Outside Context

Scott Adams, cre­ator of Dilbert, has writ­ten a philo­soph­ical book avail­able free on the inter­net: God’s Debris.

You can down­load it from HERE

Syn­op­sis

Ima­gine that you meet a very old man who—you even­tu­ally realize—knows lit­er­ally everything. Ima­gine that he explains for you the great mys­ter­ies of life—quantum phys­ics, evol­u­tion, God, grav­ity, light, psychic phe­nomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so com­pel­ling that it all fits together and makes per­fect sense. What does it feel like to sud­denly under­stand everything? God’s Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Ques­tions. But it might be the most com­pel­ling vis­ion of real­ity you will ever read. The thought exper­i­ment is this: Try to fig­ure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explan­a­tion of real­ity. Share the book with your smart friends then dis­cuss it later while enjoy­ing a beverage.

I have read it a few times and thought it was quite good. In fact in some of my other entires I have used it to high­light cer­tain argu­ments. Any­way, I have got into a dis­cus­sion regard­ing the clas­sic “Freewill and God” argu­ment. I out­line the posts here:

fate

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1 day ago

This is an awful read. I had to stop after the old man makes the asser­tion that if God is omni­po­tent, and can know the future, free-will can’t exist under that model. It’s so stu­pid as to make the rest of the work embar­rass­ing, espe­cially when it claims to “turn your skull inside out” and bull­shit like that.Here’s a quick note, Scott: You can know the future and have abso­lutely no con­trol over it. Know­ledge alone does not pre­dic­ate a fate or allow con­trol over a situ­ation. God can know the future, and if we are to assume that God exists for the moment, it may be true that he has even given a proph­ecy of the future in the book of Revelations.…But it is still entirely pos­sible that he will not inter­fere, or at very least lack com­plete con­trol over all events.I may see a drunken Trent speed­ing down the road towards a baby car­riage on his har­ley, and know full well what’s going to happen…Hey, I might even shout “Trent, your bike! It’s going to get dented!”…but that does not take away Trent’s free will.So fuck God’s Debris. Scott Adams should stick to cartoons.

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basho­mat­suo

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23 hours ago

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I have read it, the stuff about Evol­u­tion was inter­est­ing and I like the simile of the plates and cups etc.[quote]Here’s a quick note, Scott: You can know the future and have abso­lutely no con­trol over it. Know­ledge alone does not pre­dic­ate a fate or allow con­trol over a situ­ation. God can know the future, and if we are to assume that God exists for the moment, it may be true that he has even given a proph­ecy of the future in the book of Revelations.…But it is still entirely pos­sible that he will not inter­fere, or at very least lack com­plete con­trol over all events.[/quote]The idea is that since God knows all time; he KNOWS what WILL hap­pen. And since he is OMINIPOTENT he can­not be wrong. THEREFORE you can­not change what will hap­pen; there­fore you have no freewill to decide your fate.This is incred­ibly simple and a main­stay of around 2 thou­sand years of philo­soph­ical argument.

BTW — if you like or are inter­ested in “philo­sophy lite” books like this one then I recom­mend “The Philo­sopher at the End of the Uni­verse : Philo­sophy Explained Through Sci­ence Fic­tion Films”, which is great fun and avail­able at Amazon.

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fate

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13 hours ago

basho­mat­suo, that is com­pletely com­pletely wrong. There is a huge dif­fer­ence in know­ing what will hap­pen and con­trolling what will hap­pen. God can at the same time know what choices we will make AND allow us to make them without adher­ing to ANY plan of his. Even with the very ran­dom forces of nature, God could still allow things to turn out how­ever they are to fall, and yet still know what choices are made, what actions hap­pen. Simply know­ing through infin­ity abil­ity to com­pre­hend the events that will cre­ate the future does not ulti­mately give con­trol or cre­ate a fate.Again, see my Trent example. God is the bystander that watches the whole thing hap­pens. He sees Trent speed­ing along, but doesn’t say a word, and ulti­mately he runs over the baby stroller on his har­ley. To take that example and expand on it is logical…You can know what will hap­pen and still have no con­trol or influence.———–

basho­mat­suo

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15 minutes ago

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My dear Fate.God knew what was going to hap­pen because he exists out­side of time. He see’s the future exactly as it will hap­pen. Since that is the case then that future is set. If that future is set then you can­not change it. There­fore: No free will.God doesn’t change the future, it is in the nature of the defin­i­tion of God that he removes free will. He isn’t doing it on pur­pose; it is part of his essence. If I was able to see the future per­fectly, that too would remove free will.This is a great philo­soph­ical debate. The answer is actu­ally clear. There is a rule: “Whenever you can­not get a simple answer to the prob­lem then you have bad defin­i­tions”. In this case it is the descrip­tions of God’s essence and powers and the total mis­un­der­stand­ing of “time”.

Time doesn’t exist.

Even sci­ent­ists have come up with some­thing new (Space­time) and they still know they are wrong. Time travel (as we know it) is only pos­sible in one dir­ec­tion, but (and it is a big but) it is not us that travels in time, rather it is the “now”, the “moment” that we inhabit that travels.

Given our lack of under­stand­ing regard­ing “time” it is very clear that such a ques­tion as “does god inval­id­ate freewill?” is not only com­pletely un-answerable but com­pletely irrelevant.

Philo­sophy is not about hav­ing the answers to everything; it is about using debate to high­light prob­lems with the ques­tion. In this case the ques­tion is lack­ing and this is why the debate on free will continues.

My own per­sonal view is that: Yes, I do have free will as far as my abil­it­ies to affect things are lim­ited by the reach of my arm. I have not yet been able to mar­riage that with any sort of belief in a Super Being, so in out of neces­sity to believe in my will I lack the belief in the Supreme.

Read it for your­self and let me know: what says you, fair reader?

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