Heh, I love that Inwagen quote, Dave . Iāve read a bit of his stuff, heās a really interesting guy.
You mentioned Whitehead earlier. Heās another really interesting guy. Iāve just been reading, in Rupert Sheldrakeās brilliant book The Science Delusion, about how he was one of the first people to understand that quantum physics shows that matter contains time within it - apparently something the philosopher Henri Bergson had predicted.
As Sheldrake explains it, āall physical objects are processes that have time within them, an inner duration. Quantum physics shows that there is a minimum time period for events because everything is vibratory, and no vibration can be instantaneous. The fundamental units of nature, including photons and electrons, are temporal as well as spatial.ā
Thatās my little old mind well and truly blown .
As I see it in my simple understanding, neither time nor space had to be created.
When God created the first two objects, there was a distance (or āspaceā) between them. If there were three objects (not in a line) then 3D space existed. Space was a natural consequence of the creation of objects. No objectsāno space, since āspaceā would then be meaningless, only a mental construct. Similarly with time. When the first to events occurred, time āexistedā, that is, there was a temporal ādistanceā between the two events.
There is an idea held by scientists, and I agree, that space has a quality. It is not simply āspaceā. It is in its own right a substance just as matter is. My own view is that ātimeā pre-existed āspaceā, and āspaceā pre-existed āmatterā. I think that our material universe was produced by āspaceā. āSpaceā is an incubator, a gestator, an impregnator, a generator - and it is growing.
āLightā did not need to travel 13 billion light years from one end of the universe to the other through a big bang - it was birthed where it is.
The interesting thing about all this is that, from a physics perspective; time is relative to the observer and the relative distance and speed of āobjectsā.
My physics prof. once told us that this was why faster than light travel was pure science fiction: because from the perspective of that which is traveling at the speed of light, it is everywhere in the universe at once. From an outside observers perspective though, it takes time for something traveling at the speed of light to travel from point A to point B. How much observed time passes depends on the particular vantage point of the observer.
It is interesting that in the 19th century, scientists couldnāt accept the idea of āempty spaceā but said that a substance called āaetherā (or āetherā) permeated all space. For (they said) light waves, like all other waves, require a medium through which to travel. But the Michelson-Morley experiment performed in 1887, proved that aether does not exist:
Or perhaps they simply proved that the earth was stationaryā¦
Now, of course, scientists have gone back to the idea that space does contain ādark matterā and ādark energyā.
I loved the Michelson-Morley experiment. Those guys were really clever with their inventions for capturing light with mirrors. Here is a great 3-part video on the experiment:
I look at it this way: God is of course Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnibenevolent.
Also to God āA thousand years is as a day, and a day is like a thousand years.ā To me this means that God has the same total control, awareness, patience, and ability in a single moment as He does in a thousand years. Having only an instant to act is no different to Him as having a thousand years.
Now, the time dilemma could be seen one of three ways:
1: The future already exists, and God has access to past, present, and future in the same manner that we have access to the present. This means that everything is determined and has already been finished. I donāt buy this.
2: The future doesnāt yet exist, but God knows the only way in which it can unfold, seeing all of the future from Now. God canāt move through time, but everything is still determined. I donāt buy this either.
3: God knows every possibility and choice available in the universe and knows where they all lead. This is my view.
God sees all possible futures, and the likelihood they will come about without āinterventionā. Instead of time as a single line, time moves forward from the present in an infinitely complex web of possibilities that only He can understand. God intends to bring one and only one āFinalā future state about (in whatever way He intends this). God can and has intervened with miracles and the hardening or softening of hearts, and changing of minds, as spoken of in the bible, though I believe these are rarer than normal free will. God intervenes against free will only when necessary. God takes in as much freedom as possible in his plan.
So the future is āundeterminedā and both humans and God are free to bring us to the future we want (or in our case the one that comes on us unexpectedly due to our blind choices).
BUT God is like an NBA star (only infinitely skilled and incapable of mistake) while we are short high school freshmen going against him one on one. We are free and the game is undetermined. But thereās no way we will score. He will dunk on us every time. And thus the universe will unfold exactly as God wants and according to His plan, because He interferes or refrains as He will: the universe will end up exactly where and how He wants it to. And all the while we are each living (mostly) free lives where we make real choices with real consequences.
Thanks! Great post. I think Iām with you on this. Apparently this makes me an āopen theist,ā a term Iād only read in passing, curious, but not enough so to look it up. I guess there must be different degrees of openness. I do believe Father knows the future ā just not because itās already happened. Rather, because, as you point out, Heās THAT good at what Heās doing.
So, if He knows the future, I have no problems with the concept. IF He KNOWS the future. Has foreknowledge. Though I still donāt like the idea, if it is stated in those terms, it is less objectionable. Donāt you wish I was less objectionable??
I agree that God has full foreknowledge. I just believe that foreknowledge is of all potential futures. And if strong opinion is objectionable, then I guess I am in the same boat as you!
I am on your side here Paidion. The problem with thinking God is āoutsideā of time in the way expressed by Lewis in Mere Christianity is that it destroys free will. How can God know a free act before it happens - before the person who is free actually does it? Even if we think of God āviewing all eternity at onceā, there still must be, if not a temporal sequence of events, a logical one. Time and free acts would be more vertical than horizontal, but they will still, in their own horizontal sequence, be dependent on themselves. And if the whole of time was from Godās point of view present, how could he interact with it? Any interaction would necessarily interrupt the āwholeā that is there already present to him. It would be sort of like pulling out a jinga piece. It would destroy everything āaboveā or āafterā it which depended on that piece (i.e. free choice).
