The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 6:45 pm**

promethean75 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 6:40 pm "Category error again. What God "knows" and what God "forces to happen" are two different things."

^^^ I've explained what happens here to IC like five times, Alexiev.

The issue is that this situation creates a big logical problem that makes it impossible for man to have freewill and for god to be omniscient/omnipotent at the same time.

Except that's clearly not the case. God can know any number of things, without making them happen. That's very clear.

You're making exactly the same category error. And it will still be a fallacy, no matter how many times you restate it.

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:11 pm**

I'm terribly sorry, sir, but you are indeed mistaken.

God is the necessary and sufficient immanent cause of all things by having designed them to act as they do.

What is happening in your brain is a very sophisticated kind of confusion originating out of a language game you and your words are playing right now. Things like freewill and the anthropomorphic fallacy that frames the christian concept of god. These two ideas are coming into collision and creating a tangled mess of illogical nonsense.

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:17 pm**

promethean75 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:11 pm I'm terribly sorry, sir, but you are indeed mistaken.

Don't be sorry...I'm not mistaken at all.

But you certainly are.

From Oxford Reference:

A statement about something that belongs to one category but is intelligible only of something belonging to another category, as when the mind is referred to as if it were a physical entity.

From Cambridge English Dictionary:

A mistake in which something is said or believed to be in one category (= group) when in fact it belongs to another; a mistake in which something is said to have a particular quality, or be able to do a particular thing, that only members of another category (= group) of things can have or do.

From Wikipedia:

A semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category, or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property.

And one more, from an edited, academic source, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, discussing Determinism:

Once the logical error is detected, and removed, the argument for epistemic determinism simply collapses. If some future action/choice is known prior to its occurrence, that event does not thereby become “necessary”, “compelled”, “forced”, or what have you.

Now you know...bless your heart.

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:23 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 4:06 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 12:31 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 04, 2025 8:20 pm
The Bible says they not only "can," but regularly do. It's called "sin." But sin would be impossible, if Determinism were true. So you can see that the Bible does not support Determinism.
True, sin would be impossible if God's word were deterministic. And yes ,sin is indeed impossible as God is not punitive but infinitely merciful; sin is a human category. The Bible is a book of love not a book of sin, fear, and punishment
"Sin" is a word explicitly addressed in the Bible some 1,328 times, and addressed by its subcategories, like "murder" or "lying" innumerably more. There's no escaping that the concept is everywhere in Scripture, and in a very major way. Indeed it's a central concern. And while you're right to say that "punishment" (75 explicit+ other indirect mentions) and "Hell" (15 explict + others indirect) are mentioned considerably fewer times, there's no escaping that they are very firm concepts in Scripture as well, being less mentioned by no less clearly established...the difference probably being due to God's reluctance to see anybody experience them (2 Peter 3:9), rather than them being in any way shaky or questionable as realities.

"Forgive them they know not what they do"
Well, as you know, this was spoken from the cross, about those immediately present, who crucified Christ, of course. But it does not promise a blanket releasing of all sin since the dawn of time, or anything nearly so broad, because clearly, there are those who are not forgiven and do not escape judgment, and the Scriptures...including Christ's own words...are abundantly clear about that (See, for example, Luke 3:13: "No, but I tell you: unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish".)

Sin is possible. Sin is a reality. So are punishment and Hell. There's really no escaping that, in Scripture. The better question is what to do about them.

But Determinism? No, that's everywhere contradicted.

Sin is a reality for men as are penalties for sin. As for judgement, nobody except God knows for sure who is a sheep and who is a goat. We have to do what we can to control wrong doing.

You don't seem to understand The Bible as a whole . The Bible as a whole tells the history of the God of love from Yahweh ,through the OT prophets, to Jesus , to Paul's taking the Jewish sect of Christianity to the gentiles. The old editors knew what they were doing.
Of course sin is mentioned in The Bible! There has always been sin as a category. Sin has a history and we know that there are not many sins left any more , compared with what there were at other places and times.

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:36 pm**

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:23 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 4:06 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 12:31 pm
True, sin would be impossible if God's word were deterministic. And yes ,sin is indeed impossible as God is not punitive but infinitely merciful; sin is a human category. The Bible is a book of love not a book of sin, fear, and punishment
"Sin" is a word explicitly addressed in the Bible some 1,328 times, and addressed by its subcategories, like "murder" or "lying" innumerably more. There's no escaping that the concept is everywhere in Scripture, and in a very major way. Indeed it's a central concern. And while you're right to say that "punishment" (75 explicit+ other indirect mentions) and "Hell" (15 explict + others indirect) are mentioned considerably fewer times, there's no escaping that they are very firm concepts in Scripture as well, being less mentioned by no less clearly established...the difference probably being due to God's reluctance to see anybody experience them (2 Peter 3:9), rather than them being in any way shaky or questionable as realities.

