-(Qur'an) Sura 9:5
P1: Assume there exists an entity X which has the property of total omniscience.
P2: Total omniscience is the property by which an entity knows all things that are true, ever were true and ever will be true.
C1: If entity X believed something in the future to be true, it would necessarily be true (from P1 and P2).
P3: Assume there exists a being B.
C2: If entity X believed that being B would take some specific action, it would necessarily be true that this being would take this action (from C1 and P3).
P4: Free-will requires having the ability to choose options other than the one actually chosen.
C3: If entity X believed that being B would take some specific action, this being would have no choice but to take that action, as it must satisfy the prediction of entity X (from C2).
C4: Being B does not have the ability to make another choice, as this would contradict the necessarily true knowledge that entity X has (from C1 and C3).
C5: No being has free-will (from P4 and C4).
P6: All persons are beings.
C6: No person has free-will (from C5 and P6).
P7: God is a being.
C7: God does not have free will (from C5 and P7).
C8: If entity X exists, no beings, including God, can have free will (from P1, C5 and C7).
C9: If there exists any being B which has free-will, entity X cannot exist (contrapositive of C8).
C10: There cannot exist both a being with free-will and a being with total omniscience (from C8 and C9).
This means that even if we are to assume the existence of a god, we are left with only three possibilities for our world: a world in which there are no beings with omniscience or free-will, one in which there is an omniscient being but no free-will, or one in which one or more beings have free-will, but there are no omniscient beings.
Case 1: God is omniscient, but there is no free-will
If this is true, then God doesn't really control his own actions, nor does anyone else. There are many implications to this; for one, if God isn't truly making the decisions to do anything, does he really deserve to be worshiped? If no one has control over their actions, is is morally just to punish to reward anyone based on actions when they could not choose to do otherwise?
Case 2: There is free-will in the world
In this case, God cannot be omniscient, and therefore he can make mistakes. He could've made mistake upon mistake, because he may have the same amount of information as we do. In this case, God cannot know the future, and therefore every time he created something or did something on Earth, he very possibly screwed a lot up. In fact, perhaps the idea of "Intelligent Design" should be re-named "Unintelligent Design." If this god exists, he made it so we breathe through the same tube we eat with, giving us the ability to choke. He combined muskrats and ducks to give us the platypus, the most awkward animal ever and the only non-echidna mammal that lays eggs, and he gave humans the appendix, an organ which serves humans absolutely no purpose. Additionally, this means that what this god declares may be wrong, so the things he orders are quite possibly very wrong.
Case 3: Their is neither free-will nor and omniscient being
See above
Conclusion
There is, of course, the very real possibility that no god exists, in which case free-will seems likely. Regardless of whether or not a god exists, however, this holds true. A universe which contains an omniscient being cannot also have beings with free-will. Next time you hear someone say that their god is omniscient, ask them if they think he can even choose his own actions!
P3: Assume there exists a being B.
C2: If entity X believed that being B would take some specific action, it would necessarily be true that this being would take this action (from C1 and P3).
P4: Free-will requires having the ability to choose options other than the one actually chosen.
C3: If entity X believed that being B would take some specific action, this being would have no choice but to take that action, as it must satisfy the prediction of entity X (from C2).
C4: Being B does not have the ability to make another choice, as this would contradict the necessarily true knowledge that entity X has (from C1 and C3).
C5: No being has free-will (from P4 and C4).
P6: All persons are beings.
C6: No person has free-will (from C5 and P6).
P7: God is a being.
C7: God does not have free will (from C5 and P7).
C8: If entity X exists, no beings, including God, can have free will (from P1, C5 and C7).
C9: If there exists any being B which has free-will, entity X cannot exist (contrapositive of C8).
C10: There cannot exist both a being with free-will and a being with total omniscience (from C8 and C9).
This means that even if we are to assume the existence of a god, we are left with only three possibilities for our world: a world in which there are no beings with omniscience or free-will, one in which there is an omniscient being but no free-will, or one in which one or more beings have free-will, but there are no omniscient beings.
