 |
| 
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/1/2004 5:10 AM (GMT -6) |   | This is a question I posted on another forum, but didn't really receive any totally satisfactory answers to, I thought that since you guys are quite philosophically inclined you might be able to help a bit more.
If God knows all the future as possibilities, then, at least prior to creation there are an infinite number of possibilities that he knows he can create (e.g. there is no limit on the possible length of time the universe can go on for, or the complexity which can be contained within it).
That's fine so far
But surely this involves an actual infinite existing in the present? And actual infinities seem to generate rather a lot of paradoxes, so that I'm not sure that they are a concept that can really exist in reality - it is impossible for example to think of an infinite number of monkeys existing in reality - partly i suppose because the concept of the infinite transcends all concept of countability....it kind of relates to the idea of the largest possible number I think, which is a concept which doesn't actually exist.
Any thoughts as to how all this might work out? | | Back to Top | | |
 |
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/1/2004 5:49 AM (GMT -6) | | markporter,
To my mind, to say God is infinite has just the problem you mentioned - the human mind cannot assign any real meaning to that other than a negative. But the negative seems to be unable to be proved. E.g., if I say God's love is infinite, all I can possibly understand by that is that God's love is NOT finite. But how do I prove that? God says He is LONGsuffering, NOT infinitely suffering. So if LOVE "bears all things," and God is only LONGsuffering, I can only assume that God's love is NOT infinite since he will not bear an infinite amount of suffering for another. Obviously, though, His love does surpass understanding.
To bring that around to God's knowledge, I think we have the same issue. How do you prove it? To me, the only thing I can definitely know is that God has sufficient knowledge, power, etc. to bring about all of His purposes, intentions, etc. And for me, that's impressive enough!!
But I think your on to something about the concept. To the extent that knowlege is conceptual, we are probably limited in just the way you describe. But when we talk of the infinity of space and time, though we only know it as a negative, it can be "understood" in terms of a picture in our mind. For example, when I try to put bounds on space in my mind, I automatically know there is an "outside" to the imagined bounds. I then know that if I continue to increase the bounds by a fixed amount, I will still know there will always be an outside to whatever bounds I imagine. Thus, the negative knowledge concerning the infinity of time and space is easier to get a handle on because of it's relation to the pictoral imagination. Infinity in non-pictoral (mathematical?) ideas is very problematic to me.
wjs | | Back to Top | | |
|
Newcomb
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116
| Posted 8/1/2004 6:47 AM (GMT -6) | | There are different thoughts here and how you define a number of them is based on some philosophical concepts.
The monkey analogy breaks down quickly because monkeys (anything biological) take resources that also cannot be infinite. But the idea behind the “infinite” argument is based on the Greek philosophers arguing ultimate realities.
Let’s deal with infinites for a minute. Infinity is the fact that time never ends. The Hebrews had two words, ‘owlam and ‘ad (see Isa. 45:17). Both words mean perpetual time or unending future time, or perpetuity.
In English a synonym can be used to replace another synonym because the two are, of course, synonymous or equivalents. So when “infinite” is used abut duration or time, try replacing it with a synonym like “perpetual” or “unending” to see if the argument holds simply because since about 300 B.C. the word has been used as if it were a noun as opposed to being an adjective describing time.
The adjective describes whatever it is applied to, such as monkeys, etc. But for time issues, this method works.
Let’s turn to infinite possibilities.
No person has the ability to select an infinite number of choices. Multiply this by the number of persons on earth and you still have a limited number, not infinity. So the argument itself is flawed.
God’s knowledge of future possibilities is also limited to the number of possible choices available to know at any given moment. I have three kids and not four. Each of those kids has a certain probability of marrying, but they need to meet the person first, etc. so the probability of them meeting a certain person, say, in China is slim. I don’t think God has a list that lists every possible girl on earth for my son’s to marry, he simply knows there is a probability that they will meet someone locally and not from China.
He knows nothing of my non-existent fourth child, however, there is a slim possibility at our age that we might have another. Only if another child is born will he know probabilities for that child.
Again, this is not an infinite number of possibilities, even though it is large number. Simply which child would be conceived is a very large number, but not infinite.
God knows my kids have personal choices and can choose to rebel to any extent possible or to obey to any extent possible.
