Does an Omniscient Creator Lead to Fatalism?

[Sparko]

Perhaps. But that description of time is, to me, meaningless. If all of time exists as a continuum, then all of time is fixed and all choices are merely an illusion we have as we traverse the already existent timeline. It is much like sitting in your car and the car next to you starts to back out. You have a brief illusion of forward motion, but in fact you are sitting still. As we traverse the timeline, if it already exists, then we may "feel" we are making choices - but in fact all choices already exist and we are simply following an existent timeline.

it is not an illusion. It just means that the choices fixed in the timeline are done freely. We just haven't done some of them yet from our current perspective.

If I make a recording of a football game on video tape, that video tape could represent the timeline. Nothing on that tape can be changed, but that doesn't mean that every action on that tape wasn't done freely. "now" is just where the play head is currently at.

[carpedm9587]

it is not an illusion. It just means that the choices fixed in the timeline are done freely. We just haven't done some of them yet from our current perspective.

The underlined sentence is, to me, nonsensical.

If I make a recording of a football game on video tape, that video tape could represent the timeline. Nothing on that tape can be changed, but that doesn't mean that every action on that tape wasn't done freely. "now" is just where the play head is currently at.

Continually returning to the same flawed analogy does not make it less flawed, Sparko. The recording of the football game is a recording of past actions. They were free when they were made. Once made - free will becomes irrelevant. No one will argue that a football player, after a play has been made, has the "free will" to make the play differently. It happened as it happened. The fact that we cannot change past actions has no impact on free will because the actions have already occurred and we had the will to choose differently at that time.

The same applies to your videotape of TOMORROW'S game. I can be free to make choices, until they are made. But your knowledge and tape of my choices means they have, in some sense, already occurred (how else would you have the tape?). I am no longer free to change what has already happened. This is the flaw in your analogy. You want me to be able to freely choose and, if I choose differently, the tape will magically change to match.

To use your expression - that is "moving the goal posts." Your tape says tomorrow will happen as specified - so I am not free to make it happen differently - or your tape is wrong - which means you cannot actually see the future - which creates a contradiction.

Edited to add: I've now gone through this three times. I suspect we are not going to agree. I'll leave the last word to you unless you ask a question.

[Sparko]

Interestingly enough, if Einstein is correct then the B-theory of time is real. Einstein's theories allow for actual backward time travel to the past through wormholes or kerr black holes. Which means the past actually still "exists" to go to. Which means so does the future.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startsw.../#3fd1ff4912db

https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2...-through-time/

[carpedm9587]

Interestingly enough, if Einstein is correct then the B-theory of time is real. Einstein's theories allow for actual backward time travel to the past through wormholes or kerr black holes. Which means the past actually still "exists" to go to. Which means so does the future.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startsw.../#3fd1ff4912db

https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2...-through-time/

Did you read those articles?

[Sparko]

Did you read those articles?

yes.

[carpedm9587]

yes.

Then I have no clue how you reached your conclusions. Both are speculative and filled with "assume" and "if" and "maybe." Both place very specific limits on what might and might not be possible. And the "future" is a function of time dilation due to relativity (i.e., your travel makes time pass "more slowly" for you, letting time unfold at a more rapid rate elsewhere and you return to this location where significantly more time has passed. In other words, time is experienced relatively.

I see no support for the claims you are making about causality and free will in these papers. You'll have to explain to me what it is you think is the connection.

[Sparko]

Then I have no clue how you reached your conclusions. Both are speculative and filled with "assume" and "if" and "maybe." Both place very specific limits on what might and might not be possible. And the "future" is a function of time dilation due to relativity (i.e., your travel makes time pass "more slowly" for you, letting time unfold at a more rapid rate elsewhere and you return to this location where significantly more time has passed. In other words, time is experienced relatively.

I see no support for the claims you are making about causality and free will in these papers. You'll have to explain to me what it is you think is the connection.

The if and maybe is because we have no way of testing it yet. But every other aspect that we CAN test of Einstein's theories of space/time have been verified. Basically the math allows it and what we know is that space and time are interconnected. That the universe is a 4 dimensional thing and time is just another dimension to the 3 spatial ones. So theoretically the past and future are just as real as the present.

