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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > The raging debate continues here... > God refrains from inferring future actions | Forum Quick Jump
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/24/2002 6:01 PM (GMT -6) |   | Leth, you seem to base your thinking on the assumption that "freedom" and predictability are an either/or proposition.[qupte]...how God created the very first created free agent; that is, how it occurs that things are unpredictible for God.
It seems that this makes free agency and predictability mutually exclusive.
That's not an uncommom proposition on this site.
I can't remember what all the quip was, but today it seemed a good parallel to me today of that assumption and the Enron/MCI/Bank thing. But I can't remember it now.
Freedom is whether one is or is not enslaved. We were created free. It was the fall that messed it up. Love and communion were the original design. Actually, it was that free will that made the fall possible -- which I'm sure you will agree with. But predictability and determination are different.
That's all for now.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Now I remember! The stock market in the last decade or so opperated within a perceived closed system. You could figure social science stats for behavior, and it would transfer to the market. But the "system" isn't closed. Increased based on percieved impending increased had to pop sometime. The sureness of how issues are treated here strike me as being similar, or even parallel. I kind of wonder whether they are both expressions of the late 1990's in somekind of trend.
Edited by - (o) on 07/25/2002 12:07:27 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Iconoclast
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 7/24/2002 6:11 PM (GMT -6) | | leth
You have entirely ignored the development of my argument and instead chosen to address what seemed most easy to attack. In fact, I dare say that I find it to be disingenuous on your part that those things with which you have taken issue are in large part those things which are clearly irrelvant to the points of my argument at this stage of its progression, and also those which I have put considerable efforts into answering as this thread has progressed; either you have not taken the time to address these (and you are not obligated to), or you have are not interested in doing so.
Iconoclast
leth – I sincerely apologize for coming across in an attacking way. That was not my intent. I really appreciate your spirit of open dialogue, your willingness to follow a train of thought and the effort you have put forth. I have not taken enough time to completely understand your argument. I will give more thought to your latest post.
Very quickly I will say that I am struggling a bit with your statement: “What is a process? A process is a collection of rules such that given particular inputs, when the process is applied, particular outputs result. If you wish to object to this, please say so.”
Are you suggesting that given any process (P) and a set of Inputs (I) that a set of outputs (O) will ALWAYS result? P(I) = O where a particular set of output O is ALWAYS produced by a particular set of inputs I. In other words are you ruling out processes that produce “probabilistic” results? P(I) = {.2Oa, .3Ob, .5Oc}
Also, I think I have been misunderstanding your idea that God cannot create an indeterminate object (polygon). My first understanding is that you meant an object that was capable of indeterminacy (like a quantum particle). Are you rather saying that God cannot create an “abstract” entity? When you say God cannot create a dog and you mean God cannot create the abstraction “dog” (the category “dog”) without creating an actual set of particular dogs then I think that is quite different from the question of whether God can create a particle that behaves in unpredictable ways. Is this what you were getting at?
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 7/29/2002 5:49 AM (GMT -6) | | Leth: Thus, the point of Analogy1 is that God can not actualize the entity until a selection is made…It argues against proposal (2), that the initial state of a thing is unpredictible…if God makes the selection as to which of the possible encompassed entities obtains, then God would of course know the initial state of this entity, and no uncertainty for God results unless we were to make serious concessions about God's knowledge of the present and of his own actions.
Doc: Only if the very idea of a self-determining agent is logically contradictory. If a self-determining agent is conceivable, then God could fully actualize the agent and be uncertain as to what the agent will actually do. In creating such an God, God creates future possibilities, but the agent herself selects which possibilities will be actualized. I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen the idea of a self-determining agent exposed as being self-contradictory yet.
Leth: What is a process (of the cat freely selecting options)? A process is a collection of rules such that given particular inputs, when the process is applied, particular outputs result. If you wish to object to this, please say so.
Doc: Okay, I object. This again only works if you assume at the start that processes are necessarily deterministic. But why think this? A process can operate by statistical principles. And when they do so, particualr inputs do not NOT require one particular output. As Icon has been arguing, this is the process of the entire world, so far as science now knows it. I might add that it is also the process of our own decision making. With every decision we make, we take "in puts" into consideration, but we assume that it is ultimate UP TO US as free agents to decide what we shall do. We are INFLUENCED by many factors, but not usually DETERMINED by them. Our fundamental sense of moral responsibility hangs on this.
Icon: Are you suggesting that given any process (P) and a set of Inputs (I) that a set of outputs (O) will ALWAYS result? P(I) = O where a particular set of output O is ALWAYS produced by a particular set of inputs I. In other words are you ruling out processes that produce "probabilistic" results? P(I) = {.2Oa, .3Ob, .5Oc}
Doc: As I read him, that is exactly what Leth is assuming. Given his assumption, his argument works. But I don’t grant the assumption.
One final word: One either assumes that freedom is a "given" in creation, or not. If not, one assumes that one can REDUCE the phenomenon of free will to MORE FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES. Hence, one assumes that if God knows all PRESENT processes, God knows all future results. But if one rather assumes that freedom is a given, a "fundamental" aspect of reality, both in God and in creation, then one assumes that no analysis of processes will exhaustively GET AT and EXPLAIN the free act. The free act transcends all processes the mind can analyze. As I see it, Leth’s argument is premised on the assumption that freedom is not a fundamental, and thus it can in principle be
Blessings
Doc
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/29/2002 7:03 AM (GMT -6) | | Instructions on Playing God (Creating an odd-numbered sided figure out of even sided shapes == mixing the rules!):
While six hexagons (which can be created using a compas and the bisecting rule in geometry) put together surround the shape of another hexagon, by using only five hexagons and taking them off of the single plane that six require, by putting them together the five hexagons surround a pentagon. Do that enough times, apply white and black paint, and you get a soccer ball. you just have to change the rules, or mix rules belonging to different kinds of things.
Just goes to show that we can have a really tough time, sometimes, predicting from the inside of one set of rules what is possible when different kinds interact.
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