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January 27

Voting patterns in presidential election of 1860

Why, in the US presidential election of 1860, did all of the southern states, down to the county level, vote for Democratic candidates? Having studied election and demographic maps for a long time, something is fishy about that - people don't vote exactly according to state lines unless they have different ballots or different voting times.

To show it: File:PresidentialCounty1860.gif. You'll notice that even eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, which from the 19th century through 20th century voted Republican on the national level while there southern brethren did not (c.f. File:1892prescountymap.PNG, File:1896prescountymap.PNG, File:1900prescountymap.PNG, File:1968prescountymap2.PNG, File:1980prescountymap2.PNG, etc.) voted for Democrats in this election. Also, you'll notice sharp divisions even in the northern panhandle of Virginia (today West Virginia) between surrounding areas in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Ditto on the Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland borders. The only exception is southern Illinois (Democrat, bleeding into Western Missouri) and St. Louis suburbs (Republican, bleeding into Illinois).

What's going on here? Magog the Ogre (talk) 01:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lincoln wasn't on the ballot in most of the South, and had virtually no support even in those areas where he was on the paper. His victory was due to an overwhelming sweep of the free states, thanks to splits in the Northern Democrats. The formalization of the polarization of US society, by which the North's larger electorate put the South under de facto colonial rule by a party with no support, was the direct trigger of the civil war. Something similar happened in Ireland in the same period, and the same situation is happening in Scotland (with only one Tory MP, but under Tory government thanks to England's larger electorate, and thus on the verge of a unilateral declaration of independence) today. 209.137.146.50 (talk) 02:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lincoln's two immediate predecessors (Democrats) sat around and watched the south get its way on the slavery question time after time. With Lincoln in office, the game was up. Had Lincoln's philosophy been as hands-off as Pierce and Buchanan's were, it's not so likely the south would have seceded. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the situation in Scotland is remotely analogous. Scotland is not by any means 'on the verge of a unilateral declaration of independence' - all major political parties in the UK support holding a referendum on the issue and abiding by the results - so it is difficult to see how a declaration of independence (which remains unlikely according to polls) could be 'unilateral'. In addition, the lack of support for conservatives in Scotland is hardly the most important factor behind support for independence - the level of support has not really changed since they came to power in Westminster. Not to mention that there are large parts of England and Wales with very few Tory MPs, and of course, there are none at all in Northern Ireland. 81.98.43.107 (talk) 14:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Magog the Ogre -- Some things require more than looking at maps to explain. From 1853 to 1860, southerners and strongly pro-southern northerners dominated the presidency, the senate, and the supreme court, for a clear stranglehold on 2½ of the three branches of government, and a whole series of what were perceived as unilateral Slave Power aggressions (Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, Border ruffians in Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, the caning of Sumner etc.) generated resentment and resistance in the north, resulting in the rise of the Republican party as a potent political force strongly committed to ending slavery expansion. Naturally the party had little support in the south -- and anyone who tried to actively campaign for the Republican party in many regions of the south would have been the target of mob violence. A final split between Douglasite Democrats and pro-southern democrats over the Freeport Doctrine and the Lecompton constitution smoothed the way for a Republican victory (though even if the Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell votes had all been combined, Lincoln would have still won the electoral college). AnonMoos (talk) 06:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth mentioning that Lincoln presumably had the support of the majority of the people in a large swathe of the South -- specifically, in those parts of the South where the majority of the people were slaves. --M @r ē ino 14:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe -- I would tend to doubt whether most slaves outside of the "border states" and big cities knew very much about Abraham Lincoln or the Republican party in 1860, and at that time the Republicans as a party formally disclaimed any intention of acting against slavery within the existing slave states (which would have been unconstitutional as the U.S. constitution then existed). Many individuals within the Republican party wanted to do more, but the main expressed collective goal of the party was to firmly and unyieldingly oppose the expansion of slavery into new territories (not to abolish slavery in the existing slave states)... AnonMoos (talk) 22:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The IP above has answered my question: Lincoln was not on the ballot in the southern states. Why wasn't Lincoln on the ballot in southern states? (PS. I did not need a history lesson telling me the GOP was unpopular in the South.) Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:13, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Magog, you answered your own question -- the GOP was not on the ballot because it was unpopular in the South, and especially unpopular among the wealthy, elite Southern politicians that controlled who had access to the ballot in most states. --M @r ē ino 21:17, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, official government-printed ballot papers were not too commonly used in the election of 1860 (the transition to what was known as the "Australian ballot" didn't generally happen until twenty or more years later), so being literally on the ballot was not too relevant. However, a vote for president didn't count unless the candidate had a recognized slate of electors in that state. (And of course in South Carolina there was no popular vote for president at all.) AnonMoos (talk) 00:28, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pachelbel's Canon/Werner Herzog/The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Which version of Pachelbel's Canon is this, found in Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser? Bus stop (talk) 03:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The music credits on this Google Books result simply credit "Pachelbel". Alansplodge (talk) 09:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eureka! Pachelbel Canon (from L' énigme de Kaspar Hauser) The New London Orchestra (Performer). Alansplodge (talk) 09:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Thank you very much. Bus stop (talk) 16:05, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Video in the National Archives

