What if God foreknew human reactions?

Some certainly, but not all... I don't see how this follows... why should the creator necessarily create every event within it? Why could these not be filled in with undetermined dynamics - i.e free will. The boundary conditions are set, but the internal solution is stochastic in nature.

It was a choice that was taken away. Anybody with such foreknowledge has the power to remove freewill. Freewill is a fragile commodity... probably why God invented the chronology protection conjecture Absolutely, and if God was feeling malevolent, he would tell you the night before what you were going to have for breakfast the next morning... and then watch you desperately (and hopelessly) try to prove him wrong.

I'm not sure I'm completely following you...I am certainly rejecting fatalism, and I would have to qualify determinism. I do not believe that creation of the universe entailed a mapping out of each event. I think that there are many events that are not inevitable, but determined by choice. That God has seen these choices does not remove the choice itself. What if God had exacted creation, but then turned his back so that he couldn't see how it had turned out... how would that change anything?

I admit that this can be difficult to visualise but you have to totally divorce God's time from our own. Saying God is "outside" our time does not do justice to the situation. We are 4-d paths through this universe, and we choose how these paths meander, by making choices at each point. God just sees the whole path, the string of choices.

True, but my argument is that this does not imply fatalism. We are still in the moment of creation. In fact, we are part of the very creative process, defining our own paths, beginning to end. Our paths are our choice, not God's. Well, we are keeping to safe traditional views of time evolution so I will agree.

I don't believe it is decided and what do you mean by "very start"? Very start of what? Why do you say this? I don't adhere to this, although it is often a part of Christian theology. But I don't believe that anything was decided for us... In no way am I advocating this. But this is not what I mean by you having a narrow view of time.Chuck God out, give me a time-machine, and I will know all of your future (and your past). I will know all of your choices before you make them. Did I suddenly become god-like and decide all of your choices for you?This message has been edited by cavediver, 09-16-2005 05:51 AM

In the same way that it is fixed from the very end of time? And at every other point in space-time? Which start of time BTW becasue I have universes with an infinite number of separate "beginnings of time"? The "start of time" is just a point in space-time, with which humans tend to have some sort of hang-up. It might just be your use of language but you seem to be confusing our time and God's time again. God is omniscient wrt to his creation and its time. I'm not claiming (but not dismissing either) omniscience (whatever that means in this context) outside of creation. I do not necessarily believe that God did know what would happen inside the creation before he created it. Jar said it best when he suggested that God's words of creation were "surprise me". "ANY logically possible universe" is a very interesting concept. We don't even have an idea of one logically possible universe yet, other than the evidence that we seem to be living in one! Everything we see in funde physics is pointing us towards the same ideas... we get less and less freedom the further we push as we discover that so many different ideas are all just viewpoints on the same unknown mega-theory. It is a common idea that there is only one logical universe... ours.Remember that I started the God and Mathematics thread with the question "is God bound by mathematics". I do not hold to normal naive notions of omnipotence. No, I don't see why you should hold to this. I can think of solving an elliptic stochastic equation across some space. I set the boundary conditions, I see the whole solution, yet I did not create the interior solution. Apologies. I do not hold to the same idea of creation as you, so I was missing your point.

What if there is more than one start of time? What if there is no start, as in an eternal universe? I think the confusion is precisely in the above quote: what do you mean by God existing "prior" to our universe? You seem to be still incorporating God's time and our time as the same thing. Perhaps I should say: you are failing to distinguish our time from God's time.When did God create the universe? That's a HUGE assumption. Try coming up with an a). Try coming up with an a) that does not violate b). We haven't managed it yet. Haven't come close. Now, I'm sure that God could come up with all sorts of "magic" universes, by which I mean universes that require constant intervention to work, that are not internally consistent. But to come up with the "scientific" self-consistent, self-sustaining reality we appear to inhabit is another matter. I don't believe that omnipotence is a valid concept when considering God outside of the physical universe. I am not certain as to how much choice God had in considering the design of our universe. Not true. You again seem to be failing to distinguish God's time from our time. Omniscience as required for this argument of fatalism/determinism is wrt our time - or more correctly, wrt to each of our own individual times. Switching to God's time, it is not necessary for him to have advance knowledge of what the solution would be.

But why are we insisting on omnipotence? I know it's tradition but I don't think it is essential, especially as we're hard pressed to define what it means. "Apparent omnipotence" with respect to what goes on inside the universe does not imply omnipotence with regard to matters outside the universe. And I personally do not believe that even apparent omnipotence holds water in the Christian faith.

