Quick argument against Free Agency

[_Drifting]

What Is Agency?
Agency is the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and to act for ourselves. Agency is essential in the plan of salvation. Without agency, we would not be able to learn or progress or follow the Savior. With it, we are “free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:27).

At what age do we get given 'Agency' by God and how do we identify when we have got it?

[_brade]

What Is Agency?
Agency is the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and to act for ourselves. Agency is essential in the plan of salvation. Without agency, we would not be able to learn or progress or follow the Savior. With it, we are “free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:27).

At what age do we get given 'Agency' by God and how do we identify when we have got it?

Also, in what sense was I me before God gave me free will?

[_huckelberry]

"Elapsed proper-time is a private issue.
It depends on the spacetime-path taken.
Different spacetime-paths have different spacetime-lengths."

Tobin, i am sorry I could not find anything in your link that I understand as different than what I have described previously with my space traveling buddy.Perhaps my buddy has narrowed my vision. I am sure that I am not the one who knows all things for this subject. I am not going to try to obligate you to agree with my reading.

[_huckelberry]

We are predestined for God, every single one of us. There is no one who is not. Jesus Christ is the ultimate evidence for this belief. Sin is a diversion from our destiny, who is Jesus Christ. Sin is neither created by God or caused by God. We are called to turn away from sin, and turn to Christ. In this we live who we are predestined to be.

Madeleine, I am sympathetic to this view you have stated but hope you are not thinking it gets a lot of support from traditional theologians like Aquinas. He is much closer to Calvins view that Jesus died only for a limited group of people the elect. People not elect are a real group of people determined by God for whom Jesus did not die.

Now the view you stated is of course not all off by itself either. It has strong proponents as well I understand.

[_Tobin]

"Elapsed proper-time is a private issue.
It depends on the spacetime-path taken.
Different spacetime-paths have different spacetime-lengths."

Tobin, i am sorry I could not find anything in your link that I understand as different than what I have described previously with my space traveling buddy.Perhaps my buddy has narrowed my vision. I am sure that I am not the one who knows all things for this subject. I am not going to try to obligate you to agree with my reading.

"The characteristic feature of Galileo's Spacetime was the set of horizontal slices representing "planes of simultaneity". On a given plane, all of its events are simultaneous. This is the notion of Absolute Time, in which all observers agree on the elapsed-time between two given events. In the particular case of "zero elapsed-time", all observers agree that the events on a given horizontal plane are simultaneous."

Instead - The Einstein-Minkowski Spacetime ends the concept of absolute time

"Einstein immediately realized that a consequence of his postulate was that the our understanding of the nature of time needed to be revised. The set of events that are simultaneous to one observer are not simultaneous to another observer!"

The sequnce (or order) is not absolute and the way an observer may slice up space time might be different from observer to observer.

"In Einstein-Minkowski spacetime, each observer will slice up spacetime in his own way. There is no universal way to slice it up. "

What this means is observers can see sequences in any order. One observer may see the what we would call the past, another might observe the future depending on the distance, speed, direction, and gravity. The ramifications of Einstein-Minkowski Spacetime means what we perceive as the past and future is not true for all observers.

Your statement that a space traveller could not view what we perceive as the future is absolutely false under this model. One simple way a space traveller can do so is if he is moving at close to the speed of light for example. He would see the future unfold before his eyes. Another simple example would be a space traveller far from Earth, say 1 million light years away, would view the Earth not as it is now, but as it was 1 million years ago in the past. These are just two simple (but direct ways) that observers can see the past (or the future).

[_madeleine]

We are predestined for God, every single one of us. There is no one who is not. Jesus Christ is the ultimate evidence for this belief. Sin is a diversion from our destiny, who is Jesus Christ. Sin is neither created by God or caused by God. We are called to turn away from sin, and turn to Christ. In this we live who we are predestined to be.

Madeleine, I am sympathetic to this view you have stated but hope you are not thinking it gets a lot of support from traditional theologians like Aquinas. He is much closer to Calvins view that Jesus died only for a limited group of people the elect. People not elect are a real group of people determined by God for whom Jesus did not die.

Now the view you stated is of course not all off by itself either. It has strong proponents as well I understand.