Let’s use myself and my older brother as examples. I am 51, he is 53. I have been married for 26 years. He has been married for 6 months. At church when we were kids he had a number of girls to choose from, but choose not to marry until late in life. We both had certain probabilities and made different choices that have specific consequences. I have three kids, he has none.
Do I think God knew who we would each marry or how many children we would have? No. These were beyond his control unless he choose to directly intervene and force some specific outcome. This type of action is extremely rare and classed as a “miracle.”
I don’t believe God works like this. He simply knows there are possibilities. He likely intervenes only when he is trying to accomplish a specific goal such as an end time scenario.
I have an aquarium with lots of small live bearing fishes. I know there are certain probabilities that certain color combinations will be produced but I do not know which will be produced. I then know there is a certain probability each might be eaten and never reproduce themselves. This is sufficient knowledge, there is no reason to know things exhaustively. They, like we, have free wills and take actions based on those wills, though their wills cannot make moral choices.
As for your statement that before creation there were an infinite number of things that were possible, this too is not right. We could not, for instance have occupied Venus or Saturn for instance, so within the realm of things that were possible for live, there were certainly huge number of possible outcomes, but again, it is not infinite. The time the universe can exist, for instance is limited unless a supernatural intervention occurs.
There is also a limit to the complexity possible, again given that this is a large number, it is not infinite.
There are very few things once can actually say are true infinites.
"Neuk'em" | | Back to Top | | |
|
Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 8/1/2004 9:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Mark,
You raise an interesting question. It's one that has been raised before in objection to Craig's version of the kalam cosmological argument. Basically, Craig argues that it is impossible to have an actually infinite number of really existing things. He uses Hilbert's Hotel (an imaginary hotel w/ an actually infinite number of rooms) to illustrate the kinds of paradoxes that the concrete instantiation of an actual infinite would create. Some critics have argued that if Craig is right then there cannot be an actually infinite number of true propositions, but there are (e.g., 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 1+3=4, etc.), so Craig's argument must be mistaken. Moreover, it seems that an omniscient God would know an actually infinite number of things, so if actual infinities cannot exist, then it seems that God cannot be omniscient.
I think Craig is right on this point and that his detractors are mistaken. The false assumption made by the critics is that all distinguishable propositions and possibilities exist as really distinct entities. Historically, most Christian philosophers have believed that God's knowledge was simple, i.e., that in one, all-encompassing act of knowing God knows all there is to know. We need not buy the whole doctrine of divine simplicity to see an application here to the present issue. Why think that, for example, God's knowing that 1+1=2, 1+2=3, and 1+3=4 involves God's knowing them as THREE separate propositions rather than as ONE conjunctive proposition (1+1=2 AND 1+2=3 AND 1+3=4)? Why can't God know all truths collectively rather than severally? If that makes sense, then God need not know an actually infinite number of distinct things; rather, he might know only ONE thing. As finite creatures our knowledge is built up piecemeal, and so we naturally think of it as constituted by several distinct acts of knowing, but we should not anthropomorphically assume that God, whose knowledge is not built up in that way, must stand in the same type of relation to the contents of his knowledge that we do to ours.
Hope that helps. God bless.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/2/2004 12:57 PM (GMT -6) | | Mark: If God knows all the future as possibilities, then, at least prior to creation there are an infinite number of possibilities that he knows he can create...
Tom: Why should the number of possible worlds be infinite? They are great in number for sure. But why not suppose that there are a finite number of worlds God could have started out with and, in addition, a finite number of possible ways each of those worlds could unfold?
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/3/2004 7:04 AM (GMT -6) | | ok, a couple of comments on what's been written so far (I apologise for my clumsiness in wording all this stuff, I know you should expect better from and Oxford student, but I'm not really very experienced at writing about this sort of thing)
jef The one thing which struck me from what you wrote was "To me, the only thing I can definitely know is that God has sufficient knowledge, power, etc. to bring about all of His purposes, intentions, etc. And for me, that's impressive enough!!" I admit it's pretty impressive, but I'm afraid it's not really a position I'm content with; it's a pretty impressive being, but I'm not convinced that it's God. It's a being who can only intend a limited number of things; there is no way he can intend to do something which he knows nothing about - It would be impossible for me to form the intention of marrying Christina if I neither knew of her existence or possible existence or the existence or possible existence of marriage (*off topic 0:-) what? me? in love???).
