I admit, if determinism was not dead, I would struggle a bit more
-----but only just a bit, as far as the difficulty that Bernie presented
goes. Because the listening to a familiar piece of music analogy still
seems to apply (to my way of thinking). But since God is outside of
time and our entire history is probably an 'eternal now' to him, anyway,
our anthropomorphizing an alleged "boredom" on him probably doesn't
carry much weight. By the way, even if determinism is dead, I still
don't have a problem thinking that God is omniscient over time and 'sees
it all' anyway. But I realize that this seems a dilemma for some who
think that pre-knowledge MUST equal determinism. I've never understood
the apparent solidity of this equivalence in the mind of some as I see
no logical connection between the two --as if my knowledge that an auto
will continue going forward in the next second is what actually forces
(or pre-determines) it to go forward. To which I can only respond:
'huh?'. Maybe I'm just dense about this.
--Merv
Murray Hogg wrote:
> Hi Merv,
>
> I like the teaching metaphor very much - so nice comments!
>
> Just a hypothetical musing, however: let's just say determinism wasn't
> dead. And let's just say that you knew, without a shadow of a doubt,
> that when you taught a particular point to your students and they were
> able to grasp it - how, precisely, would that effect your enjoyment of
> teaching?
>
> It seems to me the problem with determinists at this point is that
> they don't push their reasoning anywhere near far enough. They are
> determinists only when it suits them. So, for example, you never hear
> a determinist arguing "if it is INEVITABLE that Merv is going to get
> enjoyment out of teaching students, then why would God bother creating
> Merv at all?"
>
> Perhaps because THAT question so obviously answers itself!
>
> Blessings,
> Murray
>
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Received on Mon Nov 16 19:22:56 2009
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