• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Does God "CHOOSE" not to know the future?

Skwim

Veteran Member
I disagree, and I'll tell you why. Here's an analogy. It's not perfect; no analogy is, but I think that if you'll look at it with an open mind, you might see where I'm coming from and my perspective might make a little more sense to you.

I'm a dog lover (despite my kitty cat avatar). Right now, I don't have any dogs, but for most of the lasts 40 years, I have had at least one. One of my dogs was a big Golden Retriever mix by the name of Charlie. Charlie was a real sweetheart, but kind of lacking in the manners department sometimes. If I'd left a big, juicy rib eye steak on the counter ready to be cooked, and had left the room to answer the phone, I can guarantee you that when I got back, there would be no trace of that steak. I know that because I knew Charlie. I could pretty much guarantee that, if given half a chance, he'd wolf that steak down so fast it wouldn't know what had happened to it. Sure, there was a miniscule possibility that I'd be wrong, but that's only because I'm not omniscient. God, on the other hand, knows us perfectly and can therefore predict our behaviors perfectly. If He is right about what He knows about us, just like I was right about what I knew about Charlie, that doesn't mean I have no say in what I choose to do. I still have that right, even if God knows me well enough to be able to predict with 100% accuracy what I'm going to do.
God's omniscience doesn't deal with any ability to predict, but with knowing. Knowing for a fact. And this means he's absolutely right about what he knows. Your knowing lacked that certainty, even as you admit. And, as it turns out, with god knowing what you will do (being the omniscient god that he is) there was no actual choice to be made. You had to do A rather than B, because god knows that's what you'll do. Choice simply doesn't exist. It may appear so, but that's all it is, an appearance, not a fact. True choice simply doesn't exist.
 

djhwoodwerks

Well-Known Member
That this is all a play/drama written by God/Brahman; so he knows all past. present and future. You might then ask; What's the purpose? God/Consciousness is the experiencer in all of us. When this consciousness shines through a limited form it experiences limitation and then the glory of experiencing ever-advancing consciousness until Oneness with the All.

Again, ummmm, ok?
 

dust1n

Zindīq
What are your beliefs/understandings/opinions on this? I believe God knows everything and does not choose not to know.

How short sighted do you have to be to make an entire universe and then willfully not look into the future to say what will happen when one has that sort of responsibility?

That's an egregious act of irresponsibility that makes God look even more comically foolish, than if he was a big dumb-dumb with no way of knowing.
 

McBell

Unbound
How short sighted do you have to be to make an entire universe and then willfully not look into the future to say what will happen when one has that sort of responsibility?

That's an egregious act of irresponsibility that makes God look even more comically foolish, than if he was a big dumb-dumb with no way of knowing.
Wait...
Is it that god knows what will happen or that god scripts what will happen?
And what is this talk of responsibility?
What responsibility is it you think god should have?
 

McBell

Unbound
God's omniscience doesn't deal with any ability to predict, but with knowing. Knowing for a fact. And this means he's absolutely right about what he knows. Your knowing lacked that certainty, even as you admit. And, as it turns out, with god knowing what you will do (being the omniscient god that he is) there was no actual choice to be made. You had to do A rather than B, because god knows that's what you'll do. Choice simply doesn't exist. It may appear so, but that's all it is, an appearance, not a fact. True choice simply doesn't exist.
How does his knowing remove freewill?
Unless he tells you, which at best would influence freewill, not remove it.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Again, ummmm, ok?
LOL.....I understand this is not easy for people who are used to thinking in dualistic concepts (God and creation are two) to grasp. I am coming from a non-dual position (God and creation are not-two). It took me much time to really grasp what non-dualism is saying, but I now find it to be a superior way of understanding reality.
 

dust1n

Zindīq
Wait...
Is it that god knows what will happen or that god scripts what will happen?
And what is this talk of responsibility?
What responsibility is it you think god should have?

The issue of God knowing but not looking and other such nonsense is just an attempted work around of the All-Knowing/Free Will Paradox.

Responsibility as in God made things. "being the primary cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it."

As in God is responsible for my MS, because he made the world, and without even looking into the future and not seeing the potential effects, even though he could look into the future and see what would have happened. How is this anything other than negligence? If such a God attempted to put me on trial for my actions, I'd simply suggest that God had the opportunity to see the horrible effects on sentient beings his actions has resulted in, AND he had the opportunity to look into the future. Next time, consider the effects of your actions before you'd expect me to imagine such a being worshipable.

I don't think god has to have any responsibilities, as in a moral dictate to take care of things, etc., but a god without any such responsibilities can be ignored because such a god is bound by nothing.

Either way, I don't believe in God because the whole idea is silly, obviously.
 

dust1n

Zindīq
How does his knowing remove freewill?
Unless he tells you, which at best would influence freewill, not remove it.

