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sirkeled
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 4
|  Posted 4/10/2007 2:37 AM (GMT -6) |   | My title is pretty straighforward already:
1. If God (perfect being) exists, his knowledge must be perfect.
2. Having perfect knowledge means that you cannot know other things which you do not already know.
3. Since God is perfect, God cannot know other things which God does not already know. (1, 2)
4. God cannot be ignorant of some (if not all) future events and have perfect knowledge at the same time.
5. God is either not perfect (for his knowledge is not perfect/there are still some knowledge which can be added to what he already knows (e.g. what I will do 50 years from now)) or God is perfect (so is His knowledge) and there is no free will.
5.1 If God is not perfect, he cannot be God/There is no God if you claim that we have free will.
5.2 If God exists, his existence precludes free will of any kind/There is no free will if you claim that there is God.
So we cannot have free will and a perfect being which have a perfect knowledge at the same time (law of contradiction). It's either God exists and there is no free will or we have free will and God's existence (that is a perfect being which of course has perfect knowledge) is an impossibility.
Now, my stand is that a Perfect Being is an incoherent/impossible thing and that we have free will. I am not saying that I am correct. If you can show that the co-existence of God/Perfect Being and Free Will do not violate the Law of Non-Contradiction, I will reconsider.
Cheers! | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 4/10/2007 1:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Hello sirkeled,
For God's knowledge to be perfect, He need only know the future exhaustively, not as exhaustively settled. In other words, if part of the future is open, God must know that and know it exhaustively. If part of the future is determined, God must know that exhaustively. Whatever the nature of the future is, God must know that nature and know it exhaustively.
It is not "ignorance" on God's behalf if He does not know how many blinks I will blink in the next two years, or how many steps I will take - as if we could sit and watch our future in a movie theater. What WOULD constitute ignorance on God's behalf would be for Him to not know what might and might not happen. (Some members of this board argue that God can conceive of all possiblities at one time while others believe God conceives of many possibilities only when the need to do so arises. Either way, the point is made.)
It's simply a contradiction to claim both that that you are free to choose and that God knows what you will choose before you choose it. Proof, by the way, that God cannot know everything you will ever choose is that you can change things, even if God Himself were to try to tell you what you will do in every sitation. The simple, cold facts of life, as God created them when He created this world, is that freewill makes it impossible for anybody, including God to have total control over you. That's just the facts of life, sirkeled. This protection is two-fold: not only can no one control you complete, but you would change things even if you didn't want to. Just thinking about what you were told you would do would be a change. (I'm writing a book about this, and it's almost finished!)
Anyway, God's knowledge is absolutely perfect and complete. He knows all things things that are true, and He will never believe anything that is false. This in no way means He must know absolutely everything, no exeptions, or we'd have a really weird God on our hands, just like we would if God could do absolutely everything, no exceptions. I mean, that would be way too strange and unpredictable for me!
Thanks much,
Starkman
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship with us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 4/11/2007 7:10 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Hi sirkeled! What’s up?
I’d say (2) is false. Having perfect knowledge doesn’t mean never coming to know new truths. It does entail never being ignorant of any truth, but on the assumption that there are irreducibly temporal truths (propositions that are true at some times and false at others), the truth content of the universe is constantly changing. Therefore a perfectly knowledgeable God would know this, keep infallible track of the changing truth values of propositions, and so come to know new truths as those truths come to be true, etc.
Your (4) is unclear. I could agree to it depending on how you construe knowledge of future events. On my view, God knows truths positing the future contingent events, but as contingent events. So God would know “Agent X might and might not do Y in Z at time t.” But I think by “knowing future events” you mean to limit God’s knowledge of the future to “will” and “will not” propositions, so that a perfect knowledge of the future would be expressed exclusively in terms of “definitely this will happen” and “definitely that will not happen.” Assuming X is free at t with respect to doing Y, you'd still insist on limiting the possible truthful expressions of this to "X will do Y in Z at time t" or "X will not do Y in Z at time t." But “will” and “will not” here express what is causally closed about the future. But if contingency and freedom are real, sirkeled, then the future isn't causally closed, it's causally open in some respects, and "will" and "will not" props cannot express this contingenc. The question is, are there real contingency and freedom in the world? If so, then an omniscient God would know this. If not, he'd know everything in "will" and "will not" terms.
I agree with (5) minus the parenthetical remarks. God is either perfect or imperfect. But perfect would include his knowing the TRUTH about the world and that would mean his knowing the truth about future contingency, which truth is not expressed in “will” or “will not” terms but “might and might not” terms like Starkman said.
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 4/11/2007 7:16:11 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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sirkeled
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 4
| Posted 4/11/2007 8:57 AM (GMT -6) | | Since all of you replied/have the same thought/arguments, I will just address this reply to the 3 of you:
There are two types of things that we do not know (basing from your arguments): 1. Things we inherently do not know (e.g. I do not know how a TV works), 2. Things we do not know because they have not yet happened (e.g. I know of things like "graduating/not graduating" but I do not know what of these two possibilities will happen in the future. Like, will I graduate college or fail one of my subjects?)
I agree that God is omniscient in sense #1 since God knows the nature/workings of all things (e.g. how cells work, how to create micro-machines or even how to perfectly engineer flying cars (a thing we do not yet inherently know)). Now, suffice to say, there is nothing we can do to "add" to God's knowledge when it comes to the inherent nature of things for he knows all things. I agree with this.
My only problem is with #2. Number two says that God can be "unsure." Example, God is not sure whether I will go to the mall tomorrow or not. Since God can be "unsure" then he cannot be omniscient. If you can show me how inassurance cannot harm God's omniscience, then I will reconsider again.
