Always struggled with God knowing the future

[Gabriel_Serafin]

So you think that if God (or anybody else for that matter) knows with 100% certainty that I will choose to drink coffee tomorrow, it is still possible that I won’t choose to drink coffee tomorrow? Well, if that is true, then God cannot possibly know free choices.

Understand what is meant by God’s fore-knowledge. People who are poorly educated on these concepts usually confuse fore-knowledge with pre-determination. Fore-knowledge does not mean God pre-determined your future choices. God certainly knows if you’re going to choose to drink coffee tomorrow, but this doesn’t mean He pre-determined the choice for you. God simply knows what you are going to freely choose. Furthermore, you can certainly choose against God’s will. God gave you and intellect for Truth and a will for goodness and love; but you are certainly free to misuse your intellect and will.

Let it sink deep in your mind once and for all that you exist within an incredibly amazing reality which dwells inside a concept we call * time*. Time and Matter did not always exist, thus the Cause of time exists outside of time itself. God is Eternal, which means all things are present to Him. So when we say that God already knows if your eternal soul will be damned, or if it will be saved, it means that He knows all the choices you will make. There is no future in God; there is no past in God; there is only the present. Even though God made you for Himself and wants you to be saved, your will can choose against God’s will. Thus hell is a consequence much like blindness is the consequence for plucking your own eyes out.

Things that are outside of time cannot do anything.

The *Big Bang theory * explains that Time came into existence. Thus the Cause of time coming into being is outside of time itself.

I have no idea what ‘spiritual’ means.

Well then there’s your problem. You cannot expect to understand advanced calculus if you don’t know how to count. I would recommend the book Theology for Beginners by Frank Sheed.

 

[Simpleton]

Of course God knows the future, what will happen. God knows what sins you will commit, yet you pray to avoid them. Or God knows a child will die but you pray that the child won’t die. It seems prayers would be useless if the outcome is already determined. Unless we we say God knew you would pray for this or that and he gave a certain outcome.

For me, destiny, what God knew would happen, seems sometimes to make my prayers fruitless. This concept could be applied to creation. Why create a world that you knew would be evil. It is possible to say it was created that way so that there would be a "bad’ to counteract the good but sometimes it seems so purposless. Knowing all this you could say that God knew Jesus would suffer before the creation of the world (which is the teaching of the church). So eons could have been passing while this plan was still to take place no matter what.

For my finite mind it will always be perplexing. Any thoughts? It’s not really a question?

If I knew all of your thoughts and actions, past, present, and future; how have I taken away your ability to choose or have these things be yours?

 

[Richard320]

I posted this a while ago.

Think of this: God is outside of time, every moment is now.

Now think of your life as a movie, an old fashioned movie with a reel of film, not a dvd. Frame by frame your life advances. You have seen the past, and you’re in the current frame, but you haven’t got to the end of the film. God, however, sees it now.

So…let’s say you stayed out too late last night, slept through all the morning Masses, and decide to skip the evening Mass because the Superbowl is on TV. That’s a Mortal Sin. The last frame in the movie of your life shows you in Hell.

But wait! Your conscience bothers you so you go to Confession next Saturday afternoon. You’re forgiven. Now the last frame of the movie of your life shows you in Heaven.

Two vastly different endings, same movie. And God saw both of them. Now. Which is the real ending? That depends on the scriptwriter: you. You can change the ending of the movie all the way up to the next-to-the-last frame.

Hard to wrap your brain around the “everything is now” concept, isn’t it? But that’s the best way I’ve been able to understand it. Just because you’re Hellbound doesn’t mean that you will still be tomorrow. That’s up to you exercising your free will.

If we were predestined, we’d be no more than chess pieces that God moved around for amusement. And there could be no sin, because, after all, we weren’t making the choices we made, it was all pre-determined by God. If there were no Sin, why did we get the 10 Commandments? It wouldn’t matter if we killed a man in cold blood just because we coveted his wife, our future was already determined, right?

 

[LJH_80]

The whole idea of “fore-knowledge” depends on God experiencing linear time like we do.

Try this experiment:
Have someone take a piece of graph paper and start drawing a line from left to right. For every square they move over, they can choose to have the line also move up one square, down one square, or stay level. They’ll end up with a random zig-zag line.

