Yes, he is.
“Pot, this is Kettle. Come in, Pot. You’re black, over.”
His question may be philosophical in tone, but it’s still nonsense. “What is the nature of God’s omniscience? But, leave all mention of the divine itself out of the answer!”
To be philosophical implies that he has tried to use some sort of logic to arrive at his premise. I’ve seen better questions posed on the back of a Cheerio’s box.
Great, we’ve done most of the hard work now. So just to be clear we have reached the following position.
generally speaking here:
Full stop. No, we cannot. You have not resolved it, you have altered it. Your statement above is logically distinct from both my statements. You have committed an error of modal logic. Examine the difference between your statements above and the statements I have made, and with a little discipline, you should be able to discern your error. Or if not, then ask me to do it for you, and I will.
Thank you! You do grasp the essence of my demonstration. It is not God who “tricks” Tyrion, it is Tyrion who invites confusion upon himself, by his pride. God “hath confused the proud in their inmost thoughts.” It is not a “trick.” It is authentic confusion of mind, the humbling consequence of pride.
No, not at all! However, I did a poor job in elaborating what I meant by the ‘movie’ analogy. I even took the step of pointing out where the analogy falls short, though. So, you can’t beat me over the head with your take on the analogy and tell me that I’m abandoning ‘my analogy’!
Hmm… nope. Let’s review Thomistic philosophy:
God is Pure Act. You’ve already asserted this, yourself.
Which makes sense: the human framework – or more accurately, the framework of the created world – is fundamentally different from God! If you assert that there isn’t a fundamental difference, then God is no longer an ‘unmoved mover’ – he is simply just another link in an infinite regress! Since this is impossible, you cannot assert that God is explainable in terms that apply to the universe without invalidating your entire argument. I appreciate that you don’t like this logic, and it frustrates you, and you might wish to ignore it, but it’s logically solid.
OK. Thanks!
Here’s the problem: in our frame of reference, things that appear as ‘future’ events “do not exist.” However, outside our frame of reference, where time is not a constraint, these things do exist. It’s not as if their existence is contingent upon our perception of their existence, from the perspective outside our spacetime framework! From our perspective, a book that is published next year exists only in potentiality (but upon publication, it exists in actuality); from the perspective outside our framework, this dependency does not exist! Oh, sure, when describing it, God might say “Gone with the Wind, Part II: Rhett in Rio exists in 2014”, in order to describe it with respect to the (internal) dimension of time in our world, but the point is that to God’s perspective, it exists. Period.
This is a valid assertion – but only from within the constraints of our temporal framework. Outside that framework, your assertion doesn’t hold. If one is not constrained by time, then one knows. (Otherwise, if one holds that such knowledge is unknown, then what one is really saying is that the outside-the-framework observer isn’t really outside the framework: he is constrained by the temporal dimension of that framework! That, of course, is a contradiction – the assertion fails!)
No: it cannot be known by you, and at the present time. Unless you make those distinctions, you are not completely expressing the reality of the situation.
Again, you’re not fully describing the situation. Your questions are “can a person within the constraints of our space-time travel into the past?” and “can a person within the constraints of our space-time know the future?” Once you put those qualifiers on your statements, you can answer the questions.
This presumes that ‘traveling into the past’ implies existence in the past as an actor. If ‘traveling into the past’ means something like ‘being an undetected observer who does not act’, then your consequence doesn’t follow. The paradox doesn’t necessarily follow from the premise.
There’s a whole boat load of assumptions there! At the very least, if you ‘knew the future’ in a way that allows you to change it, then that means that you didn’t, in fact, ‘know the future’ – you just knew of one possible future! Your thought experiment doesn’t lead to the conclusion you wish it to!
Whew! I’m so glad we theists have wise overlords like you, to condescend to us and pat us on the head and tell us what we’re going to eventually realize! Oh, thank you, wise and powerful Tyrion! :bowdown:
I agree with you, by the way. If your desire is to posit ‘omniscience’ within the constraints of our physical framework, then no, there’s no way to do this. At best, you’ll end up with the Hegelian concept of standing at the mountaintop: at the end of time, the sum total of all human experience will finally have the perspective to look back and see all that has happened within the framework of this created world. In doing so, this Geist will have access to all of history, and will – in that context – be ‘omniscient.’ In that context, ‘omniscience’ is simply a matter of knowing all of history. From a purely ‘secular’ standpoint, that’s as good as it gets. Sorry.
