He has a blog called Cosmos in the Lost. Somewhere on it, he claims, if I recall correctly, that Bergoglio is a reader of his. I am not, or not frequently.
He added me to a FB group, Atheist vs Theist.
Now, there are MANY and QUICK people replying to me there. And I am getting notifications about it, so it makes it hard to ignore even one reply while doing something else on FB.
On top of that I see threads cluttered with reply after reply - and no nested, only chronologically serial sequence of threads.
It approximates an oral debate in which one man is heckled by a Yeshiva.
I am not a Jew. I do not consider a Yeshiva an appropriate social place for a Christian. This is not how I like to do my debating.
Let me give an example.
Someone made a claim, I answered it by a reference with link to my blogpost on whether Kepler thought God's thoughts after Him.
I get a reply, implying he can't accept my post since "omniscience excludes freewill". Someone else chimes in and says "omniscience is either omniscience 100% or it is not omniscience" - as if that were the issue.
Now, I was making it very clear in the blog post that YES, if there are two pencils before me, then God very clearly did know from the beginning of the Universe or rather from all eternity which one I was going to pick. Omniscience is 100% omniscience, anything less is not God.
However, this does NOT exclude freewill. The question is namely about the MODE of omniscience.
The guys seriously started treating the following two sentences as equivalent:
- If God knows that I am picking the right pencil, it is logically impossible that it be the left one I pick (though it was not impossible for me to pick it);
- If God knows that I am picking the right pencil, this - through logical impossibility of reverse being factual outcome - excludes my will from even ability to chose in the reverse fashion.
Of these two sentences, the former is true, the latter is false, and treating them as synonymous is a very bad pilpul. And yes, this very clearly means that after some kind of fashion God choose to let created deciders decide in time what God was going to know from all eternity. But it is also true God from eternity knew exactly what persons were possible to create and did not create all of those. So it does not make God less in control over outcomes. But our own choices are meant to be there in His plan.
I have no intention as far as I can arrange (and as far as God hears my prayers) to spend my life in a Yeshiva that is unable to get such a simple logical distinction.
If a seeing man leads a blind man, he can save him from the pit. If a blind man leads a blind man both fall into the pit. If three blind men forcefully try to lead a seeing man who sees the pit, he has reason to get angry.
When they calm down for when it's night over there, I will have to painfully extract relevant comments from the thread - if I am to show you.
Stupidity - as mentioned - erected to sophistication because that is the sophistication that goes in the Yeshiva. Me getting into that kind of company? No. Me letting them decide, whether I can write or not? God preserve me from their dictatorship over my licit exploits! Me letting their errors correct my adhesion to Catholic Truth? No way José! Saint James, Moorkiller, pray for me!
As I complained about how debates go in certain FB groups, this not being the only one, I can say Bill Gates stole a good debating club from me, when in February 2009 he closed down the MSN Groups, and Mark Zuckerberg has not given me back an equivalent. But certain someones are doing it worse than it needs be, avoiding direct debate with me, but tracking me down into quagmires where debate is impossible. If Rosman really wanted to see me debate an atheist, why not use the mirrors I made of debates on youtube or earlier on netscape boards (back when seeing the debate messages nested were an option and when I had access, and when Muslims were not depriving me if sleep by deliberately making noise close to me when seeing me asleep).
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Saint James the Greater
Apostle, called also Moorkiller
25-VII-2014
Retrieving parts of discussion:
- RA
- NN, a scientific'fact'is never wrong as long as it passes the rigors of the scientific process. all that happens is that a new theory will replace it that is more correct, that describes the principles more accurately. Newtons clockwork universe wasn't wrong it was just surpassed with the quantum relatavistic universe of Einstein. Newtons ideas describe how planets act very well still today.
- HGL
- RA
New blog on the kid : Did Kepler (or if it was Newton) think God's thoughts after him?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/2014/07/did-kepler-or-if-it-was-newton-think.html
RA, I just proved you wrong, omniscience on part of God no more takes away one's freedom than the science of present observation by another does so. Your logic skills severly suck. - PW
- oo this one again... omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive...