Now, they should hand you this piece of paper, covered up by another piece of paper. They slowly slide the top paper over, revealing the line a bit at a time.

This is like you experiencing your linear time: you see a series of choices one after the other, and you can’t see the next choice until you’re there.

To look at time how God does, now take the paper away and look at it from above. There is no “before” or “after” now. You see the entire thing at once laid out before you.
The veering of the line up, down, or straight are still free choices, because they were made as free choices from the person making them. But being outside the timeline means you can see the sum of all those choices at once.
It’s not that you know things before they happen because, when you look at the paper, it’s not like one is happening before the other, one is happening to the left of the other, and another is happening to the right, but to you, it’s all simultaneous.

 

[belorg]

Understand what is meant by God’s fore-knowledge. People who are poorly educated on these concepts usually confuse fore-knowledge with pre-determination. Fore-knowledge does not mean God pre-determined your future choices. God certainly knows if you’re going to choose to drink coffee tomorrow, but this doesn’t mean He pre-determined the choice for you. God simply knows what you are going to freely choose. Furthermore, you can certainly choose against God’s will. God gave you and intellect for Truth and a will for goodness and love; but you are certainly free to misuse your intellect and will.

I am not talking about pre-determination.

Let it sink deep in your mind once and for all that you exist within an incredibly amazing reality which dwells inside a concept we call * time*. Time and Matter did not always exist, thus the Cause of time exists outside of time itself. God is Eternal, which means all things are present to Him. So when we say that God already knows if your eternal soul will be damned, or if it will be saved, it means that He knows all the choices you will make.

Which means that those ‘choices’ are a fact, and that they were a fact before I was born.
Now, again, a simple question: if it is a fact that I will choose coffee tomorrow at 10 a.m. is it possible that I will drink tea tomorrow at 10a.m.?
It seems to me that is a a simple question. Why does nobody here want to answer that question.

There is no future in God; there is no past in God; there is only the present. Even though God made you for Himself and wants you to be saved, your will can choose against God’s will.

I am not talking about God’s will, I am talking about his knowledge. Can I or can I not choose between two options?

Thus hell is a consequence much like blindness is the consequence for plucking your own eyes out.

Can I chooise not to pluck my eyes out if God knows I am going to pluck my eyes out, IOW is ‘not plucking my eyes out’ a real option fir me?

The *Big Bang theory * explains that Time came into existence. Thus the Cause of time coming into being is outside of time itself.

Did that cause do anything outside time?

Well then there’s your problem. You cannot expect to understand advanced calculus if you don’t know how to count. I would recommend the book Theology for Beginners by Frank Sheed.

I have heard lots of things about ‘spiritual’ but never have I heard or read what it actualy means, and I bet you haven’t either. If I am wrong on this, just give me a workable definition of spiritual. And I mean a positive definition, not what it isn’t but what it is.

 

[InJesusItrust]

It’s really not that hard a concept to understand. You just have to stop thinking God is bound by time.

Suppose you decide to do X. Because God is in the future, He observed you doing X. But then you change the action to Y. God sees action Y being done in the future. Have you had your choice to change your action? Yes. Does God know what your action will be? Yes. He already saw it.

Now pretend God announces that action X will happen, but then you change it to Y. God will have to announce that Y will happen. What is to prevent Him from announcing Y in the first place? He is not bound by time, so chances are He has already changed His announcement as you changed your action. We are just unaware of it because we are bound by time.

 

[belorg]

I posted this a while ago.

Think of this: God is outside of time, every moment is now.

Now think of your life as a movie, an old fashioned movie with a reel of film, not a dvd. Frame by frame your life advances. You have seen the past, and you’re in the current frame, but you haven’t got to the end of the film. God, however, sees it now.

So…let’s say you stayed out too late last night, slept through all the morning Masses, and decide to skip the evening Mass because the Superbowl is on TV. That’s a Mortal Sin. The last frame in the movie of your life shows you in Hell.

But wait! Your conscience bothers you so you go to Confession next Saturday afternoon. You’re forgiven. Now the last frame of the movie of your life shows you in Heaven.

