How can God know everything if the future is never complete?

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Or this experiment showing that for an Atom to travel from A to B B would have to exist showing that in order for any Atom to move it had to have a point to move too! nuts, but it proves that if a present exists it has to have a future to exist in order for it to move forward, so before an Atom existed it needed to first come into being from what? and if the first Atom moved as Atoms do then what and where did it move too? something had to be before everything could be and that’s modern science saying that.?

www.sciencedaily.com

Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness

The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving...
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“Eternal life” in Heaven isn’t “more of the same, just without pain and without ever ending”; it’s wondrous joy without the passage of time.
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This isn’t true. We will have bodies in the next life, and so can change in multiple ways. Eternal life is only “eternal” in an analogous way, since only God is truly outside of all time.
 
And God is Himself infinite, so I’m not sure that an infinite future poses a problem to His ability to know all.
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Saying God is infinite is different. When we say God is infinite, we don’t mean he’s stretched out with an infinite magnitude (like space or time). Like “an infinite number of donuts” or whatever.

Instead, when we say God is infinite, we mean God is unrestricted.
 
What this all means as far as the OP is concerned, is that it’s possible to know an infinite number of things so long as they’re all discrete things.
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I don’t know if you’re just restating what I said, or if you’re agreeing. But yes, the reason why I say it’s impossible to know an infinite number of discrete things is because it’s impossible to have an infinite number of discrete things. Because that’s like saying you have achieved the unachievable. It’s a contradiction.

However, talking about God, we have to remember knowledge is only analogous. He does not know like we know, and even when we say God knows, it’s really equivalent to his very self.

So something that may help is to realize God does not “sit back” and observe. Even the metaphor of all time being “present to him” in the “eternal Now” is still misleading, because it still evokes images of God observing something — even if all at once, like a picture.

But really, God’s knowing is at one with his act of creating, so anything that exists at all is due to God’s “knowing it” or “thinking it” into existence.

So perhaps we advance in reconciling this apparent contradiction when we accept that all of reality, even if there is infinite time (in Heaven/the New Creation for example), only exists because God is “thinking” it in the first place. An eternal thought that does not change.

IDK, still seems hard to accept @IWantGod @Wesrock
 
Aquinas says we cannot think of God’s infinite knowledge in the sense of understanding things bit by bit:
Reply to Objection 1. The idea of the infinite pertains to quantity, as the Philosopher says (Phys. i). But the idea of quantity implies the order of parts. Therefore to know the infinite according to the mode of the infinite is to know part after part; and in this way the infinite cannot be known; for whatever quantity of parts be taken, there will always remain something else outside. But God does not know the infinite or infinite things, as if He enumerated part after part; since He knows all things simultaneously, and not successively, as said above (Article 7). Hence there is nothing to prevent Him from knowing infinite things.

Reply to Objection 2. Transition imports a certain succession of parts; and hence it is that the infinite cannot be traversed by the finite, nor by the infinite. But equality suffices for comprehension, because that is said to be comprehended which has nothing outside the comprehender. Hence it is not against the idea of the infinite to be comprehended by the infinite. And so, what is infinite in itself can be called finite to the knowledge of God as comprehended; but not as if it were traversable.
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Reply to Objection 3. The knowledge of God is the measure of things, not quantitatively, for the infinite is not subject to this kind of measure; but it is the measure of the essence and truth of things. For everything has truth of nature according to the degree in which it imitates the knowledge of God, as the thing made by art agrees with the art. Granted, however, an actually infinite number of things, for instance, an infinitude of men, or an infinitude in continuous quantity, as an infinitude of air, as some of the ancients held; yet it is manifest that these would have a determinate and finite being, because their being would be limited to some determinate nature. Hence they would be measurable as regards the knowledge of God.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
IDK, still seems hard to accept @IWantGod @Wesrock
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Well, as i said, you made a good point. I hesitate to say that it is impossible because this is simply a question of how God knows things. Similar to what you said, God knowing something is not in the same way we know things, and i don’t know what it’s like for God to know something.

Can God have complete infinite knowledge of a series that never ends. It does seem like a contradiction on the surface, but i don’t know. What i do know for certain however, is that if there is a potential infinite that goes on forever, it is impossible for God not to know it. Thus while it seems paradoxical there may be something missing in the equation we do not understand.

As for heaven, another less popular view (because we like to change), is that it is not something extending to a potential infinite, but rather like God it just is, it is an eternal now.
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
But really, God’s knowing is at one with his act of creating, so anything that exists at all is due to God’s “knowing it” or “thinking it” into existence.
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Yes this is correct. In fact if God were not to think it, none of us would exist. It shows how intimate God is with his creation.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
Instead, when we say God is infinite, we mean God is unrestricted.
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And that includes restricted by time and space, and these objections seem to assume that He’s restricted by at least the former. (It also sort of assumes time is strictly linear, but that’s another discussion entirely.)