Having said that, I think that the lines you're going down may be productive - in that perhaps he doesn't have to be aware of the infinite multitudes of possibilities, but only of the fundamental principles which underly them. For example, perhaps he doesn't need to be aware of all the possible numbers of monkeys that could exist, but only that whenever he creates one it is possible for him to create one more.
Newcomb The illustrations you use are all built up within the framework of the existing universe, and rather assume that we are working within that finite framework - you qualify yourself at the end by saying
"unless a supernatural intervention occurs."
but this is then kindof ignored by the next statement
"There is also a limit to the complexity possible, again given that this is a large number, it is not infinite."
the point being that God is a supernatural entity, and before he actually created this world there would have been an infinite number of possibilities for him to choose between - he could have created as many monkeys as he wanted, so long as he made the universe big enough to cope with them all.
Alan I think that your thinking here addresses the problem I'm facing a little more directly, although I'm not yet convinced that it solves it - just by conjoining the statements together yet doesn't reduce the amount of information contained in them, and I'm not sure that it solves the problem - how can God see the set of all possible worlds when that set has no limits? He can't see all possible numbers of monkeys that can exist because the set isn't limited and cannot be contained even in a thought.
Having said that, I still think that the direction you're going could be the right one, we're (or at least I'm) perhaps looking at the issue in the wrong kind of terms, looking at things as individuals when we/I should be looking at them as a whole. I was quite inspired the other day by reading an article by Creel entitled 'Continuity, Possibility, and Omniscience' (available online) in which he describes how things which cannot be known exhaustively as a set of individuals (e.g. the set of angles of all possible isosceles triangles) can be knows completely as a continuum. Now, there are some obvious questions which seem to come up here, such as the fact that the set of all these triangles is a closed rather than an open infinite. I'm not sure whether this matters or not, whether the distinction is actually real, or whether the closed infinites can somehow provide a doorway into open infinites, or even whether open infinites really exist, or are just somehow a way of looking at closed infinites from the wrong perspective. (Issue raised by Yong in "Possibility and Actuality The Doctrine of Creation and Its Implications for Divine Omniscience" - also available online, and also, interestingly examining some of Greg's stuff at the same time)
For example, we could look at the possible size of the universe as an open infinite - God could create it however large he wants, but perhaps it might be better understood in another way (given the continuous nature of space), if we look at size as a relative rather than absolute attribute, we could say that it is about how small in relation to the whole he makes all the internal components of the universe, which, I think, might reduce the problem to a closed infinite? Or another way of looking at it might be to look at the size of the universe as a product, for example, of the number of individual isosceles triangles God decides to create, which might also do the same trick. Perhaps the infinite monkeys issue can be related to the same sort of framework.
This also assumes that the concept of space as a continuum is correct, an idea I'm pretty sure that Craig goes along with.
I don't know whether this kind of idea really works, whether it can deal with all possibilities, and all complexities, but it is certainly very enticing, and also seems to be the only way out of the problem I can see at the moment.
I agree with Craig that an actual infinite cannot exist as such, the idea of having an infinite number of something just doesn't seem to correspond to anything real. I'm not sure that Greg agrees on this one, I did a search round the site before I posted this, and found a correspondence with you on kalaam in which this kind of issue was addressed and he seemed to side against Craig in this, although he looked like he was on the verge of changing his mind.
Tom Because there are some things which just aren't limited like the number of monkeys you could arrange in a straight line. | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/3/2004 9:19 AM (GMT -6) | | Mark: Tom, Because there are some things which just aren't limited like the number of monkeys you could arrange in a straight line.
Tom: The actual number of monkeys in the world is infinite? [/)]
If there is no such thing as an "actual infinte set" of anything, then being omniscient doesen't include knowing such things. If there are such sets, and such sets are impossible to know, then God's not omniscient.
I like Alan's comments but also still see a problem. If the future runs on infinitely, then the number of future states of affairs is infinite in number whether one expresses each state of affair with its own proposition or conjoins them all in one proposition. If one conjoins them all, the proposition would be unending. You'd never get to the period at the end of the proposition because the number of future states of affairs (whether the future is exhaustively determined or partly open!) is infinite by virture of the fact that time will never end. And if being omniscient means knowing all future possibilities, then God knows an actual infinite by knowing all the unending possible states of affairs (whether God unconditionally determinwa them all or not).
