The fallacy of the omniscience argument

[Raithere]

For heuristical purposes, choosing the simplist view and then trying to disprove it is best. But this simplistic view is nore more likely than any other.

Indeed. May we then take it that you subscribe to the Ptolemaic model of the Universe?

http://webpages.charter.net/middents/Ptolemy's Model.htm

The problem with your approach here is that it tends towards absurdity. One may continue to add unnecessary complexities to infinity.

You can see this tendency prevail in medieval theology. You add God, then you add the Holy Spirit, Jesus, then angels. But just angles aren't enough so we add categories of angels so we get archangels, seraphim, cherubim, oaphnim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, and principalities. And of course we can't just have Good without Evil so in addition to Satan we get Beelzebub, Mammon, Asmodai, Belphegor and their minions of course, the incubi, succubi, familiars, imps, etc.

Hopefully you can see the problem.

~Raithere

 

[Raithere]

cole:

Demonstrate your free will; choose only from the following options:

1. Blue

And I still say, where is the link? How can God's knowledge interact with the universe and force an event to occur? I just want you to tell me by what mechanism a "mental" image, such as a thought, could affect a physical universe.

Again you have it backwards. You cannot know something that is uncertain, you cannot know what is yet undecided. Knowledge comes from that which is known. Knowledge indicates that the pattern is set and unchangeable. We can know the past because it is done, it is set and static and thus knowable.

If the future can be known then it cannot change. If it cannot change then there is no alternative outcome. If there aren't any alternative possibilities in the future there's only one static reality playing out like a strip of film. To have free will, will needs the freedom of selecting between various choices. The range of available choices is the degree to which you have free will.

It's like the demonstration above. You cannot choose river, or yellow, or bayonet because those options do not exist. Your freedom is constrained by the available choices. If there is only one option then there is no choice to be made, no freedom for will to operate within.

~Raithere

 

[wesmorris]

cole:

Demonstrate your free will; choose only from the following options:

1. Blue

No.

I win.

Hehe.

 

[cole grey]

Royal blue.
No... cerulean.
No... turquoise.

Perhaps on some level our free-will is made less than perfectly free, but it is only natural that our free-will be less than free. The definition of free-will, if it is something that actually exists, for everyone, as claimed by the people who propose that God is omniscient, must include this factor - it is not 100% free.
If you define free-will as 100% free-will, you automatically MUST throw out the idea that everyone has it.
So perhaps we are constrained in some way by God's knowledge, forced to choose between types of blue. So what?

- Perhaps God is accurate enough in predicting things that all God's inaccuracies are in unkown dimension # seventy-three. To us God is effectively omniscient, but there is still plenty of room for the unknown outside of our sphere of concern. YOU are the one who insists on the strictest interpretation of the word "omniscience".

- Perhaps God has ACCESS to all knowledge, in God's non-temporal existence, but chooses not to access the information about anything that happens for the split second before it happens to allow you to choose. Again, you don't consider ACCESS to all knowledge omniscience, but I would say the word could apply.

EDIT - I like this one right now - you have knowledge, yet you don't have to be thinking about it at any particular time to consider it "known".

OR-

You have it backwards, for you the effect leads the cause, just because you perceive it occuring before the cause. However, this cause and effect link you insist upon is not necessary. The activity in your brain caused by knowing the past doesn't affect the past, does it? The past affects the knowledge.
If God sees time laid out flat and doesn't perceive a future or past, God could just as easily say "that is happening right now", as say, "that happened tomorrow." God could say your grandmother is being born and you are being born right now, and our definition of "right now" is simply an illusion we are presented with so our physical minds can grasp existence.


OR-
following wes's answer, "no" - there is an argument in there somewhere about simply letting things be, implying that you didn't choose them, meaning you weren't forced to choose them, meaning you have free-will.

 

[Light Travelling]

It's like the demonstration above. You cannot choose river, or yellow, or bayonet because those options do not exist. Your freedom is constrained by the available choices. If there is only one option then there is no choice to be made, no freedom for will to operate within.

~Raithere

Yes but what you are saying here is just that we only ever have freewill to choose from the options in front of us. This statement is true whether there is, or is not a god and whether that god is, or is not omniscient. Your statment is perfectly true but actually has little bearing on the argument as it is true for all conditions.