Case 1: God is omniscient, but there is no free-will
If this is true, then God doesn't really control his own actions, nor does anyone else. There are many implications to this; for one, if God isn't truly making the decisions to do anything, does he really deserve to be worshiped? If no one has control over their actions, is is morally just to punish to reward anyone based on actions when they could not choose to do otherwise?
Case 2: There is free-will in the world
In this case, God cannot be omniscient, and therefore he can make mistakes. He could've made mistake upon mistake, because he may have the same amount of information as we do. In this case, God cannot know the future, and therefore every time he created something or did something on Earth, he very possibly screwed a lot up. In fact, perhaps the idea of "Intelligent Design" should be re-named "Unintelligent Design." If this god exists, he made it so we breathe through the same tube we eat with, giving us the ability to choke. He combined muskrats and ducks to give us the platypus, the most awkward animal ever and the only non-echidna mammal that lays eggs, and he gave humans the appendix, an organ which serves humans absolutely no purpose. Additionally, this means that what this god declares may be wrong, so the things he orders are quite possibly very wrong.
Case 3: Their is neither free-will nor and omniscient being
See above
Conclusion
There is, of course, the very real possibility that no god exists, in which case free-will seems likely. Regardless of whether or not a god exists, however, this holds true. A universe which contains an omniscient being cannot also have beings with free-will. Next time you hear someone say that their god is omniscient, ask them if they think he can even choose his own actions!
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| russellsteapot.com |
I would say the flaw here is in P7. Omniscience only means with respect to beings existing in the universe, and God is not, in fact, one of those beings.
ReplyDeleteJacob, I've always had trouble with understanding this assertion. Where is God supposed to exist?
ReplyDeleteAnd on a side note, Ryan is assuming total omniscience, which does not limit the knowledge to the universe. This total omniscience would also apply to wherever God exists.
I'm not sure, and we are never told, so it is impossible to know at the moment. But that is no reason to state that He cannot exist, merely because we don't know what is outside of this universe. Perhaps one day it will be discovered. Who knows?
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, this is true, but the only omniscience attributed to God by theists is local omniscience, so this argument doesn't really apply. To the whole religious-debate thing anyway.
1. Even if he somehow existed "not in this universe," that still leaves no free will to humans, meaning that God's reward of heaven, regardless of the standards, is unjust because we do not actually control our own actions.
ReplyDelete2. If God has "local omniscience" where he can, say, only know all things that happen on Earth. That does not change the fact that he must then foresee actions which are results of his own doings, and therefore he has no choice but to perform those actions so as to adhere to the necessarily true foresights.
There were a few ways that certain premises could be disputed. You picked a bad one...
1. I'm not really informed about the whole free will thing from a scientific perspective, but I don't think anyone denies that any given human's behavior can be predicted perfectly with enough rules. In that sense I don't think we do have free will. However, reward still makes sense because some people's mental rules are better than others, and those people get rewarded. We have free will for the same reason frogs are conscious - because it seems like we do.
ReplyDelete2. If you play something like John Conway's Game of Life, you have total omniscience over each organism in the universe, but at the same time, you don't know what actions you will take in subsequent runs of the game. Let's say you are aiming for a specific end-state. It is possible that by just placing blocks at the start of the game, it is not possible to reach that end state. But if you place them in a certain way at the start AND, once you run it, skip to generation 1,234,567 and add one more block in a key spot, you then CAN reach the end state. Clearly thats not exactly how God does it, but it is possible. So basically God, at the same time as he decided how to make the world in exactly the way he wants it, made all his decisions about how he would change the world in our future. So again, from our perspective, he has no free will, but that is because we are constrained by our timeline and can't see him making the decisions.
^All this is just my opinion and isn't backed by any specific religious information, and for all I know it could work completely differently. This is just one possible way in which that apparent paradox could be resolved.
1. That was the most unclear post I have ever read xD I have no idea what you were really trying to say, sorry.
ReplyDelete2. It's not a paradox, it mutual exclusivity. If you claim that human lives play out according to some set of rules and patterns, just like in Conway's game, then, along with your idea that God exists outside of time, you are accepting that humans have no free will. I fully accept that this could be possible. The problem with it, however, is that if we have no control over our own outcome (like the nodes in Conway), there is no point at which we have the ability to change our final state. Is is justified to send all of the nodes on the left-hand side of the Conway board to heaven and the other have to hell when they had no control over it? Additionally, if we have no free will, what was even the point of creating earth, since God already knew all of our actions, and which of us would go to heaven? Compared to an infinitum of time in heaven, time on earth has literally zero significance, especially since we aren't even "playing our own poker hands," so to speak.
