The Future

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Are statements about the future events that no one can know about until they happen true or false? For instance: Tomorrow the steelers will win. and then the next day they do. Was this statement niether true nor untrue until the steelers actually won or was it always true?
Also what if the steelers lost would that make the speaker a liar, and the statement untrue all along or what?
 
johnnycatholic said:
Are statements about the future events that no one can know about until they happen true or false? For instance: Tomorrow the steelers will win. and then the next day they do. Was this statement niether true nor untrue until the steelers actually won or was it always true?
Also what if the steelers lost would that make the speaker a liar, and the statement untrue all along or what?
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Ach, it’s like Schrodinger’s cat!

Unless one had the power to see the future, how could making a statement like “The Steelers are gonna win tomorrow!” be a lie? It’s more wishful thinking than anything else. For it to be a lie, the intent to be untruthful would have to be there at the time of the statement, and since it is impossible to know what will happen (unless there’s a scam for the other team to throw the game, and that’s a whole other moral issue), there can be no intent to deceive. You can’t retroactively make someone a liar. If that were so, everyone would be a liar, probably daily, as we all make statements and guesses that turn out to be incorrect.
 
What if you throw in the fact that God knows whether the statement is true or false even if the speaker doesn’t. Does this affect the inherent truth or falsity of the statement?
 
johnnycatholic said:
Are statements about the future events that no one can know about until they happen true or false? For instance: Tomorrow the steelers will win. and then the next day they do. Was this statement niether true nor untrue until the steelers actually won or was it always true?
Also what if the steelers lost would that make the speaker a liar, and the statement untrue all along or what?
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This one is really a paradox.
  1. God, existing outside of time, knows our future.
  2. We are free to choose our future until death, and quite possibly, after our deaths.
  3. We cannot alter the future, yet we are free to choose, and our choice determines our future.
  4. Yet God knows our future, yet does not determine our future.
It gives me a headache thinking about it.
 
johnnycatholic said:
What if you throw in the fact that God knows whether the statement is true or false even if the speaker doesn’t. Does this affect the inherent truth or falsity of the statement?
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Well, God is rather outside of time as we understand it, so He knows what is going to happen. So yes, if someone said “The Steelers will win” and God knows it isn’t going to happen, then the statement is ultimately false (although why God would care about football is beyond me) But he also knows that we don’t know, and he knows our intentions. He knows that we do not (usually) intend to deceive or cause harm and that we have no way of knowing before the fact whether our statement is true or false. He designed us, after all.

I’m not really understanding where the difficulty is. Do you wish for God or fellow humans to regard as liars everyone who makes a statement or guess that is later proved to be incorrect? That doesn’t sound very merciful. We aren’t perfect, and we don’t have God’s perfect wisdom.
 
So we are in agreement then. A man who tells his daughter that he will be back from a war even though he has no idea whether or not he will in fact be back is not necessarilly a liar tchnically.

But, it seems to me that there is a deception here in that the implication of the statement is a knowledge of whether or not he will be back that he does not have, so in a way he is lying.Though in this case his intent is to make his daughter feel better not to lie or is he lying to make his daughter feel better… I wonder what the level of sin there is here.
 
johnnycatholic said:
So we are in agreement then. A man who tells his daughter that he will be back from a war even though he has no idea whether or not he will in fact be back is not necessarilly a liar tchnically.

But, it seems to me that there is a deception here in that the implication of the statement is a knowledge of whether or not he will be back that he does not have, so in a way he is lying.Though in this case his intent is to make his daughter feel better not to lie or is he lying to make his daughter feel better… I wonder what the level of sin there is here.
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He’s not intending to lie, so there is no lie and no sin. The assumption and hope is (and should be) that he will come back. Unfortunately things don’t always happen as they should in war, but telling the child that he isn’t coming back has as much chance (or less) of being true than telling her that he IS.

By your reasoning, I am lying to my husband every morning when we both leave for work and I tell him “I’ll see you tonight.” Something awful could happen and we may, in fact, not see each other that night. However, the assumption and hope is that we will see each other that night. There is no intention to lie and thus no sin.

In your example, perhaps a more absolutely true response would be “I plan to return, and will do everything in my power to do so”. Otherwise, I don’t know what you expect. I think God is merciful enough that He will not hold our unintentionally wrong statements against us.
 
The only argument I can find against your statement Jen is that when you kiss your husband goodbye in the morning as you have thousands of times you really can reasonably expect to return but in the case of the father going into combat his odds of actually returning are less than yours, and therefore his immenent return cannot neccessarily be the truly reasonable expectation but it should be the hope.

So generally I agree with you because to not say that he would return might be a sin against hope and would give fear a measure of power over him. So even though the odds might be against his return, if he is trusting to God and hope that he will then his statement is a sign of hope rather than a potentially false statement about the future.
 
SeekerJen said:
Well, God is rather outside of time as we understand it, so He knows what is going to happen. So yes, if someone said “The Steelers will win” and God knows it isn’t going to happen, then the statement is ultimately false (although why God would care about football is beyond me)
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Of course not – baseball is way better. 😉

Peace,
Dante
 
Recently listened to Peter Kreeft on philosophy. He said if a philoshical question, and its answer helps no one, it’s not worth the time asking it. It may or may not apply in this case. Dan
 
johnnycatholic said:
Are statements about the future events that no one can know about until they happen true or false? For instance: Tomorrow the steelers will win. and then the next day they do. Was this statement niether true nor untrue until the steelers actually won or was it always true?
Also what if the steelers lost would that make the speaker a liar, and the statement untrue all along or what?
Click to expand...
:twocents: Statements about future events that no one can know about until they happen are just expressions of people’s hopes or expectations. Nothing more. (Unless of course they are purposely trying to deceive; then it becomes sinful). Otherwise it is morally neutral. Usually these statements are good for us, because they help us to know love and serve our fellow man better, by knowing his hopes and expectations.
 
Not all statements fall into the categories TRUE or FALSE. Hypotheticals can never be either one. And statements about the future are always hypothetical.

Also, all statements rely on the meaning of the concepts within the statement. Which is why a common understanding is needed before a discussion of the correctness of a statement can be made.

So if you claim the ‘Steelers won the game’. We need to know you are in the USA, 20th century, and a football fan. Otherwise the statement could be false, meaningless, or true.
 
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