Pretty easy. If God knows all things, and he knows what I will do tomorrow with certainty, than I have no freedom to exercise a different outcome than what God already knows will happen with certainty.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
Hello all! It's been awhile since I've posted on here but, as some of you know I have a JW friend that I visit with every week. The past couple of weeks we've been discussing how God can choose not to know the future. He (my friend) says that it is his belief that God didn't know Adam was going to sin, nor did He know that satan was going to tempt them. My friend explained that, "if God knows what I'm going to do tomorrow at 6:00, then I don't have free will because God knows I'm going to do it." I tried to explain that God knows the choice he (my friend) is going to make, but he didn't understand that. What are your beliefs/understandings/opinions on this? I believe God knows everything and does not choose not to know.

My question is, how can you choose not to know the future? That's why we say "in the future" because we are saying "okay, we don't know yet but we will know later." Being in the present is a default of not being in the future until the present has passed.

With God, if he knows everything, he would know the future by default. If he had the ability to choose to not know the future, he would be contradicting his nature. Actually, for anyone, that's just illogical. You know everything but you can choose to not know everything. I think it's more, you can choose to ignore the future? Disregard it? but if you know everything, you don't have the ability to change what you already know.

I mean, can a believer explain how "not know" is even in God's vocabulary index?
 

aoji

Member
Is the future knowable at all? If so, then you still have the determinism/free will problem.

Dreams can foretell the future. Knowing the future can you do anything to change it? Not always. It sucks knowing that there's nothing you can do about a situation. Why? Because other people are usually involved. Then there's intuition - do you listen to it? "Not always," may be the answer. And if you do, then you're tempted to think that since nothing happened then nothing could have happened had you kept going in the previous direction. Lastly your soul can tell you the future. Do you listen to it? It's you speaking to yourself, so why would you discount yourself?

Free will is an illusion. It's like saying that you had a choice being born, that you had a choice in the selection of your DNA. In the greater scheme of things it isn't possible. It's like thinking that having free will means that you can do whatever you like - you can't - and the judge that throws you in jail will wake you up. Maybe you have some free will - in the little choices in life - but the bgger choices, especially if they entail contacting others - you can have no idea of what can and will happen.

The problem is that we want to know ALL of our future. Can't be done because then we would probably never take another step. But Nihilism isn't the answer either.
 

Katzpur

Not your average Mormon
God's omniscience doesn't deal with any ability to predict, but with knowing. Knowing for a fact. And this means he's absolutely right about what he knows. Your knowing lacked that certainty, even as you admit. And, as it turns out, with god knowing what you will do (being the omniscient god that he is) there was no actual choice to be made. You had to do A rather than B, because god knows that's what you'll do. Choice simply doesn't exist. It may appear so, but that's all it is, an appearance, not a fact. True choice simply doesn't exist.
Okay, well I disagree, but thanks for your input.
 

Brickjectivity

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
To suggest that God predicts the future is like saying that God is not involved in making it from moment to moment. Its like claiming deism. If God has to predict the future then God is deist. The Bible does not seem to come down on either side of that issue and leaves it up to you. Is God deist or not? It doesn't say. Could be a little of both. Its more like an observation. Its kind of like the question 'Why was there a snake in the garden'? The snake is just there corresponding with the reality that within each person there is evil present. The only boast made by the 'LORD' about the future is that the 'LORD' can announce things and then make them happen way, way off into the future and that nobody else can. On the other hand nothing in the Bible says that the far off future cannot be predicted, so maybe it can but the 'LORD' doesn't need to predict it. The opening of the prophet Jeremiah has a piece where the 'LORD' tells the prophet that he was known before he was born. It doesn't say whether this has to do with foresight or with planning, but it seems to have to do with planning. The Bible also mentions divination in passing but without much discussion and doesn't verify that it really works or not, and the predictions of prophets are brought to pass by the 'LORD' rather than just passively observed. Actually I think divination is not taken very seriously in the Bible, but you have to read between the lines about that.

Following the original Bible canon and written centuries later in the gospels there is a quote of Jesus where he says that he doesn't know the day of his return and only his heavenly Father knows the day or the hour. There is mention in Ephesians of foreknowledge. These mentions can be thought of in a deist sense 'Hands off and just observing' or they can be thought of in an active sense 'Hands on, bringing plans into reality'; but the operating principle of Christianity is that God is involved not uninvolved. Therefore it depends again upon whether you are a deist or not.
 

djhwoodwerks

Well-Known Member
Pretty easy. If God knows all things, and he knows what I will do tomorrow with certainty, than I have no freedom to exercise a different outcome than what God already knows will happen with certainty.