1&2. The two have become the same point now, my first unclear post was meant to answer the questions posed in your response to the second part. As to the reason that Earth was created, I'm not sure what the reason given by religion is. I'll talk to some Jew bros, get a consensus, and get back to you. In the meantime, I will attempt to elucidate my (admittedly quite poorly worded) prior statement.
ReplyDeleteThe free will thing (this is all my own opinion) - I think that there is likely no free will, in the sense that if you know enough about a person, you can predict perfectly everything they do. However, each person has a different set of 'mental rules', and so they become good or bad people by following those rules. So depending on how 'fit' your genetic ruleset is, you receive different amounts of reward. Situational challenges are factored in.
However, even if the above is true, it can still be said that we have free will. We do for the same reason we know we have consciousness, even though we are just a bunch of atoms. We do for the same reasons we know frogs feel pain. Consider - maybe they don't feel pain because they, unlike us, actually aren't conscious and can't feel a thing. They only exhibit pain-like symptoms because it is hardwired into their brain. Why is this illogical? First it is unprovable, seeing as we don't even have a clear definition of consciousness. Secondly, there is effectively no difference between feeling pain and exhibiting pain-like symptoms. In the same way, it can be said that we have free will, simply because it seems as though we do. We would certainly need a better definition before we could proceed any farther with this discussion, so feel free to provide one.
Also, side note - there is no hell, everyone goes to heaven. I knew we'd get to this eventually, so I'm briefly going to explain Judaism's afterlife. Your reward there I have heard expressed, by different people, in two ways.
Either: A) you get to look back on the world you lived in; you see all your decisions and their far-reaching consequences. Then, you see what the world would be like if you hadn't existed, and feel the difference in happiness caused by your presence; your "reward". Then, you see how you could have changed your decisions to be perfect, and see the difference in total happiness. This is your "punishment". The more perfect you are, the bigger your reward and smaller your punishment.
Or B) everyone is brought into God's presence; this is called being in "heaven". If you lived a God-loving life, you feel the holiness of him and become happy; like front-row seats at a Bach concert. If you lived a less good life, you, while still the same 'closeness', don't understand as much and so are less happy; like front-row seats at a Bach concert when all you want to hear is Norwegian Scat. And if you are 'evil', you will hate it; like front-row seats at a screamo band you dislike.
I still do not understand whether you think we do or don't have free will. Your opinion is very unclear. In one sentence, you say we don't. In another, you say we do. Please pick a side, and explain what "mental rules" are.
ReplyDeleteMy response to the second half of your post will be building off of a lack of free will, though I am not sure which your opinion is. If people have no choice in their actions, which would include thought, there is still no justification for any form of reward of preferential treatment, as any given being does not have the ability to have acted or believed in a way other than the way they did. They were destined to either believe or not believe in God, and destined to live a specific life, so how is it fair make certain people relive their terrible lives and see what the world would be like without them, if they didn't have a choice in the first place?
My side depends on how you want to define free will. Can you give me the definition you are using?
ReplyDeleteIt is not we who are omniscient, it is God. We get to have free will, even if some other dimensional mind knows what will happen. The problem is not in thinking of an omniscient deity, but in thinking of a deity that is like us.
ReplyDelete@jacob
ReplyDeleteP4
@libramoon
Your comment has stated nothing. All your comment says is "nuh-uh!" and gives absolutely no reasoning behind it whatsoever. Additionally, I do not understand what you are meaning by your use of dimensional nor do I understand what you mean by mind. A dimension is a direction perpendicular to all other dimensions previously specified. Are you saying your god is length? No? Please clarify your use of the word. Mind? Meaning it is controlled by a brain? This is the definition of "mind" I am familiar with. If not, can you give me any demonstrable examples of a mind that isn't attached to a brain? Can you provide me with a better understanding of what you mean by mind? Finally, regardless of whether your god is like us or not, he is still subject to the law of non-contradiction, the principle of mediocrity, and other principles of logic. Also, I'm not sure what either your first or third sentences were intended to mean.
