Jared wrote:
Bob is presented with choice C at event E. Choice C entails choosing one of three alternatives. It is completely up to Bob which way to go. Based his desires, motivation, reasoning ability, loyalties, perception, etc., he could choose alternative C1, alternative C2, or alternative C3. God happens to know ahead of time that Bob will choose C2. Bob freely chooses C2, and God knows it will happen, but Bob very well could have chosen C1 or C3. But the fact is that he chooses C2, and God passively knows this.
Hi Jared,
I'm familiar with this line of argumentation, but I don't find it convincing. When the time for choosing comes, choices C1 and C2 are excluded. Bob will chose C2. Period. Otherwise, God would have held a false belief.
My objection doesn't rest on God's knowledge *causing* C2, but that any choice other than C2 would render God's prior belief about C2 false.
To make the point more clearly, suppose that God had given Moses a stone tablet with the inscription: "At time T, Bob will choose C2". There's certainly nothing to prevent Him from having done so, since He knew about C2 from all eternity. Now time T arrives. What choices are open to Bob? Seemingly only C2. It's literally written in stone. So how can the choice be said to be "free", in the incompatibalist sense?
Furthermore, you haven't established *how* God could know C2, given indeterminism.
Jared wrote:
Let's take another example. I'm a big JRR Tolkien fan. I was very pleased several years ago that Peter Jackson made the three movies based on the Lord of the Rings, so I went to go see each of them as they came out. As it happens, since I'm a fan, I had already read the books several times, twice as a youngster, and once as an adult. Plus, I had seen the trailers for the film. It was no surprise to me, then, when some event took place in the movie, such as, for example, that the character Frodo decided to take up Gandalf's challenge to embark on the quest. Does that then mean that Peter Jackson did not exercise free will in directing the actors to act it out this way? Did my foreknowledge of how the plot would develop actually fate Mr. Jackson to have done things this way? I say no. My personal foreknowledge of the event was incidental to Jackson's choice of directing the action the way he did. Other possibilities certainly did exist. If, for example, Jackson were unduly influenced by radical feminism, he could have chosen to have a female character take up the quest instead (which of course would have butchered the plot, but if he were a Hollywood director and not an independent, such a thing would certainly be a live option). But the fact is that I knew this not to be the case because I had read the book, and because I had seen the trailers, and I had heard reports about the film from other people who had seen it. But that doesn't mean that my knowledge of it fated Jackson to do it this way. Peter Jackson doesn't know me, doesn't have any knowledge of me, and would have made his decision whether or not I had any foreknowledge of the event. My foreknowledge had no bearing on his decision.
Again, I remain unconvinced. Two issues:
1) I don't claim that foreknowledge of a future event E is the *cause* of E. Calvinists rather maintain that God's decree is the basis for His foreknowledge.
2) You are equivocating on the term foreknowledge. You have an *expectation* that the movie will follow the book plot, but you don't *know* it (in the sense that God knows future events).
Jared wrote:
Does the assertion that God's foreknowledge is passive necessarily imply that he is not in control? Not at all. Let's return to the example involving Bob. Perhaps Bob chooses C2 because of factors X, Y and Z. Prior to event E, God knows that Bob would choose C2, given factors X, Y and Z. But C2 isn't what God wants to have happen. God instead wants C3 to be the choice. God also knows that Bob would/i] choose C3 given factors Q, R, and S instead. So God manipulates events such that factors Q, R, and S are present instead of X, Y and Z. So Bob chooses C2 as God desires. God is still in control, but Bob exercised free will.
This is like the Middle Knowledge position. But how would God (or anyone else) know that factors X, Y, and Z would cause choice C2 and Q, R, and S would case C3, given the incompatibalistic notion of freedom? If that's the case, then our actions are determined by prior conditions outside of ourselves. But the indeterminism you defend maintains that *no* set of prior conditions is sufficient to produce one choice over another; we can always act contrary to our desires.
Jared wrote:
Another way of illustrating it is with someone doing sleight-of-hand card tricks. I don't know how to do card tricks myself, but I am told that the way it is done is to manipulate the subjects choices, so that the subject freely chooses to select the card that the magician wants him to select. The subject does it of his own volition, but the magician knows exactly what factors to introduce to cause the subject to make a particular choice.
So does God get His way by manipulating and tricking us? A crass view indeed.
Cheers,
Bob
