• christian2017
    1.4k
    In general i hate predestination and i've state previously or in the past why i feel at this point i must accept scientific determinism and predestination (ask me the reasons if you like).

    Does predestination make you feel less guilty about whatever mistake you made in the past (assuming you believe in scientific determinism or predestination). For me given the fact that at this point in time i believe in predestination, it does make me feel less guilty about my past crimes and mess ups. I would also like to add that i believe in time travel to some extent.

    Questions and comments?
  • christian2017
    1.4k
    if for some reason some one responds to this post, i have stuff to do until Wednesday at 8pm. Have fun philosophizing.
  • Noblosh
    152
    Odd, why isn't your amount of guilt predetermined as well? Is guilt an exception in this worldview?
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    brb. That is a good question. The OP assumes christian philosophy (topic category is philosophy of religion). God may have preordained thought patterns related to his Holy book. Guilt is effected by good decisions and bad decisions. When a God sets things in motion and things happen according to the laws of physics and other constructs that relate to people and decisions, things happen like a domino effect. (this is assuming predestination and scientific determinism is valid).

    Guilt could have nothing to do with rational thinking but God sets things up so that very often guilt (in many cases) is associated with rational thought. This is assuming the christian philosophy is correct and it also assumes the Bible supports predestination. See the OP and decide whether you want to ask me why at this specific point in time i believe in scientific determinism and predestination.
  • Noblosh
    152


    I've just realized I've never heard any atheist address predestination when they talk about how God hardened the Pharaoh's heart in the Book of Exodus and present it as a cruel ad hoc act. Though, to be honest, I don't think myself this is necessarily relevant to what you're trying to convey here, but I still don't understand how exactly you can feel less guilty by virtue of believing in what you believe.
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    if a extra-natural living entity or creator creates rule a + b leads to c or a + b leads to guilt.

    If a + b are met then guilt will happen.
  • Fine Doubter
    200
    The minute transition between the immediate past, the "present" and the immediate future is called the Planck time. I presume that if its characteristics were plotted, the "curve" would look a lot steeper (or flatter) than usual.

    Now supposing God is immensely huger than us - that might mean His Planck time is different from ours.

    (I think this also resolves some people's quandaries around the survival of an "eternal soul" versus disappearance at death.)

    I don't know about total outsiders but our "lasting" guilt if we are church insiders will have to do with how much we stunted the growth in integrity of our fellow adopted widows & orphans.

    In Pharaoh's case it was probably similar in that Joseph had introduced good teachings to his country's government some time before. The phrase "God hardened his heart" boils down, in practice, to: Pharaoh missed his chance to see the light and think better of it. His own heart hardened and he wanted to continue oppressing them, or to pursue them out of revenge. We don’t of course know what kind of judgment was to be passed on him since his death.

    We have to get used to the idiosyncratic phraseology of some of the old Bible stories, which owe their style to a certain background.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    Does predestination make you feel less guilty about whatever mistake you made in the pastchristian2017

    One need'nt feel shame and blame about mistakes, since they are past and we can't go back and they had to happen that way.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    I would also like to add that i believe in time travel to some extent.christian2017

    To some slight extent, we all travel into the future.

    When you do your time travel back into the past, can you arrange to get rid of mosquitos in such a way that the food chain still works well?
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    i would be lying if i said i wasn't so concieted that there is a possibility i might travel in time someday. As you well know sometimes the best way to get your philosophical opponent to crack is to be kind. To be honest i don't know what i would do if i went in the past.
  • Eric Jenkins
    4
    I would like to say that scientific determinism in the sense that you are talking about has been proven invalid by quantum mechanics, which has shown that the universe is indeterministic, and these indeterministic effects on the quantum scale have been shown to affect the nervous system, which means that our choices are not predetermined.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    indeterministic effects on the quantum scale have been shown to affect the nervous system, which means that our choices are not predetermined.Eric Jenkins

    Even some well figured decision might fail, due to the damage from 'random'. Everything leaks! If only we had three brains we could let the majority rule (that's what some computers do.)
  • alcontali
    1.3k
    In general i hate predestination and i've state previously or in the past why i feel at this point i must accept scientific determinism and predestination (ask me the reasons if you like).christian2017

    The concept of the Book of Life or the Preserved Tablet was inherited by all three offshoots of Second-Temple Judaism.

