Tom,


My choice was made having in view the weather, and the fact that God knew if I was going to the beach or not didn’t in any way affect my choice. This should be obvious.

Another point I want to make is that according to your view all prophecies are conditional, including Christ’s death and resurrection.

Arnold,

Does God know our character before we are born? I’m asking this having in view a quote we discussed previously:

“Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac, present a striking contrast, both in character and in life. This unlikeness was foretold by the angel of God before their birth. When in answer to Rebekah's troubled prayer he declared that two sons would be given her, he opened to her their future history, that each would become the head of a mighty nation, but that one would be greater than the other, and that the younger would have the pre-eminence” (PP 177.1).

I think so.



That will surely impact our ideas of free will, but it is what it is.

I think so.



How do you reconcile that with "cause and effect" reasoning? That's on the other side of the fence from randomness.

If Peter's free will had elements of randomness, he could have proclaimed his faith in Christ. Then God would have to scratch His head and say, "Whoa, I guess I spoke too soon."

I don't know much about chaos theory, but it doesn't necessarily imply randomness. One little cause could certainly have great (and humanly unforeseen) effects. For example, though the part we play is exceedingly small, it is required to effect the miracle of the salvation of the soul.

QM does strongly imply randomness. But the evidence is empirical and based on human limitations (as all physics is). It says nothing of divine knowledge.

If QM applied universally, then randomness would impact our choices. How could God ever make definitive judgments about our character?

QM deals with small changes, and Chaos theory could be thought of as amplifying the changes. For example, you've heard the saying that a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and there's a hurricane across the ocean? The butterfly's flapping is a random event, which causes a disturbance in the air, which combined with other factors creates a bigger disturbance, and so forth. Small random events at just the right time can have unexpected large consequences.

Similarly, you do some small gesture for a person, who helps him/her, propelling them to do something nice for someone else, etc. As you put, our small influence can wind up in something great.

If one looks at the large picture, for example, weather patterns, one could predict that a hurricane will occur, because conditions are right, but there's no way of knowing which butterfly will flap its wings to get the thing going. Or which particle will start a chemical reaction is random, but it is known that the reaction will occur and how. Or when a fire is started, which spark gets it going is random, but it is known that a fire will start.

I don't know how well I'm explaining this, but I'm trying to communicate that randomness and cause and effect work together. Specific details can be random, but there is still cause and effect.

Regarding Peter, the effect of randomness upon free will would have more of an impact upon one who is standing on the fence. But Peter was settled in his self-sufficiency, so it could be known what would happen. The effect of randomness would effect something like how soon Peter would give way.

I know you and MM and Daniel make this point very frequently, but it really has nothing to do with what I've been trying to share. It's a mystery to me why you all keep wanting to make this point.

My point has nothing to do with God's foreknowledge. It has to do with the simple fact that if the future is single-threaded, in that there is only one possible thing that can happen (which is what will happen), then our free will cannot logically mean that we are capable of doing either of several mutually exclusive alternatives. That should be obvious.



Well, obviously if Christ had failed, that would have had an impact upon His resurrection. I recall EGW writing that the stone guarding His tomb would never have been removed.

There is a conditional element to all prophesies which involve free will. If God is simply prophesying what He Himself will do, without there being any impediment caused by someone else's free will (which God will not violate), then of course He knows what He will do, and can tell us ahead of time.

Christ said Peter would deny Him three times. In other words, in order for Peter to deny Christ three times, Christ also knew that Peter would be challenged three times.

This not only involved Peter's choice to deny Him three times, but it also involved the choice by others to challenge Peter three times.

Unless foreknowledge is a fact in the sense of a TV-rerun, this seems kind of detailed and specific to me.

Bro Tom,

Your examples do not exhibit true randomness. The butterfly's flapping wings and the particles in a chemical reaction are random to us only because we lack information. There in nothing in principle that says we cannot know these things. If we knew these things, and had the computational power to calculate the effects of physical laws on all particles involved, we can accurately predict the weather, chemical reactions, etc. Accurate weather forecasts is one of the proposed uses for future supercomputers. But because we do not have such fine-detailed information, and we do not have the resources to make the necessary calculations if we did, we only deal with aggregates. That's why they look random to humans. If we knew all the causes, we will know all the effects.

These things are not really random. They just look random because of our ignorance.

True random behavior is better exhibited by electrons in the double-slit experiment. Shoot one electron toward the slits, and we really have no idea where it's going to go. Even in principle, we do not know where it will go. Essentially, our current theories have no explanation of how the electron goes from one place to the other. And all our efforts to detect where the electron is along the journey have been fruitless. In principle, it is random.

But as in the other examples, even here we know a lot about the aggregate. When we're talking trillions of electrons, we have a really good idea what they will do. But we know nothing about individual electrons.

But that's from a human perspective. Our theories have been incomplete/wrong before, and we can certainly repeat that trick. It is very possible that God knows things that we don't.

This becomes very important when we look at it theologically. Can we say that God knows what will happen with the aggregate, but not the individuals? He who knows how many hairs I lost in the shower this morning would certainly know the more important matter of my character. And with character come choices, actions, destiny.

Arnold,

Does true randomness exist anywhere in the universe?
If the answere is no, that would mean that sin wasnt random. But was it rational? Can irrationallity exist if every action has a cause? Wouldnt irrationallity together with randomness be just words we use for things we do not understand?
Now, if these things above would be true, and sin be neither random nor irrational, wouldnt it then be both predictable and rational, maybe even unavoidable?

If all of those things would be true, could we then still say that God is good in any sence of the word? Why or why not?

Arnold, I’m in perfect agreement, but this is because He sees things like in a re-run. Everybody, whatever his/her personality, circumstances, or inherited tendencies, can have a good or a bad character, depending on his/her choices. Not even identical twins have identical characters. Therefore God, without seeing things like in a re-run, would have no means of knowing, before we are born, if we will develop a good or a bad character.