the prophecies don't know anything, it's god who knows things or doesn't know things.

this is false, and it's my whole point. you're equating virtual certainty with actual certainty. if it's impossible for god to lie then he isn't relying on the law of large numbers.

insurance "agencies" (?) do not "know" that they will make money. they reasonably expect to make money.

i hope you get it by now, but it's possible for a casino to lose every bet.

what? you are confusing prophesies with what God says might happen in the bible.

very often, god says "person X is going do to Y." if it's impossible for him to say something that isn't true, he must be certain. so either god can be wrong or sometimes he knows for sure what people will do.

exactly, so when the prophecy concerns something that people will do, either we don't have free will (and he'll force us) or he knows that we will choose to do it.

"as equally weighted?" dude.

ok.

well since my whole point is that god is absolutely certain and not relatively this has nothing to do with anything.

dknightx -

I'm hoping to get answers on related questions in my new Jib-centric thread. Indeed, this sort of thing is most provocative:

Hopefully he obliges, although I suspect---to use an ominous line I got from madnak---he'll have trouble supporting any part of this.

How about they were honestly mistaken. There is no record of eyewitnesses being killed for their accounts of the Jesus magician. However lets just say that there were conclusive evidence of such people.

Actually I think Sam Harris could put it better that I can:

"In any case, stories about mystics (and charlatans) walking on water, raising the dead, flying without the aid of technology, materializing objects, reading minds, foretelling the future, etc., are being told now. Indeed, all of these powers have been attributed to the South Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba by an uncountable number of eyewitnesses-and the man claims to have been born of a virgin to boot! He has literally millions of followers, many of them educated westerners. You can watch some of his "miracles" on YouTube, performed before credulous throngs of spiritually hungry souls. Prepare to be underwhelmed. And yet, you are suggesting that tales of similar events emerging from the pre-scientific religious milieu of the 1st century Roman Empire (decades after their supposed occurrence) are especially credible."

Why would I answer these questions? You did not bother to answer mine.

Also the last time that I answered your questions to took that as an opportunity to insult me.

GO **** YOURSELF

i insulted you how, exactly?

and which question are you referring to? this one?
sorry if i missed it, answer is "yes". happy now?

The prophecies by extension.

You are not differentiating between our imperfect knowledge of probabilities and all of the variables and God's perfect knowledge of all things.

Also you are forgetting that the prophecy coming true does not 100% rely on the exact decision of the agent alone. Or that he is making that decision completely on his own.

In the bible God hardened Pharaohs heart so that his will would be done. So what does that tell us. It tells us that God can use individuals to accomplish his goals. We do not necessarily have 100% free will for a 100% of our lives.

So in order for God to prophecy he only needs to know that there will be people in those positions so that he can use them to carry out his will. Do not forget that God knows human nature and individuals perfectly. So it he does not rely on probabilities 100%, but uses his perfect knowledge of them to aid in carrying out his will.

So Dinesh D'Souza was engaged to Ann Coulter once, thinks liberals caused 9/11 and that Americans are better than Africans because our standard of living is better. Wow, quite a guy you're quoting there dont77.

Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. I dont even understand how this is arguable. And its incredibly damning.
Will you wait longer to ignore him if he answers yes?

Why would I carry on a conversation with someone that is more interested in attacking me then just attacking my argument?

I have no problem with you not liking my belief, but I am done with people that would rather personally attack people then have a discussion.

God doesnt exist in time. He isnt here now knowing the future, all moments are equally accessible to him. There is nothing inherently contradictory about a third party knowing what choice you will freely make. My wife knows what book I freely chose to read last night - the knowledge itself doesnt affect my making of the choice.

The only potential conflict arises if the knowledge is before the choice is made - but to suggest that God knows something at a particular point in time is to ascribe a temporal existence to God (eg to claim that God knows a choice before you make it). He doesnt exist within time. Past, present, future - all of them are equally accessible to him and he's not at any given moment.

Our language can't deal with it very well, but even the phrase "God exists" pressupposes a temporal existence which is not strictly correct.

EDIT: It's impossible for an omniscient being to exist in a universe with free will. It's not impossible if they exist outside of the universe and are peering in observing all moments. Sometimes it helps to explain it as a book, (albeit a book being partially written by its characters). God is outside and can flick forward, backward or look at any page he wants. He can see the choice we make, look forward to see what the consequence is, then go back and look at the beginning and read exactly why we freely made the choice we did. He could also step in and write some of it (suppressing our free will) but he chooses not to.

Well, I'm not saying Dinesh is a model Christian and for all I know he's not even Christian at all. All I know is he crushes Hitchens and Dennett in debates.