Two vastly different endings, same movie. And God saw both of them. Now. Which is the real ending? That depends on the scriptwriter: you. You can change the ending of the movie all the way up to the next-to-the-last frame.

Hard to wrap your brain around the “everything is now” concept, isn’t it? But that’s the best way I’ve been able to understand it. Just because you’re Hellbound doesn’t mean that you will still be tomorrow. That’s up to you exercising your free will.

If we were predestined, we’d be no more than chess pieces that God moved around for amusement. And there could be no sin, because, after all, we weren’t making the choices we made, it was all pre-determined by God. If there were no Sin, why did we get the 10 Commandments? It wouldn’t matter if we killed a man in cold blood just because we coveted his wife, our future was already determined, right?

And this is a great example of the problem I have been pointing out all along. What you are decsribing here is not absolute foreknowledge. If God truly knows the future, then there is only one movie with only one end. What you are decsribing is God knowing all possible outcomes, but not knowing any actual outcome. God, in your analogy, is outside an infinte number of movies, all depicting something different.

 

[belorg]

It’s really not that hard a concept to understand. You just have to stop thinking God is bound by time.

Suppose you decide to do X. Because God is in the future, He observed you doing X. But then you change the action to Y. God sees action Y being done in the future.

 

[belorg]

If I knew all of your thoughts and actions, past, present, and future; how have I taken away your ability to choose or have these things be yours?

You would not have taken away my ability to choose, but the fact that you were able to know my ‘choices’ for a fact before they happened, means they were a fact befiore they happened, and they were not real ‘choices’.

 

[InJesusItrust]

God does not “fore-know”. He sees it as “already happened”. There is a difference between the two. The reason He knows the future is because He is not bound by linear time. As choices change so does what future God sees. This is why repentance is possible, and God can announce the future at the same time. He sees the end and reports it.

Just try to think about what would be possible if you were not bound by time but exist eternally.

 

[belorg]

God does not “fore-know”. He sees it as “already happened”.

Sure. Which means that whatever ‘has happened’ is a fact.

There is a difference between the two. The reason He knows the future is because He is not bound by linear time. As choices change so does what future God sees.

As choices and circumstances chnage, so does what future I see.
I too can predict your future, but if you change any of your choices, your future will be different. Does not make too much sense.
I.

Now, I don’t have too much of a problem with what you are describing, but it has nothing to do with the traditional concept of divine foreknwoledge.

This is why repentance is possible, and God can announce the future at the same time. He sees the end and reports it.

Which end does He see? It sems to me your view entails there is no single end. There is a future in which I repent and thre is a future in which I don’t. now either these two futures are real, in which case it is meaningless to say God can see which is true (because both are), or only one of them is real, in which case, I do niot have a choice between two real options.

Just try to think about what would be possible if you were not bound by time but exist eternally.

If what you say is true, not too much actually.

 

[prodigalson2011]

You would not have taken away my ability to choose, but the fact that you were able to know my ‘choices’ for a fact before they happened, means they were a fact befiore they happened, and they were not real ‘choices’.

This is not true. “Clairvoyance” does not negate free agency. If someone were able to look into the future to see what you chose to do in a given circumstance, it does not follow that you did not freely choose it. If time is a continuum in which choices are made, it stands to reason that the ability to look into different points along this continuum from beyond or outside of it would not have any effect on the liberty of the agents within.

The only point that can rightly be deduced is that you yourself are confined, as a causal agent, to one point in the continuum at any given time.

 

[belorg]

This is not true. “Clairvoyance” does not negate free agency. If someone were able to look into the future to see what you chose to do in a given circumstance, it does not follow that you did not freely choose it. If time is a continuum in which choices are made, it stands to reason that the ability to look into different points along this continuum from beyond or outside of it would not have any effect on the liberty of the agents within.

I have never claimed it has any such effect. It is actually the other way round. the fact that somebody can be really clairvoyant is a result of the fact that a certain statement about the future is true at the time the prediction is made.
Now if today it is true that I will choose X tomorrow then I do not really have a libertarian choice, because it is not possible that I will choose Y.

The only point that can rightly be deduced is that you yourself are confined, as a causal agent, to one point in the continuum at any given time.

