Indeed, and perhaps one of these other-dimensional locals is Oz, or Wonderland, but right now we don’t even have knowledge of their existence, let alone if it is possible to live in them, travel to or from them, or if it is possible to effect our world from them. They are one big “I don’t know.”
But the OP specifically said that this is not a thread to discuss the existence or non-existence of deities. I would argue that arbitrarily restricting properties that are not uncommonly attributed to deities, directly related to answering the question posed by the OP is, IMO, in violation of the spirit of that intent.
It seems to me that you want an answer about how a deity can know the future without affecting the future. As such, and correct me if I’m wrong, I would guess that you subscribe to the A-Theory of Time. Whereas I, and likely most others who would put forth the concept of God existing outside of time, subscribe to the B-Theory of Time. If you subscribe to the former, then your objections are understandable, but I also think if you at least understand the perspective of a B-Theorist, even if you don’t agree, you might understand why it isn’t necessarily far-fetched from that perspective.
Did He know His future:
[QUOTE=Matthew 24:36]
[ The Day and Hour Unknown ] “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
[/QUOTE]
OK, though if we say that these are “predictable” with perfect knowledge, then I’m not sure what true randomness exists. Can quantum foam influence me? I suppose it might be possible… particles coming into existence (briefly) collide and influence other particles eventually leading to a synapse firing or not-firing that leads to an action. Of course, as the actor I’d have no way of telling what the ultimate cause of my action was… indeed, given the way people rationalize I have no doubt that I would have a ready explanation for my action, whether or not that was the actual cause. 
Sure. The OP was asking how an omni-max deity could be squared with a *lack *of predestination… but perhaps the answer is more nuanced, perhaps omni-max implies predestination (but only for certain values of predestination that do not force mortals to make choices).
I have no issue with omniscient implying predestination. I have lots of problems squaring omniscient with benevolent, but that is outside this topic.
I thought my answer before reading the thread might be valuable, so here it is:
I don’t know about anyone else, but I just have no problem with predestination and free will existing side by side. Everything is predestined, but there’s no way for us to know what’s going to happen until it does. Predestination does not imply lack of choice, just that your choices are known in advance.
However, I know some people who look at it differently: they believe that God just knows how to handle every variation of what can happen, and subtly manipulates it so that, in the end, the same future happens anyways. “All things work together for good” and all that.
But I’ve never met a person who doesn’t believe that God knows the future, although I’ve seen some theological arguments that conveniently forget that.
Now I was going to go read the thread, and respond, but, as I suspected, my answer has already been given. Just combine the two above answers. I have no problem with God’s interactions with us being “locked” by how he’s already decided to interact with us. Omnipotence is about potential, so God knows he could act differently, but knows he won’t.
But in this situation, “won’t” means the same thing as “can’t”. He is locked into action by knowledge and nature, and has become his own puppet-the scriptwriter is part of the cast now, and there is no one authorized to rewrite the script.
When X knows that Y occurs, this does not imply that Y could not have failed to occur.
I know right now (at 9:15) that my kid fails to brush his teeth at 8:00 this morning. But that does not mean my kid couldn’t have brushed his teeth–he could have, he just didn’t.
I know right now (at 9:15) that my wife gets home at 2:00 today. But that doesn’t mean my wife couldn’t come home some other time–she could, she just won’t.
God supposedly knows exactly what I’ll be doin at 1:00 today. That doesn’t mean that when I do that, I couldn’t have done anything else–I could have, I just didn’t.
How can he affect what happens in space and time and not exist in it, at least while he is causing said effect? Everything that *happens *in space and time necessarily *exists *in space and time.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Did He know His future:
[/QUOTE]
He knew he was about to be betrayed.
That’s a basic tenet of Christianity. God, who exists apart from space and time, has intervened/does intervene/will intervene in the Universe. And he can do this at any time or location in the universe from his vantage point on the outside - like an Author can make changes to any part of her novel without having to be in the novel itself.
But he also prayed that the cup would be taken from him – so he apparently thought his death was not certain. In any case Jesus’ foreknowledge seems to have been limited.
Congratulations!
I was about to say this, but you said it first.
