Talk:Theological fatalism

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)

Not the correct argument?

I always thought the argument stated, was like this:

1. God is infallibly omniscient. (If K(X) -> X)

2. God knows something. (There exists an X such that K(X))

3. Let S be something that God knows. (Instance of #2, thus K(S))

4. S will happen. (K(S) -> S)

1 is justified by definition. #2 is justified, because if this premise was rejected, you would be saying for all X Not K(X). But then, by definition, you would say that for any set of possibilities, God has no knowledge of them, which is absurd. #3 simply falls from the definition of there exists, this step is valid because S is not referenced anywhere else. #4 is Modus Ponens on #1 and #3.

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!".

That is only true if God has free will. If God had no choice to set things in motion in the way that he did then he cannot be said to be responsible for those things. It can be argued that since God's knowledge of his own actions is known to him before he performs them there is a feedback loop of causation since the knowledge is fed into the information available at the time the decision is made. Thus God would have no ability to do anything other than what he already knows he will do and thus without a will. This paradox isn't in place with agents that don't have this knowledge and God's knowledge can't be said to have set them in motion because God had no ability to do so; he had nothing to do with it.

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

Islamic

Should be something on Islamic connection (Ash`arism etc.)... AnonMoos 11:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge to fatalism

See Talk:Fatalism. --24.57.157.81 01:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Rebuttals Are Poor

There are a whole bunch of errors on this page, but here are a few that jumped out at me:

The statement "no premise states that God has infallible foreknowledge that tomorrow you will engage in event X" is incorrect: "Things we will do tomorrow" is a subset of the set of all things that can be known, and an omniscient entity knows all things. This one just seems like a no-brainer to me.

I don't agree that statement 3 (If God has infallible foreknowledge that tomorrow you will engage in event X, then you must invariably engage in event X.) assumes what is trying to be proven. Statement 3 is the if-then statement required for the argument to be valid. In fact, it's the only statement that makes sense: It would be self-contradictory if it read "If God has infallible foreknowledge that tomorrow you will engage in event X, then you must invariably 'not' engage in event X", or "'may or may not' engage in event X".

Statement 3 of the opposing argument (If God has infallible foreknowledge that tomorrow you will engage in event X, then you will freely choose this based on your free will, not obligation or lack of choice in event X.) is just statement 3 with "free will, not obligation or lack of choice in event X" gratuitously inserted. "Statement" 4 is a rambling paragraph of unsupported statements.

Actually, I just read the last two paragraphs and I think the entire article needs to be rewritten, but I'd like to hear others' opinions before I do anything. And my head is starting to hurt.

Hmsbeagle 00:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Since I wrote the initial rebuttal to statement 3, saying that it assumes the argument. In a nutshell, theological fatalism says that if God knows what you are going to do in the future, then you are required to do that action. And if you read statement 3, it says the exact same thing. It does not logically follow that if God knows you will do X, then you invariably must do X, any more than knowledge of a past action means that you were required to perform that action. The correct logical conclusion is that if God knows you will do X, then you will do X. There is a world of difference between the idea that you WILL do something, and that you MUST do something. And in fact, statement 3 of the opposing argument does say “will,” not “must.”

But I do agree with you on one thing: Statement 3 is the statement required for the argument to be valid. That was pretty much my whole point in posting the rebuttal. 75.17.119.149 07:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmsbeaglem, your whole counter argument in the article entirely ignores the fact that the supposed God created the individuals, therefore giving the creator responsibility for the choices the individual makes. The initial statements don't even mention creation. An acknowledgment should be made that the argument also entails that the God with foreknowledge also created the individuals, as this is the true argument, rather than the straw-man that you've put up.

Causation Rebuttal

There is also an implied causual relationship between God's knowledge and the free agent's decisions in the argument at 3. It states that because God knows you will do X then you will do X. However, knowledge about events does not cause those events, events cause the stated knowledge. More specifically, the knowledge of an event must be based on that event having occured, in the process of occuring, or occuring in the future (in this case God's knowledge could not be "complete").