Yes, but that is not relevant.

 

[Simpleton]

You would not have taken away my ability to choose, but the fact that you were able to know my ‘choices’ for a fact before they happened, means they were a fact befiore they happened, and they were not real ‘choices’.

Wait, how can they not be real choices if I haven’t taken away your ability to choose? Why couldn’t they be regarded as the real choice you made with your ability to choose? How can you say you were forced to choose X if your ability to choose Y and not choose X was never taken away?

If anything my foreknowledge would be of what you will choose with your ability to choose.

 

[FurtherSuntime]

Of course God knows the future, what will happen. God knows what sins you will commit, yet you pray to avoid them. Or God knows a child will die but you pray that the child won’t die. It seems prayers would be useless if the outcome is already determined. Unless we we say God knew you would pray for this or that and he gave a certain outcome.

For me, destiny, what God knew would happen, seems sometimes to make my prayers fruitless. This concept could be applied to creation. Why create a world that you knew would be evil. It is possible to say it was created that way so that there would be a "bad’ to counteract the good but sometimes it seems so purposless. Knowing all this you could say that God knew Jesus would suffer before the creation of the world (which is the teaching of the church). So eons could have been passing while this plan was still to take place no matter what.

For my finite mind it will always be perplexing. Any thoughts? It’s not really a question?

The first attribute of the great Creator which is needed in order to bring things into order is the innocence and beauty of simplistic un congested order, which would describe absolute goodness, which would describe our understanding of the Creator.

Notice I’m using the word Creator. I feel that your style of personality is impressionable and the God word itself, is carrying some baggage which I will try to speak to.

You may be assuming an almost manipulative, cunning God. The Creator would have no need for a self serving judgmental stance. The primary hope in this Creators abundance in innocence would be in our appreciation of a kick at the cat toward mans prime directive unity. We can all play a role, and what? Simply do our best, thats all. The diversification of humanity itself “only allows”, through contrast in everyday theme in many ways, an opportunity to give a kick at the cat.

Try not to over complicate something very simple. Move, think, associate, hope in an un congested simplistic way. This adaption of approach to life will loosen the un-intended obstruction allowing for innocence in mind and body , the beauty of simplicity .

God may just be god without the needed & contrived notions which the human has. He may know the future but …think…he may not be looking at it as you may think in a degree of self need or other. The reception of heartfelt recognition draws in this innocent beauty. Innocence knows not or considers-negotiates, anti innocent manifistation, why?
well for one thing a Creator would have no experience to comprehend it with and as well have no use…could a little toddler understand or be interested in a man in the war shoveling a live body into a furnace in hatred…No…The Creator I think would be in the heart of the victim only, as the being can be …understood from relative perspective.

So…If I have some trouble, which we all do from time to time, I think of the Sun, interesting placement of the keeper I might add…think of the Sun just shining on what it can…sure in the shade, no sunshine, thats how it works, open the curtains is what i say to myself and as Pachino says…forgettt about it…not being disrespectful here, independently of our talking and not suggesting in any way at all except myself maybe in some moments which is absolutely normal…, I don’t think God like a parent in the park with toddlers would want humans sitting under the tree and worrying, it can happen to some, instead of gettin out there and causin a little rukus.

 

[belorg]

Wait, how can they not be real choices if I haven’t taken away your ability to choose? Why couldn’t they be regarded as the real choice you made with your ability to choose? How can you say you were forced to choose X if your ability to choose Y and not choose X was never taken away?

My ability to choose Y was never taken away, but if you have the ability to choose Y but nevertheless it is detremined even before you were born that you will choose X, we are talking about compatibilist free will.
And I agree that foreknowledge does not take away compatibilist free will…
I have no problem with compatibilist free will. Most Catgholics do, however.

If anything my foreknowledge would be of what you will choose with your ability to choose.

That is a pretty accurate description of compatibilist free will.

 

[Gabriel_Serafin]

Which means that those ‘choices’ are a fact, and that they were a fact before I was born. . if it is a fact that I will choose coffee tomorrow at 10 a.m. is it possible that I will drink tea tomorrow at 10a.m.?

