| Subject: Arrow of time |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 06/26/02 4:15pm
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "More on omnipotence and omniscience." on 06/26/02 1:16pm
>
>
>Suppose I use a time machine to travel from the
>present to the year 1995. I know that the American
>people will elect George W. Bush in the year 2000.
>But clearly, this foreknowledge does not imply
>predestination. I don’t take away the people’s free
>will simply by knowing what will happen. But what if
>people choose to vote for Al Gore instead? In that
>case, I would correspondingly have always known that
>when I traveled from the present to the year 1995.
>
>It’s the same with God’s omniscience. Let’s face it,
>either I will choose action A (whether it be
>voting for a particular candidate or whatever) or I
>won’t. Suppose I choose A. If God knew it
>ahead of time, would that remove my free will? No.
>What if, at the last minute, I choose Not A?
>Then God would correspondingly have always known that
>I wouldn’t do A. It’s like traveling back in
>time before George W. Bush was elected. Simply
>because I know that the people would vote for George
>does not in the least imply that I have removed their
>free will, just like God knowing who would be elected
>does not imply that He removed their free will.
>
The problem with this reasoning as I see it is it assumes something that is viewed as impossible to begin with, namely traveling back in time. There is also a question of the so called arrow of time that is dictated by things like entropy that people like Hawking have dabbled in. Basically, their curosity is why we never see something like a glass of coffee that falls to the floor and shatters spring back up instead and reassemble itself. Hawking suggests that while he thinks time travel back via the speed of light is impossible, he doesn't think that it's impossible for your past self to somehow communicate with your future self due to this "arrow of time".
Having said all of that, I feel that your analogy has the fundamental flaw of looking "Back" in time. That if you made a different choice that God would have known it if we should regress ultimately back to him is not the best way to look at the picture. Instead, let us look at time in a forward motion from the moment we are born. As I mentioned in my other post, from the moment we are born God must know what we are going to do in the future. In order to know something it must be something that isn't temporary, and doesn't faulter. It must always be true to be knowledge, otherwise, if it's sometimes true then that leads to the obvious which means it sometimes isn't. If we do not do in the future what God knows we are going to do, then God never knew it to begin with. Either we have no free will, or God doesn't know the future. One or the other must be the case if we progress time forward instead of backwards. I see no other conclusion.
Damoclese
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