    An interesting mention is how it is viewed in the Rabbinic take:

    For this reason extra mention is made for the Book of Life during Amidah recitations during the Days of Awe, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement (the two High Holidays, particularly in the prayer Unetaneh Tokef).

    The Tablet indeed poses serious problems to the idea of free will. The matter has never really been settled. For example:

    There are only two groups who represent the extremes regarding Qadar [=predestination]. Al-Jabiriyah are of the opinion that humans have no control over their actions and everything is dictated by God. The other group is Al-Qadiriyyah and they are of the opinion of humans having complete control over their destiny, to the extent that God does not even know what humans will choose to do. The Sunni view is a synthesis of these two views, where they believe that God has knowledge of everything that will be, but that humans have freedom of choice.

    There is a similar concept in science, where the Preserved Tablet is referred to as the Theory of Everything (ToE):

    A theory of everything (TOE or ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. Finding a TOE is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.

    Hawkings argued that we will never discover the ToE because of Gödel's incompleteness theorems:

    What is the relation between Godel’s theorem and whether we can formulate the theory of the universe in terms of a finite number of principles? One connection is obvious. According to the positivist philosophy of science, a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted.

    Scientific determinism would require access to the ToE, i.e. the Preserved Tablet. This is deemed unattainable.
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    Are you saying everything is not predetermined or that we as people will never be able to predict the future to extreme precision due to various limitations? I actually have no concern which is true. I just find the topic interesting. I'm naturally inclined to reject Scientific determinism and/or predestination.
  • Eric Jenkins
    4
    Yes. Quantum physics shows that the Universe is not deterministic, and that even if you knew everything about every single particle’s and wave’s position, direction, velocity, and energy level, etc,(which quantum physics has also shown that you can’t know all of those things about a particle or wave at the same time. It’s called the uncertainty principle) that you would not be able to predict the future state of the universe.
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    I agree with everything that you said except for the first sentence
    Quantum physics shows that the Universe is not deterministic,Eric Jenkins

    There is alot of disagreement about what is observed regarding tests/experiments involving Quantum Physics.
  • alcontali
    1.3k
    Are you saying everything is not predetermined or that we as people will never be able to predict the future to extreme precision due to various limitations? I actually have no concern which is true. I just find the topic interesting. I'm naturally inclined to reject Scientific determinism and/or predestination.christian2017

    We may need to distinguish more rigorously between the observer and the observable.

    Immanuel Kant. Prolegomena, § 32. And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.

    Knowledge is about how the thing appears to us, and not how it really is, which we do not know, because the thing in itself is an unknown.

    For example, are the following 10 numbers random?

    06717 72296 11318 23781 09686 69034 01824 08055 87729 40845

    Well, this sequence was specifically constructed to appear to be random. It will undoubtedly pass all known tests for randomness; of course it is like that, because that is part of the construction sequence in producing these numbers.

    So, are these numbers random? Well, in some way they are.

    https://stattrek.com/statistics/random-number-generator.aspx

    Specs: This table of 10 random numbers was produced according to the following specifications: Numbers were randomly selected from within the range of 0 to 99999. Duplicate numbers were allowed. Table entries were selected using a seed value of 35000. This table was generated on 8/23/2019.


    If you know that the arbitrarily-chosen seed is 35000, you can use this pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to generate exactly the same sequence again. Hence, to the person who knows the seed, these numbers are not random at all.

    Furthermore, there is absolutely no way to know if someone possesses the seed that allows him to flawlessly predict the 11th, 12th, and so on, numbers in this sequence. That is fundamentally part of the construction logic of this sequence.

    In the real, physical world, the same problem occurs. You cannot possibly know if a sequence of random events was generated by true randomness or just by another PRNG.

    So, concerning "Are you saying everything is not predetermined", which is the same question as, "Does a true random number generator exist?", I can only answer that the question is out of scope in mathematics.
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