And this is why I think the argument can be broken down into two streams. That of the subjective and the objective.

In a subjective reality in a subjective universe - we have the experience of making (a sometimes limited) choice. This condition is true, whether god exists or not and is omniscient or not.

In an objective reality and in an objective universe - it is not so clear whether we really have choice and in fact the logical argument that we dont is certainly very strong. But the problem I have with this is that we cannot be objective about reality or universe (as i'm sure you already know) because we are inextricably bound into both. There are many things in life we can be objective about, usually by raising to a level of intellect above the senses and emotions. But with reality we cannot do that becuase intellect is bound into reality. So we can never really know the truth of this.

But this whole argument starts when the religious claim a god (which by definition is omniscient) and then claim god gives them freewill. Others then calim that the two states cannot exist at the same time thereby disproving god if both the aforementioned conditions are true. But the religious have never claimed an objective freewill has been given, so the statement;

An omniscient god has given man a subjective experience of freewill within his subjective universe.

is true.

Whether this is objectively true is slightly irrelevant as we can never objectively experience freewill.

 

[okinrus]

Indeed. May we then take it that you subscribe to the Ptolemaic model of the Universe?

I didn't say a complex solution was necessarily correct, only that it could be correct.
If a solution is too simple then that it's likely it was just made up. On the other hand, you can get a type of complexity that is contrived, and this same conclusion can be reached. What this ammounts to is, because we're complex and because Christianity seeks to be our path, it's expected that Christianity has some complexity.

The problem with your approach here is that it tends towards absurdity. One may continue to add unnecessary complexities to infinity.

OK, but God is a solution to many problems. Other theories that address the problems God addresses are just as complex, I think.

 

[Light Travelling]

Demonstrate your free will; choose only from the following options:

1. Blue

It's like the demonstration above. You cannot choose river, or yellow, or bayonet because those options do not exist. Your freedom is constrained by the available choices. If there is only one option then there is no choice to be made, no freedom for will to operate within.

~Raithere

Or, to try and look at it from an objective viewpoint.

your argument
In the physical conscious world;
we see only blue.
Therefore the choice is only blue.
Therefore we have no choice.
Therefore we have no freewill.

If we could step outside of subjective reality and look in though we might see;

alternative argument
In the subconscious and ethereal worlds;
Long before we get to the situation of choosing blue in the physical world
we have at some sub conscious level chosen to be in that particular place at that particular time with only blue in front of us, and it is some time before this choice filters down into physical manifestation.
Therefore we have made a choice.
Therefore we do have freewill.


But as I said, for the purposes of reasoned argument we cannot step out of reality to be objective. Even if we were able to enter new levels of reality, as soon as we entered it, we would experience it and it would instantly become subjective reality again. So you see there is no such thing as an objective reality - even for god.

 

[Raithere]

No.

Royal blue.
No... cerulean.
No... turquoise.

All answers so far are out of bounds. If God knew you would pick blue you cannot refuse to pick, nor can you pick some deviation from what God knows.

Perhaps on some level our free-will is made less than perfectly free, but it is only natural that our free-will be less than free. The definition of free-will, if it is something that actually exists, for everyone, as claimed by the people who propose that God is omniscient, must include this factor - it is not 100% free.

Agreed.

So perhaps we are constrained in some way by God's knowledge, forced to choose between types of blue. So what?

- Perhaps God is accurate enough in predicting things that all God's inaccuracies are in unkown dimension # seventy-three. To us God is effectively omniscient, but there is still plenty of room for the unknown outside of our sphere of concern. YOU are the one who insists on the strictest interpretation of the word "omniscience".

Actually I don't, I just needed to make the point clear. We agree (at least for argument's sake) that precognition sets boundaries for free will. Let's put that back into context. The next question is; what is the point of God allowing man free will? From my understanding the point is responsibility, without free will man is no more responsible for his actions than an electric can opener is.

Perhaps God has ACCESS to all knowledge, in God's non-temporal existence, but chooses not to access the information about anything that happens for the split second before it happens to allow you to choose. Again, you don't consider ACCESS to all knowledge omniscience, but I would say the word could apply.

