Knowing your decisions doesn’t prevent you from being able to make them, for proper consequentialist reasons and not out of an obligation to preserve consistency. It’s the responsibility of knowledge about your decisions to be correct, not of your decisions to anticipate that knowledge. The physical world “already” “knows” everyone’s decisions, that doesn’t break down anyone’s ability to act.
True, but I more meant the idea of theistic intervention, how that works with intercession and so on. The world “knows” everyone’s decisions… but no one intercedes to the world expecting it to change something about the future. But theists do.
I suppose one can simply take the view that god knows both what will happen, what people will intercede for, and that he will or will not answer those prayers. Thus, most theists think they are calling on god to change something, when in reality he “already” “knew” they would ask for it and already knew he would do it.
Reality can’t be changed, but it can be determined, in part by many preceding decisions. The changes happen only to the less than perfectly informed expectations.
(With these decision-philosophical points cleared out, it’s still unclear what you’re inquiring about. Logical impossibility is a bad argument against theism, as it’s possible to (conceptually) construct a world that includes any artifacts or sequence of events whatsoever, it just so happens that our particular world is not like that.)
Logical impossibility is a bad argument against theism, as it’s possible to...
Good point, though my jury is still out on whether it really is possible to parse what it would mean to be omniscient, for example. Or if we can suggest things like the universe “knowing everything,” it’s typically not what theists are implying when they speak of an omniscient being.
...it’s still unclear what you’re inquiring about.
I think I’ll just let it go. Even the fact that we’re both on the same page with respect to determinism pretty much ends the need to have a discussion. Conundrums like how an omniscient being can know what it will do and also be said to be responsive (change what it was going to do) based on being asked via prayer only seems to work if determinism is not on the table, and about every apologetics bit I’ve read suggests that it’s not on the table.
This thread has been the first time I think I can see how intercession and omniscience could jive in a deterministic sense. A being could know that it will answer a prayer, and that a pray-er would pray for such an answer.
From the theists I know/interact with, I think they would find this like going through the motions though. It would remove the “magic” from things for them. I could be wrong.
Knowing your decisions doesn’t prevent you from being able to make them, for proper consequentialist reasons and not out of an obligation to preserve consistency. It’s the responsibility of knowledge about your decisions to be correct, not of your decisions to anticipate that knowledge. The physical world “already” “knows” everyone’s decisions, that doesn’t break down anyone’s ability to act.
True, but I more meant the idea of theistic intervention, how that works with intercession and so on. The world “knows” everyone’s decisions… but no one intercedes to the world expecting it to change something about the future. But theists do.
I suppose one can simply take the view that god knows both what will happen, what people will intercede for, and that he will or will not answer those prayers. Thus, most theists think they are calling on god to change something, when in reality he “already” “knew” they would ask for it and already knew he would do it.
Is it any clearer what I was inquiring about?
Reality can’t be changed, but it can be determined, in part by many preceding decisions. The changes happen only to the less than perfectly informed expectations.
(With these decision-philosophical points cleared out, it’s still unclear what you’re inquiring about. Logical impossibility is a bad argument against theism, as it’s possible to (conceptually) construct a world that includes any artifacts or sequence of events whatsoever, it just so happens that our particular world is not like that.)
Good point, though my jury is still out on whether it really is possible to parse what it would mean to be omniscient, for example. Or if we can suggest things like the universe “knowing everything,” it’s typically not what theists are implying when they speak of an omniscient being.
I think I’ll just let it go. Even the fact that we’re both on the same page with respect to determinism pretty much ends the need to have a discussion. Conundrums like how an omniscient being can know what it will do and also be said to be responsive (change what it was going to do) based on being asked via prayer only seems to work if determinism is not on the table, and about every apologetics bit I’ve read suggests that it’s not on the table.
This thread has been the first time I think I can see how intercession and omniscience could jive in a deterministic sense. A being could know that it will answer a prayer, and that a pray-er would pray for such an answer.
From the theists I know/interact with, I think they would find this like going through the motions though. It would remove the “magic” from things for them. I could be wrong.