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From: david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Welcome back, Laura (plus argument!)
Message-ID: <869@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Mar-84 18:45:42 EST
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.869
Posted: Thu Mar  1 18:45:42 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Mar-84 23:34:47 EST
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 61

[This line does not have free will]

Well, Laura asked me specifically what I made of her last article.  Rather
than repeat her article, I'll try to summarize her points and respond to them.
Firstly, welcome back to the living.  We had all thought you had been exiled
like Tim Maroney!

I have some problem with the "multiple universe" business.  The question "If
Jesus was God, was He omniscient?" is a difficult question, and not altogether
unrelated to the topic at hand, but there is not much data on either side of
this argument.  But we shouldn't commit a reductive error by assuming God is
within time because Jesus was, or that, because God interacts with man, he
*must* act within time.  An unspoken premise of this argument is that God is
not Omnipotent.  Which brings me to my next topic.

"If God can do anything, he can create a round square."  This is silly.  I
personally don't believe that God can do things which are mutally exclusive.
Laura's point (which is the same as Jon's and Darrell's) is that Omni/Free Will
all into the catagory of being mutually exclusive.  But we all agree in this,
so the problem still remains of showing how Omniscience and Free Will are
mutually exclusive.  Note that I'm pretty much in agreement up to this point.
But I think all we've done is to lay down a basis for discussion, and not
really *proved* anything yet. 

Now Laura presents her most convincing argument, albeit still one of analogy.
I refer to the chemist/behaviourist who can predict what a person will do
before he does it.  Of course, extending the argument Laura demonstrates that
such a theory, if true, obviates free will or even responsibility, since we
can't be responsible for the "chemical soup" we were born with.  This is pretty
convincing, but, as Laura points out, something does seem wrong here. 

Finally, Laura asks what is the difference between the chemist's "omniscience"
and God's omniscience, and here I must object.  Carl Sagan demonstrates a good
example of this reductive fallacy when he asked if he was nothing more than
a collection of "billyuns and billyuns" of molecules, connected together.
Laura's error is that she attempts to extend the analogy to God.  The chemist
denies the existance of the "'I' that did the raising," as Laura aptly put it
(the old word "soul" was often used).  God, on the other hand, is concerned
chiefly with the soul.  The chemist *predicts* future behaviour based on present
physical data.  God *sees* future behaviour happening in His Unbounded Now (a
definitive term I'm using with Jon); not based on "soulish-data", as it were,
and in fact not "based" on anything.  God doesn't "predict" that you will do
something; He sees you doing it.  At any rate, the analogy quickly falls apart,
and we become guilty of the fallacy of extension ("knocking down strawmen"). 

But at last, Laura states:

	"... by the fact that this was knowable my action becomes not-free.
	 Whatever God uses to make a prediction is a condition which constrains
	 me to behave in a not-free manner."

I'll complain first that Laura has constrained God within time ("make a
prediction").  But look closely at the statement.  Re-worded, "God's omniscience
obviates man's free will."   Doesn't this beg the question?  Aren't you using
your conclusion as your premise?  Isn't that what you are trying to demonstrate?

	-- David Norris        :-)
	-- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david