Also I am not talking about time dilation. that is traveling forward in time faster or slower than someone else. The kerr black hole/wormhole allows backwards travel from the future to the present (or basically from a future point to when the wormhole was created) so if I created a wormhole today and you took the other end with you and waited 50 years, you could pop back through it and you would appear to me today. Showing that both the future and the past actually exist.

[carpedm9587]

The if and maybe is because we have no way of testing it yet. But every other aspect that we CAN test of Einstein's theories of space/time have been verified. Basically the math allows it and what we know is that space and time are interconnected. That the universe is a 4 dimensional thing and time is just another dimension to the 3 spatial ones. So theoretically the past and future are just as real as the present.

Also I am not talking about time dilation. that is traveling forward in time faster or slower than someone else. The kerr black hole/wormhole allows backwards travel from the future to the present (or basically from a future point to when the wormhole was created) so if I created a wormhole today and you took the other end with you and waited 50 years, you could pop back through it and you would appear to me today. Showing that both the future and the past actually exist.

OK. As you wish. We'll have to leave it there. I think we are largely repeating ourselves.

[Sparko]

OK. As you wish. We'll have to leave it there. I think we are largely repeating ourselves.

I knew you would say that. you are my puppet.

[carpedm9587]

I knew you would say that. you are my puppet.

Apparently

[JimL]

The if and maybe is because we have no way of testing it yet. But every other aspect that we CAN test of Einstein's theories of space/time have been verified. Basically the math allows it and what we know is that space and time are interconnected. That the universe is a 4 dimensional thing and time is just another dimension to the 3 spatial ones. So theoretically the past and future are just as real as the present.

Also I am not talking about time dilation. that is traveling forward in time faster or slower than someone else. The kerr black hole/wormhole allows backwards travel from the future to the present (or basically from a future point to when the wormhole was created) so if I created a wormhole today and you took the other end with you and waited 50 years, you could pop back through it and you would appear to me today. Showing that both the future and the past actually exist.

Eistein's Block Universe is eternal, in that there is no change within it. Past, present and future all exist, but they have always existed. So, even ones experience of having traveled to the past or future would not be a freely chosen action, such action has always existed just like everything else in the Block Universe. That's the the only kind of Universe where an entity living outside of it, could know it's future as well as its past, but there could be no free will choices being made within it. It's all there!

[Tassman]

So? You still did it of your own free will choice.

Well, one has the illusion of free-will choice

Because I made the choice freely. Knowing is not controlling.

[Sparko]

Well, one has the illusion

You are wrong.

We know the choices made in the past and they cannot be altered, yet they were genuinely free will choices. This is functionally equivalent to knowledge of our future free will choices that "can't be altered" as known by an even further future observer. No choice/action can be altered once made. That's how it works.

The knowledge is dependent ON the choices made, not the other way around.

[JimL]

You are wrong.

We know the choices made in the past and they cannot be altered, yet they were genuinely free will choices. This is functionally equivalent to knowledge of our future free will choices that "can't be altered" as known by an even further future observer. No choice/action can be altered once made. That's how it works.

Boy oh Boy, knowledge of the past is equivalent to knowledge of the future! It doesn't work that way Sparko. If the fact of our future choices precedes our experience of them, then they are not free choices. You people are trying so hard to adjust the facts to fit your beliefs that you are making yourselves look foolish. Also, if the future somehow exists so that god can see it or know it prior to our experience of it, then it exists in a way that we have no control over or power to alter.

The knowledge is dependent ON the choices made, not the other way around.

Wrong. You can't have knowledge of the future choices of a person unless those future choices are fixed by he that created the chooser.

[Sparko]

Boy oh Boy, knowledge of the past is equivalent to knowledge of the future! It doesn't work that way Sparko. If the fact of our future choices precedes our experience of them, then they are not free choices. You people are trying so hard to adjust the facts to fit your beliefs that you are making yourselves look foolish. Also, if the future somehow exists so that god can see it or know it prior to our experience of it, then it exists in a way that we have no control over or power to alter.


Wrong. You can't have knowledge of the future choices of a person unless those future choices are fixed by he that created the chooser.

JimL, I know I will never convince you, they guy who thought that if you were on a distant planet and walked toward earth you would travel forward in time and if you walked away from Earth you would walk backwards in time. You have absolutely no concept of space and time, or physics. Your miss-statement of what I was saying above is proof of that.

JimL you are currently in the past of someone in the future, so guess what? according to their point of view everything you do is fixed and you can't change it.