Can someone find a video in the National Archives online? Does the National Archives allow wikipedia or anybody to use one of their old films/photographs free of charge? Or do they charge fees to use their materials? --KAVEBEAR (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which one of them, List of national archives? CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 04:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As your question below is about Hawaii, I assume you mean the US archives. If the video is the work of the federal government, it's in the public domain; otherwise, the situation will depend on the status of the creator and what permissions they've given. WP:COPY and the links there should cover every given situation. Bear in mind that Wikipedia videos are in the non-standard ogg format owing to free-use considerations. 209.137.146.50 (talk) 05:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it is the US, check here and search under both "archival description" and "digital copies". A fraction is online. For the rest, someone needs to go to the national archives branch and scan it. You can hire someone to make the copies for you (the National Archive web site has lists of approved vendors) but we have good cooperation with the National Archives and often events at branches, see WP:NARA.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Congressional Visit to Hawaii in early 1900s

When exactly was the congressional visit to Hawaii in the early 1900s? Queen Liliuokalani was still alive and they paid a visit to her.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 04:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There was one where they visited her on her 71st birthday, September 2, 1909, here. There may have been others, but that was one.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

All WP articles lead to philosophy

I read about this on another website the other day and was delighted to discover that it appears to work. Pick any WP article (perhaps using the "Random article" link on the left). Click the first link in the main text of the article (i.e. not counting links in parentheses) to take you to another article. Keep doing this and sooner or later you will land on the Philosophy article. It works every time. Any theories about why this should be? Something to do with philosophy being at the root of all human endeavour, perhaps? --Viennese Waltz 08:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you are saying. I tested it. I clicked the "Random article" button and found the article Accident blackspot. Clicking the first links from this article, as you mentioned, lead to Road traffic safety, Pedestrian, Walking, Gait, Motion (physics), Physics, Natural science, Science, Knowledge, Information, Order theory, Mathematics, Quantity, Property (philosophy), Modern philosophy, Philosophy.

Another time, I found Pascal Pinard, then France, Unitary state, State (polity), Government, Legislator, Legislature, Deliberative assembly, Organization, Social group, Social science, Academic discipline, Knowledge. From knowledge, the rest is like the first.

So we can see all links will lead to the article Knowledge. This is why all articles ultimately lead to the article philosophy. HTH. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 09:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you're interested in the mathematics of this, you could post it at WP:RD/M. I'm sure someone will have an idea.

However, I ran my own experiment, and starting with List of acronyms and initialisms: H, I took a few clicks to get to Latin, then a few more to Ancient Greek. However, then it was straight back to Latin. Since I was just going round in a circle there was no way to get to Philosophy, or to Knowledge. I would suggest that the number of times that you DO get to Philosophy are merely sufficient to awaken our innate sense of coincidence. Since there is no limit to the number of clicks you are allowed BEFORE hitting Philosophy, logic says that, at most, you need 3,856,235 clicks to get there.

Something that I just thought of that argues slightly in the other direction is that by definition, the first link in any given article is likely to be quite 'meta'. It normally takes the form of <x> is a subset of <y> - things like London is a city in England, Greek is an Indo European language and so on. If you imagine Wikipedia as a nested list of subjects, your general trend will be upwards in the list, and Philosophy is probably quite near the top. That's probably why the theory above uses Philosophy rather than, say, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Cucumber Mike (talk) 09:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(To OP): you can read about it on this website too: Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(To Cucumber Mike): the OP said discounting links in parentheses. If you follow that then you won't get stuck in the "Latin rut": List of acronyms and initialisms: H -> (Acronym) -> Acronym and initialism -> Abbreviation -> Phrase -> Word -> Language -> Human -> Species -> Biology -> Natural science -> Science -> Knowledge, and from there as described above to Philosophy. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The first try for me pointed me to a loop: Nargis Fakhri → Bollywood → Standard Hindi → Devanagari → Deva (Hinduism) → and back to Devanagari

The second try did it: Fidel Maldonado → Albuquerque, New Mexico → List of lists of settlements in the United States → United States → Federalism → Politics → Group decision making → Individual → Person → Human → Species → Biology → Natural science → Science → Knowledge → Information → Order theory → Mathematics → Quantity → Property (philosophy) → Modern philosophy