P4 is a non-definition, because being that the universe only occurs one time, there is no way to know if any other outcome could have been possible. Even with things like quantum mechanics, we have no real way of knowing (as far as I know) how inherent the randomness is; if you ran the entire universe again a second time, it is possible that all the electrons are measured in all the same places. Or this could not be the case, we have no way of knowing. Please provide a new definition, or if you wish, a method of testing instead. All I require is enough specificity to be able to take object X (in a universe in which we assume there is no omniscient being) and determine whether or not it has free will.
ReplyDeleteThe other possibility, of course, is that you mean to claim by your definition that since all electrons are bound by the uncertainty principle, and all objects contain electrons, all objects - regardless of their complexity - could potentially have been in a state different from how they are. This, however, ignores the word 'choose' in your definition. Choice I assume requires consciousness, and then you need to define consciousness.
Please clarify the terms a little more.
And, uh, I think libramoon's point is that it is possible for being A to have free will even if being B has information of what choices it will make, so long as being A never receives that information. Even if being B tells being A 99% of what it is going to do in the future, and for 99% of its existence, being A simply does as was predicted, the 1% of the time in which it is making a choice that it does not have advance knowledge of the outcome of (even if being B has that knowledge) constitutes free will. The other stuff, I'm not sure what he/she meant. But there is no need to attack every word of a poorly stated argument, it is the main concepts that count.
ReplyDelete(Responding to your second post first)
ReplyDeleteIt's not about B broadcasting its predictions, it's that fact that B makes the prediction which then must be made true by being A. If B thinks that Joe is going to drink coffee next Tuesday at 6:24, Joe must drink coffee at that time in order to satisfy the belief of B. You say, "the 1% of the time in which it is making a choice that it does not have advance knowledge of the outcome of constitutes free will." In no way does this constitute free-will; it is entirely unrelated. Free-will would require that he could have chosen not to drink coffee; just because he was unsure does not mean he has free-will. Reviving your Conway example, whether or not the "nodes" have knowledge of the rules which govern their actions, they do not have a choice, even if they think they do. People who do not know what gravity is are still subject to it. Finally, I agree I was rather harsh on libramoon, but I did this for a reason. If he were to become a regular commenter on here as Ed, you, lincolnparkmsk, etc., I don't want him making short little comments that sound like a lot but don't mean anything. If he's going to comment, I'd like it to be coherent. And no, the main concepts are not all that count when it comes to posts on this blog, because it's the details that separate sects of religions and make big differences in debates. When people say "God exists in another dimension" that literally means absolutely nothing to me. The word comes with baggage.
(To your first comment)
ReplyDeleteI am not claiming there is or isn't free-will. You, however, have made my end of the debate extremely easy. You have blatantly admitted that your view does not give humans the ability to choose one option over another. This means they cannot control their actions and therefore I would be unjust of any being to punish them based on their actions or even their thoughts as thoughts are governed by the very electrons and nerves that are subject to the same physical and quantum principles you so graciously defined above, none of which a human can, according to your analysis, choose. You have proven my point, so thank you. Is it subtly humorous that the atheist benefited from someone playing Devil's Advocate? xD
I still need a better definition before I can claim whether humans do or do not have free will, and thus move on to the next phase of the debate (it is possible to justify punishment and reward even in the absence of choice).
ReplyDeleteAnd I believe you misunderstood what I said - quantum uncertainty makes it impossible for any being within our universe to predict exactly the future state of the universe. This is a fundamental law. So as far as anyone who is living in this world is concerned, we DO have free will.
However, as far as I know there is no way to know if a being NOT in this universe is still constrained by that law when observing it. Perhaps God even controls it, deciding which of the infinite possibilities actually occurs. So it IS possible that an outside being is omniscient.
Please redefine free will for me.