Let me explain your confusion:According to the only theory of time we have at our disposal, GR, time is merely one dimension of four. Admittedly, it appears in the metric with opposite signature to the other three dimensions, but it is still an internal part of our reality. If we take the FRW big bang model, time has an origin at the past singularity. There is no "before". There is no "prior" to this point. Such concepts are utterly meaningless. It is placing god further south than the south pole. What do you mean? There is no place along this concept of time for any god to act to "create" the universe.Whatever kind of model comsology you generate from GR, it will essentially be of two types. One, where the time begins a finite time in the past, and one where the time is infinite in extent. Either way, there is no place for any "before" or "prior".Now, without even approaching religion or even metaphysics, I can produce a super-cosmology with two time dimensions. They are completely independent (which of course they must be two be two separate dimensions) and it is impossible to talk of one being prior to the other (in the same way that x does not come "before" or "after" y in cartesian coordinates). I have two beings, G and H. G evolves along the first time dimension Tg and H evolves along Th. H is fixed in Tg but G is dynamic in Th. Within this simple set-up, G can quite easily create a sub-reality for H, such that there is a specific Tg that marks the act of creation that cannot in any sense be said to occur prior to any element of Th. Here I have all of the necessary apparatus to reproduce the nature of God and time that I have been espousing. Not that my own concept of God involves wrapping him up in some model of cosmology, but if I can create a psuedo-model of my ideas of his interrelation with our time on a physical or mathematical basis, then the possibility is secure without having to resort to illogical religious rambling.If you are disputing GR, fine, but kindly state to which theory of the universe you are referring when you describe your ideas about the nature of time. By different universes I thought we were referring to universes with different constituents/laws, not just variations in the positions of a few of the atoms. If the former, then we cannot easily imagine. Within reason, I don't have a major problem with the latter.

I am well aware of that. That is why I was claiming confusion. It is rather important for such a discussion to have a model of time in mind, rather than just the naive view built upon common experience, given that over the course of the 20th C that view has been shattered. Maybe, but not in any sense of which you were apparently aware. It certainly negates some of your statements. For example is invalidated. There is no reason Th cannot be infinte in extent. But without something akin to my model, you have NO valid sense of prior whatsoever. As I have pointed out several times, this whole debate rests on a god's omniscience wrt our time (Th) not his time (Tg). In my model, this omniscience is purely a result of the differing time-lines, no over-arching religious concept. Again, I do not understand why you insist that all configurations must have been presupposed. Your previous reason rested on the requirement of a god's omniscience of the created solution. I have addressed that problem, so why is this still an issue? Back to my example of the solution to a stochastic equation, I can set up that equation across a hypersurface to Tg containing Th. As I pointed out above, this god is omniscient wrt Th becasue it is not his timeline, but he still evolves along Tg and has no magical foreknowledge of what he is going to create. I have stated something similar to this a couple of times now, in that I do not hold to traditional views of omnipotence and omniscience. And my views here are not based upon Christianity, just on consideration of any "omniscient" creator, whether that be YHWH or some sad geeky mega-being playing on his computer.But you're correct, I will not be presenting these ideas at the next home group meeting... Simply because it is the laws that are the creation in my mind (although in my "model", the laws are at least in part pre-existing). The history is not part of creation in my view, as you will have gathered.

No I haven't. I stated that Th can be finite or infinite. It makes no difference to my model. Yes I have, when I said this

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Whatever kind of model comsology you generate from GR, it will essentially be of two types. One, where the time begins a finite time in the past, and one where the time is infinite in extent. Either way, there is no place for any "before" or "prior".

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Now, how do you suggest a concept of prior, given that the time-line to which you are trying to be prior either doesn't exist or is always there? Yes, that is fine. But the "states" of those points in time do not have to be set. If you disagree, explain why they must. As I have said repeatedly, this whole debate only requires omniscience wrt Th, not Tg. If you disagree, explain why. As we have no awareness whatsoever of Tg, why would we describe it as occuring prior to the effect in your first case? And please explain why it cannot be assigned a time in Th. In my model, a divine interaction is just a space-time event. It has to be assigned a point in Th. Its causal nature is tied to Tg so we would have no knowledge of it. Prior has no meaning to us for actions of a being who evolves along Tg.

No, your understanding is fundementally inconsistent.We are debating the impact of a god's foreknowledge of OUR actions, remember? That is all. Given that actions are tied to Th, THAT is all that is important. Huh? And whose point of view is that? It is a perfect description of an eternal universe in any sense that I am aware. Or perhaps you know how to make ethernal mean something more in a space-time with more than one time dimension? The point is that many have naively assumed that an eternal universe removed a position for any creative act. That was what drove many to the Steady State theory, and on the opposite side, what drove the Vatican to accept BBT. Neither view holds any water. Yes, fine, whatever. His actions are causal wrt Tg. I have not said otherwise. In fact, I defined them as such. But again, this is not relevant for this discussion. We are talking about a god's omniscience wrt Th. If you want to talk about a god's omniscience wrt to Tg and Th, then go talk to someone else. I am trying to address the initial issue. I've not quite figured what your are trying to do... Believe me, there is failure of understanding but it does not reside in me at the moment... Yes, I would describe it as the boundary. Evolution within the boundary might be completely determined as you suggest. But it could be stochastic, undetermined, or whatever. You have completely failed to explain why this could not b the case. Your original reason was an appeal to omniscience. We only require omniscience wrt Th for this debate. Please explain. Why? Why is it necessary for a debate about a god's foreknowledge of our actions and its implication for fatalism and determinism? That is what we were discussing after all. Given that the "obvious" view is that fatism/determinism is implied, picking a particular extended-scenario and saying "see, it's still implied" is not really very constructive. I am constructing a scenario where it does not seem to be implied. If you are not willing to address that scenario, I will conclude. There is nothing more to say. Explain away. But Tg is unobservable from our perspective, so has little bearing on our original issue which was about a god's foreknowledge of our actions and its implication for fatalism and determinism.