I think SupernovaExplosion is right. Knowledge is the nexus of all this. If someone rewrites its lead paragraph, we probably won't ever get to Philosophy.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 10:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The reason Nargis Fakhri didn't work for you is that you clicked on Devanagari which is in brackets. Click 'standardised' instead and it works. --Viennese Waltz 11:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Obsidian Soul, you should not click Standard Hindi → Devanagari because it is in parenthesis. The links are Standard Hindi → Standard language → Variety (linguistics) → Sociolinguistics → Society → Interpersonal relationship → Limerence → Psychologist → Clinical psychology → Science → Knowledge, and from there Philosophy. --SupernovaExplosion (talk) 11:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, my bad.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is fun! Zoltán Eötvös -> Hungary -> Central Europe -> Europe -> Continent -> Landmass -> Ocean -> Planet -> Astronomical object -> Entity -> Abstraction -> Hierarchy -> Ordered set -> Order theory -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy. I suppose lots of articles start with a country or nationality, which are likely to end up at Continent or Ocean or something similar. Note that Philosophy goes to Ontology, which goes straight back to Philosophy. 130.88.73.65 (talk) 11:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that, since it shows that not all articles lead to Knowledge as stated by some posters upthread. --Viennese Waltz 12:50, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Worked for me too! Garret Hobart -> Vice President of the United States -> public administration -> politics and then from there as per the example by Obsidian Soul.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not all, but it seems a substanial number. In my case 3378 Susanvictoria → Asteroid belt → Solar System → Sun → Star → Plasma (physics) → Physics → Natural science → Knowledge. Also in the above case we still have the same root of Order theory as in the knowledge case. Also while philosophy may lead nearly straight back to philosophy now, comments on the talk page of Wikipedia talk:Getting to Philosophy which appear to be partially mistaken (well at least at the time of the OPs comment it seems the first link was not to Metaphysics) lead me to [1]. This suggests it may have went (I'm going by current versions from here so this may not be accurate) Philosophy → Reason → Fact → Experience → Concept which then leads back to philosphy, so at the time, you could have said all links lead to fact or reason (like you can now say they all lead to ontology). The talk page and Talk:Philosophy also suggests other historic changes, e.g. for a while Natural science resulted in a loop and evidentally so did mathematics. Nil Einne (talk) 15:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe that nobody has posted Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia also Small-world network. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 20:43, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Testing (ignoring dablinks) Ai FM -> Chinese language -> Language* -> Human -> Taxonomy -> Ancient Greek -> Greek language -> Indo-European language -> Language family -> Language. Not excluding dablinks I go from Chinese language to a bounce between simplified and traditional Chinese. Second try: Alice de Toeni, Countess of Warwick -> Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick, Magnate -> Late Latin -> Latin -> Italic languages. Third try: Tarbutt and Tarbutt Additional, Township (Canada), Australia, Southern Hemisphere, Earth, Planet, Ancient Greek, Astronomical object, Entity, Abstraction, Hierarchy, Ordinary, Ordered set, Order theory, Mathematics, Quantity, Property (philosophy), Modern philosophy, Philosophy. Fourth try: Itemirus -> Theropoda -> Bipedalism -> Terrestrial locomotion -> Evolution -> Generation -> Reproduction -> Biological process -> Organism -> Contiguity -> Aristotle (nope ;) -> Greeks -> Nation -> International relations -> Sovereign state -> State (polity) -> Government -> Legislator -> Legislature -> Deliberative assembly -> Organization -> Social group -> Social science -> Academic discipline -> Knowledge (and now we're on the path - see above).

Now it's pretty obvious any given page will lead to a relatively small loop eventually. I wonder whether, if we impose certain restrictions like all looping pages after the first are discounted, we could come up with a dataset which obeys Zipf's law. Certainly this is a very interesting sort of Wikipedia "psychohistory". Wnt (talk) 15:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

