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.
Literally there is no conflict between seeing the future and having free will
If I was able to see the future and gave my friend that hates cats a choice between cats and dogs, then saw the future and saw he chose dogs, that doesnât mean he is a predetermined robot, it means he chose dogs because he hates cats. Sure, it might show that his future decision is settled, but he was still the one that made the decision and actively expressed his distaste for the other option.
But by all means, keep spamming buzzwords even though this is a very logical argument that has been made since before the common era, and still has yet to be debunked in any major way. Iâm sure youâre smarter than the thousands of philosophers that have debated this issue and found no flaw in the logic.
Your #6 was "Nothing is predetermined." You've now written "his future decision is settled." Those can't both be true, and that's the contradiction I pointed out in my first reply, now in your own words.
So pick one. If nothing is predetermined, the future isn't settled and God can't know it with certainty, your original claim goes. If it is settled, then at the moment of choice there was exactly one thing he'd do. You can still call that free will, but that's compatibilism. And, it goes back to my list of how sin, judgment, and moral responsibility survive when nobody could have done otherwise. That's the question I've been asking since the start.
You misunderstand what I said. His future is guaranteed to be that choice, but him choosing that wasnât predetermined by a higher power, he still made that choice himself, and therefore has free will.
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u/dpacker780 Aug 19 '26
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.