Decisions and actions are events and thus God must know the decision or action either because he experienced it or knows something about the process by which it will come to be that is complete enough that he can predict it with absolute accuracy. Obviously it is true that there are some types of rules that may exist that could negate free will for other reasons, and God might know these rules, but that doesn't mean that God's knowledge itself creates this negation.

The argument is circular and also uses a causation fallacy. It must be shown HOW God's knowledge of an event causes the event. (3) simply states this causual relationship, which as already mentioned is the conclusion of the argument. The argument tries to say that knowledge is the cause of the events it is about and this certainly needs some support.

Yes, the argument in this article is admittedly terribly written. I believe sounder alternatives exist, but I am no philosopher and have no access to these arguments. Eebster the Great (talk) 04:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Bible

In Bible it is clearly stated that God knows your future acts. E.g. in the New Testament "you know everything" (Peter to Jesus); in Old Testament it is stated somewhere (perhaps in Psalms) that "God knows what you're going to say even before you open your mouth/take a breath/whatever" (sorry for not remembering the exact phrase). In the New Testament God foreknows what people do (e.g. about the case of Jesus). Furthermore, St.Paul even says in some of his letters that all our good deeds are foreplanned and prepared by God (and that they are grace, that they are not our contributions etc.), which means that God knows all good deads throughout the history. And how you can know a good deed without knowing circumstances in which it happens? Events have no sense as isles, everything has its share in the future, evil too.

It just needs some looking throughout the Bible and you'll have enough arguments. E.g. people predestinated (praeordinati) for eternal life and those not... (Acts: "and all predestinated for eternal life followed him" -- when Paul said that he has to go to pagans, because in Israel noone listens to him... or similar).

Finally, if God is invariable and beyond time, then his knowledge certainly doesn't change with our earthly time. Otherwise it would involve the problem of creation, i.e. if the Old God is within time, then did he perhaps create the world after the ellapse of eternal boredom? Is it possible that eternity ends? If eternity is defined as an infinite amount of time, and infinity is defined as something that cannot be passed, then the moment of creation certainly couldn't come.

-- 77.114.107.233 (talk) 16:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, let me add that this is very simple. Let's say a "God" creates the world. We assume there are various ways he (or rather it) can do this. But he knows what will happen... If he creates such circumstances, then such things will happen; if he chooses other, then other things will happen, etc. He adjusts the creation, plans all acts and creates them.

But finally, all this babbling about freedom is only about subject... "Me", "devil", "God" are just grammatics, these are subjects and nothing more. We know actions and ONLY actions, everything beyond this is superfluous – subjects are imaginary and added after an act... They don't matter a thing, except psychologically (because man says "it's mine" or "it's created by me" when something happens AFTER he first planned it: so whatever happens according to his plan, determined by an earlier aim/will, is "his"... but certainly not everything happens as planned). This, let me repeat, changes nothing, because the world is created just as wanted by God, and therefore there can be no talk of "God's wish" (or "the will of Father") that man always, throughout history, does some (always the same) things and avoids others. There is no such wish – and history will show it is even naive to have such.

-- 77.114.107.233 (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Straw man

This whole page is horrendous; it literally consists of presenting a bad argument it admits is "rough" and an "example," savagely attacking that poorly written argument in the very same section, then providing another unconvincing counterargument with no sources or criticism. It sounds like somebody really wanted to defeat the notion of theological fatalism without actually researching even so much as its definition, let alone a single philosopher's stance or argument. Even the logic on the page is extremely unsound from both formal and informal perspectives. This is the height of original research, nonverifiability, lack of references, severe point of view, poor prose, unencyclopedic material, and overall bad writing.

The page should be completely redone and honestly does not deserve "Start" class, lacking even a single citation. Eebster the Great (talk) 04:28, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm entirely in agreement. --Nathanmx (talk) 17:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)