Thats how you know he is correct. "Wins" debates.

this doesn't address what i said at all. what you were saying is that god only knows the future when it comes to human decisions in terms of probabilities < 1. and i'm saying that this implies that god can not be 100% certain about anything that involves future human decisions. this is obviously and trivially true!

no, it makes no difference! he knows that a member of a given set of combinations of decisions (notice i didn't say he has to know which member), resulting in the fulfillment of the prophecy, will be achieved 100% of the time. it makes zero difference if it's one person and one decision or a million. the only thing that matters is that, unless there are relevant decisions of which he knows the outcome with 100% certainty, it's not possible to take a bunch of probabilistic knowledge about the future and synthesize it magically into certainty.

so what the hell was the point of all that gibberish about insurance companies and casinos then?? all you had to say was "god suspends free will when he wants to." discussion over.

no he can't! in order to do something, then do something else, he needs to exist in time.

It is a flaw in our language - we cant talk about anything without a temporal element. To extend the book analogy, i am essentially postulating a meta-time (I am not claiming there really is such a thing) in which God is existing and paging forward and back - it is completely separate from the past/present/future in the book that he is reading.

EDIT: Another way to think about it (rather than in the context of some meta-time) is that God experiences all moments "at once" that there is only one instant for him - creation, existence, end-of-time all happns in one go.

i disagree that it's a flaw in our language (or merely a flaw in our language).

the limitation isn't just what you can say, it's what you can conceive.

the meta-time isn't just a way to talk about god, it's a way you're forced to think about god, and i think it's a pretty strong indication that we can't actually conceive of things that exist independently of our universe. we just imagine something that could exist in our universe and say we're imagining something else.

as long as we agree that it doesn't make sense for him to do one thing, and then do another.

honestly though, even to say that god "experiences" something, i think you're still using the concept of meta-time.

I never said that God only uses probabilities to know the future. Nor did I say that every single action that we make all throughout time is a free will decision.

Who said that free will means that every decision that we will ever make is a free will choice? When does the free will decisions end?

That was merely part of the equation. I never said that God suspends free will at all?

I agree - and I also concede that it's impossible for me to really conceive what it would be like to exist outside of time. Nonetheless, I believe God created the universe - which includes space and time. So I dont think it's unreasonable to conceive of God as being external to both. I dont think he lives in the clouds and I dont think he exists at a particular moment (not even "at all moments").

I think the language thing is a problem - every sentence in the above paragraph seems to imply that God exists within time. In general, I think that making a statement about anything pretty much involves imputing a temporal element, so when I talk about God I cant help but use words which make it sound like he exists now - which I think is strictly incorrect.

The ultimate point I wanted to make, though, is that the free will-omniscience paradox occurs if the omniscient being is at a particular moment in time, knowing the future. That's not how I think the situation is with God (even if I'm incapable of understanding exactly what it would be like to be outside of time, I nonetheless think that that is how God exists).

well i said "when it comes to human decisions" but: i know, that comes from the assumption that all human decisions are "free" which we just did away with, so it's irrelevant.

yes, and now that we've established that not all decisions are "free" the argument is over.

whenever you want them to.

yeah you basically did. if you didn't mean that, you shouldn't have said this:

who cares? they're arguing about extremely complex topics for which no one has answers to and they get a few minutes to present their case.

ok, but i think that means you believe that god exists in his own "meta-time," otherwise it doesn't make sense to believe that god "did" something. i mean, you could say "i believe god created the universe... i don't actually but that's the best way i can tell you what i do believe" but i think that's pretty sketchy.

this is probably enormous arrogance, but i don't think anyone actually "conceives" that at all, i think they just say it (unless they're conceiving that god exists in his own time). i think what they're really conceiving (if anything) is a god a universe removed.

right, i don't think it's any better to say "he exists outside time, i just can't really communicate what that means" because it seems like you're still saying something that's strictly incorrect.

i agree with you there, i just think you're describing "a belief about a belief" and not an actual belief, if that makes sense.

Perhaps "God is responsible for the universe" is a better phrasing. Again, I concede that "God did something" is inconsistent with my (claimed) belief about God's nature. I can't think of a better way to say it, other than using language and hoping you'll get what I really mean.
This is probably true - if I make any effort to think "What would it be like for God?" I'm picturing a being operating within some temporal framework. However, at least intellectually, I think this is a necessity of my conception, not a logical necessity in order to make God consistent - I dont think that I logically require there to be some meta-time.
My position is that any statement is strictly incorrect. All I can do is hope to convey what I mean. That said, I dont think it matters. I can't really tell you exactly what it means for me to experience something - yet I may tell you I'm happy, excited or whatever, even though my language is not perfectly expressing what I want to convey.
Possibly, I'd perhaps say a deduction about a belief instead of a belief about a belief. For me, it's not important to have a firm view about what it's like for God (there I go again...).

I think spiritual beliefs are inherently fuzzy and more difficult to articulate - whether because they are empty statements about nothing or because they are reports about a purely subjective experience. I think it matters that they be logically consistent - I dont think it's as important if they are unable to be articulated, since I dont think they have any real meaning to someone who doesnt experience them personally.

That does not mean that he suspends free will at all. I do not believe that it is possible to have free will if it can be taken away.

So you believe that I am making this up because it goes against you preconceptions of free will?