Aquinas is not the end all of Catholic theology. I'm influenced by Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Hans urs Von Balthasar is also an influencer of my views. But most of all I'm influenced by Fr. Luigi Giussani. Destiny, being an oft discussed topic of his.

[_3sheets2thewind]

My explanation is that I know how someone will act in a certain situation, I don't tell them before hand what I know, but it still happens...so in that sense someone else knowing what I will has no bearing on what I actually do.


Also this thread made me.think of a recent futurama where bender was upset that he had no free will and all his choices were because of his programming.

[_brade]

My explanation is that I know how someone will act in a certain situation, I don't tell them before hand what I know, but it still happens...so in that sense someone else knowing what I will has no bearing on what I actually do.


Also this thread made me.think of a recent futurama where bender was upset that he had no free will and all his choices were because of his programming.

That's a common misunderstanding of the problem. Assuming that I know, with certainty, what you will do tomorrow, it is not my knowing what you will do that prevents you from doing otherwise. Rather, it is the fact that there is a fact about what you will do tomorrow that rules out you doing otherwise.

So, even if nobody knows what you will do tomorrow, if there are facts about what you will do tomorrow, then you cannot do otherwise and you don't have libertarian free will.

Edit: Stak's OP argument is an attempt to separate this issue of people knowing things from there being future facts. It's a good thing to do because the response you've just given represents a common confusion between the two.

[_PrickKicker]

What does this question have in common with cartoon 'the Simpsons?

God cannot work in 2D, free agency is not about black and white, right or wrong, on or off, there must be other variables based on faith and agency.

throw in a variable like grey, equilibrium, or open circuit. if only it was that simple.

There are innumerable variables, Agency like faith is the over whelming factor of religion. each and every millisecond of Bobs life could be altering his future.

According to Mormon logic, Bob knew who he was in the pre existence, he was then preordained to the Aaronic priesthood, Melchizedek priesthood through to prophet, seer and revelator.
As with the Temple endowment it is not predetermined you will become a god but you are ordained to become such.

Bob then had his mind erased and now based on Bobs split second decisions influenced by life experiences and gut feeling has to find all truth.

What is the probability Bob will find truth based on the billions of variables? finding that 1 person you promised to find and marry in the pre existence.

It would be like me asking you to find a single grain of sand I had signed using an electron microscope, and then dropped on a beach some where on earth.

You get one life, now find it.

[_sock puppet]

My explanation is that I know how someone will act in a certain situation, I don't tell them before hand what I know, but it still happens...so in that sense someone else knowing what I will has no bearing on what I actually do.


Also this thread made me.think of a recent futurama where bender was upset that he had no free will and all his choices were because of his programming.

That's a common misunderstanding of the problem. Assuming that I know, with certainty, what you will do tomorrow, it is not my knowing what you will do that prevents you from doing otherwise. Rather, it is the fact that there is a fact about what you will do tomorrow that rules out you doing otherwise.

So, even if nobody knows what you will do tomorrow, if there are facts about what you will do tomorrow, then you cannot do otherwise and you don't have libertarian free will.

Edit: Stak's OP argument is an attempt to separate this issue of people knowing things from there being future facts. It's a good thing to do because the response you've just given represents a common confusion between the two.

Stak posted this OP on a Mormon discussions board, and even imbued it with the concept of the pre-existence, a Mormon teaching. So I don't think in the context in which he posited the OP, the use of the term 'free agency' is reasonably understood by readers to connote the Mormon use of that term.

The Mormon pre-existence and 'free agency' are, respectively, where a choice was made and a choice as distinguished from one where in this mortality (a step necessary to gain a physical body) all would live in accordance with elohim's precepts and return to live with elohim. In that context, free agency is not used in the absolute, boiled down derivative sense. In the Mormon context, free agency means that elohim was not going to use his power to mandate compliance with his precepts.

The problem that the future poses for free agency in an abstract, noncontextual setting does not apply any more so to the Mormon theology than it does, say, to whether will or will not vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November, or if one votes, whether that vote will be for Obama, Romney, someone, else, etc.

But having invoked the Mormon context as the OP does, it is a fair reading by other posters to explain the context and how it is relative to elohim refraining from using his power to force people to live according to his precepts.