Now, Craig's argument against an infinite number of moments leading up to the moment of creation seems to make sense to me. He argues that there's no problem with an unending FUTURE number of moments because the number of moments is not ACTUAL. True. The moments aren't ACTUAL (i.e., historical). But an omniscient God WOULD presumably know all the truths about each of the unending future states of affairs. This essentiatially runs into the same objection Craig had against an infinite past, except in the case of an omnisciently known infinite future, there is an actual infinite number of foreknown states of affairs as oppossed to an actual infinite number of moments leading up to creation. In either case you have drawn a line around infinity. Craig is in just as much trouble as us. Every theist has to answer this one.
Good thinking Mark.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 8/3/2004 3:25 PM (GMT -6) | | mark,
quote:
jef The one thing which struck me from what you wrote was "To me, the only thing I can definitely know is that God has sufficient knowledge, power, etc. to bring about all of His purposes, intentions, etc. And for me, that's impressive enough!!" I admit it's pretty impressive, but I'm afraid it's not really a position I'm content with; it's a pretty impressive being, but I'm not convinced that it's God. It's a being who can only intend a limited number of things; there is no way he can intend to do something which he knows nothing about
If only a limited number of things are going with respect to God's creation at any given time, I don't see why your objection is conclusive. Romans 1 says that what we can know of God from creation is His Godhead and Power. But what power? That power that is sufficient to account for creation itself - which is not infinite since creation is not infinite. So unless scripture adds on knowledge about an INFINITE power, I don't see where we are justified in claiming such. Again, I'm not saying that I know that God is NOT infinite in certain ways - just that I think we need compelling scriptural evidence of such a notion. Is there even a word in Greek/Hebrew that means "infinite" which is applied to an attribute of God?
wjs | | Back to Top | | |
|
Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 8/9/2004 2:03 PM (GMT -6) | | Mark: Alan, I think that your thinking here addresses the problem I'm facing a little more directly, although I'm not yet convinced that it solves it - just by conjoining the statements together yet doesn't reduce the amount of information contained in them, and I'm not sure that it solves the problem - how can God see the set of all possible worlds when that set has no limits? He can't see all possible numbers of monkeys that can exist because the set isn't limited and cannot be contained even in a thought.
Alan: Let me try to restate my point and see if this helps. In arithmetic we can form an infinite # of true statements, e.g., 1+1=2, 1+2=3, etc. But there is a FINITE set of axioms (Peano's axioms) from which all such statements follow as corrolaries. In knowing that finite set of propositions God virtually knows everything that follows from them. No new content is added in going from Peano's axioms to 1+1=2 or 356+244=600. What I am suggesting is that all of God's knowledge may be summed up by one proposition (or if necessary a finite number of propositions) from which all other propositions follow as logical entailments. Thus in knowing a finite set of axioms, so to speak, God virtually knows everything else. His knowledge of the axioms is not dependent on his knowledge of their entailments. Rather, God knows the entailments because he knows the axioms. Thus what God knows, in the primary instance, is not an actually infinite set of discrete propositions, but rather a finite set of propositions from which all other propositions that God knows follow.
For example, God knows that He is omnipotent. This entails that he can create 1 monkey, that he can create 2 monkeys, that he can create 3 monkeys, and so on. But God doesn't have to know an infinite number of propositions about monkeys to know that he is omnipotent. Rather, in knowing the ONE truth, that he is omnipotent, he thereby knows all those other propositions about monkeys.
Make sense?
In thinking more about this problem of how God can know an actually infinite number of things if actual infinites cannot exist, it seems to me that there are only two possible solutions. The first is the one I have proposed, which is that God only virtually knows an actually infinite number of propositions. In the primary sense, God knows at most a finite number of propositions from which all other propositions follow as entailments.
A second possible solution is to concede that God knows an actually infinite number of propositions but to deny that an actual infinite number of propositions is problematic. Hilbert's Hotel seems to show that there cannot plausibly be an actually infinite set of concretely existing things, but propositions aren't concrete; they are abstract entities. It is not so clear that the counterintuitive consequences of actual infinites follow in such cases. An actually infinite number of monkeys would be problematic, but is the same true of propositions?
Hope that helps clarify matters.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/11/2004 3:32 AM (GMT -6) | | Alan: In thinking more about this problem of how God can know an actually infinite number of things if actual infinites cannot exist, it seems to me that there are only two possible solutions. The first is the one I have proposed, which is that God only virtually knows an actually infinite number of propositions. In the primary sense, God knows at most a finite number of propositions from which all other propositions follow as entailments.