Not true. God knows the final choice "YOU" will make, He doesn't make you make the choice.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
You had to do A rather than B, because god knows that's what you'll do. Choice simply doesn't exist. It may appear so, but that's all it is, an appearance, not a fact. True choice simply doesn't exist.
How about the argument that God knows you would freely choose A. That doesn't mean A wasn't chosen freely.
 

djhwoodwerks

Well-Known Member
It's like saying that you had a choice being born, that you had a choice in the selection of your DNA.

This is nonsense! Didn't your parents have a choice in having you? How can a person have a choice when they aren't even born? But when you were 5, didn't you have a choice whether or not you did what your parents told you to do? When they asked you to pick up your toys, how many times did you choose to say no?
 

djhwoodwerks

Well-Known Member
You had to do A rather than B, because god knows that's what you'll do. Choice simply doesn't exist.

You didn't have to do A, but you did and God knew it. You could have changed your mind 25 times between doing A and B, but God knew you were going to ultimately choose A.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
What are your beliefs/understandings/opinions on this? I believe God knows everything and does not choose not to know.
Quoted from my previous posts:
By this logic, so is tense. The statement "It will rain tomorrow" is either true or not true, as either it will indeed rain or it won't. Ergo, the truth-value of the statement determines whether or not it will rain. For, if this is not true, it must be that the statement "it will rain tomorrow" isn't true and isn't false today, but will be true or false forever after a particular moment in time (thereby making time a mechanism for granting truth to statements).
Likewise, knowledge of the future/omniscience is incompatible with free will (or at least indeterminism) iff [if and only if] knowledge has causal power. Imagine I know the truth-value to a statement like the above about the future. Then I am merely a substitute mechanism for time. The truth of the statement (that which comes to pass or be) is not caused by my knowledge any more than time causes "it will rain tomorrow" to be true or false; I am simply able to evaluate the truth of such statements before "time" can render them truth-bearing.
Determinism is, I think, best considered as the ability to predict the state of anything arbitrarily far into the future given sufficient knowledge of current or past states. Knowledge of future states without knowledge of the causal processes that ensure them doesn't entail determinism because there is nothing such knowledge entails that actually determines these states (just the knowledge of these states themselves).

Free will concerns causality. If nothing about your knowledge is capable of causally effecting what I do, than it cannot impinge upon my free will. Every action for which I am capable of exercising my "free will" (I am assuming here that "free will" isn't defined as "free of any influences all of the time" but rather closer to self-determining future states or to make choices such that at least part of your choice is caused by you) results in a future state which I have determined at least in part by exercising free will or (equivalently) by my self-caused choices.
Let us assume that there exists a strict (global) division between past and future. It therefore necessarily follows that knowledge of the future means that whatever choices I make in the future are known, and thus either that this knowledge is causally efficacious, or that I am still free to make the choices I do. Even if the results of future choices are known, I am able to make them so long as knowledge of them doesn't have any causal influence. Similarly, fixing the truth-value of statements about future choices doesn't at all limit my ability to make them.
If we assume, as is more consist with empirical findings and modern physics, that no strict (global) division between the past and present exists, then things become even easier. In both special and general relativity, there is only a strict division between past and present when causality becomes important (and actually, in GTR, not even necessarily then), and therefore locally. Thus knowledge of the future is nothing other than knowledge of the past, because everything that happens is both in the past and future.

So substitute "in 24 hours". All words are nebulous. I can at least define precisely increments of time.


Not unless you feel it is impossible to make statements about the future. The classical answer to the question is that Aristotle's response didn't really hold but rather that statements about the future aren't truth-bearing. In other words, to define a would-be proposition like "there will be a sea-battle at 6:00 AM on 12/21/2030" as lacking truth-value.


That's one thing I've said.

Free will concerns causality. If nothing about your knowledge is capable of causally effecting what I do, than it cannot impinge upon my free will. Every action for which I am capable of exercising my "free will" (I am assuming here that "free will" isn't defined as "free of any influences all of the time" but rather closer to self-determining future states or to make choices such that at least part of your choice is caused by you) results in a future state which I have determined at least in part by exercising free will or (equivalently) by my self-caused choices.

Let us assume that there exists a strict (global) division between past and future. It therefore necessarily follows that knowledge of the future means that whatever choices I make in the future are known, and thus either that this knowledge is causally efficacious, or that I am still free to make the choices I do. Even if the results of future choices are known, I am able to make them so long as knowledge of them doesn't have any causal influence. Similarly, fixing the truth-value of statements about future choices doesn't at all limit my ability to make them.

If we assume, as is more consist with empirical findings and modern physics, that no strict (global) division between the past and present exists, then things become even easier. In both special and general relativity, there is only a strict division between past and present when causality becomes important (and actually, in GTR, not even necessarily then), and therefore locally. Thus knowledge of the future is nothing other than knowledge of the past, because everything that happens is both in the past and future.


