Do prayers to the Light actually work?

[Tud]

I'm not sure exactly what point you are trying to make, but I'll asume you're attempting to refure the existance of free will and therefroe are asserting the fact that because free will deosn't exist, then the rest of the my post is invalid..which would be the logical conclusion. Unfortunately,your arguement flies in the face of the central tenant of every religion I've ever studied or heard of (Including Aetheism since believing or not believing is a choice. A clear example of Free Will.). Without free will, you cannot have faith or lack thereof.

 

Your point that free will to the average human is an illusion in the face of an omniscient deity is actually irrelevant. The fact that the diety has the power isn't what's important here. Nor is it important that free will to the average human (BTW, what constitutes an "average human"?) is an illusion. What's important is whether He/She/Whatever chooses to exercise his/her omniscence and whether the "average human" believes that he/she is free to make a choice.

 

If the "average person" believes they have the choice, then "free will" exists.

 

That being the case, the rest of my post stands as validated.

[jemron]

@Tud - I completely agree with you, as I believe that there is a real God who, above all, respects our free will and gives us opportunities to "choose the right" through spiritual influence...

 

Anyway, back to WoT, this is why I believe so strongly that the Randlanders are wrong when they assume that the Creator left them to rot on their little rock and went elsewhere. I think he doesn't intervene because he gives them free will, but I think, when the time is right, he will intervene if necessary.

 

I think prayers to the Light/Creator/Whatever you want to call it, don't go unheard or unanswered, but those answers may very well be "no answer for now."

 

I may be totally wrong, but, just as some have argued that RJ uses what he believed to build some of the basics of this fantasy world, I use what I believe to drive and even bias the theories that I create for how I think/hope it will go down in the end.

[Erunion]

@Jemron/Tud

 

Absolutely agree with the both of you, very well said. I've just been throwing out a lot of possible, but highly improbable ideas in order to spark thought/conversation.

 

@MichealoftheWhite

 

God's omniscience in the nature of his understanding of time-space (including the future/past/present) is because of the very nature of his existence - he exists outside of the time-space continuum, therefore he is not constrained by time, or the human understanding thereof. He can exist at any point in time at once (Omnipresence), therefore he knows exactly what will happen at any time or place anywhere. However, his knowledge of our choices does not invalidate the fact that we made those choices! When dealing with any such theological question, it is important to cast off our instinctive visualization of time. Time is not something that just 'is', and that all beings are constrained to exist within the bounds of, rather time-space is creation, created by the Creator, who is unaffected by time, or space as they are His creations.

[muddymess]

@Jemron/Tud

 

Absolutely agree with the both of you, very well said. I've just been throwing out a lot of possible, but highly improbable ideas in order to spark thought/conversation.

 

@MichealoftheWhite

 

God's omniscience in the nature of his understanding of time-space (including the future/past/present) is because of the very nature of his existence - he exists outside of the time-space continuum, therefore he is not constrained by time, or the human understanding thereof. He can exist at any point in time at once (Omnipresence), therefore he knows exactly what will happen at any time or place anywhere. However, his knowledge of our choices does not invalidate the fact that we made those choices! When dealing with any such theological question, it is important to cast off our instinctive visualization of time. Time is not something that just 'is', and that all beings are constrained to exist within the bounds of, rather time-space is creation, created by the Creator, who is unaffected by time, or space as they are His creations.

 

So in essence his existence is meaningless, since he has no impact besides creation - which happened a long time ago.

[Erunion]

Muddymess, I'm not sure how you got that out of my comment, existing outside of the flow of space-time does not mean He cannot change or effect the flow of space-time (although that may actually be how RJ's Creator works, it is not how the Judeo-Christian YHWH works). You don't have to be inside something in order to affect it (although, as a Christian, I believe that God sent a part of himself into space-time in Jesus Christ), you can easily make changes from the outside, much as I can change the contents (add or subtract something, stir it up/etc) of a glass of water without being inside the water, or even getting wet.

