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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Divine omniscience (Again)
Message-ID: <4060@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Mar-85 23:01:26 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.4060
Posted: Thu Mar 14 23:01:26 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Mar-85 00:25:01 EST
References: <941@sjuvax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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In article <941@sjuvax.UUCP> iannucci@sjuvax.UUCP (iannucci) writes:

>                   This raises a very interesting question (apologies if this
>has been beaten to death already).

It has.

>  One of the unquestionable characteristics
>of God, at least for most people, is that he is omniscient.  Presumably, this
>omniscience includes knowledge of the future. I think there are few people
>who hold traditional views of religion (even if they are unbelievers) who
>would >contest this.

>                           So if God always knows with certainty beforehand 
>that we will do X at time t, then we have no freedom NOT to do X at time t.
>Knowledge by definition is "justified true belief", which means that that 
>which is known is TRUE.  For this reason, human beings cannot restrain
>other humans' freedom by predicting their actions -- humans may have BELIEF
>of future actions, but they have no KNOWLEDGE.  But God does have knowledge.
>So how do we evade the conclusion that God's foreknowledge of all human
>actions,thoughts, etc. prevents them from being freely done, in other words,
>human beings have no real free will?
>
>        It seems we have no choice but to say that either human beings really
>*have* no free will, or that God does not exist.

Sigh.

I suppose that I should run through this again.  The error in the above
argument is that it implicitly assumes that a god must exist sequentially in
time in the same way humans do.  There is no reason to conclude this,
however; it is not a part of any traditional formulation of divinity, and it
is not required by any other property.  If God is truly omnipotent, then he
need not be bound by time.  

Now if God does not exist in time, then all the problems stated above simply
dissolve.  The knowing that an event will happen and the event itself
"happen at the same time", from the divine perspective.

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe