Re: Here's one for Bob (hope it makes your head spin)

On Sep 7, 12:10 pm, davi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
In article <KyXDi.39755$Pv4.12...@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Ron Johnson <ron.l.john...@xxxxxxx> writes:
On 09/06/07 11:00, davi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
In article <7_zDi.246902$dA7.32...@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Ron Johnson <ron.l.john...@xxxxxxx> writes:
On 09/05/07 08:08, davi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
In article <1188944683.389501.295...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ultra...@xxxxxxxxx writes:
On Sep 4, 4:50 pm, koeh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bob
Koehler) wrote:
In article <1188926008.865710.82...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ultra...@xxxxxxxxx writes:

" He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for
he is not a man, that he should change his mind."
But he did change his mind. He sent his only son to implement the
changes.
no He did not ... that was planned all along ...

God knows the future ... read revelation and Daniel
and other prophecies and they are happening right
now before your very eyes ...

If he knows the future (which he obviously should being omniscient) then
everything is predetermined and hence our free-will is an illusion.
Not true.

"Predetermined" implies a consciously-created pre-set plan of action.

No it doesn't.

And I disagree.

$ dict predetermined
3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
[gcide]:

Predetermine \Pre`de*ter"mine\, v. t. [imp. & p. p.
{Predetermined}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Predermining}.] [Pref. pre-
+ determine: cf. F. pr['e]d['e]terminer.]
1. To determine (something) beforehand. --Sir M. Hale.
[1913 Webster]

2. To doom by previous decree; to foredoom.
[1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) [wn]:

predetermined
adj 1: set in advance; "a preset plan of action"; "at a
predetermined time" [syn: {preset}, {predetermined}]

For all I know the future Universe is totally predetermined
(and we have no free will but just an illusion of free will) but that doesn't
imply that God or any other entity consciously created a plan of how the
Universe will unfold. The predetermination would come from the initial
conditions and laws of the Universe.
(For the purposes of this discussion i'm ignoring the complexities about
pre-determination introduced by our poor understanding of the meaning of
Quantum theory and treating the Universe as a classical system).

I just totally disagree with that meaning of predetermined.

For example: the end-result of computer simulations are not
predetermined before the sim is run.

Yes they are. They are predetermined by the initial conditions and the rules of
the program. The fact that you don't know the outcome doesn't make the result
any less predetermined.
(I'm simplifying slightly here since to be fully deterministic you have to
consider not just the program and initial conditions but also any additional
input from an external source during the programs running eg user input,
timing sensitivity of the hardware running the simulation eg multiple processes
updating the same data at the same time and hardware errors.
)

The classical ie Newtonian Universe is a clockwork Universe which is
theoretically completely deterministic.

Pierre-Simon Laplace 1814

"
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and
the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all
forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which
nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these
data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the
greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an
intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be
present before its eyes.
"

Oh dear. Now you've opened the door for another battle of dead
scientists:-)


In practise there are many situations where even slight changes in initial
conditions result in wildy different behaviour emerging ie Chaotic systems
but for any given set of initial conditions the behaviour is fully
deterministic.

An omniscient God would be in the position of Laplace's intellect and would
thus have the future present before his eyes.


Like I said in another thread long ago that was probably kill-filed by
most c.o.v.er's, an all-powerful and all-knowing God could have
arranged the big-bang to happen in such a way that no further
intervention would have been needed.

It is interesting to read all of the mentions of Chaos made here since
that thread.

.

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