 

That, however, brings us back to our initial question: Does RJ's Creator do anything to the pattern? Can He (or will He) change anything within existence, or will he simply leave his 'perfect' Pattern to do that work? Is the pattern 'good' and/or intelligent enough to recognize and respond to prayers, or is the pattern simply a neutral super-computer that is intent only on self-preservation?

[MichaelOfTheWhite]

I'm not sure exactly what point you are trying to make, but I'll asume you're attempting to refure the existance of free will and therefroe are asserting the fact that because free will deosn't exist, then the rest of the my post is invalid..which would be the logical conclusion. Unfortunately,your arguement flies in the face of the central tenant of every religion I've ever studied or heard of (Including Aetheism since believing or not believing is a choice. A clear example of Free Will.). Without free will, you cannot have faith or lack thereof.

 

Your point that free will to the average human is an illusion in the face of an omniscient deity is actually irrelevant. The fact that the diety has the power isn't what's important here. Nor is it important that free will to the average human (BTW, what constitutes an "average human"?) is an illusion. What's important is whether He/She/Whatever chooses to exercise his/her omniscence and whether the "average human" believes that he/she is free to make a choice.

 

If the "average person" believes they have the choice, then "free will" exists.

 

That being the case, the rest of my post stands as validated.

You didn't answer my questions; instead you went off at a tangent about not understanding them, when you would've understood my point just fine if you'd answered the questions...

 

What a waste of time. :/

[MichaelOfTheWhite]

@Jemron/Tud

 

Absolutely agree with the both of you, very well said. I've just been throwing out a lot of possible, but highly improbable ideas in order to spark thought/conversation.

 

@MichealoftheWhite

 

God's omniscience in the nature of his understanding of time-space (including the future/past/present) is because of the very nature of his existence - he exists outside of the time-space continuum, therefore he is not constrained by time, or the human understanding thereof. He can exist at any point in time at once (Omnipresence), therefore he knows exactly what will happen at any time or place anywhere. However, his knowledge of our choices does not invalidate the fact that we made those choices! When dealing with any such theological question, it is important to cast off our instinctive visualization of time. Time is not something that just 'is', and that all beings are constrained to exist within the bounds of, rather time-space is creation, created by the Creator, who is unaffected by time, or space as they are His creations.

Thanks for putting some thought into my question. :)

 

My next thought would be to say that we as humans do not sense extra-universal things beyond the limits of our senses. We are not omniscient like gods. We exist in a closed system - the four dimensions of space-time we can actually perceive.

With that in mind, it is clear that time as we see it exists within that limited system.

Hence, any choices we make are made within the constraints of that closed system.

 

Therefore 'free will' refers to a set of choices we have that are limited by the realities of our universe. Limited choices are not free choices; and, because a Higher Power would understand this, he allows us only the illusion of free choice.

 

Technically, any higher power would be able to watch all of our various instances replicated across the multiverse each making different choices (or sometimes the same choices, I guess) and understand that he watches countless MichaelOfTheWhites that each believe themselves to be making unique decisions.

 

The beauty of this is that it allows the Theist room for his faith in a higher power that takes an interest in him, the Agnostic the chance to contemplate a higher power that could exist beyond the realms of human perception; and the Atheist a firm faith in the laws and realms of physics: where, it was said by Einstein, surely some great unknowable power must surely be at play.

[Morsker]

You didn't answer my questions; instead you went off at a tangent about not understanding them, when you would've understood my point just fine if you'd answered the questions...

 

What a waste of time. :/

The question was a waste of time. Anyone using free will in an argument against the Problem of Evil already has an explanation for how free will is compatible with the existence of an omniscient God. There's such a variety of theories of free will that people can just select one that fits their argument. There are theories that require indeterminacy, theories that require determinism, theories that don't care, and so on. There are more theories of free will than there were theories of Asmodean's murder.