I stand by what I said before. P4 is a valid definition for the context of this argument; it does not require falsifiability or a method of testing since that is not the claim being made. Free-will as defined here is to mean that a being which makes one decision had the ability to make any other of a finite set of possible decisions. Whether or not we can determine if a specific entity has free-will according to my definition is irrelevant. Additionally, what you said is blatantly false. Quantum uncertainty according to the Copenhagen interpretation and only that interpretation (there are 3) predict that there is true uncertainty. It is not strictly related, but don't go throwing "fundamental laws" out there when they aren't what you claim. Finally you have once again made my overall point easy to argue. You say that a being inside the universe cannot have omniscience because of quantum uncertainty. Therefore, if God exists in the universe, he is not omniscient. If God exists "outside" of the universe (which there is absolutely zero evidence, scientific or biblical, to back up this claim), then either he controls it or he simply observes from "outside" of time, since time is a property of our universe. If he exists "outside" of time, then that would mean he can see all moments in our universe's time at once, which blatantly implies that the universe is predestined and therefore humans have no free-will. If he exists in the universe, he is not omniscient. If he does not, then humans do not have free-will. Quod erat demonstrandum.
ReplyDeleteI think I understand what you are saying now, and I will certainly agree that the universe must be predestined. So let us assume that the universe is, in fact, predestined and therefore by your definition of free will, we do not have it. Punishment/reward can still, however, be justified. Let me attempt to give you an example - this one from my own experience because I can't think of another good way to explain it. Genetic algorithms (which are, by the way, awesome and you should totally use them for all your NP-hard optimizations) are problem-solving algorithms that work by sort of simulating evolution. Google it or something for more info.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
The point is, each 'organism' is a list of parameters, and a 'fitness function' scores each organism based on plugging in its unique parameters. Now, these 'organisms', if evaluated multiple times in a row, will receive the same score every time (in most implementations). There is no question that the outcome is completely predictable. However, it is still "fair" to score these organisms and give them different 'rewards' or 'punishments' based off of their scores. Extending that analogy, think of the human mind as a set of parameters and rules and think of life as the fitness function. Even though if you lived your life again you would have no choice but to do all of the same things again, it is still fair to judge you based upon what you did.
Now one thing - I don't propose to know with certainty that humanity is actually a genetic algorithm designed by God (although how awesome would it be if the purpose of the world was to design the perfect human being). The truth could be totally different. This was just meant to show ONE way in which lack of free-will and heavenly judgement could both be perfect.
How is it fair for God to punish beings who do only what they are programmed by him to do? How is that any different from him just creating beings and deciding right then and there if he felt like hanging out with them in heaven or sending them to the Norwegian scat?
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, there is an interesting clip I think you would like regarding God being a programmer. See below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ucqYJzK1rk
I like how that entire show was basically just a giant Will Wright ad. And I have no idea what he was saying at the end with us being our own creators. Other than those things, pretty cool. Also, just noticed - you have in your original post the platypus is the only mammal that lays eggs. This is even more completely false than my focusing on just one interpretation of quantum mechanics as two species of echidna lay eggs as well. Please fix ^^
ReplyDeleteSo now, you will agree, your question is just "Why did God create the universe", and more specifically, "Why did God create the universe in this way (including with a life and an afterlife)". That is one question that I don't think anyone will ever be fully able to answer, but that does not disprove the existence of God.
I have, actually, talked to a couple of religious guys about this, and here are their responses:
The universe was created because God is a perfect being and, as such, has all the qualities of perfection. One of these qualities is causing happiness in others. In order to do this, he created this world so that he could give us happiness.
The world is the way that it is because maximum happiness can be reached through accomplishment. If he just created us and caused us to be happy, we could not have reached the same level of collective happiness as if we fought through challenges to obtain it. Happiness is relative, and the possibility of failure increases it exponentially.
These are not my thoughts, so I'm not really going to debate them with you, as the holes in the logic are apparent to me as well. Just putting it out there.
I FORGOT ABOUT THEM! Will fix.
ReplyDeleteNo, not just that. I do not consider it to be fair to reward beings based on actions they cannot control, though there is no point in debating this as this is something that obviously neither of us are about to change our opinions on.
As for those who use perfection as an argument for God, they in a way invoke special pleading. If a requirement of happiness is making others happy, others must already exist for this to hold true. There are other problems with the perfection argument but I'll cut it off there to save time xD