God, Time and Freedom
1. God is perfect, and hence
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omniscient: knows all true propositions
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omnipotent: can do all that is consistent
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omnibenevolent: chooses do do what is good (best?).
2. If God creates the world, and God is omniscient, omnipotent,
and omnibenevolent, whence evil? Some have appealed to the misuse
of free will by creatures as a source for moral, if not for physical, evil.
But divine omniscience seems incompatible with at least one way of understanding
free will. For, free will can be understood in two ways:
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as absence of external impediment
NOTE: This is compatible with divine omniscience as long as God foreknows
I do X of my own will.
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as agent-causation :
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the agent is the sole cause of action
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the agent has freedom of indifference, i.e. could have done otherwise even
with all the same conditions in place
NOTE: this seems incompatible with divine omniscience
3. Although divine omniscience seems compatible with the idea
that the agent is the sole cause of action (knowing is not the same as
causing), there is a powerful argument (neutral between tensed and tenseless
views) for the incompatibility of divine omniscience and the ability
to do otherwise:
Let t1, t2, and t3 be successive times.
Then:
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God foreknows at t1 that I do X at t3.
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hence, at t2 I can choose not-X only if at t2
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i. I make God wrong (i.e. God doesn't know)
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ii. I can change the fact that at t1 God knows I do X at t3,
i.e., I can change the past.
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However, I cannot bring about either 2i or 2ii.
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Hence, at t2 I cannot choose otherwise than God at t1
knows I choose.
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Hence, I have no free will.
A. Objections to (1) "God foreknows at t1 that I do X at t3":
First objection:
i. eternal timeless God (Boethius, Aquinas) who knows
a. in one timeless act
b. contemporaneously with the event known because eternity is present
at every time
ii. Since either (a) or (b) is sufficient to show that God doesn't foreknow
at any time, (1) false.
Problems:
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Does a timeless God make sense?
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An eternal timeless God who knows everything in one timeless act would
not know what time it is. Hence, God would not be omniscient.
NOTE: this presupposes tensed facts exist.
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God doesn't know I do X contemporaneoulsy with my doing X because God is
not in time.
Second objection:
i. Future open and bivalence false.
NOTE: this presupposes the tensed view fo time.
ii. Hence propositions about future have truth value "undeterminate",
and God doesn't know them.
iii.So, God doesn't foreknow because there is nothing to know.
iv. Hence, (1) false.
Problems: Divine plans? Providence? Preordination?
B. Objections to (2ii) "I cannot change the past":
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Ockham distinguishes between:
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simple (hard) facts about the past (e.g. in 1951 I am born)
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non-simple (soft) facts about the past (e.g. in 1951 I start a life lasting
100 years)
NOTE: these imply a fact about the future relative to now.
I have no control on (a) but have some on (b). If I decide to jump
from a high tower, God would know that in 1951 I start a life ending in
1995; that is although I don't decide to jump, I still could
decide to jump.
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Divine foreknowledge involves knowing that I'll die in 205. But there
is no event in 1951 that makes “I’ll die in 2051” true; the event that
makes that sentence true occurrs in 2051 and may be under
my control. The point is that altough I cannot alter the past in
the sense of bringing about past events, I can affect it in
the sense of bringing about past facts, e.g. the fact that “I’ll die in
2051” is true.
NOTE:
Hence, properly speaking, I cannot change the past; rather, I can control
past facts involving events which are still future and under my control