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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/8/2007 6:27 PM (GMT -6) |   | |
Your responses indicate that you have not understood my objection. I'll assume I've not expressed it clearly enough for you.
You've insisted that the future that God observes is actual, not merely conceptual. God perceives, not conceives. God watches the actual rape, the slow diseased death, etc. This stuff really, actually happens, or God couldn't "observe" it! Then when God doesn't like how that panned out, he intervenes and creates a new world, one where those things don't happen. But in the first world... those things DID happen. They were actually experienced. NOTHING EVIL WAS AVOIDED THERE. Not only did those evil things happen, but God let the game keep running, so to speak, long after it's already clear that he is going to punt. Why let the clock keep running? Isn't this gratuitous and/or sadistic?
You answered my question why by saying, "Because God is outside time." What does this have to do with anything? How does this answer why God would ACTUALIZE multiple worlds, where all alternative worlds were too evil for God to tolerate? Oy. I don't think you're getting it. Post Edited (Corey) : 8/8/2007 7:23:31 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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SerialForeknowledge
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 21
| Posted 8/8/2007 7:25 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey said...
Your responses indicate that you have not understood my objection. I'll assume I've not expressed it clearly enough for you.
You've insisted that the future that God observes is actual, not merely conceptual. God watch the child get raped, the wife die slowly, etc. This stuff really, actually happens, or God couldn't "observe" it! Then when God doesn't like how that panned out, he intervenes and creates a new world, one where those things don't happen. But in the first world... those things DID happen. They were actually experienced. NOTHING EVIL WAS AVOIDED THERE. Not only did those evil things happen, but God let the game keep running, so to speak, long after it's already clear that he is going to punt. Why let the clock keep running? Isn't this gratuitous and/or sadistic?
You answered my question why by saying, "Because God is outside time." What does this have to do with anything? How does this answer why God would ACTUALIZE multiple worlds, where all alternative worlds were too evil for God to tolerate? Oy. I don't think you're getting it.
Think of a time (in God's time) *before* God created Adam & Eve. The universe was void. There was nothing in existance from the beginning of time to the end of time. God consideres creating a world and populating it with free creatures. *Before* actually speaking the creative word and bringing them into existance, he does not know how they will turn out.
God then speaks the creative word.
What happens? God is omnitemporal. He exists in all time. He exists in the past and he exists in the future. When God speaks, Adam & Eve are brought into existance. They are brought into existance in all time (present and future) all at once.
It is not like God is watching his creation unfold frame-by-frame in his DVD player. When God brings Adam & Eve into existance, the whole DVD is created all at once containing their whole life story.
...
Go back to the example from the TV show "Early Edition" (if you have seen it). When Gary Hobson intervenes, the paper instantly changes to show the results. God's paper doesn't have just the next day's headlines--God's paper has an exhaustive account of all future events. When God intervenes, the paper instantly changes reflecing the new exhaustive account.
*Before* God created Adam & Eve, the paper was void and empty. *Afterwards,* it contained an exhaustive account of all the free decisions Adam & Eve will ever make. It is because of God's omnitemporal existance in all time all at once.
Now, once God did say the word he perceived what would happen and this is what he saw:
Genesis 6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them."
His creation grieved him. He was sorry he created us because of our wickedness. He considered bloting out man. The word in Hebrew is machah. I don't know Hebrew, but this page says that word means "to stroke or rub; by implication, to erase". God considered erasing man. I take "erase" to mean God was considering uncreating man. Erasing them from existance. This would certainly accomplish what you suggest, preventing any evil from ever taking place by erasing it from existance. Instead, God began shepherding history through interventions like the flood. When God does intervene, future evils that are prevented are erased from existance, so that future evil really is avoided. It no longer exists.
The fulfillment of God's plan is sending his Son for the free salvation of these wicked men, with the promise of a new earth where righteousness will reign. | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/9/2007 6:54 PM (GMT -6) | | | Okay, so every event in that entire timeline ACTUALLY HAPPENED. An entire existance, extending infinitely in it's time, took place with no intervention from God. Essentially, deism is true in that world. Nothing gets corrected for all those people. Apparently God needed them all to suffer like that just so he could get a good baseline comparison. Too bad for the individuals THERE.
Next, God decided he didn't like how that one went down. So, he picks some point on it's timeline, and create a whole new infinite extension starting from that point. But there were new problems in that one which he also wasn't content with, so yet another creation. Every time God intervenes, there's an entire, new timeline starting from that point.
