Is the world predictable?

Question

For example: If you know everything there is to know about a particular game, the rules, all the possible outcomes, like a game of chess, could you in effect predict the outcome of this game? What if it where not a game but life itself?

What if God knows? What if he knows: what you will do, what we will say, even before you say it?

then is our destiny decided even before we are born? What does your religion say aboutt divine predestination?

Answer 1

For the Christian, God knows all. He knows what we will do and even think. But we don't. He has given us free will. So whatever decisions I make are new to me; I don't know the outcome, but God does.

Answer 2

I personally view life like this: Infinite possibilities are already laid out, every time we have the chance to make a decision our predestined future branches out into more possibilites, splitting and weaving around the destinies of other people. As we reach these junction we choose one of the paths to follow, thus wielding the power of free will. This reflects in the Greek and Norse myths of the three goddesses of fate, one to measure the thick cord of the past, one to create the whispy frays of the future, and one too weave the future into the past. As to those paths that we do not choose to follow, perhaps when we reach a point of choice in our lives the entire world splits into many different realities, maybe even creating a parralel universe. Mayhap we inhabit just one of a set of infinite realities, each one born of a different possibility. As for predestination, maybe almost all of our possibilites lead to one outcome, and it seems that we cannot stop it from happening. I believe that freewill and predestination are both circumstantial illusions, and the reality is that they exist side by side, weaving a pattern of fate...

Answer 3

No, the world is not predictable because events are the result of people exercising free will.

There's literally a near-infinite number of variations to the game of chess (as a mathematician, you would know). Once the board is set up, there's NO WAY to know the outcome of the game in advance. Same as life.

God knows. But again, He has given us the gift of free will. (along with the responsibility for the consequences)

Destiny is NOT known before we are born. We have the ability to exercise free will.

And, the one decision above all others is to come to the love and mercy of the one true God, and salvation thru His Son, Jesus, OR to reject/deny Him. And, again, responsibility for that decision.

Answer 4

I find that the more I know about something, the less sure I am about the outcome of it. It is only in knowing enough to be dangerous that anyone feels sure that they are right.

Answer 5

Forget the god bit, the problem of determinism has been debated for centuries. Quantum mechanics threw a bit of a wrench into the whole deterministic theory but it hasn't quite killed it off.

Answer 6

Pretty much although not always in the form as you would expect, i.e, 9/11. Was a terrorist attack really a surprise? No. But. the form that it took certainly was.

Answer 7

For us it is unpredictable... but as we ride on ladder of more and more being conscious.. the chaos lessens

At the level of God, nothing is unpredictable, as all is going as per plan

Answer 8

" Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves (with their own souls). But when (once) Allah willeth a people's punishment, there can be no turning it back, nor will they find, besides Him, any to protect." (ar-Ra'ad: 11)

Answer 9

stop worrying and live!!!!!!