Catalina. I think it must be pretty boring to be God. After all, he's omniscient, so he already knows how things are going to come out. He can't even make bets on which sinners are going to repent and which are going to burn, because he already knows who is and isn't going to repent.
Jaiden. Even though God is omniscient, he doesn't know who will repent and who will not because, for him, it's just like tossing a coin.
Catalina. 1. God already knows how everything is going to come out.
(2. Life is boring if you already know how everything is going to come out.)
C. God's life is boring.
Jaiden. 1. God knowing who will repent is like you knowing how a coin toss will come out.
(2. You cannot predict how a coin toss will come out.)
(3. If there is something god cannot predict, then god will not necessarily be bored.)
(C. God's life is not necessarily boring.)
Catalina bears the burden of proof because he is ascribing a property to God. Jaiden is merely defending the null hypothesis that God's life isn't necessarily boring or non boring.
Both are making direct arguments.
Evaluation:
Catalina. Argument Jaiden. Analogy argument
Cites lack of interesting events. Conclusion Thingy: God knowing how repentance will turn out.
Based
on perfect predictability Premise Thingy: Someone knowing how a coin toss will come out.
Property: Unpredictability.
Catalina gives a fairly reasonable argument. Lots of things (like movies and sporting events) would be boring if we knew every little detail before it happened. On the other hand, I don't know if that covers everything. Would our friends amuse us if we knew exactly what they were going to do ahead of time? And maybe God has a high tolerance for predictability. Many TV shows are excruciatingly predictable, and plenty of people watch them. Jaiden's argument relies on a supposed similarity between predicting who will repent and predicting how a coin toss will come out. Actually, I just realized that I misinterpreted Jaiden's argument. I've been talking about it as though it says that god knowing about repentance is like you knowing about a coin toss, but that's not what she said. She said "for him, it's just like tossing a coin," which means that the analogy is really between God predicting repentance and God calling a coin toss. But, if God exists and is omniscient, then he always knows how a coin toss is going to come out! So if that's the analogy, it proves that God will know who will repent and who will not, and Jaiden's argument fails. So Jaiden's argument will be stronger if we take it to rest on a comparison between God calling repentance and you calling a coin toss. Here, the argument is stronger because you, (unless you're God, or some other supernatural being), cannot reliably predict how a coin toss will come out. Furthermore, there is a significant similarity between the two cases in that the outcome of the coin toss is out of your control and, because of free will, the outcome of repentance is out of God's control. However, there is a fatal difference. Humans are not omniscient. They don't know how coin tosses will turn out
because they can't see the future. God is supposed to be omniscient. If he
or she is omniscient, then he or she can see into the future, and will see
how a coin toss will turn out. So even if a repentance decision is like a
coin toss, in that God cannot control how it turns out, his or her ability
to know everything means that he or she can know how it's going to turn out.
The problem with this analogy is that while repentance for God might be analogous
to a coin toss for God, God's purported omniscience means that it cannot
be analogous to a coin toss for a human. God calling repentance is unlike you calling a coin toss precisely because God is omniscient and you're not. Since omniscience is about predictability, and predictability is precisely what is in question here, Jaiden's argument is a false analogy, so it fails. Big-time.
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