 

It's all a tangent that only comes up if we expect the Creator to be the Christian God, and have to explain away how he could possibly allow evil. The Creator simply isn't as nice as the Christian God is defined to be, but people's faith is different, and they don't care. The Creator is in an eternal struggle against the Dark One, and still manages to offer everyone rebirth and salvation. No one seems to mind that he doesn't offer everything for nothing.

[MichaelOfTheWhite]

Would 'continued existence' count as suffucuent motivation to stay faithful to the Light, Morsker?

[Tud]

I fail to see how my response was a "waste of time", but I'm not going to get into...

 

The point that the Creator is omniscient is irrelevant to the concept of free will because we can't conceive of anything that lies outside of the Space/Time continuim. As Erunion posted, so long as the Creator doesn't interfer, his/her/it's knowledge doesn't mean anything so far as free will is concerned. Even if free will is illusionary, it still applies because those of us who do believe, believe that we have the power to make the choice.

 

Also as has already been posted, a better way to look at the question is to note that the Creator has a different approach than our dieties...We really don't know whether he answers prayers since RJ never wrote a scene where the issue was dealt with, one way or the other. I think it is interesting to note that no one in Randland doubts that there is a Creator or that a soul exists..

 

tud

[Kal-El814]

 

On a side topic, I've always felt that the main weakness in the entire WOT concept (and indeed in most Fantasy ) is the fact that the Dark One, etc shows no mercy to his followers who fail. You screw up an assignment and you're consigned to the firy pits. There's never an allowance for you to just not be successful.The problem I have with that scenario is where's the incentive to join up? I mean, sure, you might get infinite power, if you succeed, but you can get plenty of power, etc if you work for the other side and you don't get roasted if you screw up.Heck, you can even turn traitor and still, the other side will take you back. Try that working for the Dark One..So, again, where's the incentive?

 

 

There's some discussion/inner monologue about this amongst the Forsaken and others throughout the books. Once saidin was tainted, males had an incentive to turn to the Shadow as the DO insulates them against madness.

 

Ishy/Moridin came to the conclusion that the the DO will inevitably break free and that Randland will be destroyed, so he may as well play for the "winning" team before the inevitable happens. Others were promised immortality, clout, etc., beyond what could be easily or possibly attained without the DO's intervention.

 

As far as the topic is concerned, I think the most obvious answer is "no". The way the TS is discussed, treated, etc., is in such a way that "prayer" seems more akin to mediation than seeking active intervention from the Creator. Rand's "discussions" with LTT on the topic reinforce that. Galad's recent thoughts regarding the actions of the Children of the Light allow him to realize that the Light will not directly drive the actions of people who claim to follow it, and that goodness is independent of it.

 

The only evidence that the Creator responds to prayers or intervenes in human affairs is, at best, circumstantial.

 

Also, I don't agree with the notion that the Creator and the DO are struggling against one another. The Creator made the WoT which is "powered" by the TS. The Creator is said to have created the prison on the DO, but there's pretty obviously no ongoing maintenance of that beyond what humans are doing and have done to it. This seems like a case of Occam's razor to me. The Creator got the WoT turning, imprisoned the Dark One and moved on. This is how the characters in this universe believe things to be and there's really nothing in the books that challenges that notion.

 

Just my $.02, of course.

[MichaelOfTheWhite]

I fail to see how my response was a "waste of time", but I'm not going to get into...

 

The point that the Creator is omniscient is irrelevant to the concept of free will because we can't conceive of anything that lies outside of the Space/Time continuim. As Erunion posted, so long as the Creator doesn't interfer, his/her/it's knowledge doesn't mean anything so far as free will is concerned. Even if free will is illusionary, it still applies because those of us who do believe, believe that we have the power to make the choice.

 

I understand the following formula:

((Belief + time = faith) = Trust) = 'The power to have faith in my decisions'. Having faith in the choices I make is very different to having 'free will'.

 

The above should show how I can not believe in Free Will, but can still have faith in a power greater than myself.

