The impossibility of knowing the future?

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For fun, i will make more predictions that I claim you will not invalidate if you are human, like me, and live a month more.

You will bathe. You will eat. You will sleep. You will pee within the week. You will feel pain and pleasure. I could go on.

Your argument rests on simple choices. God says you will choose blue, you choose red. Wala. I don’t need to be omniscient to make predictions about you because you are not free, my fellow human. Not by a long shot.
 
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We are discussing and attempting to use logic as a means to determine whether omniscience (including knowing the future) is possible. Catholicism teaches that freewill and omniscience exist. You are trying prove that omniscience and freewill cannot be simultaneous.

You reason that omniscience makes a person’s life into a script. Something written, so to speak. The feet of that person must always hit their mark. Failure to do so would violate the script. The only way to be free, then, is to be the author of the script, and what will be written must not be known.

I reason along the lines that omniscience is the book and paper which contains and holds the completed script. You are coauthor along with all others who write. In your book of life, there are the people you know. All the names you keep are there.

Catholics reason that God is not bound inside time. Due to his nature, he is fully present throughout time and without limitation on his omnipotence or omniscience. He knows your book’s end before you finish it. Though, he coauthors your book due to the fact that he is the author of life and probably for reasons known to God alone. If you are baptised, your name is in the Lamb’s book of life. You become a part of his life and he becomes a part of yours.

That is my best understanding. If I am wrong, someone might correct me if they know better and see this post.

The question we are trying to answer is how can someone know your script before it was authored. The answer is there is nothing before or after God. That is difficult or maybe impossible to understand. Can logic make it understandable?
 
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Trevize said:
The question boils down to “does the future exist as an ontological entity , or exists only as a potential (or set of possible events)”? If it exists as an ontological entity, then the question arises: “where”? How can we examine it - after all the physical world must exist physically - somewhere! Obviously this is not the case. If the future only exists as a potential , then there is no omniscience. Think about a die to be tossed. You know that the result will be either a number between one and six (or nothing, if someone snatches it before it lands), but that is NOT omniscience. You have to know the actual result, not just the potential one - but that cannot be known before it happens.
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Where? Examine your location in 3 seconds. Are you sure you are not a computer? You don’t seem to grasp the concept of time. No offense.

I would say the future is an actual reality, but not presently. More than potential. It is inevitable, at least, for you and me.
 
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JamesATyler said:
Where? Examine your location in 3 seconds.
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He is a free agent so he can plan future, moving his hand for example. And he can do contrary to God’s foreknowledge if the knowledge is revealed.
 
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I suppose that is true as long as his agency is truly free. But if that were the case, I don’t think God would say he couldn’t do it according to his own agency. We believe that God doesn’t tell lies.
 
JamesATyler said:
I suppose that is true as long as his agency is truly free. But if that were the case, I don’t think God would say he couldn’t do it according to his own agency. We believe that God doesn’t tell lies.
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He is free therefore he can choose between options. There are two options, to do what God revealed or do contrary. He does contrary. God’s knowledge dictates that he does otherwise. Therefore there is a contradiction.
 
Since he is free to choose, then God must tell a lie to say otherwise or to assert that he knows his choices, is what I am understanding from you. You are convinced he is free to choose something in this life. Big or small. Everything or at least one thing. Regardless, it can’t be known, or he has to do it. It would mean that everything is under the dominion of God. Good and evil. Everything. Then we arrive at that other question often pondered. Why does he allow an evil will to act. And another often pondered question. Can an evil person become good? And, Can you ever truly be free?

I guess the answer is, that those who love to do the will of God are blessed.
 
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I can’t read all the previous posts to be honest but I just wanted to say that one of the most interesting stories I heard on the subject of knowing the future etc was of blessed Anna Maria Tiagi. There have been many blessed people with this gift as well of saints of course.

Sometimes I liken our unawareness to that of the ant or earthworm and how unaware those creatures are of mankind, if they could debate the existence of humans it would sound similar I think to how we debate the existence of God and His powers, including His power to know the future.
 
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