Tom: I like it. I was just reading the most interesting little book on Math yesterday (The Number Devil) and it talked about how infinite numbers of things can be known by having the right "recipe" for knowing them. But here's my question. We're talking about an infinite future in heaven where, we suppose, all is not determined and possibilities remain. The future continues to branch out. There may two or more equally good and loving ways a particular action of ours may take. How does one determine a recipe "now" for knowing such possibilities. In Math, 1+1=2, 1+1+1=3, 1+1+1+1=4 reflects a recipe for knowing a "determined reality" that extends into eternity. But what about undertermined possibilities that extend into eternity and which don't follow a mathematical "recipe"? They don't follow mathematically.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/11/2004 3:41 AM (GMT -6) | | Maybe they DO follow mathematically, as in
If A, then B, C, or D
If B, then F
If C, then G
If D, then H or I
If I, then J, K, or L
If, and so on
Logic/Math can express these. Hmm. It's not the number of possibilities covering a particular time that's the problem. Those are finite. And it's not that possibilities don't follow logically from actualities and can't be foreknown. That's not the problem. The problem is that future time extends infinitely into the future.
This is not JUST an open view problem. Theological determinists who believe God knows the future by knowing his own unconditional and all-determining will also have to explain how God knows the pariculars of an infinite future.
Craig too.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/11/2004 7:04 AM (GMT -6) | | Alan,
Thanks, that makes your position a lot clearer. I think it's an elegant solution, but I have nagging doubts that it reduces the actual content of God's knowledge to almost nothing. Yes, he knows the truths about monkeys in that case, but does he know the monkeys for which the truth can be known about? I guess that the answer is yes, but only in a virtual sense.
The second solution you suggest I think I would reject in any case - I'm not sure it's the paradoxes that make the infinite a problem for me so much as the fact that I think the idea of an infinite number is a contradiction in itself - that the very idea of an infinite is a fiction. | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/12/2004 7:04 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom
Thanks for your participation here, I'm glad there is someone that is at least as confused as me about all this.
I've got a couple of points for you to think about, I'm not sure whether they help, but they look as if they might.
The first relates to time in heaven; I don't think that you'll find everyone in agreement that heaven is a temporal place, I think that someone like Craig might contend for the possibility at least of a timeless existence in heaven.
The second relates to the way that we're looking at this time; because it is potentially infinite we are saying that there are a potentially infinite number of facts to be known about it - I'm not sure that this necessarily follows, if, every second for the whole of eternity God were to add another monkey to his collection (I'm sorry....I don't know why I have a thing about the monkeys, it must be the typewriters and hamlet scripts) then how much do we actually need to know to know the entire future? Do we actually need to know an infinite number of facts? If certain logical possibilities are within my capabilty to act out at any particular time then perhaps I only need to know the set of logical possibilities, or the limits/lack of limits to that set, and the potentially unlimited nature of time, and that will suffice.
A contention might be that we need to know all the possible sequences of those possibilities, and the effects that the actualisation of one possibility might have on the future range of possibilities - in this universe I suppose such an objection seems quite objectionable, but perhaps that is only because we are overwhelmed by the vastness of everything - if there were just one particle bobbing about in a box, or perhaps even two then can we begin to comprehend? I don't know. (or perhaps even a potentially unlimited number.....)
Another issue I guess we come up against is that complexity often carries a great deal of meaning, I really don't know how complexity fits into all this at all, apart from as a general mixture of divions, purpose, randomness, quanitity and that sort of thing.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/12/2004 7:36 AM (GMT -6) | | Mark: I don't think that you'll find everyone in agreement that heaven is a temporal place, I think that someone like Craig might contend for the possibility at least of a timeless existence in heaven.
Tom: I’m pretty sure Craig argues (in his book on God and time) that divine atemporality and temporality are contingent attributes. He argues God is timeless in the absence of creation but necessarily abandons this atemporal mode of existence for a temporal one when he creates. Craig argues God is now temporal, and only temporal. In heaven? I’m sure he’d argue God continues to be temporal because he continues to relate to a finite creation, and a material universe. The eternal state, remember, is not an immaterial mode of existence. Even if the eternal state were purely an immaterial one, I think Craig (well, I would at least) argue God remains temporal. The existence of finite contingent beings presupposes temporality, for they did not always exist but will continue to do so.