- HGL
- PW a certain type of omniscience would be excluding free will, not the kind we Christians attribute to God, as demonstrated in the blog post.
- PW
- it's very simple.
there are two pencils in front of you.
Lets pretend god KNOWS you will pick up the pencil on the left, god knew this since the beginning of the universe.
if you have free will, you could pick up the pencil on the right. but for that to happen, god can't be omniscient as he would have been wrong.
"a certain type of omniscience"????
there is no certain type, there is "all knowing" and NOT all knowing... [confusing "type" with "degree"] - Fai Rdinkum
- no degress of omni ... either omni or not omni
- HGL
- God being omniscient means He knew from the beginning of the universe which pencil I would pick up AND that I was quite free to pick up the other one.
- PW
- not if he knew you would pick up the one on the left...
[I missed following two points in general chaos:]
can you do differently to what god KNOWS you will do?
the paradox only exists when you try to combine freewill and omniscience, to say that the two are mutually exclusive is (imo) the only logical conclusion.
caveating 'omni' just makes it laughable - HGL
- [linking to above on this article]
- PW
- ok... so... we get to a divine plan...
If there is a divine plan, can it go wrong? - HGL
- No. Persons can screw up, but that is accounted for.
[I missed following comment:] - DK
- many scientific things? Uh, no. Most science is pretty intuitive. Most of the crazy shit happens with quantum mechanics.
- PW
- i do agree that these forums could do with being nested, but only pages get that feature.. nice one facebook
so a divine plan cannot go wrong?
and we are part of that plan.
while there is a known plan, that we cannot stray from, there cannot be free will - SSD
- Looking for answers before science
- HGL
- I think that has already been answered too. We can stray, but that does not stray the plan away.
- PW
- ok, lets talk about the suffering of innocents.... how does that fall into gods plan? does he know it happens? does he care?
- HGL
- God knows every innocent person suffering, no suffering happens without his allowing it for some or other reason (there are different ones) and never without God caring.
- PW
- oh, he allows it for some reason... fair enough...
Answers supplementary retrieved from other thread:
- RP
- An omnipotent beeing can't have a free will because omnipotent includes omniscent. If god is omniscent then everything is predetermined since his existence. Otherwise he couldn't know the future.
And this lack of free will applies also for theists. And to this effect you can blame god for everything - HGL
- RP, you just stated the hitherto unstated objection to God's omniscience allowing freewill.
If I make a game, only way I can know in advance how to me it WILL in my future work out is by predetermining it, leaving no choice/freewill to players and no part to chance. BUT if I leave certain things to other players and to chance, I will certainly be surprised. And thus I cannot be omniscient about it.
HOWEVER, in God's case, what happens now with us after Creation is to us posterior to our individual creations and to the creation of the universe, BUT it is not so posterior to God. Instead, God is watching it happen and this in an eternal present.
He knows the future which is future to us, because to Him it is not future but present.
And SUCH "fore"-knowledge does not depend on predetermining to exclusion of freewill. - RP
- It doesn't matter if our future is his present - he is omniscent and one can blame him for everything - for every little cruelty and crime ... This virtual scy-daddy is gui lty ...
- SB
- Obviously god had no free will. He wouldn't have killed so many millions if he'd had any choice in the matter I'm sure.
- RS
- Hans, in your last sentence, what I just read was, "Therefore, there would be no paradox in there being a paradox."
- HGL
- RS, if you like. The Bavarian at Cana observed Christ had turned water into wine. "Kein Wunder, ist halt a Wunder g'schehn" - Nothing special, only happened a miracle.
More seriously, God being above time means that certain things are not paradoxical to Him which would be it to us.
If our future is God's present (as much as our present and as our past) God's knowledge about it is of same nature as my knowledge of what I watch insofar as it doesn't predetermine the things watched. - EB
- claims? got evidence?
- HGL
- Explanation offered. Got objections?
Happy St Patrick's Day!
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