 

You wrote, 'I'm not sure exactly what point you are trying to make, but I'll asume you're attempting to refute the existance of free will... Without free will, you cannot have faith or lack thereof', which is, IMHO, where you went wrong - hence my 'time wasting' comment, because that wasn't my point at all, and you wasted time and effort refuting a point I'd not even made. That, I think, was why Morsker found my original question to be a 'waste of time' - because he reasoned that you'd have some sort of defense or argument loaded up and ready to fire as soon as you caught a sniff of my question. As noted above, you were shooting at shadows - again, this was where your time got wasted.

 

The short answer, and I suppose I expected too much of you, is that the answer to my original question is the formula above, which shows how the rejection of the idea of 'free will' can co-exist alongside faith - contrary, as you said, to the 'teachings' of 'most' religions.

 

You scored 0 points on that one, Tud. :)

[Tud]

MOTW, I can't believe that you so missed the point of my initial post..Whether free will exists or is just an illusion is immaterial to the discussion. The point is that I was making..rather clearly, I might add... was to offer up a possible explanation regarding why The Creator in Randland might not answer all prayers. He dosn't because he is self- constrained by His need to allow mankind the freedom to make a choice. The Dark One doesn't seem to because he doesn't want to..Of course, since we've never been shown a POV of an ordinary DF praying, this is all supposition. Of course, all of this supposes that Randland's Creator reflects God in the real world (assuming, of course, that this isn't a dream), which is where Morsker's point about the nature of the Creator comes into play.

 

His point was well taken..Due to the fact that RJ was a Christian, the natural impulse is to treat Randland's Creator as being GOd when it is unclear that he is..In point of fact, we really don't know whether the Creator answers prayer because RJ never showed a prayer being answered ( for that matter, aside for praying for Kumira and the DF's in LOC chanting a catechism to the DO, we're never shown anyone praying).

 

Actually, the answer to the original query is that we don't know because we've not been given enough empirical data to draw a valid conclusion.

[MichaelOfTheWhite]

I see what you did there.

 

I guess that you're keen to discuss the Creator as a charcater or plot device, allowing yourself the liecense to draw comparisons to real-world religions and speculate on the Creator's subsequent origins in RJ's mind within a familiar paradigm, yet draw the line at questions that poke at the idea of 'free will' which was the catalyst you used to develop your entire original argument.

 

TUD

'...I think y'all are missing an essential element to Christianity (And almost every religion I've ever studied) that informs RJ's approach to The Creator: Free Will'.

 

'MOTW, I can't believe that you so missed the point of my initial post..Whether free will exists or is just an illusion is immaterial to the discussion'.

/TUD

 

Seeing as my original question was designed to get you thinking outside your paradigm, the fact that it failed shows me that further discussion in this area would be unhelpful for both of us.

[plague fiend]

I guess the answer to your question, do prayers to the light actually work, depends on what you call "work". I've always believed that Taveren and Need were a form of answer to one's prayers(Rand, Nynaeve, ect.). Although, it seems to me that these are mechanical in nature(like a system put in place to do these types of things) and not a direct action by the Creator. I believe there's a quote out there by RJ, when someone asked him about the involvement of the Creator in his world. I don't remember the exact answer, but I got the feeling that the Creator is watching events. Maybe the big unseen thing, is the Creator.

[Kestrel]

I understand the following formula:

((Belief + time = faith) = Trust) = 'The power to have faith in my decisions'.

I had a short night and a very long day, so please forgive my unfocused eyes.

 

But the first time I scrolled by this post I saw:

 

((BELA + time = faith) = Trust) = 'The power to have faith in my decisions'.

[MichaelOfTheWhite]

I understand the following formula:

((Belief + time = faith) = Trust) = 'The power to have faith in my decisions'.

I had a short night and a very long day, so please forgive my unfocused eyes.

 

But the first time I scrolled by this post I saw:

 

((BELA + time = faith) = Trust) = 'The power to have faith in my decisions'.

Here endeth the lesson! :D