The problem can’t really be the definition of “omniscience.” Nobody here (that I have seen) has denied that omniscience includes God’s ability to foresee the future acts of all rational creatures with certainty. If any Catholic tried to deny that then they would directly contradict a de fide teaching of the Church as held by the First Vatican Council, session 3, ch. 1:
Yes, and someone who hasn’t experienced past events can still know them. If we use justified-true-belief as the standard (ignoring Gettier and other problems), then we certainly can know past events without direct experience. It is either true or false that the lunar landing occurred. We have visual footage of the landing that is beyond reasonable dispute, giving justification. We believe that the moon landing occurred. We have knowledge that the landing occurred. If all you are asserting is that we have a higher degree of knowledge of the past through direct experience than otherwise, then I agree with you.
It isn’t uniformly held by philosophers that future propositions are unknowable. The truth component of knowledge becomes important ie. the correspondence theory. It shouldn’t present a problem to B-theorists if they hold that future events do exist as a four-dimensional block, because even under the correspondence theory there is a fact or reality that corresponds to the truth assertion.
Hmmmm, I do not believe I have made an error here. If you believe otherwise then by all means please demonstrate.
37 pages deep in a thread and still arguing over definitions, apparently.
Let’s don’t and say we did.
(Just kidding!) But, for the record, I reject the thomistic philosophy, because it is incoherent. And also for the reason that it is NOT the official catholic philosophy. Also for the record, the catholic church has NO official philosophy.Since we can say that God’s “causative” factor is “within” God, this presents no problem.
Definitely drop the incorrect definition. In my little list I made a metaphysical argument, not a physical one. If there is any meaning to “action” , there musty be a difference from “inaction”. If “action” means something, then there must be a “change”. If “change” means something, there must be a “before and after”. There is noting here that would require a “temporal” framework.
This is the moment where your argument becomes problematic. (Not you "personal fault, of course.) You use the words “…cause other things to change”. Now, regardless of the specifics of the “causation”, there is an “action” there. The first sentence of Genesis is: “God said: ‘Let there be light’…”. It does not matter, if there were actual “words” or just an internal “will”, there is something that happens. And “happens” drags along “change”… etc. Mind you, it is not required nor asserted that God’s “essence” would change. (Whatever that “essence” might be.) Just like your essence does not change when you make a decision to create an answer to this post.
This phrase is meaningless. And there is a confusion between “action” and “inaction”. Yes, I heard it before. God “eternally wills” X. It has no informational value. Besides, the word “wills” implies an action.
Not so. The first decision does not have to be “external”.
I say that the presented “concept of God” is incoherent. In the presented picture there is no difference between “action” and “inaction”, between “change” and “no change”, between “before” and “during” and “after”. So what you presented here has no informational value. It is just a string of characters without any meaning, just like the phrase of “that which exists to the north from the North Pole”. And all this just to preserve the idea that God can know what does not exist. It ain’t worth it.You see, though, that your explanation can’t hold up. Either it’s lacks explicative force, or it contradicts the notion that God is God. You can’t have it both ways – you can’t posit God as God and yet refuse to accept what logically follows from that assertion.
My apologies, I misspoke previously. Upon further examination I can see that it is not in the previous line that your error lies, but rather here. The previous line is actually a legitimate application of the law of distributivity. This, however, is not. This, is rather, an error in modal logic. The <> operator is not distributive as such, thus it is an illegal transformation, to go from (<>X /\ <>Y) to <>(X /\ Y).
Possibly, Tyrion will choose B, and possibly, God will predict A. The conjunction of two true statements is true, so the expression
Where? When? How? The ontological objects we speak of (books, for example) all have spatial and temporal coordinates. Where does that book “exist”, which has no even conceived yet, since the future author’s parents have not even met? What does the word “exists” mean for this book? You commit again the fallacy of the stolen concept, when you attempt to speak of “existence” for such a book. To speak of “existence” in this context is totally meaningless.
Existence is not conditional. You see, the problems do not stop here. It is perfectly possible that the “hypothetical book” will never be written. It will always stay an unfulfilled potential. But the assertion that God “knows” all the potentials, and as such you must assert that God “knows” the contents (etc…) of that book, which was never written and will never be written either. And that truly makes the word “knows” meaningless.
That is the point! Knowledge of the future and interfering with the past lead to a logical contradiction.
Well said. Time to shake the dust out of the ol’ sandals, and move on.
No one has introduced the idea of interfering with the past, which is absurd and impossible.