And also, the Bible contains predictions, that means that there is a way for him to know the future. If that's the case then the future is already determined. Example, it is mentioned that God knows when we will die. He cannot know when we will die and still maintain that the future is not determined. If he can know a certain future t, then that already shows that he can know any future ts. I mean for example: You can argue that God knows that X will die at t but can "choose" not to know what happens before t (the death). But the problem is not that he can "choose not to know" but the mere fact that "a future t can be known." Hence, even if he DID choose not to know it, it is still determined by the fact that it CAN BE KNOWN. If God, by his will, chooses to know any future t, then the information for any future t is available. Thus, determined.
Now, I am not again saying that I know the nature of these predictions. A prediction may not be in a form of actual foreknowledge if: 1.) E.g. God learned Herod's thoughts that he will order Christ's killings. This information of his is then relayed to Joseph and Mary. This kind of knowledge is not prediction for God but a prediction for Joseph/Mary since they had no access to Herod's thoughts. 2.) If God willed something to happen at a particular t. Like sending Christ at t. This is basically the same as having future plans. E.g. I will go to the mall tomorrow. The fact that it will happen tomorrow is not a prediction but a plan. If God relayed Christ's coming 3000 years before t (Christ's birth), then it may seem like a prediction to the people who heard it because it's so far in the future for them to see it in their lifetime. 3.) By exhaustively knowing the nature of things. E.g. I myself may not know that I will go to Europe 6 years from now, but since God knows me and the present circumstances exhaustively, then perhaps by his omniscient analysis, he can predict that I will. This is okay since science are making this kind of prediction all the time. Even in the field of economics, economists predict future trends based from current knowledge. The more in-depth the analysis, the more correct the prediction.
Those three are perfectly okay (and tell me if you're okay with them). But the former paragraph isn't (like knowing when we will die or how we will die). That really reeks of predeterminism unless God can use prediction #3. I am just doubtful if there is a way to know exactly when we will die depending on current knowledge. And how about the death of Christ on a cross? Can God arrive on such a prediction through analysis of events 3000 years before when the cross hasn't been even invented? I mean, God knows that man can create a thing such as a cross, I am not contending against that. What I am contending about is his certainty that at time t, people will have invented the cross and crucify Christ on it. This reeks of predeterminism unless you can solve it by using prediction #3.
(Personally, it's a good thing though that there are no exact predictions in the Bible (like George Bush being elected at t1 or Francis Crick discovering the DNA at t2)). So, this kind of gives you a leeway for your open theism argument. Just a thought. :D) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 4/12/2007 2:59 PM (GMT -6) | | sirkeled: Do you have any articles discussing this whole thing elaborately? I could agree with you on this point then. But you still have to address the Biblical predictions or prophecies.
Tom: There are three really crazy guys (!) who just published a Faith and Philosophy (Fall '06) article on an open view semantics of the sort I’ve described. You can download it here: http://www.alanrhoda.net/papers/opentheism.pdf
Nobody’s really wrestled at length with the prophecy issue. I think it would make a great thesis or issue to write a book on. John Sanders deals with it in his The God Who Risks, and Boyd mentions it somewhat in God of the Possible, but there’s no real in-depth treatment that I know of.
Tom
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 4/12/2007 6:23 PM (GMT -6) | | sirkeled,
I would say your argument fails if God is not known as a perfect being, like you say. To know God as a perfect being, 1 or 2 things must be true:
1) Either all humans have an underived proposition in their head to the effect that "There is a perfect being," with the definition of perfect being identical for each person, or
2) All humans have some category that entails/implies the existence of a being whose so-called perfect attributes can be deduced or correlatively known by all.
For traditional theism to be true, we must additionally say that either 1) or 2) entails that God is the creator of the universe. My question is, do people really have in their minds a divinely-originated, UNDERIVED proposition as claimed by 1)? I suspect they don't. Moreover, I think it's clear that people don't define "perfect" the same, anyway. So, from 1), we have the problem of defining "perfect" in addition to seeing how "perfect" entails being the Creator of our universe.
It would seem to me that a perfect being could create an imperfect being that had creative capacities. If so, a perfect being could exist without being the creator of our world, unless our definition of perfect entails that God can only create a perfect world or being. But in that case, we would know there is no perfect being independent of an argument about omniscience--unless we are uncreated beings like God and just don't realize it. But again, if we are uncreated, traditional theism is false anyway.
So my question is, do you experience 1) or 2) or neither? I suspect that most people believe that God is the necessary correlate of a world which seems unintelligibile without a personal intelligence as its ground. Personally, I think this is so because humans can not but organize their experiential apprehension of the world in terms of final causality (we see this in the inductive sciences in terms like trends and tendencies). The attributes of that person we call God, then, are worked out as a result of rationally interpreting our experience of and interaction with the world and, as the case may be, God.
When theism is viewed this way, omniscience, in the sense that you define it, must be proven--not assumed--as an attribute of deity. It must be entailed in our most rational interpretation of our experience. For me, it is NOT entailed in my interpretation of experience. Indeed, the kind of omniscience you say God must have seems unintelligible. But that doesn't in the least bring into question the existence of final causality as real categorical relation.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 4/12/2007 6:53:19 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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sirkeled
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 4
| Posted 4/12/2007 11:32 PM (GMT -6) | | ^Actually, I don't know what "perfection" entails. God is perfect, in what sense? I agree that we have different concepts of perfection, what may be perfect for me may actually be imperfect in other areas.
My question now is, how do we know what "perfection" truly is? Most paradoxes/contradictions with regard to God's attributes rise from the different notions of "perfection." We really don't have a working idea/theory of what constitues "perfection," so I don't know maybe I'm really mistaken. | | Back to Top | | |
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