Every time God intervenes in your model, the universe essentially splits! Now, you can say that God destroys the first universe to be replaced by the second one, but this doesn't get you off the hook. EVERY EVIL EVENT HAS ALREADY OCCURRED THERE! It's poor consolation to THOSE individuals to suffer through their whole forsaken timeline only to finally be annihilated.
This is, by far, the WORST model of divine providence I've ever encountered. Bob not only gets cancer and dies a slow painful death, but he (or his clone, whatever) suffers that slow painful death each time God intervenes in the world.
Sorry, man, love ya to pieces, but this theory is just awful. I hope you can rework it significantly to avoid what I'll call the multiverse problem inherent in the present revision. | | Back to Top | | |
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SerialForeknowledge
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 21
| Posted 8/9/2007 8:07 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey said...
This is, by far, the WORST model of divine providence I've ever encountered. Bob not only gets cancer and dies a slow painful death, but he (or his clone, whatever) suffers that slow painful death each time God intervenes in the world.
Sorry, man, love ya to pieces, but this theory is just awful. I hope you can rework it significantly to avoid what I'll call the multiverse problem inherent in the present revision.
I read a novel a while back by Orson Scott Card that had a big influence on my ideas on the problem of pain. It is called The Worthing Chronicle published in a larger work called The Worthing Saga. In it there was a group of super-psychics who took it upon themselves to use their super-powers to take away all of other people's suffering. Jason Worthing came along and convinced them they were wrong to do it. Basically his argument was: Yes a person might have had a poor miserable life, but it was that person's poor miserable life. It was wrong of them to unilaterally interfere like that, basically taking that life away from them. These psychics didn't take the pain away from people in their own group. Jason Worthing finally convinced them to stop by offering to take away painful memories they had. They didn't want to part with them.
So when I look at it, I see what kind of tough job God has in deciding when to interviene. God gave these creatures life and even in fixing problems God is taking some of that back. I had a chapter on prayer in earlier drafts but left it out because just getting the basic principle down would be difficult enough. I imagined prayer as free creatures asking God to interfere in an exisistance that God granted them, basically inviting him to change the course of their life, making his decision a little easier.
The multiverse is a problem, but, FWIW, I think Middle Knowledge's multiverse problem is much more revolting. | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/10/2007 7:49 AM (GMT -6) | | | SF: ... I think Middle Knowledge's multiverse problem is much more revolting.
Corey: What multiverse problem?? There is exactly one universe which God decided to actualize. All the counter-factual worlds are exactly that: counter factual (didn't actualize). That model says God has the knowledge of what WOULD happen in each possible world, but it's a conceptual knowledge.
Spell it out for me. Exactly what about middle knowledge is more revolting? At least there the evil remains conceptual. In your model, God has to actualize all that evil before he can know it. Which is worse: conceptual evil or actual evil?
BTW, it still seems to me that you have not really grasped my objection yet. You talk about the implications on the final world, but ignore the implications on all the interim worlds. The evil in those worlds ACTUALLY happened; fixing it in some other world doesn't do ANYTHING for the people in the first world. Post Edited (Corey) : 8/10/2007 9:51:08 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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SerialForeknowledge
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 21
| Posted 8/12/2007 11:20 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey said...
BTW, it still seems to me that you have not really grasped my objection yet. You talk about the implications on the final world, but ignore the implications on all the interim worlds. The evil in those worlds ACTUALLY happened; fixing it in some other world doesn't do ANYTHING for the people in the first world.
When God acts to change the future, the previous future is erased. It is no more. It is no longer factually accurate to say that evil in those interim worlds actually happened. It is uncreated.Corey said...
SF: ... I think Middle Knowledge's multiverse problem is much more revolting.
Corey: What multiverse problem?? There is exactly one universe which God decided to actualize. All the counter-factual worlds are exactly that: counter factual (didn't actualize). That model says God has the knowledge of what WOULD happen in each possible world, but it's a conceptual knowledge.
Spell it out for me. Exactly what about middle knowledge is more revolting? At least there the evil remains conceptual.
In Middle Knowledge theory, God has knowledge of what I would do if placed in a situation.
For all I know, there is a possible world out there where, after a long chain of improbable events, it is part of my character and personality that I would certainly flip out and go on a shooting rampage or commit some other malicious deed.
Is that evil conceptual or actual? It is a real fact in MK that the content of my character and personality would certainly lead me to those acts. My personality and character are in a real sense actually guilty of those acts because "I would certainly commit them if only...". It matters little if my character and personality happened to be "actualized" in a world where that chain of imporbable events didn't take place.
