Define the "foreknowledge view" of predestination.

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   RGrafposted 14 years ago

   There are several views of predestination.  How would you define "foreknowledge view" and do you agree with it.?

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      sandra rinckposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Depends, did you end up where you thought you would?

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2. 76

   Shadesbreathposted 14 years ago

   Well, like you said, there are several views on this, all of which are fun to think about. Here's a couple:
   
   1. One form of "foreknowledge" is the absolute existence or knowledge of what's to come.  Everything, including our actions, is already set in stone as to what is going to happen, what we are going to do etc.  In this scenario, there is no free will and life is simply us traveling through time checking off the items that God/Fate had planned for us.  We have nothing to do with the outcome because we were already going to happen before we ever made a choice.
   
   2.  Number 1 has a really fun non-religious counterpart/alternate-version wherein the physics of the Big Bang set in motion a physical and chemical and biological etc. chain of events that can be micro-followed down to the relationships and actions of everything being inevitable in the vast net of ever expanding cause and effect.  I.E. the star exploded sending the dust out that formed the earth upon which a lightning bolt charged an amino acid which evolved ultimately into people two of whom met and became your parents who, having gastro-intestinal and biological requirements for food, took you to Taco Bell when you were six where you fell in love with bean burritos which is why you were at the burrito stand on the beach at the time you met your future wife etc....... Take out any step in that and something different happened, but it didn't, again, etc.... thus proving that "fate" is set by physical reactions dating back to the big bang.
   
   3. Passive "foreknowledge" is the state where God knows what we are going to do, but He is not going to influence us.  So, we have free will and it is up to us to decide how we behave etc.  The choice is ours, our actions are not pre-determined.  Just because God knows what we are going to do in advance does not mean we didn't have free will.  (This is a very fun distinction from item number one, although some people struggle to see the difference.) Free well makes us accountable for our actions, unlike the two above where we can technically blame God/Fate or physics/chemistry. (This is the meat of the arguments and fun to be found in Milton's Paradise Lost)
   
   4. There is no God or Fate, and there is no future, there is only the moment of "now."  Events in the future cannot be predetermined because they do not exist.  They will only exist when and if they happen. (There is a fun "extended" version of this wherein the past does not exist either, but I digress.)
   
   5.  There is no such thing as foreknowledge at all because all time is happening simultaneously. We are simple creatures and experience time linearly, but a creature with the capacity to experience time as an enduring thing rather than a perduring one (like God) would not see "foreknowledge" as an advance knowledge of something to come but more a view of things on the complete scale... it's rather like the difference between listening to a song being sung versus seeing it all written out on a piece of sheet music (that's a clunky analogy, but it suggests the point). I think Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book about an alien species that saw time like that, but I haven't read it so can't point you in the direction.
   
   (Told you I was bored)
   
   I will happily argue for or against any of these if anyone is that bored back. 

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3. 58

   Jeramiposted 14 years ago

   When you were born your parents developed a plan for your life. They imagined your future. You are going to learn how to ride a bike/or not.  They determined that you are going to pre school . high school diploma, and then you are going to Collage.
   During this time they have implanted their desires for you to eventually get married and give them Grandchildren.
        
   
      Your parents did not predestine you to kiss little Jimmy in the broom closet, or break the neighbors window when you threw that rock at your brother, or get pregnant on prom nite.
   
      Certain aspects of destiny can and some can not be changed.
   Einstein may have been predestined to develop the theory of relativity. But if his free will choices prevented that from happening, someone else would have come up with it.
        I think that some Event's are destined to happen;
   And sometimes our choices  set in motion a predetermined outcome.
        If Moses was in fact put in a basket and floated down the Nile river I would say that a few things were predestined to happen in his life.  Was he predestined to get drunk on his wedding day and marry the wrong woman?  I don't think so.

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   sandra rinckposted 14 years ago

   I know that I was born into death. Seems undeniable that I was destine for life in death.  From the moment I was conceived death loomed over me ready to take me at some point. 
   
   It is strange to live in death believing that I am alive even if for only a moment. 
   
   So when does life begin? Certainly death began before I was even conceived. I was not given a choice in the matters concerning my death. 
   
   A person becomes distraught because they have gotten cancer but death was inevitable from the beginning but you become angry with cancer?
   
   Anyways just a thought.
   
   I wonder how it all works out.  Am I living death, was I born into the land of the dead?

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      Jeramiposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I think that is a good way of looking at it.  Or you are living in a state of birth. Birth of new cells balancing to the death of other cells. This is necessary in order to experience LIFE.
      This is necessary within the individual person as it is in the grand scope of things. The earth has to maintain the same kind of balance.  But I could be wrong.

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         sandra rinckposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Maybe...just wonder what the land of the living is like.

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            Jeramiposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                 I've wondered the same thing.  I think that if we were living there right now, we might miss the sensation of life in the middle. I just had a light bulb moment. 
                 That is what life is. The physical world is life in the middle. Between   LIFE  and   Death. We can not exit the middle ground without entering one side or the other. I don't think that I expressed that as well as I was thinking it.

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               sandra rinckposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               Then I wonder if because we are predestined to live in death, if we are also predestined to live in life without death? 
               
               *ponderous*

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   lyricsingrayposted 14 years ago

   You can't agree because it's about the agony and the ecstasy.

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6. 59

   tantrumposted 14 years ago

   Is everybody philosophical today !

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      sandra rinckposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      You too huh.

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         tantrumposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         
         no, not today !
         not on a Saturday !

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            sandra rinckposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            today is saturday?  Holy Moly!

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               tantrumposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               I think so !
               Maybe I'm wrong ?
               

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7. 58

   Jeramiposted 14 years ago

   I have sometimes thought that living on the LIFE side might be kinda boring.  We come over here to the middle linda like goin on a vacation. We make it either heaven or hell while we are here. We don't want to forget how to get back home. Or Go the wrong direction or something.

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      sandra rinckposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Well at least either way, death looming isn't an option.

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         Jeramiposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Yea the rollercoaster has to come to an end and we get off so that others who want to ride can sit in our seats.

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