Mark: The second relates to the way that we're looking at this time; because it is potentially infinite we are saying that there are a potentially infinite number of facts to be known about it - I'm not sure that this necessarily follows, if, every second for the whole of eternity God were to add another monkey to his collection (I'm sorry....I don't know why I have a thing about the monkeys, it must be the typewriters and hamlet scripts) then how much do we actually need to know to know the entire future? Do we actually need to know an infinite number of facts?
Tom: I see your point. I guess my point was that future events of an interpersonal nature are ‘open’ and so different that the ‘closed’ future events of repeating the ‘same’ addition of one monkey. The latter can be known know by way of ‘recipe’, but can the former? That’s what’s stumping me.
Mark: If certain logical possibilities are within my capabilty to act out at any particular time then perhaps I only need to know the set of logical possibilities, or the limits/lack of limits to that set, and the potentially unlimited nature of time, and that will suffice.
Tom: But would those possibilities be infinite by virtue of extending infinitely into an unending future? If God knows all THESE, then he knows an actual infinite. No?
Mark: A contention might be that we need to know all the possible sequences of those possibilities, and the effects that the actualisation of one possibility might have on the future range of possibilities - in this universe I suppose such an objection seems quite objectionable…
Tom: It’s a pretty powerful objection, for an open theist’s understanding of providence is based upon God’s ability to make decisions now based on infallibly knowing all the possible outcomes (good and bad) that follow from his and own actions. Do we want to say that God’s knowledge of the future following the consummation is not as exhaustive as it is now?
Interesting stuff!
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/16/2004 7:02 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom: I see your point. I guess my point was that future events of an interpersonal nature are ‘open’ and so different that the ‘closed’ future events of repeating the ‘same’ addition of one monkey. The latter can be known know by way of ‘recipe’, but can the former? That’s what’s stumping me.
they're still subject to the laws of logic.... | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/16/2004 7:13 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom: I see your point. I guess my point was that future events of an interpersonal nature are ‘open’ and so different than the ‘closed’ future events of repeating the ‘same’ addition of one monkey. The latter can be known know by way of ‘recipe’, but can the former? That’s what’s stumping me.
Mark: They're still subject to the laws of logic.
Tom: Ooo, I love it when you talk dirty logic to me.  Yes, logic rules! But that doesn't mean possibilities of an interpersonal kind can be foreknown "by recipe." If such possibilities can't be 'recipied', then logic would constrain us to admit that an omniscient God would have to foreknow them piecemeal, each one for what it is. But if such possibilies are infinite because they run on into the unending future, and if God knows them each because they can't be foreknown via mathematical recipie, THEN THAT would in turn involve God in knowing an actual infinite (which is the problem, right?), wouldn't it?
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/19/2004 7:15 AM (GMT -6) | | | Hmm, I don't see why there shouldn't be any aspects of these interaction which couldn't be known by the same kind of recipe as can interactions now. Perhaps you could give a specific example of the kind of thing which you think might throw us out? | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/19/2004 9:02 AM (GMT -6) | | Mark: Hmm, I don't see why there shouldn't be any aspects of these interaction which couldn't be known by the same kind of recipe as can interactions now. Perhaps you could give a specific example of the kind of thing which you think might throw us out?
Tom: I’ll try. OK, my understanding of God’s infinite intelligence with regard to, say, his providential actions in the world includes his knowing the “specific” possibilities that follow from actions. God would presumably have foreknown at creation, for example, a line of specific possibilities stretching from his act to create and my act of posting these comments. My being here to post didn’t follow necessarily from the act of creation. The number of possible futures branching out from the Garden of Eden to today is innumerable. My posting right now was then ONE of the possible futures. But these aren’t known by “recipe.” I’m not sure what sort of providential advantage God would gain from something other than foreknowledge of the specifics of future possibilities. So I don’t think God’s foreknowledge of events transpiring now was reciped. I think it was foreknowledge of the specifics of those possibilities. God knew their names and addresses. I think this because it can explain how God is able to adequately prepare for contingencies. He foreknows the contingencies.