God's will and free will

This question has been bothering me for a long time now. Let's say, if a man became successful in life, when you ask someone why it happened, they would say it's God's will, but if he did something bad, then they would say that God gave him free will. My question is not about not blaming God (God is perfect, so we can never blame him), but why the free will clause almost always only occurs during discussions of bad things. Wouldn't it be possible that a person was able to become successful like Bill Gates or Barack Obama by using his free will well, or the person's wrongdoings were God's will because they were punishments for his sins? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on which brand of religion you subscribe to, if any. You could start by looking at our article on Predestination. Alansplodge (talk) 10:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, Roman Catholicism. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 10:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases one may want to honour God by associating good things to him. On the other hand, when talking about one's own case, one may want to be modest and not ascribe too much success to their own character. So instead of talking about how all these good things are a result of human action, instead one talks about how God permitted them or even caused them. Conversely, one may be very wary of speaking ill of God and so avoid relating bad things to him. This is all just speculation; whether any serious psychology has been done on this question I am unsure. However, the premise of your question may be doubted too. I take it to be something like: People "almost always" limit relating free will to bad things. Is this true? Maybe not--you would have to collect a broad amount of data to give good confirmation to this theory and not just rely on anecdote. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 11:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you do a Google search, a there are a great many articles and essays on the subject. We Anglicans tend to ignore the whole notion, but (as always) there are many strands of thought. Alansplodge (talk) 11:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can't ask that question without questioning the omniscience of [the Abrahamic] God as well. The very same question is asked by almost everyone who eventually became agnostics or atheists.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a dichotomy - it's not a choice of either God made this happen to me or there is no god. In my limited view, I have never really believed in a god that controls who succeeds and who fails. Saying that God is omniscient, and by definition all-knowing does not mean that God does or does not exert physical control over the happenings on the planet. Even if you say that God is omnipotent, that only means that God can do anything, not that God does. A lot of people have a lot of disagreement over these subjects. Falconus^{p t c} 11:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We are talking about omniscience not omnipotence. Whether God acts or not, does not come into the equation. An omniscient God means whatever we do is already known. Before we're even born, we've already been assigned a place in heaven or hell (or the equivalents thereof in the different branches of Abrahamic religions).

When whatever "choice" you make now, has already been accounted for, do the rituals, prayers, guilt, sins, scriptures, codes, sermons, conversions, sects, good and evil, everything still matter? If such a God knows you will sin, why does he punish you for it? He knows Adam and Eve will eat the apple, so why make them in the first place? -- Obsidi♠n Soul 12:28, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a huge difference between predetermination (these people will be saved, these people won't, and there's nothing that they can do about it) and the idea that God knows what choices one is going to make and what that person's fate will be ahead of time. In the latter situation, the person is in control of his or her destiny, it's just that God can preview the results. Also, many Christians don't fall so neatly into these two philosophies. In the Anglican church, as referenced above, it doesn't seem to be discussed much; it's not an important issue in my Episcopal church. Falconus^{p t c} 12:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As for "why", I can't answer that. Falconus^{p t c} 12:44, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No there isn't. The difference between the two is simply who to blame. Predetermination blames the deity, free will + omniscience blames the individual. Both do not have room for the concept of "choices". Everything was, is, and will be as God knows them to be. Anything other than that means he does not know everything. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 13:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will politely have to disagree; the latter is all about choices. It is not about God controlling what choices people will make, it is about God knowing what choices people will make. Prior knowledge does not equal manipulation. Why does knowledge of the future determine the future, rather than the future determining knowledge of the future? To me, the latter makes more sense. To be objective, there is also the third option - there is no future, only the present and the past, so knowledge of the future cannot exist. In that case, of course, there could be no omniscient God. Falconus^{p t c} 13:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of divine omniscience does not necessarily preclude human choice. See C. S. Lewis's discussion of Boethius' treatment of the question on pp. 88–89 of The Discarded Image (assuming that you can see the same Google Books "preview" that I see). Deor (talk) 14:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Falconus: Because your choice is already known. Even the act and time of choosing is already known. Even if to a human the future seems to change because of his/her choice, that choice and the seeming "branching" of futures is already known as if it had already happened or is happening.

Omniscience does not merely mean prior knowledge, it is knowledge period. An omniscient being can not be subject to the tyrannies of time, he knows that which has happened, is happening, and will happen. The future is not the "possible". The future simply is. Any choices/actions, including those done by God himself is already accounted for.

C.S. Lewis/Boethius actually says the same thing in Deor's link: "..God is eternal, not perpetual. Strictly speaking, He never foresees; He simply sees. Your 'future' is only an area, and for us a special area, of His infinite Now."

@Deor: His 'answer': "As a human spectator, by watching my present act, does not at all infringe its freedom, so I am none the less free to act as I choose in the future because God, in that future (His present) watches me acting" is not an answer. Nor does it justify saying that omniscience would therefore not preclude human choice. An "act" is not a discrete moment, neither is time separated into snippets of choices, each determining what your fate will be. For how long would such a snippet be then? If presented with a chocochip or oatmeal cookie, does the three seconds it takes for me to choose the chocochip constitute a snippet wherein an omniscient being truly would not know what my choice would be? Would it be the microseconds it takes for my fingertips to touch the cookie of my choice?

