07-09-2023, 11:34 PM
(07-09-2023, 08:54 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: I would say no, we cannot freely choose to do differently than what God knows we will do. But I would also argue that the inability to choose is not determined by what God knows, but by that which we have already chosen; bound by the creators preferred reality.
The issue is that God knows the decision before it was made. When God chose to make this world instead of another, he also chose the decisions of this world as opposed to another. Our choices in any omniscient creation scenario would necessarily be contingent and unchangeable; bound by the creator's preferred reality.
Quote:I think you are mistakenly treating the existence of humanity like a movie where God is the screenwriter and we are just the actors and we cannot deviate from the script which God has written. Really, we are the ones writing the movie (making the choices) and acting them out. God is more so the producer that puts money behind making the movie happen, but he is not necessarily directly involved with writing the script in relation to the choices the actors will make throughout the movie. That's not to say he isn't inviolved in the script at all, because producers are involved, it's just they're not writing every single thing that happens, just like God doesn't write everything that is happening, just parts of it.
Keeping with your analogy --
God made a movie in which he purposely hired actors that he knew were terrible.
Once the movie comes out, he publicly condemns the actors for being terrible.
Then, he assigns himself to make a sequel using the same terrible actors he condemned.
However, this time, he tells the actors he will forgive them for doing what he hired them to do - be the terrible actors he knows they are - as long as they accept and worship his greatness as a movie maker; which will grant them eternal access to his entire filmography.
I'm being a bit playful with my version of your analogy, but only because I find the entire concept of original sin and sacrificial atonement to be completely devoid of any logical consistency and purposely absent any ontological responsibility.
Quote:But without an everlasting offering from God, then there is never an outcome in which anyone will ever have everlasting life. The point being that knowledge itself does not beget the outcome. Without God's self choice of offering us everlasting life that outcome never exists.
Knowledge, in and of itself, doesn't beget an outcome; but omniscience does beget complete knowledge of the outcome.
Do you believe God could have created any world he wanted, or do you think there are limits to what worlds he can create? -- in terms of all logically possible and noncontradictory worlds, of course.
Quote:But you didn't create the mass shooting, because the shooting doesn't happen until the shooter acts it out on their own free will, much like how I just mentioned that there cannot be salvation until God chooses to give it to us. Before the shooting happens you just have the set up for the movie. Again, God sets the stage, but he doesn't write the whole script. He doesn't make us act out the shooting. Him knowing that it will happen is beside the point of the shooting actually happenning.
If I created the exact scenario needed for the shooting to happen, having omniscient knowledge of what the shooter's decision would be, I am absolutely responsible if I did anything other than scrap that scenario so that it wouldn't occur.
The shooter, in that scenario, could not do anything other than what I knew he would do. The shooter's free will only exists to the extent he imagines it to be the case, because he can't escape omniscient knowledge and violate already known outcomes.