By this logic, everything in the past is necessarily determined by the future, since we have knowledge of it. It is to mistake knowledge with what is required to limit free will: causal mechanisms. You are asserting that somehow the knowledge of my choices means it impossible for me to exercise my will when making them. THAT I will make the choices I will because I exercise my free will in doing so is compatible with your advanced knowledge of these choices (this is one form of compatabilism, so long as "determinism" is understood as including self-determined future states or self-caused future states). Your knowledge, lacking any causal efficacy, cannot and does not have any impact over my free will.



If I didn't have the choice, then something cause me to think I did. More specifically, any and all actions I made are determined by a series of causal mechanisms which I have no causal efficacy in making (if I could determine which choices I made, then I would at least in part cause my own choices, whereas if I had to make the "choices" I did, then I didn't actually choose anything because something not me caused everything which led up to and includes my "choice" as well as the resulting future states that I attribute as being in part caused by my choice). However, your writing down my choices is causally disconnected from them. Thus I am free to make choices other than those I did, all you know is the truth-value of various statements about the future, your knowledge can't influence my ability to make choices that I do not at least in part determine by being able to actually make choices, and to the extent I am fated to make these choices it is only because you know future states as if they had already happened. That is, your knowledge determines the future no more than knowledge of the past.

You aren't a truth-maker with respect to statements about the future, they just become truth-bearing and you know their value, but your knowledge makes the future no more determined or fated than if these values were unknown but still existed.


And unless are choices aren't at all self-caused or self-determined such that we can't say we exercised free will, then we are able to actually choose (exercise free will). Your asserting that mere knowledge causally effects decisions I have not made (providing you are not arguing for Laplacean determinism but rather that knowledge of my choices entails I cannot exercise my free will making them). However, you also assert that "knowing something is going to happen doesn't cause that thing to happen". Now, unless there is something about knowledge of the future that does cause the future, then knowledge of the future can't restrict my ability to exercise free will (to determine by choice future states, or to cause future states by choice).

The apparent logical incompatibility can be resolved in several ways. For example, we can suppose the error is in thinking that a being with perfect knowledge should be considered as "within" time but rather more akin to knowledge from the perspective of an entity which exists outside of time and sees everything unfolding within time statically (again, like the "box universe" model of spacetime or any ontic spacetime). Alternatively, your knowledge selects from a set of binary (true/false) values from what is really a many-valued set of truth-values (and therefore rules like the LNC and non tertium datur don't hold). Yet again, we must conclude that knowledge of the future which doesn't require Laplacean determinism and the perfect knowledge of Laplace's Intellect MUST therefore exercise causal power on future events. Or we could side with (some of) the compatibilists and conclude that there isn't any logical inconsistency or incompatibility between you knowing exactly what I will do, feel, and think in the future and my free will (that because your knowledge is vacuous and ineffective and cannot influence my free will it can't possibly constrain it, let alone negate it). These don't by any means exhaust the set of solutions (or even arguments as to why no solution is needed), but they are some examples.
 

McBell

Unbound
Pretty easy. If God knows all things, and he knows what I will do tomorrow with certainty, than I have no freedom to exercise a different outcome than what God already knows will happen with certainty.
I see.
It is along the lines of "I cannot fly regardless of if I choose to therefore no free will"
 

McBell

Unbound
The issue of God knowing but not looking and other such nonsense is just an attempted work around of the All-Knowing/Free Will Paradox.

Responsibility as in God made things. "being the primary cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it."

As in God is responsible for my MS, because he made the world, and without even looking into the future and not seeing the potential effects, even though he could look into the future and see what would have happened. How is this anything other than negligence? If such a God attempted to put me on trial for my actions, I'd simply suggest that God had the opportunity to see the horrible effects on sentient beings his actions has resulted in, AND he had the opportunity to look into the future. Next time, consider the effects of your actions before you'd expect me to imagine such a being worshipable.

I don't think god has to have any responsibilities, as in a moral dictate to take care of things, etc., but a god without any such responsibilities can be ignored because such a god is bound by nothing.

Either way, I don't believe in God because the whole idea is silly, obviously.
Please explain in what way you are being coerced by god simply knowing what you will do.
 

dust1n

Zindīq
Not true. God knows the final choice "YOU" will make, He doesn't make you make the choice.

God knows what I will eat for dinner tonight. He knows what I will choose for dinner tonight. I have not made a choice yet, myself.

So given that I have some complete control over my entire existence, all that free will entails, am I going to eat the one thing God knows I'm going to eat tonight, or am I going to eat any other possible thing tonight?
 
Top