Future contingents

What do they believe? What do you think? Talk about religion as it exists today.

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Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Future contingents

Post by Clive »

What is ridiculous?

That there are serious issues about statements in the future tense and a major religion that asserts credal systems whereby people must assent to the truth of these assertions about the future is built upon such statements?
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Future contingents

Post by Clive »

if we succeed in recognising that He has come within the limits of those times, we may without doubt believe Him to be the very one whose future coming was ever the theme of prophetic song, upon whom we —the nations, to wit— were ever announced as destined to believe; and that, when it shall have been agreed that He is come, we may undoubtedly likewise believe that the new law has by Him been given, and not disavow the new testament in Him and through Him drawn up for us. For that Christ was to come we know that even the Jews do not attempt to disprove, inasmuch as it is to His advent that they are directing their hope.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030188.htm
From time shift thread.

I am proposing that a series of category mistakes, for example about prophecy, institutional prayer to change things, sacrifice to the gods or entrail reading to win a battle, became institutionalised in various superstitio and religio, and that these somehow inoculated themselves (or did they?) from the arguments of Aristotle and many more about statements about the future.

Something interesting happened with xianity - messing with time (past, present and future) became highly sophisticated, allowing assertions that death had been conquered.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Future contingents

Post by Clive »

And persecuting "paganism" then has a real reason behind it, not fluff that they are all heathens, but because any reasonably educated person would know Aristotle and the issue that can you make a true statement about the battle tomorrow, and letting that thinking out immediately destroys xianity.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Future contingents

Post by Clive »

Revelation 22King James Version (KJV)

22 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

4 And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

6 And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.

7 Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.

8 And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.

9 Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.

10 And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.

11 He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

12 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

14 Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

15 For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.

17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

21 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Future contingents are contingent statements about the future — such as future events, actions, states etc. To qualify as contingent the predicted event, state, action or whatever is at stake must neither be impossible nor inevitable. Statements such as “My mother shall go to London” or “There will be a sea-battle tomorrow” could serve as standard examples. What could be called the problem of future contingents concerns how to ascribe truth-values to such statements. If there are several possible decisions out of which one is going to be made freely tomorrow, can there be a truth now about which one will be made? If ‘yes’, on what grounds could something which is still open, nevertheless be true already now? If ‘no’, can we in fact hold that all logically exclusive possibilities must be untrue without denying that one of the possible outcomes must turn out to be the chosen one?[1]

In point of fact, ‘future contingents’ could also refer to future contingent objects. A statement like “The first astronaut to go to Mars will have a unique experience” could be analyzed as referring to an object not yet existing, supposing that one day in the distant future some person will indeed travel to Mars, but that person has not yet been born. The notion of ‘future contingent objects’ involves important philosophical questions, for instance the issue of ethical obligations towards future generations, quantification over ‘future contingent objects’ etc. However, this entry is confined to the study of future contingent statements.

The problem of future contingents is interwoven with a number of issues in theology, philosophy, logic, semantics of natural language, computer science, and applied mathematics. The theological issue of how to reconcile the assumption of God's foreknowledge with the freedom and moral accountability of human beings has been a main impetus to the discussion and a major inspiration to the development of various logical models of time and future contingents. This theological issue is connected with the general philosophical question of determinism versus indeterminism. Within logic, the relation between time and modality must be studied and various models satisfying various assumptions with respect to the structure of time must be developed and investigated. The project of formal semantics for natural languages also has to address the problem of how to ascribe a correct semantics to statements about the future.
Revelation 22 is a series of assertions about the future. It is thus extremely problematic and had been recognised as such in the Greek world in which Revelation was written for several hundred years.

Why is it that texts that utterly contradicted thinking of the time, and would have been recognised as such, came to have such prominence that different ways of thinking were almost wiped out?
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Future contingents

Post by Clive »

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,
This assertion is actually a take over bid of time!
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
iskander
Posts: 2091
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2015 12:38 pm

Re: Future contingents

Post by iskander »

Clive wrote:What is ridiculous?

That there are serious issues about statements in the future tense and a major religion that asserts credal systems whereby people must assent to the truth of these assertions about the future is built upon such statements?
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
Just so stories for dreamers.

"... as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name"
A Midsummer Night's Dream, V,I, 7
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