Anything like that, no matter how fleeting, constitutes a blind spot. And such blind spots of knowledge would therefore mean that God is not omniscient. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 15:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Although, I must say the concept of a future not existing is definitely a novel idea. One which could solve the paradox where it not for the fact that Abrahamic religions themselves put special value on prophets.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 15:18, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

When you say "If presented with a chocochip or oatmeal cookie, does the three seconds it takes for me to choose the chocochip constitute a snippet wherein an omniscient being truly would not know what my choice would be?" how are you not viewing the omniscient being as inside time rather than outside it? There's no "three-second snippet" for God; he sees the presentation of the cookies, your hesitation, and your eventual choice all as part of his "infinite Now". Deor (talk) 18:08, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly the point, because then he knows my choice, does he not? If he already knows my eventual choice, it becomes a necessity for it to be. If I choose differently than what he knows I will choose, that makes him not omniscient. If I always choose what he knows I will choose, then that makes me not have free will.

Even if his "infinite Now" is a timeless realm of all possibilities (with me choosing the chocochip cookie, the oatmeal cookie, both, or neither) then you'd come to the same conclusion - there would be no choice and no free will, as I've done all of them and none of them. And no, if you argue that perhaps my "soul" can only follow one of the possible paths, we're back to the singular reality where an omniscient being would already know which paths I would follow. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:35, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This part of the discussion is clearly going nowhere, so this will be my final comment. You're clearly not getting the point (or playing the game, if you will) by continually slipping in temporal terms—"already knows my eventual choice", "knows what I will choose", "would already know which paths I would follow". The thrust of Boethius' argument that "He never foresees; He simply sees" is that "knows what I will choose", "knows what I am choosing", and "knows what I have chosen" are all simply inadequate human expressions of the mode of knowing enjoyed by a timeless and omniscient being. The second and third of those expressions don't infringe on free human choice, and the first only seems to do so from our time-bound perspective. Deor (talk) 15:04, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why? By obeying linguistic rules in English, why would I somehow not understand it? I have repeatedly and explicitly tried to convey the fact that there is no future or past in an omniscient being even before you pointed out Boethius to me. But English as a human language forces me to use tenses. By all means, do remove or switch any tenses you don't like and get me a straight answer. Arguing about semantics is avoiding the issue which leads to a discussion that leads to nowhere.

If you wish, you can examine a clearer rebuttal of Boethius/C.S. Lewis' argument in the Argument from free will article. Which still clearly shows how such a "timeless" perception of actions would still mean the action is already predeternined to happen. If anything, it only cements your fate even more solidly.

Imagine you are God. And in your timeless reality, you see the following events in a person's life. This is in addition to all the events of course, but let's just focus on these three. To a human they are obviously a sequence of events - a choosing, the choice, and the consequence. But to you as God, they are all right there, happening all at once so there's no past, present, or future in them. Heck, they're not even in order as a human would see them.

Now tell me, is there any way at all for any of those events you are seeing to change? Or to avoid the tense problem, is there any way for the pictures to show something different happening? Is there another picture perhaps with the person opening box B? Is there another picture with the person not opening any boxes? Is there a picture where Schroedinger's cat comes out (alive!) instead of a snake?

No. There isn't. Because if even one of them does not happen, it will mean that you as God are not omniscient, since you saw an event that did not, will not, or is not happening. To a human being, it will also be impossible, since I can not possibly be doing all of those things at once at the same moment unless reality itself has branched.

Even if you are experiencing them all at once, the events are fixed, since that is how you know them. The person will always choose A and get bitten by a snake and die, regardless if you don't actually experience them linearly as would a human. Is that a clear enough explanation?-- Obsidi♠n Soul 23:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The position that the future does not exist now is not a novel idea among philosophers of time. It is implied by both presentism (which is a commonly defended view), and the growing block view (which, I would say, is uncommon).

It seems, an assumption of what you said so far is that one exercises free will in doing something only if one could do otherwise. From the Stoics on, many compatibilists have argued that this is not necessary for exercising free will, and that it is sufficient for one to act by virtue of an internal function or in accord with an internal principle in order to exercise free will. Indeed, some compatiblilists argue that exercising free will is possible only if actions are pre-determined.

Another assumption you make is that if one's action is known before it occurs, then one could not have done otherwise. Although this is a common position, it is not without controversy. Theoretically one can make a distinction along the lines of modality: Knowing that something is the case implies that that is the case, and, by double negation, that it is not not the case, however, it does not imply it could not not be the case. The point here is in not confusing statements about what is or isn't with statements about what could or couldn't be. To put it another way, the following statement does not seem like an unreasonable position to me, and you would have to argue against it to make your point: That someone will do something does not imply that someone must do that thing. As a counterexample, say we watch my friend, whom I know well, stroll up to pile of peanut butter cookies. You ask me: "Could he eat a cookie?" I answer: "He could, but he won't. And you, being a skeptic, respond: "If you admit that he could, how do you know he won't?" I answer: "Because he knows they are peanut butter cookies and that, as such, he is allergic to them, and he really does not want to suffer an allergic reaction." It don't think it would be unreasonable to have a judgement like that. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 10:16, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1) Novel for me at least when used in this context.

