Omniscience (reject, choices, choice, creation, experience)

Francine · #1 01-01-2008, 11:58 AM

Absolute knowledge and absolute power are mutually contradictory. Once an event is sampled and recorded, it cannot be changed. To change a previously known outcome means it wasn't really known. The inability to change a thing reduces power to nothing. Omnipotence can only act where omniscience does not look. Omniscience can only look where omnipotence does not act. Limiting foresight is a condition for granting human free will. By averting His gaze, God carves out a space for men to freely act. This achievement allows created beings to respond to God meaningfully.

Sola'lor · #2 01-01-2008, 12:43 PM

You've got some great topics.

You make a good point. This is one of the topics I enjoy pondering but it's very difficult to explain. So forgive me if I start talking about time travel. I would like to put forth that omniscience and onipotence are distint from eachother but not excluive. Omniscience is thought and omnipotence is action. God knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in this univrse. However that doesn't stop Him from taking action. He simple knows already what action has been, is being, and will be taken. It doesn't make his power a slave to His knowledge nor does it make His knowledge a slave to his power. He simply knows what actions are. It's kind of hard to explain.

I don't believe that the past can ever be changes. Why? Because it is in the past. The actions have already been taken. But I also don't believe that the future can be changed. The future can never be changed from what will happen. If I post this message then no matter what has happened I will post this.

Sorry but the best description I can come up with is:

I am always going to take those actions that I am going to take.

The only difference is that God knows the future, I don't know the future. It's not that I'm predetermined to make certain choices, but rather I am going to make the choices that I am going to make. I can't even not make a choice that I'm going to make. THat's why if you could time travel into the past or future you could change anything. If I travelled back and tried to kill Hitler I couln't do it because Hitler wasn't killed by me. No matter what actions I would take back in time it wouldn't change anything because those actions would have already been taken before I time travelled, before I was even born. Opps I went to time travel.

So no omniscience doesn't contradtice omnipotence. Omniscience mearly give knowledge of actions that have been, are and will be taken.

I better stop now or I'm going to end up typing the same thing over and over again. I wish I could explain it better. It makes perfect sence to me.

Francine · #3 01-03-2008, 07:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sola'lor

The only difference is that God knows the future, I don't know the future.

I reject the possibility that the future can be known, even by God, for the following reason:

If the future already exists, then why do we think it's "now" now? And why does everyone agree it's now? If all of time is laid out like a tapestry, then my now could be your yesterday, or your tomorrow. We could be surrounded by ghosts that are people we think are responding to us, but they aren't really "here" with us, now, because the point of view of each one of us is in a unique place in time. So I conclude that there is only two possibilites: The past is growing, and our now is the place where new events are added on to the past, or there is only an eternal now moment that changes. In both cases, the future literally does not exist.

Rolling_Stone · #4 01-03-2008, 09:41 AM

This subject has always fascinated me but it calls for a lot of speculation.

In other threads I described time as "the movement between the birth of an idea and its fulfillment." But God is eternal and therefore there was never a time when the Idea was not whole and complete in the mind of God. Does the space-time universe even exist for God? I think it does, but not in a way we can imagine. Perhaps something like a stage-shadow where his real concern, a dance of finitized (not in my dictionary, but appropriate here) personalities takes place as a means of escaping the experiential limitations of unqualified infinity.

Just a thought.

Willamena · #5 01-03-2008, 01:26 PM

To me, omniscience in concept is "all-informed," and omnipotence is "all-being." Those concepts make much more sense in terms of immanent creation than the ideas that allow a time-line to take precendence over eternity.

Rolling_Stone · #6 01-03-2008, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willamena

To me, omniscience in concept is "all-informed," and omnipotence is "all-being." Those concepts make much more sense in terms of immanent creation than the ideas that allow a time-line to take precendence over eternity.

I accept that. Fits with what I said.

Sola'lor · #7 01-03-2008, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francine

I reject the possibility that the future can be known, even by God, for the following reason:

If the future already exists, then why do we think it's "now" now? And why does everyone agree it's now? If all of time is laid out like a tapestry, then my now could be your yesterday, or your tomorrow. We could be surrounded by ghosts that are people we think are responding to us, but they aren't really "here" with us, now, because the point of view of each one of us is in a unique place in time. So I conclude that there is only two possibilites: The past is growing, and our now is the place where new events are added on to the past, or there is only an eternal now moment that changes. In both cases, the future literally does not exist.

I think I understand what you are talking about. However I view it rather like a movie. Everyhting is already there. It's just that we are only at one point in the movie at any given time. Now what you are saying is that time should be diferent for each of us because we would each be a t a different point in time. But I think this would be impossible as it would be nearly impossible to interact with each other. I don't view it as us moving through time, but the universe as a whole is moving through time. The entire universe is only at one place in time at any given time. The space-time fabric of the universe is being pulled toward the future. That is why we are all experienceing the same moment in time. In order to get 'out of sync' if you will, we would have to be free from the universe.

But I agree with you in part that our nows are somebodyies yesterdays and our nows are somebodies tommorrows. If we think about it our now is yesterday's tomorrow. and our now is tomorrows yesterday.

lunamoth · #8 01-03-2008, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Francine

I reject the possibility that the future can be known, even by God, for the following reason:

If the future already exists, then why do we think it's "now" now? And why does everyone agree it's now? If all of time is laid out like a tapestry, then my now could be your yesterday, or your tomorrow. We could be surrounded by ghosts that are people we think are responding to us, but they aren't really "here" with us, now, because the point of view of each one of us is in a unique place in time. So I conclude that there is only two possibilites: The past is growing, and our now is the place where new events are added on to the past, or there is only an eternal now moment that changes. In both cases, the future literally does not exist.

That makes sense if we can understand that past and present do not exist, and eternity (and eternal life) are precisely now.

Wandered Off · #9 01-03-2008, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sola'lor

However I view it rather like a movie. Everyhting is already there.

Which would make free will an illusion.

Rolling_Stone · #10 01-03-2008, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lunamoth

That makes sense if we can understand that past and present do not exist, and eternity (and eternal life) are precisely now.

Is the circle of time fixed or always changing? I mean, if God experiences the circle of time from the outside, is what he experiences static or always changing?

"Time's arrow" is a puzzle to scientists because according to theory past and future are symmetrical. It should flow in both directions, but it doesn't. (There's an article about this in the Jan issue of Scientific American.) Here's something I've thought about (like I said, it's a topic that fascinates me). It's speculation (maybe just plain nuts), but consistent with all the facts with which I'm aware.

The present, the now, is where the past and its "echo" from the future intersect creating an interference pattern we call "universe." But the movement from past into future, and from the future into the past, doesn't end in with the interference pattern, where our decisions in the now affects both timelines, thereby modifying the circle of time in its entirety. God therefore sees all of time not as something fixed, but as a dynamic and perpetual "becoming." Free will is not an illusion, but a creative act.

Crazy, huh?