"Forgive them they know not what they do"
Well, as you know, this was spoken from the cross, about those immediately present, who crucified Christ, of course. But it does not promise a blanket releasing of all sin since the dawn of time, or anything nearly so broad, because clearly, there are those who are not forgiven and do not escape judgment, and the Scriptures...including Christ's own words...are abundantly clear about that (See, for example, Luke 3:13: "No, but I tell you: unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish".)

Sin is possible. Sin is a reality. So are punishment and Hell. There's really no escaping that, in Scripture. The better question is what to do about them.

But Determinism? No, that's everywhere contradicted.
Sin is a reality for men as are penalties for sin. As for judgement, nobody except God knows for sure who is a sheep and who is a goat. We have to do what we can to control wrong doing.

Yes, it's true that God is the Judge. But He has told us a couple of things, and we can believe Him: one, sin is a reality, and is the fault of human will, not of God. Secondly, there will be "sheep," but also "goats": and there will be said to the "goats," the words, "Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity," and "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

You don't seem to understand The Bible as a whole .

I have to say, this is really, really funny...projection of the first order. But I'll let you believe it.

...we know that there are not many sins left any more...

Oh, my, B...."we know," you say? Apparently "we" don't "know" anything at all.

Have you ever read these words: "But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these." (2 Tim. 3:1-5)

Or the words of Christ, in Matthew 24:

"And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people. And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold. But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come."

If you'd read the Bible even once, you could not have missed these passages. So now, who "doesn't seem to understand the Bible as a whole"?

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:40 pm**

Here's how magnificent the confusion is here:

Even being the most generous we could only ever say:

1. There is no god, but...

2. ... if there was a god, it wouldn't "know" anything, but...

3. If there was a god and it did know something, that something would be exactly what everything is and will do the entire time it exists, being the cause of those things.

This becomes very simple to understand once you excise the illusion of freewill from your brizzle. It's worse than an illusion. It's actually a totally incoherent idea... which is to say its impossible to describe a universe in which it could be true

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:46 pm**

promethean75 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:40 pm Here's how magnificent the confusion is here:

On whose side? Is it on the side of Oxford, Cambridge, Wiki, and the IEP? I marvel that they've all becomes so confused...and you have somehow managed to remain full of clarity.

You don't know how wrong you are. But don't worry...everybody else seems to know, so maybe you'll catch up one day.

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 9:26 pm**

promethean75 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 6:40 pm "Category error again. What God "knows" and what God "forces to happen" are two different things."

^^^ I've explained what happens here to IC like five times, Alexiev.

The issue is that this situation creates a big logical problem that makes it impossible for man to have freewill and for god to be omniscient/omnipotent at the same time.

To say "god knows what will happen but forces nothing to happen" is to say that it's not possible for a man to do something that would result in the end state being different than the end state god knows will happen (before it does).

If it were possible for man to 'pull a fast one' on god and end up proving him wrong by going to the movies instead of the mall, then what kind of a god doesn't even know what his own universe will do?

On the other hand, since god is omniscient and can't ever be wrong about what he claims to know will happen, no man in fact had the freewill to take a course of action ending in a different result... something god didn't know would happen.

Follow whuddum sayin? IC can't, so i had to abandon him. Bless his heart.

I follow what you're saying, and I think most people agree wirh you. But I don't. Fate, I think, does not contradict free will. "Free" means unconstrained by others. We can use it in the past tense: "I freely chose to go to the store yesterday." If God can see the future as we see the past, and if we can reasonably and coherently say, "I freely chose to go to the store yesterday," I don't see how fate precludes free will. That our choices are known (whether in the past or future) does not make them less "free".

Posted: **Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:40 pm**

To exemplify:

Look at Oedipus. It was fated that he would kill his father and marry his mother. But the choices that led to that fate remained "choices". His parents chose to nail his feet together and leave him to die. Their moral culpability is not diminished because an oracle knew what would happen (despite Bigmike's claims).

The tragedy is that despite free will, they could not escape their fate. All the actor's choices were free, but inevitable.

