Why would he know? Or, perhaps, how would he know? How could his knowledge have been eternally established? For me, I require an explanation, a mechanism. More than “God knows 'cuz he knows.” That explains nothing.
“Omniscient.” (Yeah, I know, that doesn’t help you much. But, we kinda posit it as the definition of the being who created the universe ex nihilo.)
This is a more interesting question, IMHO. He creates the universe and is “outside” of it. So, it’s not like He’s watching a movie and waiting to see how it turns out. By analogy (and it’s not a perfect one), it’s like the author of a book looking at the book. He just knows, even if you – who are immersed in the book – do not know until you experience it.
An empty assertion with no meaning behind it.
I agree fully with the exception that, by definition, that would mean this present is already over and has been eternally for God. But, by his power, he perpetually returns to sustain this moment. God IS outside. He is, as I’ve pointed out, far, far removed.
If every moment is distinct, in what moment does a song exist? When is it alive?
It seems to me, whenever we have very powerful experiences, we try to, as it were, “burst” the bounds of time. The moment “swells” as it were, and things start getting faster and faster. The more you are living in the moment, the faster time moves, because you are participating, it seems to me, in a reality which “erupts” and surpasses time’s confines.
Except that… He’s God. He’s existence itself. He’s the source of all things. With that in mind, “knows without (name removed by moderator)uts” isn’t absurd… it’s by definition.
Except that He created the sun.
LOL! Even there, you can’t help but to refer to eternity except through the medium of temporal reference. There’s no “limitless future” in God.
I don’t think so. If God knows everything through himself alone, extrapolating towards everything via his own essence… that doesn’t account for contingent things, for one thing, even if that were true. If this was, again, Spinoza’s God, where the end is perfectly determined by initial conditions, then I would be with you. But I believe free will and other such things exist. Things happening in time have a reality that isn’t fixed. God requires (name removed by moderator)uts to know them. Of course, he always did know them, being infinitely removed in timelessness, but in the context of time, it isn’t fixed, and God’s sensing apparatus works backwards.
That doesn’t tell me anything new. I still think your position is an impoverished view.
Going by my schema: You have to take into account how “our present” has existence, and how it is, again, sustained by God “moving” (from our perspective, or “position”) backward from his Eternal Present. He does this by his power. Of course, if time had no reality whatever, everything would be simultaneous, and there would be no “forward-press.” But time does have reality. For us and the status of our temporal reality. So, even though for God the “limitless future” is NOW, it ever exists as a dynamic horizon in some sense, especially for us.Dimmesdale:
LOL! Even there, you can’t help but to refer to eternity except through the medium of temporal reference. There’s no “limitless future” in God.
How does it not? “Contingency” doesn’t mean “unknowability”; it merely means that something did not exist ‘necessarily’. Neither does it mean that its existence cannot be foreknown (although, for us as humans, given our limitations, sometimes that is the case). So, I’m not seeing how you reach this conclusion. Can you give us your reasoning, here?
We continue to disagree on this point. God’s knowledge does not proceed from sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. (If it did, mind you, you’d have a really good argument!)
Sure it does. You claim that he does not know the sun (“living in a cave”, as it were). I claim that He knows the sun because He created it!
I’m not seeing the “backwards” part of your argument, but there are more substantial issues here…
The thing is, though, that you’re attempting to cast eternity in terms of temporal framework, and that skews your analysis. God does not have a “limitless future”; in fact, He has no future; everything exists for God. Your “now” is as real to Him as my “ten minutes ago” and everyone’s “one hour from now”. The fact that He experiences them doesn’t imply a “b-theory of time” in which the future is a big ol’ block that we don’t control individually.
I guess I could come at this a number of angles… It seems to me if something is not necessary in reality, then it is not necessary mentally. 1 + 1 = 2 is a concept which truly exists in my mind. And external reality confirms it. If one thing and one more thing did not yield the conclusion “two things”, then 1+1 would not equal 2 in my mind. That’s an example of absolute necessity.