2) Not much of "free will" then eh? And I was right the first time. It seems the only way you can reconcile the two is if we accept the fact that we have already been judged even before we were born. It's fine in Philosophical musings if they want to redefine "free will" as "not free" after all, but it destroys the foundation of religions.

3) And no. You are confusing possibilities with fact and regressing to a human viewpoint. The question you used in the first place is misleading. "Could he eat the cookie?" is asking about possibilities. That which could have happened but will not. Of course, he could have done otherwise, but he won't because you know he won't.

A more relevant line of questioning is thus: I as a human being will ask "Will he eat the cookie?", and the only answer I really care about is if an omniscient being will say "He will" or "He won't". Everything else is irrelevant.

An omniscient being is already assumed to know, how he knows or what the reasons are for the individual's choice does not matter. Even the question "How do you know?" is a red herring. The only thing that matters is that his choice will be what you know it to be. And it will be, because anything otherwise will prove that you didn't know after all.

The presence of an option (the could in your argument) does not automatically mean free will. That's like having two doors in which one is locked, barred, or otherwise rendered impassable and then declaring that there is a choice on which door to take just because there are two. No there won't, because only one of them can be opened. -- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Useless stuff I regret writing
Content which starts hidden Absolute predestination, including the implication that we had already been judged before we were born, is a tenet of the doctrines of some Christian theologians and their followers, including whole sects which have endured for centuries. So, one should not unqualifiedly say that having a compatibilist theory of free will destroys the foundation of religions. And I'm not sure if it would be completely fair to say that one would now be "redefining" free will if one employed the Stoic definition. If one uses a definition which is 2300 years old, even older than some of the religions which the definition supposedly undermines, then one is not exactly being innovative, nor skirting the issue. I do not believe I have confused possibilities with fact. Of course the "could" question is about possibilities--that distinction between the "could" (problematic) and "is" (assertoric) modalities, or categories of possibility/impossiblity and existence/non-existence ("fact", if you will), was indeed part of what the example was supposed to illustrate. And I don't think I've ever progressed to a non-human viewpoint whence I could then regress, but, of course, that is not what you meant. As to what you meant, I am unsure.

Anyway, with what you've said now, I am unsure of your position. You've said, I think, that questions of what one could do are irrelevant to questions of whether one exercises free will. But, assuming that, I don't know what you would take to be necessary or sufficient for the exercise of free will. Maybe it's best to start afresh with clear questions so that I'm not addressing a straw-man of my own making.

Do you think that, in any case of one doing something, if one could not do otherwise, then one does not exercise freewill?

Do you think that, in any case of one doing something, if what one does is known beforehand, then one could not do otherwise?

Is the exercise of free will even possible?

If it is, could you give an example (real or imagined) of such an exercise?

Again, if it is, what do you think is necessary for the exercise of free will?

Finally, again, if it is, what do you think is sufficient for the exercise of free will?

--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 12:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've collapsed and struck-through most of my last response because it was really not helpful and didn't advance the discussion at all, and, as such, just muddied the waters. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 13:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Returning to the original question, let's look at each case:

"When good things happen, are they due to the action of the individual or God/outside influence ?" The individual is usually at least partially responsible, although there are exceptions, like when an unknown relative leaves you his vast estate. On the other hand, there almost always has to be some outside influence to enable the good thing to happen. In the Bill Gates example, he needed others with good ideas that he could steal, and a government which allowed him to become rich as a result.

"When bad things happen, are they due to the action of the individual or God/outside influence ?" Again, it's usually a mixture, although some people appear to be able to destroy their seemingly perfect lives all on their own (Nixon's Watergate self-destruction comes to mind). There are, of course, natural disasters which have nothing to do with human choices, like if you are struck by a meteor. StuRat (talk) 19:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're actually conflating two distinct concepts of religious morality: outcomes and behavior. Many people who do good things achieve little to no success in life (e.g. Mother Teresa); many people who do bad things become inordinately successful (e.g. Saddam Hussein). in religious thought, outcomes are provided by God, but behavior is controlled by Man, and worldly success is not a measure that matters. What matters is what happens after you die.

Yes, it makes for some confusion over why God would want bad people to succeed in the world and good people to fail. But keep in mind that what religions are trying to do (in their ham-handed way) is get people to behave well whether those people are failing or succeeding. Otherwise we end up with a society in which the golden rule is "Do unto others before they do unto you". --Ludwigs2 20:13, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly: in one case it is "if a man became", in the other case it is "if he did". One shouldn't be so surprised that the explanations are going to be different.