OK, but “recipe” foreknowledge. Hmm. Let’s take the set of all uneven numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10…and on unendingly. Now we want to argue that God can’t actually possess, hold in conscious view (if I can say that), ALL members of this set. Why? Because the number of uneven numbers is infinte. But since this set is constituted by and follows an established pattern that all its members abide by (i.e., each member is divisible by both the numbers 1 and 2 and each member is separated from its immediately preceding and immediately following member by 2), God CAN know all the members of this set the same way we know all the members of this set, by recipe—the recipe being the shared characteristics off all members. By knowing these characteristics, God knows all uneven number.
OK, such reciped knowledge of infinite sets, it seems to me, is possible because the characteristics shared by all members of the sets are uniform and predictable. This is precisely what makes it possible to know all members by recipe. Interpersonal relations, interactions of an interpersonal and libertarian nature, are UNLIKE infinite sets. The possibilities follow logically but not uniformly. So in knowing infinite sets of uneven numbers, the future of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, __, __, is known by knowing the defining characteristics of membership in "unevenness." So we know 14 and 16 fill the blanks. But in foreknowing future free actions this sort of recipe won’t do, for by definition libertarian acts cannot be foreknown on the basis of past performance or established patterns. I rejected Christ on many occasions prior to the time I received Christ. God foreknew these possible futures in my case but I don’t see how he could have foreknown them by “recipe.” What common pattern of behavior (like numbers) would have enabled God to fill in the blank “Tom will receive Christ this time”? It’s not there. But he does know the possibilities. So if in heaven we continue to relate to God in an interpersonal and thus “open” fashion, and the future is eternal, then the unending future is comprised of interpersonal actions and choices which do NOT follow mathematically or predictably.
Have I lost my mind? Make any sense at all?
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/21/2004 2:06 AM (GMT -6) | | | Ok, thanks for that, I shall try and have a think through sometime in the next couple of days. I'm still not entirely sure I understand, but shall have a go. | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/22/2004 5:06 AM (GMT -6) | | | *wonders what other consequences this whole train of thought might have for the attributes of God* | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/23/2004 6:22 AM (GMT -6) | | still not got round to thinking about your points yet tom....sorry.
Just one more thought from me...and that is, that with him knowing a basic set of axioms, I have a feeling that some states of affairs are further away from this starting point than others....I get the feeling that God would take longer to get to the number 10000000 than he would to the number 2 for example.... | | Back to Top | | |
|
markporter
Fire over Oxford
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 263
| Posted 8/24/2004 4:20 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
OK, such reciped knowledge of infinite sets, it seems to me, is possible because the characteristics shared by all members of the sets are uniform and predictable. This is precisely what makes it possible to know all members by recipe. Interpersonal relations, interactions of an interpersonal and libertarian nature, are UNLIKE infinite sets. The possibilities follow logically but not uniformly. So in knowing infinite sets of uneven numbers, the future of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, __, __, is known by knowing the defining characteristics of membership in "unevenness." So we know 14 and 16 fill the blanks. But in foreknowing future free actions this sort of recipe won’t do, for by definition libertarian acts cannot be foreknown on the basis of past performance or established patterns. I rejected Christ on many occasions prior to the time I received Christ. God foreknew these possible futures in my case but I don’t see how he could have foreknown them by “recipe.” What common pattern of behavior (like numbers) would have enabled God to fill in the blank “Tom will receive Christ this time”? It’s not there. But he does know the possibilities. So if in heaven we continue to relate to God in an interpersonal and thus “open” fashion, and the future is eternal, then the unending future is comprised of interpersonal actions and choices which do NOT follow mathematically or predictably.
There's still a logic to the possibilities open to you and to their possible consequences which God can know as it is - he can know the range of things open to you, and can know what sorts of things follow from certain choices. It's only the actual choice itself which cannot be known | | Back to Top | | |
|
Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/25/2004 3:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Mark: There's still a logic to the possibilities open to you and to their possible consequences which God can know as it is - he can know the range of things open to you, and can know what sorts of things follow from certain choices. It's only the actual choice itself which cannot be known.
Tom: Oh, for sure. Yeah, that much is agreed upon. I thought the issue was: if the possibilities he knows are infinite because the future goes on infintely, then how does this not amount to his knowing an actual infintite (i.e., that set of truths defines as "All the possibile futures running infinitely into the future"). We agree he knows them. The question is how he knows them if actual inifites are impossible.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
| 28 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 11:41 AM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|