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Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/28/2001 10:31 AM (GMT -6) |   | TGB
02/17/01 2:50 AM
Clarence's Omelet
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Friends-
I’d like to hear again exactly WHY is must be true that simple foreknowledge (in the view of open theists) must exclude genuine freedom. I’d like to post Hasker’s argument for this and suggest an alternative.
Hasker’s argument:
1. It is now true that Clarence will have a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (Premise)
2. It is impossible that God should at any time believe what is false, or fail to believe anything that is true. (Premise: divine omniscience)
3. God has always believed that Clarence will have a cheese omelet tomorrow. (From 1, 2)
4. If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Premise: the unalterability of the past)
5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast. (From 3, 4)
6. It is not possible for it to be true both that God has always believed that Clarence would have a cheese omelet for breakfast, and that he does not in fact have one. (From 2)
7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 5, 6) So Clarence’s eating the omelet tomorrow is not an act of free choice.
In what follows I may show myself to be a total jerk when it comes to logic.
I’d like to assume simple foreknowledge for the time being and suggest Hasker’s argument overlooks an important truth regarding God’s knowing that Clarence will eat an omelet tomorrow. It boils down to something like this:
God's existence outside of time as we know it means that his knowledge of Clarence’s act is contemporaneous with and not prior to the act itself. That is, Clarence’s free choice to eat a cheese omelet informs (or rather informed) God’s foreknowledge, not visa versa. All human language used to describe this relationship is anthropomorphic in a sense. That is, God’s knowledge only “precedes” Clarence’s action from our point of view, and thus the problem it posses with regard to free will is an illusion. Clarence’s free choice informed God’s knowledge of the event and God carries this bit of knowledge to what WE call "the past" (with respect to Clarence's action). But it’s not past for God.
OK guys. Go ahead. Fire away. Don’t be too hard. I want to chase this possibility that simple foreknowledge and libertarian free will are compatible down every alley way before giving up.
Does Hasker’s argument as stated above necessarily entail the conclusion that God “caused” Clarence to eat a cheese omelet? Why or why not? If not Clarences’ will and not God’s will, then what DOES cause him to choose the omelet?
Adrift,
Tom
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
Mephi2K
02/17/01 5:14 AM
Meph Attempts To Eat Clarence's Omelette (Burp...excuse me...)
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Tom,
I'm gonna call you the Riddler, man. LOL By the way, Tom, are you SURE you want to be an open theist? You're depth of questions blow me away with their level of perception and the way you find issues with the open view. Anyways...
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Some Notes On Hasker's Thinking
Look at Hasker's complete argumentation as Tom has it. As I look at it, premises 4, 5, and 7 operate upon a supposition that needs to be addressed.
4. If God has always believed a certain thing, it is not in anyone’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that thing. (Premise: the unalterability of the past)
Mephi:
Now the parenthetical note states that this asserts the unalterability of the past. But as I see it it does much more than just that. The "it is not in anyone's power to bring it out" thing is CRUCIAL. Notice what he is implicitly doing. He is setting the whole thing up such that Charles Hodges' sense of "power to the contrary" is in effect. The supposition placed in this premise is that the power of human will is INEXTRICABLY linked to the power of the contrary qua Hodge. What this does is make it such that anything that violates the "power of the contrary" is said ipso facto to DENY the power of the human will. Oooh...this was a nasty one!
5. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to bring it about that God has not always believed that he would have a cheese omelet for breakfast. (From 3, 4)
Mephi:
Notice how Hasker is honing this now. "It is not in Clarence's power..." His terminology heightens the tension created by the assumption that has been SMUGGLED, I repeat, SMUGGLED into premise 4.
7. Therefore, it is not in Clarence’s power to refrain from having a cheese omelet for breakfast tomorrow. (From 5, 6) So Clarence’s eating the omelet tomorrow is not an act of free choice.