Actually, as the post below ([2]) illustrates, it isn't going to be that different for Atheists: just change "God" to "luck", "environment", "circumstances"...

Also, it might be a good idea to take a look at the article Grace (Christianity) (and other related articles and sources) for a more "nuanced" explanation. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your first mistake was believing that God exists, even though his existence would contradict everything we know about physics and, as shown above, would lead to logical paradoxes. Your second mistake was assuming that when people say something is "God's will" or "free will", they actually know anything about God's will. When successful people claim that their success is due to God's will, they conveniently ignore that the fortunate environment in which they grew up, their lucky decisions, and their superior genes played a much bigger role than their own choices. They ignore that a child in Africa could have become just as successful, if only he didn't die of cholera; they ignore that a thousand people in their own country could have become billionaires, if some more tax money had been spent on poorer schools; they ignore that had their competitors not waited 2 hours longer to file a patent, or not gotten into a car accident, or not missed a bus by 5 seconds, or not donated as much to charity, they would be out of business. As always in human history, religion becomes a way to justify the existing world order and cleanse guilt by blaming the victim--the poor and oppressed--for their own condition.

Your third mistake was assuming that God is perfect. In what sense is he perfect? This assumption is contradicted by the Bible itself, in which God gets angry, acts arbitrarily, and sometimes regrets his decisions. Perfect example: Noah's flood. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 20:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

<ahem> Science does not contradict the existence of God. The existence of God is simply a non-falsifiable theory, something which modern science frowns upon, but non-falsifiability is not a refutation of anything in and of itself (except in the mind of a certain class of skeptic who take Popper's outmoded ideation far too much to heart).

I understand where you're coming from, IP, I even mostly agree with you, but the real contradiction here is in your insistence that a skeptical position is right. A skeptic who isn't skeptical of his own skepticism isn't a skeptic at all; he's just an ideologue hiding behind the mantle of science. --Ludwigs2 20:46, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) God does not contradict physics. Science has neither proven nor disproved God. I agree with you about what you said about "When successful people..." We have spent quite a bit of time talking about that particular issue in my church. Systems of oppression, unequal opportunity, etc. Although, by the sounds of it, you didn't think that people who believe in God consider that stuff - I assure you, you are quite wrong on that count. In my church, we have devoted a lot of time to learning about and working with some of the poorest and most oppressed populations in the US; people that the middle and upper class generally never ever see unless they look for them. The prosperity gospel attitudes that you cite are representative of some very vocal Christian groups. However, I will state very sincerely that there are many, many Christians that feel that the Christian mission is to get rid of inequality, help the poor (and no, I don't mean throw money at them to feel good), reject things that contribute to the systems of oppression, spread the word about these issues, etc. The prosperity gospel is frankly opposite to what we see when we study Jesus's teachings. I completely respect that you don't believe in a God, but kindly refrain from making generic false statements about those who do. You will note that I am not telling you how you are wrong about what you believe. Also, this is not really related to the subject, so I have said what I have to say; I won't derail the conversation further. Falconus^{p t c} 20:53, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry if I implied that all religious people, or even most religious people, don't care about the poor. I was referring specifically to successful people who claim that their success was God's will, not to believers in general. As such, I think my comment is very relevant to the OP's question.

I also think, however, that you can't dismiss the vocal Christian groups that adhere to the prosperity gospel. Like it or not, they're very prominent groups that have a large following. At least in the United States, the heavily religious tend to advocate for fewer benefits for the poor, less humane treatment of criminals, treating illegal immigrants like animals, taking away LGBT rights, and advancing a foreign policy that promotes American interests by trampling on all notions of justice or morality. Atheists are left to scratch their heads and wonder why it should be the case that a religion which claims to teach love of neighbor and "turning the other cheek" should be a potent force of hatred, while their opponents tend to be less religious or non-religious. I think that if a less advanced alien race were to look at Earth to decide what to include in their own civilization, they'd see religion fomenting conflict, justifying inequalities, and (historically) justifying the divine right of kings, slavery, racism, genocide, colonialism, and feudalism, and immediately exclude it from their societies.

