Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 06/29/02 9:02pm
In reply to:
Damoclese
's message, "Arrow of time" on 06/26/02 4:15pm
>>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.
The reasoning does not at all assume or view it as impossible. Nor do I.
>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.
So what? The same would hold if we look back into the past. And even if we cut that out, I still (in the time-travel story) knew that people were going to elect George W. Bush even though I was at a point in time (“looking forward,” if you will) before Bush was elected. I knew before it happened. I knew who would be elected at that time. How I knew it doesn’t change the fact that I would not have removed their free will. Looking back at the original argument:
- As a person with free will, let’s say I’m given
two options:
- A (I will do a specific task, action, etc.)
- Not A (I will not do that specific task,
action, etc.)
- God is omniscient and knows everything, including
the future. Thus, he cannot be wrong.
- God knows I will choose A.
- I will choose A and cannot choose Not
A (from 2 and 3) no matter what.
- But if that’s true, I cannot freely choose between
two options (from 4) if God is omniscient, contrary to
that of a free willed being (from 1).
Conclusion: Free will and omniscience cannot coexist.
Bottom line, I provided a counterexample to disprove premise 4. I showed that just because something is known in advance does not mean that it is predestined, and gave an example to prove my point. You did not really attack my reasoning with a specific evidential argument, (i.e. did not attack that being a example as having foreknowledge without predestination). Thus my objection stands. If the above does not represent your argument against omniscience and free will, what is yours?
In contemporary physics, it is true that matter cannot be accelerated to and beyond light speed in order to travel back in time. But one cannot rationally use this as a suitable argument against God not being able to travel back in time. For one thing, this principle of physics still leaves open the possibility to travel back in time by some other means. Perhaps sufficiently warping space-time could be used for time travel. Second, this principle of physics only applies to matter. God is not composed of matter, so this principle does not apply. Third, this is a natural law of physics on the normal operation of our natural universe. God is a supernatural being and would not necessarily be bound by the “laws” that we observe in the natural universe that He created.
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