Mephi:
He's gone for the kill! Hasker has set up the reader to concede Clarence's "powerlessness" and than EXPLICITLY states that Clarence's act was not of free choice. Can anyone else see how this was cheating in some regard. There SHOULD have been a premise explicitly and FAIRLY stated thusly...
Premise: For Clarence to commit an act of free choice, it MUST be in Clarence's power to have "power to the contrary" regarding any and ALL situations.
But he didn't say this, now did he? He SMUGGLED this in. On this alone, I would consider Hasker's argument defunct. Please tell me that you guys see this.
[Note: Can you see why I'm so pedantic about presuppositions and assumptions. In logical argumentation, a smart person can straight KILL you with smuggled assumptions, if you cannot discern them. Asking people to spell them out UPFRONT stops this onslaught cold. Hopefully, this will hip you to why I am the way I am. LOL ]
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My Problem With Simple Foreknowledge
Tom, I'll say this. You've got it going on. Your point stands. It can REALLY work.
Let's analyze this from the get go. If we assume simple foreknowledge is true with a timeless God and all, this is how I see it working out.
1) There was a state of reality where all was a monism that consisted only of God.
2) God initiates the creative event.
3) Creation includes the timeline of events as an ontological whole AT LEAST in the perception of God. [this is necessary for us to say that God sees all time as one big "now"]
4) God witnesses the actions and events in the timeline and is INFORMED by those actions, in the respect of what reality is.
If we consider God to have been omniscient at #1, (omniscience infering that God had knowledge of all possible existences, including acts, events, and agents) this houses the presupposition that God knew a large host of possibilities in #1, but God knew no ACTUALITY but himself. Why? Because God was the only thing "actual" there was in #1. Thus the "informing" would be considered God seeing his possibilities becoming actualities. Notice that if you assume the timelessness of God, this works out JUST AS WELL as the view qua open view theism. Thus, Tom would be right that simple foreknowledge need NOT preclude the idea of liberatarian free will!
Now to my problem. My question is this: What do BOTH of the ideas I've talked about assume within their respective paradigms? They both assume reality exists such that that though God can know ALL possibilities, he can ONLY know those as possibilities and not actualities. They would ALSO assume the existence of libertarian free will. This would not necessarily be a problem except for the following. Libertarian free will, as they understand it, would ASSUME two things: 1) Hodge's sense of "power to the contrary" and 2) the (AT LEAST, relative) autonomy of the will. Why do I say this? Because if we say that God has perfect predictability of all events, including the decisions of agents, then the FACT of God's omniscience would necessarily lead us to the conclusion that God "knew" before creation what events WOULD take place! You would recognize this as "determinism" The only way to get away from the sense of determinism or predestination is to posit that reality is such that God CANNOT perfectly predict future states of reality from past states of reality. Well, how do you do that? The two ways that libertarians currently do it...
1) Appeal to quantum theory Many libertarians hold the uncertainty principle and other stuff up as banners to rally for the idea of INDETERMINISM in all cases, including God's knowledge and/or ability to predict perfectly. I think this fails for a NUMBER of reasons, but that's beside the point right now.
2) Appeal to the autonomy of the will When you say that the will is such that it can operate CONTRARY to the influence of all factors bearing upon that will, this is autonomy of the will. (If consistant, one can see the direct link between the notion of the "power to the contrary" and autonomy of the will) If this is assumed then, of course, it would be impossible for anyone, including God, to predict all future events with complete accuracy.
I challenge the assumption of libertarian free will! I think there are some VERY good arguments against the idea itself. Thus I feel that both simple foreknowledge and the open view take is defunct because of the ASSUMPTION of libertarian free will and it's corresponding ideas. However, IF one were partial to keeping the assumption of libertarian free will, Tom's thinking is quite sound, IMHO, and simple foreknowledge DOES seem compatible with libertarian free will, IF libertarian free will is assumed in the first place. Way to go, Tom!!
Hope this wasn't too convoluted or too long.
In Christ,
Mephi2K
PS: Tom, are you REALLY, REALLY sure that you want to be an open theist??
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