In fact, I think it is a timeless view of God that makes prophecy impossible. Or else it destroys free will. True, God may indeed see all events presently if he has created the world and time in such and such a way. But the further act of actually going into time and giving a prophecy would be to alter the first āspace time continuumā in a way that wasnāt initially there. In other words, if Godās act of creation is a single thing from the standpoint of eternity, then that act itself must already contain the prophecy in it, but it is not logically possible, if an agent is free, to know with certainty what it will do before it does it, and the point in time (vertically speaking) in which God interacts with the creation if he is timeless, may indeed not have involve any temporal problems of knowing the acts of free agents, but there are still logical insolubilities.
Thatās why Lewis and others I think are wrong to say God can prophecy about the future because he simply āseesā the present in an eternal now. Even if that is true, he is still bound to interact with his creation in a logical sequence, and it is this very sequence which must be reflected the same in āplayed outā time.
In fact, the whole problem can be viewed this way. If beings are free there is some power they have that God is not totally able to control. He āgivesā them freedom. But until they respond, he cannot interact with them based on their decision. In other words, God has made it so that he has not determined his response to creatures because his response is partly dependent on their own. Hence there is a ārelationshipā. But, if this is the case, Godās acts towards his creation cannot be settled; thus there is a āriskā involved. But āriskā is a concept incoherent on the model of Godās divine timelessness and immutability.
Give Lewis some credit though, since, although he did not see through to the end of his thinking (he did this regarding the concept of eternal Hell, too), he did see the more important truth of the matter of God making us with free wills so he could have a relationship with us.
āOf course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk.ā
From Mere Christianity
I appreciate your well-expressed thoughts here and will be only a little nit-picky, which seems to be my theme for the day.
I donāt want to recap other threads here, but I have questioned elsewhere why free-will is necessarily (logically) not free in the case that God knows the future.
I coined the phrase āFree Will Enough Defenseā (FWED, which is not easy to pronounce ) to express that our freedom is not absolute, but still real, real enough in fact to make our choices meaningful EVEN THOUGH God knows what they will be.
Thatās it, I wonāt labor it any more - I do not think our troubles thinking about free will should control what we think God can do. Something like thatā¦
One more quote from Lewis which shows how I think he really was more open theist than classical timeless God at heart.
His whole solution to the problem of evil revolves around the concept of free will. But the words in the quote below ācouldā and āmayā are actually meaningless on a divine timeless model.
āGod willed the free will of angels and men in spite of his knowledge that it **could **lead in some cases to sin and then suffering: he thought freedom worth creating even at that price. It is like when a mother allows a small child to walk on its own without holding its hand. She knows it **may **fall but learning to walk on oneās own is worth a few falls. When it does fall this is in one sense contrary to the motherās will, but the general situation in which falls are possible IS the motherās will.ā
God can know that a sentence is true only if it IS in fact true, and similarly He can know that a sentence is false only if it IS in fact false.
But sentences about the future are neither true nor false.
For if the sentence āJoe Bloe will raise his hand at 2 P.M. tomorrowā is now true, then Joe CANNOT keep his hand down at 2 P.M. tomorrow. Similarly, if the sentence is now false, then Joe CANNOT raise his hand at 2 P.M. tomorrow. This is the case even if nothing is interfering with Joeās decision at 2 P.M. tomorrow. Thus, if Joe Bloe has the free will to either raise his hand at 2 P.M. or to refrain from raising it at 2 P.M., then the sentence is NEITHER TRUE NOR FALSE at the present time. The sentence BECOMES true of false at 2 P.M. tomorrow when Joe makes his decision.
Since the sentence is neither true nor false NOW, then, logically, itās truth value cannot be known NOW. Sentences can be known to be true or false only if they are, in fact, either true or false. So how can anyone KNOW a sentence to be true if it is neither true nor false. Or how can anyone KNOW a sentence to be false, if it is neither true not false. It is logically impossible.
"But sentences about the future are neither true nor false. "
You could be right, Paidion. Youāve given it a lot of thought, obviously, and the subject is not one that I can āproveā by linguistic analysis or truth tables.
I donāt have a vested interest in BEING right on this subject, other than to say that the general tenor of scripture as I read it indicates omniscience and omnipotence in God, in providential ruling of history, AND free will enough for the actors in the play in spite of our ideas on what āfree willā really is.
Iām satisfied to let it rest at that point though of course if you or others want to continue it I will be very interested in the conversation.
Thanks for your clear explanation of your thoughts.
To me it seems that if it is certain that at Future Time X I will make Choice Y, then I cannot make Choice Z at that time. Therefore my choice at Future Time X was not in fact free. I may have the illusion of freedom, but I am not actually free. However if we are instead saying that I am only very likely to make Choice Y and not Z at Time X, then that could be considered free. In the former I am a slave to circumstances, while in the latter I am heavily influenced by them but still free to go against them.
However that does not stop God from knowing all potential events stemming from the results of both Choice Y or Choice Z, and that would also not stop God from preventing either of those choices if He chooses to. Godās Freedom can circumvent ours whenever He wills. I guess God is Omnifree!?
I agree with you 100%, Dave, It is all just humans trying to untie the paradox of free will in a world ruled by an Omniscient Theistic God. I am sure that whatever the real Truth is, we could not hope to comprehend it.
. Iāve read a bit of his stuff, heās a really interesting guy.
And if strong opinion is objectionable, then I guess I am in the same boat as you!