It’ obviously not an actual fact in time until it actually happens. But whatever it is that you choose will happen in time and God knows everything that will happen in Time because God is outside of time. Think of a book. A biography of a man. Within it is contained all the information that you will read about this man, one page at a time, one sentence at a time, and one word a time. Once you finish the book, your mind contains all the information that is in this book about this man, where he was born, what he did, etc. After reading the book are all-knowing about this book. Now say your friend wants to reads the same book. You already know the exact sequence of events that will unfold in that book before he even reads it. It’s as if you were outside of time --knowing the book as a whole with the entire story present in your mind.

Think of a motion picture reel: Each frame has a succession of events. In order to see what is going to happen in the end, you must watch the entire reel. This takes time. But imagine if that motion picture reel is conscious of itself-–it would know the entire story without having to watch it unfold in time because within it is contained the entire story.

Science explains that Time and Matter came into existence together. Since it is impossible for nothingness to produce anything, then the Cause of Time and Matter is outside of time and matter itself–in other words* eternal and spiritual.* Earlier you said you have no idea what the word spiritual means. I’m afraid you’ve given us an example of what is at the heart of your problem. You are dabbling and dismissing with concepts without even knowing what words mean.

God knows infallibly and from eternity what you will actually do, and what you might or would have done in different circumstances. God does not have to wait on the temporal event of your free choice to know what it is that you will choose. He knows it from eternity because everything that happens is within Himself. The difficulty for us in time and with finite minds is to understand how to interpret and explain the manner of God’s infinite and eternal knowledge. There are different schools of thought within philosophy which grapple with the subject which you can readily read about if you do some homework. You can’t expect to be spoon-fed a formal and systematic philosophical treatise on the matter in a chat forum.

Can I chooise not to pluck my eyes out if God knows I am going to pluck my eyes out, IOW is ‘not plucking my eyes out’ a real option fir me?

Yes, you can choose not to pluck your eyes out, just as people can choose not to commit suicide, not to beat their wives and not to lie.

I have heard lots of things about ‘spiritual’ but never have I heard or read what it actualy means, and I bet you haven’t either. If I am wrong on this, just give me a workable definition of spiritual. And I mean a positive definition, not what it isn’t but what it is.

The problem is that the word spiritual is misused. We human beings are made up of both body and spirit. A spirit has the power to produce ideas. God is an Infinite Spirit. He knows everything there is to be known and wills things into existence. God made us in His Image and Likeness, which means that we have an intellect and a will. Though we are tiny and finite beings, God is an infinite all-knowing Spiritual Being.

Look around your room. Everything you see first started out* as an idea before it became a physical reality.* The chair, the walls, the floor, your clothes, all started as ideas in the minds of their designer/creators. That monitor in front of your face was willed into existence by the mind of man, who wrapped the idea in materials such as plastics, metals and glass to produce the physical object in front of your face. Understand that the natural world is made up of atoms and molecules which even the finite intellect of man has the power to harness them to invent things with them.

The problem with atheism is that it not only blinds the mind, but it also leads to a waste of life. You need to realize that your life has a purpose and that the universe did not simply “bubble up” without a Cause. Harmony is not accidental…

 

[belorg]

Think of a motion picture reel: Each frame has a succession of events. In order to see what is going to happen in the end, you must watch the entire reel. This takes time. But imagine if that motion picture reel is conscious of itself-–it would know the entire story without having to watch it unfold in time because within it is contained the entire story.

I am thinking of it as a motion picture, and that’s exactly where the problem is. Because although we may not be able to see the next picture in the movie until after it has been shown, it nevertheless exists already before it’s shown. IOW it is determined.

Science explains that Time and Matter came into existence together. Since it is impossible for nothingness to produce anything, then the Cause of Time and Matter is outside of time and matter itself–in other words* eternal and spiritual.* Earlier you said you have no idea what the word spiritual means. I’m afraid you’ve given us an example of what is at the heart of your problem. You are dabbling and dismissing with concepts without even knowing what words mean.

I do not use a word that I don’t understand. It seems you are the one doing that.

God knows infallibly and from eternity what you will actually do, and what you might or would have done in different circumstances.

The last part is called middle knowledge, which actually makes things worse fro libertarian free will.