As for whether the existence of God contradicts physics, I agree that the existence of God in general does not. This does not apply to the Judeo-Christian God, which is falsifiable (and has been falsified), because the Bible explicitly contradicts scientific findings about the origin and development of the universe as well as historical findings about the Israelites. It also does not apply to any omniscient or omnipotent God. Chaos theory, in addition to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, means that it's impossible to predict the future any significant length of time in advance. It is impossible, for example, to predict whether a certain radioactive atom will decay after 1 second or 1 billion years. Any entity, including God, that can predict the future in this way is violating the laws of physics. It is also impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. If God is able to visit Earth, communicate with the people there, visit a civilization in the Andromeda Galaxy, and return in less than 4 million years, that explicitly and unambiguously violates the laws of physics. You might say that our knowledge of physics is incomplete, but so is our knowledge of mathematics, yet that didn't prevent Orwell from saying in 1984 that a government which can declare 2+2=5 is an example of ultimate tyranny. If that's true, religions are other examples of ultimate tyranny, for declaring "facts" that contradict the laws of physics and expecting people to believe them. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 21:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just in the spirit of fun, you've made a foible and an error:

Refuting the bible doesn't refute the idea of God. that's like saying you refute the existence of the internet if you break your computer.
Chaos (in the chaos theory sense) is absolutely deterministic. it appears chaotic to us because it's sensitive to initial conditions: small differences at the start lead to big differences farther on, and we don't have have the ability to measure those small differences accurately enough. a being who was actually omniscient would be fully aware of the initial conditions and thus able to predict outcomes perfectly.
The 'speed of light' limitation only applies to things with mass and to things that have to move from place to place. it's probably best to to visualize God as some guy scooting around from place to place in a UFO.

just sayin'…

--Ludwigs2 04:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. Refuting the bible refutes the Judeo-Christian God, but not God in general. How would you define the Judeo-Christian god, if not as "the god of the Bible"?

2. "Chaos", in the classical sense, is indeed absolutely deterministic. However, the essence of chaos theory is that small variations in initial conditions get exponentially magnified with time. The cause of those small variations are not deterministic--they could be the result of random wavefunction collapse, which are truly random.

3. That's 100% wrong. Photons are massless, but they're also bound by the speed of light. Any method of transferring information faster than light violates the laws of physics. --140.180.15.97 (talk) 08:31, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Generally claims of physics refuting the Judeo-Christian God are in relation to literal interpretations. Sure, science may contradict the idea that God created the world in 7 days and that Jesus walked on water. That is true, however many Christians don't believe that either of those literally happened either. And the image of God being debated here seems to be some dude flying around space - while an entertaining image, that's the first time I've thought of it that way since I was a young child. For me, God is not physical, but more spiritual, and exists outside of space and time (i.e. the universe). That is completely different. Why do I think that? Because a God flying around space pushing buttons just doesn't seem to work, for all the reasons mentioned here and 1000 more. Falconus^{p t c} 11:37, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An obvious factor that is often overlooked is the possibility that God can see all possible outcomes of a given decision. It helps to get outside of normal human experience when theorizing about God. In fact, I think this concept was posed in a Mark Twain story, possibly The Mysterious Stranger. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The outcomes and the decision aren't two different things, of which one is outside the scope of omniscience. If being omniscient means he knows the possible outcomes, doesn't it follow that he also knows what the decision is? I know all this sounds very unrelated to the original post, but it does all boil down to that question. Who to blame for the "bad" things and the "good" things. Did we choose them, or have we already made the choice?-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is this goofy theory about reverse time travel, that if you were to go back in time and do something that creates a paradox, the paradox would be resolved by the universe splitting into two parallel parts, with different outcomes. That's about as nutty an idea as I've heard. I don't know if whoever came up with that is a believer or not - but as silly as it sounds, there could be something to it: the omniscient God will have seen any and all of those "universes". So whichever action you take, you are free to do so. So the blame is on you, not on God. That's one theory, anyway. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The man who came up with that "nutty" idea - or rather the respectable if not universally accepted quantum physics version of it (which does account for time-travel paradoxes, although that is not its main thrust) was a "committed atheist" if his WP article is to be believed. Valiantis (talk) 04:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How old was he when he was committed? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A solution might be inferred from the text of Revelation (21:4) which says "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Compare the idea of Lethe. From this I take the proposal that in the spiritual future, the history of the world will be such that all of the bad things we see happening now will no longer ever have happened. (In other words, that the wiping away of the sorrow is the revision of history to remove the offending events, rather than just an amnesia) Now in such a situation, those who have endured misery and suffering lose it, but retain the virtues that they have gained while enduring it. So, for example, a mother loves her son with the intensity as if she had watched him waste away from leukemia - without the leukemia. Such virtues are the product of free will, the choices people have made; they are not simply some robotic good behavior implant forced on the denizens of a perfect simulation. Those who have suffered the most, who have held out against the worst, retain the most; thus the last become first in the kingdom of heaven. And in this way, for those who can endure it, suffering can perhaps be viewed as a divine gift for their betterment, rather than any kind of hatred or punishment. Wnt (talk) 14:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That really has nothing to do with the OP's question about free will, though. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]