Same problem actually. If the future is knowable it must be static even if no one actually does know it. If God wants to allow free will, some things at least must be intrinsically unknowable.

The activity in your brain caused by knowing the past doesn't affect the past, does it? The past affects the knowledge.

The past causes the knowledge.

If God sees time laid out flat and doesn't perceive a future or past, God could just as easily say "that is happening right now", as say, "that happened tomorrow." God could say your grandmother is being born and you are being born right now, and our definition of "right now" is simply an illusion we are presented with so our physical minds can grasp existence.

This is another possibility and indeed from a position outside of time it would hold true. But it doesn't resolve the free will issue for either God or man, events in time (past, present, and future) would still be static.

following wes's answer, "no" - there is an argument in there somewhere about simply letting things be, implying that you didn't choose them, meaning you weren't forced to choose them, meaning you have free-will.

Refusing to select any option is still a choice, something that absolute omniscience would know.

~Raithere

 

[Raithere]

Yes but what you are saying here is just that we only ever have freewill to choose from the options in front of us.

No, that's not all I'm saying here. What I'm saying is that knowledge limits the choices to 1, which means there are no choices.

In an objective reality and in an objective universe - it is not so clear whether we really have choice and in fact the logical argument that we dont is certainly very strong. But the problem I have with this is that we cannot be objective about reality or universe (as i'm sure you already know) because we are inextricably bound into both. There are many things in life we can be objective about, usually by raising to a level of intellect above the senses and emotions. But with reality we cannot do that becuase intellect is bound into reality. So we can never really know the truth of this.

I agree.

An omniscient god has given man a subjective experience of freewill within his subjective universe.

is true.

It could be true. But it has yet to be proven or even argued successfully.

Whether this is objectively true is slightly irrelevant as we can never objectively experience freewill.

But it's not irrelevant. If our behavior is not free (even if our subjective experience seems otherwise), then we are not responsible for what we do. If we are not responsible then how can a just God hold us accountable?

Long before we get to the situation of choosing blue in the physical world
we have at some sub conscious level chosen to be in that particular place at that particular time with only blue in front of us, and it is some time before this choice filters down into physical manifestation.

This just pushes the problem back it doesn't resolve it. Interesting idea though.

~Raithere

 

[Raithere]

I didn't say a complex solution was necessarily correct, only that it could be correct.
If a solution is too simple then that it's likely it was just made up. On the other hand, you can get a type of complexity that is contrived, and this same conclusion can be reached. What this ammounts to is, because we're complex and because Christianity seeks to be our path, it's expected that Christianity has some complexity.

A solution should be as simple as possible without ignoring any facts. Something is only "too simple" when it ignores facts. Any unnecessary complication is useless and pointless.

OK, but God is a solution to many problems. Other theories that address the problems God addresses are just as complex, I think.

"God" doesn't resolve anything though, it just pushes the problem off where it can then be ignored.

For instance, the answer of "God did it" to "how did the Universe come to be" doesn't answer the essential question because there is no answer to "then where did God come from".

~Raithere

 

[Light Travelling]

If everything in the universe is interconnected and is all the result of cause and effect then there can be no freewill, as all is the product of cause and effect.

The only complete freewill that is possible, is the original freewill that set the first cause in motion.

If everything in this universe is illusion.

Then the first freewill choice that made the first cause that started the illusion could have been started by us. In this case it would be possible to make that freewill choice again.

In this case in a universe of cause and effect there is only one excercise of freewill possible: to see the illusion or not: to give the first cause or not: and at any time the first cause may be withdrawn and the universe of illusion will diappear. - enlightenment!

I posted this on another thread, but to make it relevant here, I would like to suggest that the first choice / cause would be choose god or not choose god. Because this choice dissolves the universe, the omniscience of god within the universe is irrelevant.

As all is illusion Gods omniscience outside this universe is unaffected, as he would know all along it is illusion, in fact when the choice is made we realise we are god, we are omniscient and this world of limits is but a dream.

Now I know you will say this is fantasy, but it does broadly fit with some 'mystical' traditions of mainstream religion.