God's knowledge of what we will choose does not necessarily compel the choice, nor does it diminish our responsibilty for it.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2025 12:22 am**

Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:40 pm Look at Oedipus.

The fictional character? He's not proof, or even an indication, of anything at all.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:02 am**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 12:22 am
Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:40 pm Look at Oedipus.
The fictional character? He's not proof, or even an indication, of anything at all.

This is ridiculous. I'm presenting a hypothetical case, and whether the character is fictional or not .makes absolutely no difference to my point.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:10 am**

Alexiev wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:02 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 12:22 am
Alexiev wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:40 pm Look at Oedipus.
The fictional character? He's not proof, or even an indication, of anything at all.
This is ridiculous. I'm presenting a hypothetical case, and whether the character is fictional or not .makes absolutely no difference to my point.

The "point" is only made fictively. It has no relation to real life. But Determinism/Fatalism is supposed to be a theory about life...real life, not fiction.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2025 6:03 am**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:10 am
Alexiev wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:02 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 12:22 am
The fictional character? He's not proof, or even an indication, of anything at all.
This is ridiculous. I'm presenting a hypothetical case, and whether the character is fictional or not .makes absolutely no difference to my point.
The "point" is only made fictively. It has no relation to real life. But Determinism/Fatalism is supposed to be a theory about life...real life, not fiction.

Give me a break! The point is about logical necessities, obviously.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2025 6:17 am**

Alexiev wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 6:03 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:10 am
Alexiev wrote: ↑Thu Mar 06, 2025 2:02 am

This is ridiculous. I'm presenting a hypothetical case, and whether the character is fictional or not .makes absolutely no difference to my point.
The "point" is only made fictively. It has no relation to real life. But Determinism/Fatalism is supposed to be a theory about life...real life, not fiction.
Give me a break! The point is about logical necessities, obviously.

I can't see you've made a point, actually. All you've done is appeal to fiction.

Posted: **Thu Mar 06, 2025 1:08 pm**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:36 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 7:23 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 05, 2025 4:06 pm
"Sin" is a word explicitly addressed in the Bible some 1,328 times, and addressed by its subcategories, like "murder" or "lying" innumerably more. There's no escaping that the concept is everywhere in Scripture, and in a very major way. Indeed it's a central concern. And while you're right to say that "punishment" (75 explicit+ other indirect mentions) and "Hell" (15 explict + others indirect) are mentioned considerably fewer times, there's no escaping that they are very firm concepts in Scripture as well, being less mentioned by no less clearly established...the difference probably being due to God's reluctance to see anybody experience them (2 Peter 3:9), rather than them being in any way shaky or questionable as realities.

Well, as you know, this was spoken from the cross, about those immediately present, who crucified Christ, of course. But it does not promise a blanket releasing of all sin since the dawn of time, or anything nearly so broad, because clearly, there are those who are not forgiven and do not escape judgment, and the Scriptures...including Christ's own words...are abundantly clear about that (See, for example, Luke 3:13: "No, but I tell you: unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish".)

Sin is possible. Sin is a reality. So are punishment and Hell. There's really no escaping that, in Scripture. The better question is what to do about them.

But Determinism? No, that's everywhere contradicted.
Sin is a reality for men as are penalties for sin. As for judgement, nobody except God knows for sure who is a sheep and who is a goat. We have to do what we can to control wrong doing.
Yes, it's true that God is the Judge. But He has told us a couple of things, and we can believe Him: one, sin is a reality, and is the fault of human will, not of God. Secondly, there will be "sheep," but also "goats": and there will be said to the "goats," the words, "Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity," and "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

You don't seem to understand The Bible as a whole .
I have to say, this is really, really funny...projection of the first order. But I'll let you believe it.
...we know that there are not many sins left any more...
Oh, my, B...."we know," you say? Apparently "we" don't "know" anything at all.

Have you ever read these words: "But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these." (2 Tim. 3:1-5)

Or the words of Christ, in Matthew 24:

"And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people. And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold. But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come."

If you'd read the Bible even once, you could not have missed these passages. So now, who "doesn't seem to understand the Bible as a whole"?

Yes these passages in The Bible are impressive. By 'sins' I don't refer to fallen human nature, as do Timothy and Christ. I refer to specific outdated sins such as adultery, sodomy, masturbation, scepticism, disobedience to authority, lack of circumcision, or lack of covering of one's primary or secondary genitalia .
Timothy and Jesus are right as we know all too well. The times we are entering are apocalyptic.

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