neo-x wrote:Actually, that is the same objection I have against molinism, that given enough variables to calculate one can ultimately become omniscient.
Yup. But I also have to say that I'm told by some people who have studied the issue more than me that there are other versions of Molinism that don't have this problem. I don't know what they are, as I've not looked into them in any detail (yet). "Molinism" is something of a nebulous term, anyway. But I digress. Just saying that I don't think it's all it's being argued it's cracked up to be.
As to your point Jac, I have tried to see (in the past) if the choice we have and God knowing the choice we would choose, really collide contrary to as you say? I think they still do.
How can God know something that does not exist yet? Knowledge is only relative between things that are or can be, existence and potential. But the potential will really come to pass depends upon factors that are also contingent outside of God, human free will (limited even it may be) or else it gets predetermined.
Look at the words I just put in bold. Whether you mean it or not, you are applying temporality to God. To say that God knows something that does not exist
yet is to say that God somehow knows things that are future
to Him. But nothing is future to God (if we take classical theism seriously, anyway). For those here who believe--wrongly, I think--that God is temporal, I think you have a good and important question. But for those of us who believe what theists of all stripes, and by that I specifically mean Christians, Muslims, and Jews, have been saying about God for at least eighteen hundred years, then your objection just doesn't apply.
The key to your problem lies in your second question. Don't make the mistake of equating potential existence with possible existence. Possible existence is just a theoretical construct. Potential existence has a deeper meaning associated with it (for classical theists). Potential existence is
real existence. It goes back to the Greek word
dunamis, which means "capacity" or "power." You, right now, as we speak, have the capacity to laugh. You probably aren't laughing now, but you have that capacity. It's a
real thing that you have. That you are not laughing does not mean the potential is only a possibility. Part of what it means to be human is to really be able to laugh, and sometimes, you actualize that potential by really laughing!
Just so with potential existence. You, as a human, have the potential to exist in myriads of ways (you could be laughing, for instance). What gets actualized depends on many factors, one of which is certainly your own free will. The point is that God knows ALL existence absolutely, and He knows it for what it is. He knows potential existence as potential and He knows actual existence as actual. He knows free choices as free choices and determined events as determined events. More below.
Since God knows what we will choose, the future is set. Where the property of knowledge does arise? In god or in us? If it exists in God, it exists prior to us and is equal to the existence of God if put on a time scale. So in a crude way, the moment God exists, the knowledge that we will choose “X” also exists, in a concrete way (or else it’s just a good guess). But we do not exist, actually yet, nor our wills. Or the ability to change that will. Since if not free will then God determines everything.
If God knows our will, then our will is a part of his being and existence, since the choice is made prior to our creation because the future does not exist yet for us to make that choice. Then if I did not make a choice and the future does not exist yet then, who makes the choice that God acknowledges, that I would have apparently made? That really bothers me.
Choice is only an illusion in this way. If you know that your son will choose a red shirt, even if you present him with 7 different colors. You know that on instinct and could be wrong. But if you know as an omniscient being that your son WILL choose the red shirt, then you know that by knowing the future. If you know it by knowing the future then by seeing the future you made it concrete, since you must know that your son will choose the red shirt before he chooses it in time. So if you saw the future, and your knowledge can’t be wrong in anyway. Your son’s future now is concrete. He cannot have a last minute change of heart. Because if he does then your knowledge is wrong. Since your knowledge can’t be wrong then his future can’t be changed since you know of his actions prior to his existence.
This is the problem I have with God knowing our choice, does not negate our choice. If God knows our choice then I can’t change my choice, the very act of knowing made my choice the ONLY one, the rest is only an illusion to me.
The only way it makes sense to me is that God does not see past my choices. That serves the purpose of free will and a conscience creature.
How do you think God knows the future, without making it concrete? To me, the act of foreseeing, cements the very act in future time which can’t change.
Knowledge exists in God in an analogous sense to a way it exists in us. We cannot say that God knows the same way we do. God doesn't look down the infinite corridors of time, see what we will choose, know it, and therefore have this existence within Himself that we call knowledge about what we will do. That are LOTS of reasons we can't and shouldn't adopt that view. One of the most important is that, in God, knowledge is not a thing that He goes and "checks"--as if there is God and then there is what He knows (within Himself). That's obviously not the case with you and me. There is Jack, and then there is in Jack what Jack knows, and Jack and Jack's knowledge are not identical with one another. But that's not the case in God. Strictly, what God knows is Himself, and God's knowledge of Himself
is Himself. And since what God
is is pure, unlimited existence itself, then He immediately knows all ways that being can be. Being this way is a horse. Being that way is a dog. Being this other way is Jack talking to Neo. Being still this other way is Jack potentially laughing. And being that other way is Neo
actually laughing.
Keep in mind, all we are is
being in some particular way. You have never encountered pure being. Everything you have ever experienced is being, just being this way or that way. To the extent that we exist, then, we are
like God, but we are not God, because God is pure, unlimited (which is to say, undefined) being; whereas we are limited, defined being
s.
So, again, when God knows Himself, He immediately knows every way in which being can be, both potential and actual. Moreover, since He is the cause of everything that is--that is, nothing can be without Him being its Prime Mover--then there is nothing that is that He has not made to be. That is not to say He determines everything, for He moves everything according to its own nature.
The bottom line is that when you take God's eternality seriously (that is, His atemporality) and thereby remove all temporal indicators from God's essence, when you see that God's knowledge is identical with Himself, and when you see that what God is is pure being, then all of that shows that when God knows in what ways I am actual and what ways I am potential, and that by my own choices, then there is no conflict between God's knowledge of
our future (it isn't His, after all) and our ability to freely actualize our own potentialities.
I know this doesn't answer everything, and there's quite a bit of detail I'm leaving out. But I don't want to go too far. Your thought so far?
