Talk:Theological fatalism

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For the February 2005 deletion discussion, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Theological fatalism. Decision was to keep this article. jni 11:25, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About Passive Foreknowledge

In the article it is said that a passive foreknowledge will not invalidate free will in any logical or rational way. I disagree with this. If God or anyone has a passive forknowlege of something that is about to happen, this is in contradiction with free will. If God knows with his Omniscience that a person X is going to perform action A, and not B or C, then this is not compatible with free will (in exception of soft determenism, wich i will explain later). Because his foreknowledge of person X performing A, exludes the possibilities of person X performing action B or C. If person X doesent perform action A (wich has been foreseen), but B or C, then God then is not Omniscient. For any certain foreknowledge of any action excludes the other possibilities of other actions, otherwise it is not certain foreknowledge, only partial foreknowledge or statistical foreknowledge, hence the person X is not able to choose from other actions than the action that is foreseen. Thus making the action foreseen determined and not of free will (free will is the ability to choose one of many different actions, and thus be in controll of your own actions). Now to Soft Determinisim. This part of determinism says that determinism and free will are compatible. Like certain foreknowledge of action A beeing comitted and not action B or C. The point here is in the definition of free will and the type of determination. Unlike hard determination, soft determination says that the person that is determined to do action A, is not determined by outer forces. He/she is determined by inner forces. Like hard determinism the person is not able to do anything else than that wich is determined, but in soft determinism the determined subject is determined to do action A, because of inner forces such as will, lust or thoughts or (neurobiological connections for that matter), he is just as determined, but he/she actually chooses in the sense that it is the will of that person or other inner forces is what determines him/her. Thus he/she wants to and does perform what he/she wants to perform, and is not forced to do what he/she does in a strict sense. In this way he/she does what he/she wants to do, thus having a free will. In this way, determinism and free will is compatible. The free will in determinism is not the same as that in hard determinism. In hard determinism free will is based on the possibility to choose and perform one of many actions, but in soft determinisms free will is based on the wanting to do what you do. In this way the free will of the two determinism is defined in a different way. (if anyone has any corrections here, please post them below) Flaffen

Flaffen, your argument is logically flawed. There is a distinct difference between what a person WILL do and what a person COULD do. For example, if I eat eggs for breakfast, that does not preclude the possibility that I could have eaten pancakes. I could have, but I didn’t. Similarly, if a perfect observer, who sees everything with perfect clarity, watches me eat breakfast, he can conclude with absolute certainty that I ate eggs. Now, if we were to use your logic, you could make the following argument:

“The perfect observer sees everything with perfect clarity, and is never mistaken. Now, if see sees that person X did action A, then this is not compatible with free will. Because the perfect observer is never mistaken, and he saw X do action A, then that means that person X could not have done B or C. After all, if he did B, then the perfect observer would be mistaken when he saw him do A. Therefore, X does not have free will.”

Do you see how ludicrous that argument is? If the perfect observer sees X doing A, then from that, you can conclude only that X did do A. You can not conclude that X had to do A. Similarly, with an omniscient being, it is logically necessary that if that being (let’s call him “God” for simplicity) knows that X will do A, then X will do A. It doesn’t mean that he MUST do A, only that he WILL do A. It is not logically necessary for him to do A; in some possible worlds, he could have done B or C. However, in those words, God would have known that he did B or C.

Does that make sense? It is a lot easier to explain if you use logical terminology, instead of just saying, “Obviously person X had to perform action A,” as if stating that somehow proves your point. 17.201.38.216 23:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

This is what I wrote for debate regarding free will on christianity.com (got banned afterwards):

"An interesting point many people omit when defending "passive foreknowledge" and thus existance of free will in situation where God is both omniscient and omnipotent (judeo-christian doctrine) is that, even if the foreknowledge of events is kept hidden, God is the Ultimate Cause, the Beginning of Everything which makes Him either directly or indirectly responisible for choices made by His creation. In other words: God had set up a whole set of events (creation) leading to eternal damnation (or salvation in other cases) of particular individuals eventhough He foresaw what the results would be. That leads to the conclusion of us being not responsible for choices made by "ourselves" only from our limited perception (lack of divine foreknowledge) as we are not responsible for the act of creation itself; any form of punishment would be unreasonable as it is not the creation that is the Ultimate Cause for its deed, but God Himself!".

Although I did not take the note on the difference between hard and soft determinism, I rather confronted theological fatalism (the conception of determinism) with belief in God's punishment/reward and whether it would be justified. It, after all, doesn't matter if a human being believes he/she wants to act this way (soft determinism) because from God's perspective it is Him who takes the whole responsibility whilst "sealing the pact" and thus agreeing to the forepredicted events, when commiting the "act of creation".

By the way, have you studied philosophy or are only a hobbist as myself?

MaybeNextTime

PS To mods: sorry for editing the article, I didn't know that showing logic issues in it is against wiki's rule or the such. Next time I will rather head to "discussion" right on.

PSS Thank you for expanding the topic.

The latest addition is comepletely flawed... The difference between human being being not responsible for the history is that the man was not there to make it all happen whilst in God's case that's what supposedly has happened.

He is said to have intentionally created the very current of events we are a part of knowing that certain (particular) people will sin and will thus become damned.

Also what the heck is "spiritual choices"?! It's been a long, long time since it's been proven that there are no choices independent from our bodies, so unless one implies that our "souls" so to speak are so easily influenced by physical damage (eg. brain damage as a result of a car accident) there is no suhc thing as "spiritual choices".

God HAS ultimately INFLUENCED (directly or indirectly - depends how you apporach to it) this very current of events (planet orbits, existance of life - everything, even our choices!).

Either that or we're not discussing christian God here, which I believe we are. MaybeNextTime