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I don't understand this metaphor. It sounds like if the river represents the events that will happen to us throughout our lives, then our free will is how we na

I don't understand this metaphor. It sounds like if the river represents the events that will happen to us throughout our lives, then our free will is how we navigate through it. So does God know that ahead of time? Can He see me approaching a rock and know I will go around it on the left or right? Does He know I'll get smashed on it? If he doesn't, then that means there is a limit to His omniscience. If He does, then my "free" choices are predestined. Furthermore, in this metaphor God doesn't just see the river, He created the river, and all the people on it. He laid out its twists and obstacles, with a perfect understanding of how it would affect the humans afloat on it. Moreover, at the moment of creation, He had an unbounded freedom to create the river in any other way He saw fit. If I get smashed on a rock half way down, it's because He chose to create the river in such a way that I would get smashed on it. If He didn't know this, or didn't have a choice, then He is either not all knowing, or not all powerful. This, for me is the fundamental problem with any theist philosophy that holds that God is both omniscient and the prime mover of creation, but still suggests concepts like free will and morality have any meaning. Not only are "our" decisions predestined, they're a direct result of another being's free will, and the concept of us then being judged on them by that same being is farcical. It's like a puppeteer putting one their puppets on trial.

msviss 8y ago
So, Tolstoy held that the puppets are the powerful. Those who appear to have the most freedom of action are most beholden to the forces of history. (He also pointed out how futile it is for humans to do predictions on human endeavors. Here he predicts chaos w/in classical mechanics) It’s a bit of a cop out because presumably Gods omniscience isn’t limited to large scale events. I know this is unpopular amongst CS guys, particularly, functional language types, but why should knowing which path you'll choose imply that I made that choice for you? From a QM level that answer I suspect that the answer is easier: omniscience implies that I am aware of all the realizable paths - but which one is taken is free.
ZeroFries 8y ago
You can judge your programs as good or bad despite being the programmer. God doesn't judge morality how we judge. I think God's judgement might be more akin to how a programmer might judge which program to enter in a competition, after generating billions of programs through some generative process. We have free will to the extent that we can seperate internal and external forces, and to the degree that internal forces play the causal role in any given event. Of course, in reality, this is just an abstraction, and there's no true seperation between internal and external just as there's no real seperation between bodies of water, but the categories are useful, so we use them.

msviss 8y ago

So, Tolstoy held that the puppets are the powerful. Those who appear to have the most freedom of action are most beholden to the forces of history. (He also pointed out how futile it is for humans to do predictions on human endeavors. Here he predicts chaos w/in classical mechanics) It’s a bit of a cop out because presumably Gods omniscience isn’t limited to large scale events. I know this is unpopular amongst CS guys, particularly, functional language types, but why should knowing which path you'll choose imply that I made that choice for you? From a QM level that answer I suspect that the answer is easier: omniscience implies that I am aware of all the realizable paths - but which one is taken is free.

ZeroFries 8y ago

You can judge your programs as good or bad despite being the programmer. God doesn't judge morality how we judge. I think God's judgement might be more akin to how a programmer might judge which program to enter in a competition, after generating billions of programs through some generative process. We have free will to the extent that we can seperate internal and external forces, and to the degree that internal forces play the causal role in any given event. Of course, in reality, this is just an abstraction, and there's no true seperation between internal and external just as there's no real seperation between bodies of water, but the categories are useful, so we use them.