[lit-ideas] Re: TUESDAY'S FORCAST
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:15:19 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Thu, 30/7/09, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: TUESDAY'S FORCAST
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Thursday, 30 July, 2009, 9:30 PM
> Donal: if God knows all then
> S/He must know what is to come, but if this is known then
> God cannot be empowered to change what is to come because
> the capacity to change it would mean it cannot be known in
> advance;
>
>
> Objections: (1) There is nothing in the concept of God to
> establish that "Godly knowing" is in any way similar to
> human knowing. There is likely nothing to
> be said about God or what we presume to be attributes of
> God.
A main problem with this objection is that it may be taken to concede that the
use of the human term "knowing" apropos God is inappropriate since His/Hers may
be in no "way similar to human knowing" - if there truly is "nothing to be said
about God", then surely we shouldn't be trying to offer what can only be
misleading and inadequate and inappropriate anthropomorphisms. This knocks down
the validity of an "all knowing" God as simply being another misleading and
inadequate and inappropriate anthropomorphism.
(2) Theology outlined in the JOHN (which Faust is
> reading when Mephistopheles approaches) can be construed to
> mean that all times happen at once; in other words, because
> we are "in time," we are blind to the ever-present and
> singular aspect of time. Because God, in this version of
> God, sees all time as a single moment, there is nothing to
> prevent a change in the past or to deny the ongoing
> perfection of what happens. This view contrasts eternity
> (being outside of time) with infinite arrow-of-time (one
> damned thing after another).
There are a number of objections to this: first, a metaphysics that asserts a
4-D Parmenidean 'block universe' where "all [events] happen at once", is a
metaphysics that denies the reality of time and change [which become on this
view a subjective illusion] - but this metaphysics must surely undermine a
Christian ethics that asserts the reality of human suffering and the moral
imperative of lessening avoidable suffering.
The 4-D Parmenidean view, held at one point by Einstein, is highly problematic
as metaphysics: see for example Popper's "The Open Universe - An Argument For
Indeterminism". There on p.2 fn.2 Popper recounts his discussions with Einstein
on this point: "I argued that if men, or other organisms, could experience
change and genuine succession in time, then this was real. It could not be
explained away by a theory of the successive rising into our consciousness of
time slices which in some sense coexist; for this kind of "rising into
consciousness" would have precisely the same character as that succession of
changes which the theory tries to explain away.......[T]he evolution of
life..cannot really be understood on the basis of any theory which interprets
time as if it were something like another (anisotropic) space coordinate. After
all, we do _not_ experience space coordinates. And this is because they are
simply nonexistent: we must beware of
hypostatizing them; they are contructions which are almost wholly arbitrary.
Why should we then experience the time coordinate - to be sure, the one
appropriate to our inertial system - not only as real but also as absolute,
that is, as unalterable and independent of anything we do (except changing our
state of motion)?
Lastly the view that
"Because God, in this version of
> God, sees all time as a single moment, there is nothing to
> prevent a change in the past or to deny the ongoing
> perfection of what happens"
may be doubted on several grounds - for one, if all is eternally present then
surely all is unchangeable? And if all is eternally present then talk of "the
past" and "the ongoing" is illusory.
Donal
Bedtime For This Bonzo
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