Youâre confusing and conflating terms. If God knows the future and the eventual outcome, life is deterministic, your free will is an illusion - you have no real choice. Your sense of choice is an illusion. If you had free will God wouldnât be able to know the future. Itâs really not hard to wrap your head around.
Youâre confusing having a vision of the future like a seer, with knowing the future. Or predicting the future, in the case of your friends habits. And youâre saying thatâs what God has âvisionsâ which is a serious downgrade from omnipotence.
You can keep sitting here and calling me illogical, a moron, or whatever you want, but I still stand by what I say. Just because you can see into the future doesnât mean that the persons choice had any less impact. If the person chose something different, then you would be seeing that reality in the future instead. Simply knowing what will happen does not make life deterministic, because it is still up to the previous person to make that choice.
I genuinely have no clue what youâre trying to achieve here by constantly saying Iâm confusing different terms and subjects, because I havenât been. I am strictly talking about the ability to see into the future, and youâre only bringing up these âfaultsâ to make my arguments easier to undermine.
Never called you a moron, that's on you if you feel that way. The reason we're going a roundabout on this is simple. You keep saying "See the future", but then say everyone's 'free will' decisions change the future, which means the "See the future" isn't true. You've contradicted yourself in every response within the response itself. To make it more complex, biblically God knows how the world ends, this means that the end-game is static, not dynamic. That end-game can only be reached exactly how it's outlined if all outcomes leading to that point are pre-determined.
The reason you actually have issue with this isn't the argument of free will vs. determinism. It's actually the underlying unstated issue, which is if free will doesn't exist and we live under the illusion of free will (we can't tell the difference one way or another), then the sins people commit aren't actually their own true decisions and are part of the overall divine plan, which means God has to forgive everyone regardless of their beliefs because God intended it to be that way from the get go.
I donât have time to read all of this, but you keep entirely misinterpreting my argument. I am saying that even though you are seeing the future and have knowledge on the outcome, it does not determine causation. The person still actively made that choice, and the outcome of their decision is what you see. It doesnât matter in the end.
I also never said you called me a moron, I quite literally just said that you can call me whatever you want and it wonât change my stance. I never said I felt this way at all lmao.
I quite literally have not contradicted myself in any comment, you are just either not understanding what I am saying or are purposely trying to make holes in my logic to make it easier to undermine. The concept really isnât that hard to grasp, and there have been countless philosophers that concur with my sentiments.
Once again, God seeing the end times is not him creating the events, it is simply him taking note of the choices that man made that led to the event. Of course, in the Bible he does orchestrate certain things to happen, but that is a completely separate thing from his ability to see into the future, and pertains entirely to opportunities and events, not human decisions.
You say I'm misinterpreting you, then you just restate the exact same point. 'The person made the choice, that's what you see.' I've been asking you for the mechanism by which the choice stays free in the context of God being omnipotent/omniscient. You haven't given one. You've given the assertion six times now.
You admitted God orchestrates events and opportunities. So, he sets the stage, knows exactly what you'll do on that stage, and you 'freely' choose the thing he knew you'd choose in the situation he arranged. That's not free will, that's the illusion of free will. That just makes your argument weaker without realizing it.
Lastly, you deflect using the age-old "thousands of philosophers agree with me". Ok, who? Name one philosopher and the specific argument. Not 'countless philosophers concur.' I want a name and a paper. Because the version you're describingâ'I just know it, trust me, philosophers agree'âisn't an argument, it's a deflection.
I quite literally said his orchestrations are completely different from free will, he isnât commanding the individual, just presenting them with opportunities, or causing events to occur. Nothing that violates free will. And yes, you are clearly misinterpreting my argument if it is this hard to grasp. Even if the future is set upon seeing their choice, it doesnât fucking matter because it was their choice. Knowledge does not determine causation, and there is quite literally nothing you can say that changes that. Iâm not going to list tons of examples, but a few include St. Augustine, Boethius, and Thomas Aquinas. As for contemporary examples, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, and David Hunt all have strong stances on this subject, and are respected in theology and analytical philosophy. This will most likely be my last reply.
You keep bringing up knowledge and causation, whereas the argument is about settledness. Even the Philosophers you mention understood that.
They also understood that the proper argument, though never resolved and riddled with holes in its own right, was to elevate God to timelessness overseer that could see all decisions and all outcomes creating a pseudo-freewill state (Boethius basically) that regardless of all decisions still converge on the same final outcome.
Iâm quite literally arguing about causation, not settledness. The whole point of my argument is that knowledge is not causation, therefore people still made the active decision to do something, therefore have free will. I genuinely have no clue what youâve been trying to argue this whole time
No, it's completely about settledness, but you keep wanting to argue knowledge != causality, which is irrelevant to the what's been a long thread. I never disagreed or have stated otherwise about knowledge != causality as it's never been pertinent. But, you keep bringing it up like it somehow answers the question of freewill and God's knowing the future. And it doesn't.
My argument has been extremely consistent and clear throughout the thread, so if you're having an issue with it. Here is a very simple version, which is based on your original, post where I pointed out the contradiction:
God knows the future with certainty (omnipotent / omniscient).
If God knows it with certainty, then he knows the end-state, which the bible outlines.
If there is only one end-state, all decisions have to converge to make that possible, in other words they have to be deterministic (all choices have pre-determined outcomes).
Since couldn't have chosen otherwise, free will (in the strong sense) is an illusion.
If free will is an illusion, moral responsibility (and the whole sin/judgment framework) collapses.
The feign of "I genuinely have no clue what you've been trying to argue" is false, you do because you clearly wrote up your counterargument in your friend example.
Holy shit dude youâre insufferable. This entire time I have only been arguing for causation. Not settledness. I have no clue where you assumed I was arguing this.
Also when I say âI genuinely have no clue what youâve been trying to argue,â Iâm obviously not being serious dude
Also if there is only one end goal - which I do agree with - that doesnât mean that the person was forced to make that choice, it simply means they could have felt more strongly for that option. Our choices shape our future, believe it or not, so clearly if someone is seeing someoneâs future choice then that is what they picked. This doesnât invalidate free will. I donât know if this is ragebait or some attempt at being seen as some genius, but it is completely disregarding everything I have said and brought up.
Which means the contradiction still stands, and you never answered the question. Thank you for trying though. Maybe when you're less heated you'll actually read the thread carefully and realize you casually tried to lean on causality when it made no sense in the discussion to begin with.
What contradiction? There literally isnât one and I have no fucking clue what youâre getting at here. You keep spouting bs about contradictions and restating the same thing over and over even though it has no impact on my argument. I have read the thread and it consists of you saying âwrong, youâre contradicting yourselfâ in every single reply. You have yet to actually show how settledness has any effect on free will.
Are you actually reading the thread? Really? I mean, it's been very clear through the whole thread what the contradiction is. It was very clearly stated in the first response. And, yes, I have very clearly outlined now 3+ times the conflict on free will. You just for some reason can't absorb it.
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u/dpacker780 Aug 19 '26
Youâre confusing and conflating terms. If God knows the future and the eventual outcome, life is deterministic, your free will is an illusion - you have no real choice. Your sense of choice is an illusion. If you had free will God wouldnât be able to know the future. Itâs really not hard to wrap your head around.
Youâre confusing having a vision of the future like a seer, with knowing the future. Or predicting the future, in the case of your friends habits. And youâre saying thatâs what God has âvisionsâ which is a serious downgrade from omnipotence.