Speaking of "actualized" world, I have difficulty comprehending what makes the actualized world any more real than the multitude of unactualized worlds. Each are populated with facts. | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/12/2007 12:11 PM (GMT -6) | | SF: Speaking of "actualized" world, I have difficulty comprehending what makes the actualized world any more real than the multitude of unactualized worlds. Each are populated with facts.
Corey: Seriously? You can't tell the difference between a counter-factual ("would" ) and a factual ("actual" )? None of the "would" worlds actually exists except in the mind of God; none (except the one chosen one) of those actually ever obtains in the Molinist view. This is a HUGE difference.
Gosh, I really don't mean to sound harsh or abrupt or terse or whatever. I'm just trying to be succinct for the sake of clarity. I'm looking for your best here.
Post Edited (Corey) : 8/12/2007 12:16:37 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/12/2007 3:27 PM (GMT -6) | | SF: God did not create an evil world.
Corey: Put this together with all your talk about God perceiving a world in which he did not intervene AT ALL. Was this world not evil? If not, why did God "uncreate" it and do something else?
You've been emphatic that God perceives these worlds; he does not merely conceive of them. Maybe you don't realize that perception entails actuality of the object perceived?
SF: God created a world populated with free beings who, in turn, had the potential to make what they would out of it.
Corey: This, I agree with!
SF: He did not know *before* he created it that he was creating an evil world.
Corey: But he knew its potential for evil, right?
SF: So once God creates this world of potential, then sees to his sorrow that that potential was used towards evil ends, what is he to do?
Corey: Redeem it!! "God works all things together for good..." Why not just hold, as we do, that God is interacting with his creation in real time as it unfolds? Post Edited (Corey) : 8/12/2007 3:35:11 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 8/26/2007 9:09 AM (GMT -6) | | Hello SF, your webstie sarts with one of my favorite TV shows.
See http://www.opentheismboard.org/default.aspx?f=7&m=31169 for info ontime.
Time is a dimension. It can’t be split into two kinds of itself any more that height can be split into metaphysical height as differing from actual height.
I like your thinking and concept, and I limit foreknowledge more than most here, simply because the free will of 5 billion sentient beings on earth also interplay with what will happen in the next 5 minutes. Since this is true (I can determine if I will sin or not and make those determinations every few minutes, as does everyone else), the actual future God might know changes constantly.
There is no way around this. Then the issue becomes, what future events does God choose to stop (unlike Gary Hobson, God could stop lots of events simultaneously) and which does he allow to continue. The moral questions in this case are as large as that are for classical theisms. Why didn’t he stop the holocaust? All he needed to do was prevent a judge from releasing Hitler from a prison. Why didn’t he stop my sister from being raped? All he needed to do was make someone walk by and notice the assault. And so on and so forth. So you end up with a God who makes relative moral decisions to intervene.
It seems that God only intervenes when he is trying to do something specific to his plans: He blinded Saul and knocked him off of his horse (or caused the events that made him fall), he spoke through prophets to change specific events (Samuel anointed David), and so forth.
It would seem that God does not intervene at all in the normal day-to-day events unless there is a compelling need to do so to further his overall plans, and that is what he foreknows, his plans, and that in general. I don’t believe the anti-Christ is a specific person, rather a person who will move into a position he describes in the future (presuming my theology is correct about it being in the future). I don’t believe a specified time for Christ’s return has been selected because he said he didn’t event know when he would be back. If the time were already set, he would know it.
So I even have problems with the standard OV view in that regard. I think, again, the only thing set about the future is the general plan, and this is all God knows beyond probability based on knowledge of individuals who are free to do as they choose much like I can assume my kids will have a beef today simply because they will be in close proximity and that is how they have been behaving recently, but they have free will and may choose otherwise.
We plan to go to church later today as a family, but any of the three may determine that have things that prevent that (true things: one in law school, one in college stayed out too late last night to get her work done for tomorrow, one preparing for two HS AP classes starting in a few weeks, etc.) So their free wills and previous actions condition what I think the probability of us all making it are.
So now my foreknowledge of today’s events is, there is a probability we will all go to church, a greater probability less than all of us will go to church, etc.
So I agree foreknowledge is serial, however, the time frame in which it changes is conditioned by 5 billion free wills and there cannot be Gary Hobson’s newspaper because every event printed is conditioned on multiple free will choices coalescing into an event which might not happen if one small divisions is made differently in a split second, more like the “Hat” scene at Ascot Race Track where the choreography prevented incidents until Professor Higgins bumps someone. Billions of things go right every day and some things go wrong, but all because of the exercise of all of the free wills in the world.
The seriality of the foreknowledge fades as insignificant to mention when the whole picture is in view and I think our masters of OV side step this to some degree trying not to disrupt the classical view holders too much.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 8/26/2007 8:26 PM (GMT -6) | |
Ronald A. Newcomb said...