To take things the other way: Do you think God just “poofed” into existence at the beginning of time? If so, then that exposes the fundamental flaw in your understanding of God. If not, then I’m not sure how God’s ability to, in human terms, exist in and know the infinite future is that much different than the fact that, again in human terms, He eternally exists in the infinite past.
 
Besides what others have said, I would point out that even in this material universe, and according to scientists, time is finite. Because in some billions of years the universe will cease to expand, and everything will come to a grinding halt. At that point, because nothing changes from one moment to the next, there is no time anymore, time ceases to exist. God is outside time as we know it.
 
Not in Heaven.

Aquinas says that even if we consider the thoughts and movements in man’s heart alone in Heaven, without thinking of a natural Creation in heaven, then we still have to say there is an infinite future.

But of course, there is a New Heaven and New Earth, and so that even compounds the idea that there is time in Heaven.
 
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But God doesn’t “ do ”…God “ is ”. You want God to be an active creator, and not just the " measure of things" as Aquinas put it in his reply to Objection #3. You’re anthropomorphizing God. All that you have to do is stop doing that. Of course, it means that you’ll have to change your concept of God.
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Huh? God is the active creator. That’s the whole point of Aquinas’ proofs; they suggest we need God in the here and now and not just sometime in the distant past – like at the Big Bang or whatever.
 
God is not in time.

But we say He knows all of time. And also that God knows all things in one Eternal “thought.”

But time goes on forever. But it’s been much argued you can never have a complete infinite set, for an infinite by definition is not complete. And yet, we say God knows all at once. Aquinas says that indeed, it is impossible for anyone including God to know an infinite number of things as bit by bit. He attempts to solve this by pointing out the fact God does not know things bit by bit. However, the problem still seems to remain. Because even if we say God knows things all at once, we’re still claiming he knows an infinite set of things ---- even if all at once. But, again, an infinite is never complete. Sooo…
 
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Don’t waste your time trying to puzzle this out. It’s really not important. God said that he knows all things; therefore, He does know all things.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
Because even if we say God knows things all at once, we’re still claiming he knows an infinite set of things ---- even if all at once. But, again, an infinite is never complete. Sooo…
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And that would pose a problem for a finite being, since any finite being would certainly run out of their finite reasoning capacity before being able to fully comprehend the infinite set. (This, of course, assumes that whatever is infinite isn’t enclosed somehow, like a line tracing a circle that can be traced for infinity but still reasoned about finitely.)

An infinite being, however, does not have this problem, since they don’t have some finite reasoning to run out of. This at least gets around the problem for God, since He is an infinite being.

Of course, though, we cannot fully comprehend such a being, since it expands beyond our finite reasoning. We could perhaps reason that the being exists, but getting the particulars, like how it reasons time (assuming time isn’t circular), are beyond us. At best, we may be able to envision a grander (though we may have to stop at “equal” not “grander”) yet still finite being, but an infinite being would simply remain the same as all “infinite” does to as - as an idea. (Fun story: I had one calculus professor who had to spend a long time explaining that “infinity” is an idea, because a lot of students kept trying to comprehend it as if it were a single number.)

So while I don’t want to say “stop thinking about it”, there does a come a point where we need to recognize that, due to our finiteness, we cannot fully comprehend a concept. If you want a less spiritual example, try imagining the full set of natural numbers without mathematical notations used to finitely represent the idea of the infinite set. You can’t, and that’s sort of the problem in trying to fully reason this beyond understanding there’s little reason to think an infinite being couldn’t know or eternally experiencing all of infinite time.
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
So how can God have a complete knowledge of everything in His eternal “Now” if the future is never complete?
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Understanding can be found in resolving the following divine questions:
  1. What is the Creator of everything’s greatest creation?
  2. What is the formula to fulfill the greatest creation?
Points to consider
A. The Creator must think of every detail of the plan in order to ensure the creation is successful.
B. Prior to physically creating anything, time does not exist, therefore the Creator exists outside of time.
C. Once creation and time is set in motion, the Creator knows everything that will happen, therefore nothing changes, and the Creator has complete knowledge of everything in his eternal now, even though the future hasn’t physically completed.
 
looskanal said:
But how can God know the end from the beginning if there is no end? There literally is no end.
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Additional points to consider:
D. The beginning of time is marked by the creation of the first physical thing.
E. The end of time is marked by the last physical event of the Holy Spirit, as the third person of the Holy Trinity, proceeding from the Father and the Son by spiration.
F. The beginning of the greatest creation is marked by the end of time.
G. And you are correct, there is no end to the greatest creation!
 
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looskanal said:
Well I must admit that this is something that I’ve never, ever heard of before. As such, I must admit that I’m skeptical.
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Understandable!

There is no need to take my word for it. Resolve the questions while ensuring your resolutions align with the Catholic Faith. If you have different findings, please share because I would love to consider them. I am open to recognizing that my resolutions are faulty.
 
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