God is dependent on (name removed by moderator)ut. He is not an island. If he was, he would know only himself and whatever is absolutely necessary in external reality as it proceeds from him, and perhaps also all the different possibilities that are possible. But he would not know anything that is both possible and actualized by a truly “free” will.
By the sun, I meant the contingent realities of free-will creatures. As I have demonstrated, your view of God does not allow this, as far as I can tell.
If you don’t see that part of my argument, then nothing else that I say will make sense to you. It is the perhaps the main part of my argument.
Your present exists primarily because God condescends to your status of reality. Your own existence is trivial by comparison. What is primary is God’s power.
It looks like I’m trying to cast it in temporal terms because it is inextricably wedded to our status of time-bound reality. Actually, it seems to me that your position commits God to being tied-down to an absolute beginning, and that “now” exists for God, whereas I am maintaining God’s absolute transcendence and freedom from the captivity of time. This world is long, long over as far as his Kingdom is concerned…
OK… that presents a particular philosophical problem, though.
You realized that you just described “God, all spirits, and all of creation.” In other words, “everything”. So, you’re correct: God does know all of these things. And He doesn’t need “(name removed by moderator)ut” to know them.
I think that “backwards” is the problem with the argument – it’s a characterization that doesn’t fit. You’re looking at “eternity” as if it temporally precedes any (arbitrary) instant in time in the created universe. It doesn’t. Rather, the two are distinct and unconnected by any temporal constraint. (And, to tell the truth, that’s kinda the reason I think your argument doesn’t stand up.)
Sure, I’ll grant that. However, that doesn’t mean that my existence isn’t real. What it does mean is that my existence is actualized by God’s creating act and His sustaining act.
You’re really not. You’re claiming He’s captive to my contingent decisions within the framework of time.
Nope. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “there you go again…”!
There would still be things God wouldn’t know, namely the actualized possible things.
I differentiate “time” and “eternity” in the following way. Time is limited in that the present is “situated” between past and future. It can only provide a limited horizon of experience: kind of like drinking through a straw. The present moves from “a past” towards “a future.” In my mind the eternal is a Big Moment: instead of a straw, you drain the whole cup in one, infinite gulp. But the similarity between the two is that there is a direction in which all this “succeeds.” Before you criticize me for introducing temporality into the “Big Moment” - hear me out. In the context of the Big Moment EVERYTHING - past, present and future, are “contained.” This is the backward cycling motion. But the Big Moment proper is situated in an even greater transcendence which cannot be touched by anything temporal. Only in the cycles which it metes out, into the past. (Or not, “into the past” but into “our reality” - which then produces past, present and future).
Well, at least his knowledge. But I think there is more to God than just his knowledge of us.
The Church disagrees with you.
That would imply that God isn’t omniscient.
Still not seeing how that’s “backward”…
Because you’re labeling him as “dependent”.
And I disagree with the Church.
Like I said, if God is an island then he would not be omniscient in the fullest sense: knowing contingent human acts. He would only know all the different combinations/possibilities.
Well, it’s “moving” from God’s “reality” to our own… maybe it’s impossible to express because we can only think in terms of time and our concepts of time, in a linear way…but I don’t think God is tied down to a past. Then again, “when” is “now” for God?
For me, God is still all-powerful, all-good and omnisicient. Omniscient only with the caveat that his vision in some particulars depends on us. But it is still complete for him. He knows all: past, present and future.
It’s fun to throw around terms. It’s even more fun to know how to use them properly.
It’s a nice assertion to make… but how would you prove that it is true? “He would only know…” is true why? Not seeing the logic there.
OK. So, it’s like a mapping from God to us. I can hang with that.
Every-when.
It’s not “vision”; it’s knowledge. If it were otherwise, He would have to act in order to observe, and that implies change in God, which then changes the definition of God as immutable. So… it doesn’t really work out.