Time is a dimension. QUOTE:
2. Time brooks no unreality, nature admits no lies. That is the simple reason why sin must tend toward death. Time is Realization, and as such it is of Grace. Time is not Space at all, and is certainly not a dimension (sorry E.), but it is Grace, and Grace is more, much more than Time. Because of this one fact, the Christian can Hope.
http://janotec.typepad.com/terrace/2007/08/rieffian-notes-.html
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 8/26/2007 8:31 PM (GMT -6) | | |
MORE QUOTE:
5. Is there an "uncertainty principle" governing the relationship of Time and Space that follows the contours of the relationship of momentum and location -- that one may know when he is, but not where, simultaneously? And to extend this proposition, is it impossible to thus "prove" reality? As it is impossible to prove this moment in this place, or this place in this moment?
6. Is there a wave function that is an image of the dyad of Divine Ordinance and Human Freedom? Does this wave function collapse when the event occurs?
7. A sacrament is the intersection of Spirit with the World -- there must be the intersection of Sacrament for the soul to act in history. This is why we pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Every Sacrament is an invasion of the eschaton into this God-beloved, but God-rejecting world.
8. There is no greater mission, or raison d'etre, for a Christian than to pray. Every prayer is a redemption. Every prayer is a deliberate rebuttal of determinism. Every prayer is accompanied by "Lord have mercy," and is confirmed by the only possible Christian existentialist expression, which is, what we will all understand when we finally grow up, "Amen." . . . . . . . If you pray with editorial reserve, wondering whether God is big enough or if your requests are too sentimental, insignificant or transgressive of calvinistic dogma, then you have built your mountains higher than God is tall, and you have made of Him a mere constituent force, like a corporation, instead of a Person, like a Father, Who sent His Only-Begotten Son and His Spirit, Who makes of prayer an Eschatological Revolution, not a mere sentiment signed on Hallmark cards.
(SAME SOURCE AS ABOVE)
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 8/27/2007 2:58:48 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 8/26/2007 8:38 PM (GMT -6) | | |
QUOTE-
There are no meaningless "coincidences" — in fact, this cliché does not go far enough. Life is completely, infinitely meaningful, as every microscopic and macroscopic event is called into being by the Father, articulated by the Son, and fulfilled by the Spirit: "In Christ," St. Paul (again) says, "all things hold together" (Colossians 1.17). Solomon, writing before the revelation of Christ, says this: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3.1).
http://janotec.typepad.com/terrace/
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 8/27/2007 1:14:58 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 8/27/2007 8:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Pot: I have been off the board for some time but do recall you have a penchant for mystic thoughts. This seems to be one of them.
I really don’t care if someone thinks time=grace or time=realization, time is in fact a dimension. This isn’t a point of debate as your quoted author thinks. He then hangs his reality on his straw man, as yet another, presumable to create a situation (hope depends only on this) where people will be afraid to burn the straw man.
I have a match, and I am not afraid to use it.
That is absurd to claim reality isn’t reality so you can build a one straw man on top of another.
Point 5 mixes yet again a scientific idea (a false one, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) with other reality concepts to produce yet another idea rejected by all sciences at all times. Heisenberg was dead wrong as Schrödinger’s cat pointed out, but instead of realizing Schrödinger’s cat clearly made mockery of his idea, he accepted it as a de facto explanation of his idea! Your author mixes up all kinds of ideas and then claims an unsupportable scientific principle is “governing the relationship of Time and Space. This is absurd.
[Heisenberg was trying to deal with Einstein’s doing away with “ether” only to find out that this left a huge question: is light a wave or a particle. Light is a particle which creates a wave as it passes through her” or “dark matter” or “black hydrogen” the later two being the new way of explaining the old theory (ether) which Einstein wrongly dismissed and knew he was wrong about before he retired because his theory (E=MC2) only works in gravitational fields and there was simply insufficient gravity without the ether he has dismissed. Why had he dismissed it? Because it allowed for Cartesian coordinates to be set in a universe he wanted to be relative. He was a naturalist and tried unsuccessfully to force this naturalist view on the world. His theory slowly (partly) unraveled because it was based on a false idea. That which deals with gravity is pretty good.]
Mysticism doesn’t give real answers. It doesn’t even deal with reality, it makes up reality as opposed to thinking about it, which is hard work.
Sorry, but time is a dmension, there is no changing that.
Professor Ronald A. Newcomb
Adjunct Faculty
College of Sciences
San Diego State University
R.A.Newcomb
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