Omniscience vs. Freewill (was Re: [PLUG-TALK] Re: PLUG-talk Digest, Vol 7, Issue 6)

[glen e. p. ropella]

=><=><= "rj" == Russ Johnson <russj at dimstar.net> writes:

>> 1) Human choice is temporal.  God is trans-temporal.
>> 
rj>  From our perspective, if God knows what we did/do/done, then our 
rj> choices are already made. To make a change to what God knows, makes him 
rj> wrong, which flies in the face of omniscience.
[...]
>> God, on the other hand, is independent of time.  He's like 
>> Maxwell's equations... he is what he is whether you plug in
>> the t-value of yesterday or today.
>> 
rj> How does that affect our decision making? If we have to decide what he 
rj> knows, then free will is out the window.

>> So, in this context, we can have freedom of choice.  But, 
>> the _impact_ of that choice simply varies with time... And
>> God sees us as the entire historical trajectory rather than
>> as a coherent entity at a single time point.  So, he knows
>> what we did/do/will do... In fact, "did", "do", and "will do"
>> are all the same to him.
>> 
>> 
rj>  From that perspective, God sees our entire timeline. If we can alter 
rj> the whole timeline that He sees, then we have freewill, and he isn't 
rj> omniscient. If we have to follow the path he sees, then we don't have 
rj> freewill.

These three responses make me think I didn't do a good enough job
of explaining (1).  Let me try again.  There is no "already" from
God's perspective because "already" is a function of time.  There
is no "altering" the timeline that He sees because change is a 
function of time.  And, we don't "decide" what he sees.  He sees
it all.

Our decisions are also a function of time... At time, t_1 we haven't
decided what to do and at t_2 we have.  But, from God's perspective,
the state of the universe at times t_1 and t_2 are each just slices
of the whole 22 dimensional space.  By analogy, imagine a cube in 
3 dimensional space.  If you take several 2-d slices of the cube and
set them next to each other, you can "see" the whole cube.  You may
_point_ to the first slice first and then point to the second slice,
etc.  But, your pointing to sequential slices of the cube doesn't
mean, somehow that the slices you haven't reached yet don't exist.

So, here I am living from time point to time point... at t_i I 
think about going to the store.  At t_(i+1), I go to the store.
>From my perspective, I decided to go to the store and I don't 
consider there to be any single canalizing force that made me 
do that.  So, I have freewill.

>From God's perspective, all he sees is the state of the universe
(including me) at time t_i and at time t_(i+1), regardless of 
whether I have freewill or not.

But, I repeat that I'm proposing this as a mechanism by which we can
have freewill without limiting God's knowledge.  I'm not trying to
_define_ freewill.  And since you didn't define it, either, this
mechanism is sufficient to allow both freewill and God's omniscience.

>> 2) Potential vs. Actual is real and God has infinite inferential
>> ability and can know what will happen regardless of the path
>> you end up taking.
>> 
>> 
rj> This takes us back to the "all possible realities exist at the same 
rj> time" Star Trek story. Interesting theory, but I have a hard time 
rj> grasping that, since I don't believe in alternate universes, or believe 
rj> that some idiot version of myself could make decisions that would result 
rj> in some of the possibilities I can think of.

Uhhh, but just because you don't _believe_ it doesn't mean that it's
false.  So, as with (1), all I'm trying to do with (2) is show that
you haven't shown a _logical_ contradiction between freewill and 
God's omniscience, regardless of what you can grasp or believe.

Logically, if the multi-verse exists as envisioned by Wheeler, it 
would allow freewill and God's omniscience to co-exist quite nicely.

-- 
glen e. p. ropella              =><=                           Hail Eris!
H: 503.630.4505                              http://www.ropella.net/~gepr
M: 971.219.3846                               http://www.tempusdictum.com