God does not have to wait on the temporal event of your free choice to know what it is that you will choose. He knows it from eternity because everything that happens is within Himself. The difficulty for us in time and with finite minds is to understand how to interpret and explain the manner of God’s infinite and eternal knowledge. There are different schools of thought within philosophy which grapple with the subject which you can readily read about if you do some homework. You can’t expect to be spoon-fed a formal and systematic philosophical treatise on the matter in a chat forum.

Ow, but I have read lots of stiuff about this.

Yes, you can choose not to pluck your eyes out, just as people can choose not to commit suicide, not to beat their wives and not to lie.

That’s not what I was asking. i was asking if God knows I will pluck my eyes out, can I choose not to do it?

The problem is that the word spiritual is misused. We human beings are made up of both body and spirit. A spirit has the power to produce ideas. God is an Infinite Spirit. He knows everything there is to be known and wills things into existence. God made us in His Image and Likeness, which means that we have an intellect and a will. Though we are tiny and finite beings, God is an infinite all-knowing Spiritual Being.

IOW you don’t know what spiritual means either.

Look around your room. Everything you see first started out* as an idea before it became a physical reality.* The chair, the walls, the floor, your clothes, all started as ideas in the minds of their designer/creators. That monitor in front of your face was willed into existence by the mind of man, who wrapped the idea in materials such as plastics, metals and glass to produce the physical object in front of your face. Understand that the natural world is made up of atoms and molecules which even the finite intellect of man has the power to harness them to invent things with them.

Yes, and now what is ‘spiritual reality’ made of?

The problem with atheism is that it not only blinds the mind, but it also leads to a waste of life. You need to realize that your life has a purpose and that the universe did not simply “bubble up” without a Cause. Harmony is not accidental…

Don’t project your own inability to understand things onto others, Gabriel

 

[Gabriel_Serafin]

I am thinking of it as a motion picture, and that’s exactly where the problem is. Because although we may not be able to see the next picture in the movie until after it has been shown, it nevertheless exists already before it’s shown. IOW it is determined.

But if the picture reel is of your entire life, it merely is a record of all your free choices. You must wrap your mind around what it means to be outside of time. For God it means the past and the future are present. There is no future in God. That’s what the word Eternal means. Eternity is not an infinite number of years; rather it is an existence outside of time. God is not an old man with a long white beard who knows a lot of truth—God is *Truth itself. * The Infinite Being who is Truth itself, has all knowledge is in Himself–past and future.

A man’s life in time has a beginning and an end, but time gives man a chance to freely choose God. The fact that God knows what each and every man will choose does not infringe on man’s freedom to choose to hate God. Man is both body (matter) and spirit; thus man exists in time, which is a measurement of change; thus man has a limited time to choose his fulfillment in God. That’s the whole purpose why God put man in time. Those who choose wickedness and sin are freely rejecting God; whereas those who respond to God’s grace and freely choose goodness and truth are serving God.

At the moment of death, man’s spirit separates from the body (matter) and is either eternally lost (separated from God) or is eternally in union with God, Who is Truth, Goodness and Beauty itself.

 

[DCNBILL]

The whole idea of “fore-knowledge” depends on God experiencing linear time like we do.

Try this experiment:
Have someone take a piece of graph paper and start drawing a line from left to right. For every square they move over, they can choose to have the line also move up one square, down one square, or stay level. They’ll end up with a random zig-zag line.

Now, they should hand you this piece of paper, covered up by another piece of paper. They slowly slide the top paper over, revealing the line a bit at a time.

This is like you experiencing your linear time: you see a series of choices one after the other, and you can’t see the next choice until you’re there.

To look at time how God does, now take the paper away and look at it from above. There is no “before” or “after” now. You see the entire thing at once laid out before you.
The veering of the line up, down, or straight are still free choices, because they were made as free choices from the person making them. But being outside the timeline means you can see the sum of all those choices at once.
It’s not that you know things before they happen because, when you look at the paper, it’s not like one is happening before the other, one is happening to the left of the other, and another is happening to the right, but to you, it’s all simultaneous.

This is a very good example of how God sees the universe. As He is outside of time He also has all of eternity to view everything in creation in an “eternal instant.”