But by choosing not to act he has shown his previous “knowledge” of the future to be false. One cannot both know the future and be free from it. We have free will because of our lack of knowledge of the future. It might be said that God can, “from outside space and time”(by universal remote control, perhaps?), change history. It’s an interesting notion that a supposedly perfect being would need such an ability, seeing as how he can’t make mistakes in the first place. Perhaps, though, he is a “Groundhog’s Day” type of God, with an infinite number of do-overs until he gets it right, and all we are reading is the Bible(version 300,000.5) in series of 5 billion and all we remember is the current version.
A God that changes the set future by constantly changing the past is a lot more probable than a God that can directly change the set future, in my opinion.
I think we have to make a distinction between God’s future, and our (or the universe’s) future.
God has no future to know. To say he cannot be free from the future because he knows it is nonsensical because all times are Now to God.
He knows our future because He can observe it as it happens. When he intervenes, He’s not changing the future or the past; He’s changing the present.
The only perspective we can use is our own. God may or may not be free of space and time-that is pure conjecture as yet unsupported by evidence, but we have a past, present and future. By our perspective, if God changes the past he changes written history, and if he changes the future all prophesy is moot. In fact, as far as prophesy goes he has no need to see the future-he merely has to wait until something happens, then go back in time to make a prophesy. If later on he decides that the event didn’t turn out to be that big a deal, he goes back just a little bit more and un-makes the prophesy, keeping his record spotless as far as we are concerned.
I think you’re close to the right track here, except it would be a mistake to think that things happen one way and then God changes them. Things happen just once, with God intervening or not. Prophecy is not a prediction of the future as much as a description of the future.
ETA: God doesn’t have to “wait until something happens” then “go back in time” to make a prophesy. It may look like that from our perspective, as you say.
I think that we are both just speculating without evidence…but at least my speculation doesn’t require him to reside outside space and time.
I think what you’re getting at might better be addressed in a debate about interpretations of General Relativity, excluding any references to God. Because physicists can describe the universe from a perspective independent of any particular point in space-time. And many of them would call such a perspective “outside of space-time”.
I fully understand a perspective of “outside space and time”, but I despair when when others so readily seize on it as a physical location from where one can play hide and seek with the universe.
Science can’t say much about things outside our space-time, but it cannot disprove such things, and some hypotheses need them to be workable.
I feel like this is a bit ingenuous. Yes, there’s no evidence on the nature of God. However, in the context of this discussion, we sort of take for granted that God exists, as specifically assumed by the OP. In my view it makes at least as much sense to say that God created the universe, which consists of all space-time, and therefore, is not limited by the properties of space-time, as it does to say that God created the universe, which may or may not consist of all space-time, and he is indeterminately affected by the properties of space-time.
If you want to postulate different properties for God, that’s fine, but as those supporting the consistency have, from I can tell, all also supported the “God is outside of time” idea, I think disagreeing with that isn’t going to further the argument. Inherently, by being a discussion of God, this isn’t an argument that will have any evidence, and so asking for evidence as a counter-point is… counter-productive and distracting.
Specifically that both religion AND science strongly suggest that there may be more out there than space-time as we perceive it, and that both also say that, whatever that “more” is, is something that we cannot perceive, at least at this time, it would seem to me that the expecting evidence for it is just silly.
Again, I think the issue here is that we are not viewing space-time in the same manner. That is, space and time are the same “stuff”, they aren’t separate things. That you’re despairing on differentiating between time and physical location, I have to say that I think that’s a lack of understanding of what space-time actually is.
I disagree with this. This sort of leads into a number of theoretical time paradoxes, that are I think best resolved with the idea that any attempts to change the past have simply always been exactly the way they are, and so they either fail, or it’s always been exactly that way.
I think an analogy works best to describe this, particularly one that makes space and time more or less equivalent. Imagine existence as a film, where time is represented as the progression of frames, and each frame consists of that particular snapshot of all space at that moment. Our perspective is that internal to this space-time film, as if viewing it in its completed state, and we are unable to perceive anything outside of it, as that would violate our perception limited to space-time. And in this analogy, what the director/producer does to the film is akin to how God interacts with time and the universe in my view.
That is, the director could spend weeks or months making changes in a few scenes to affect. He could decide to completely rewrite a character, remove a scene, add a scene, whatever. More interestingly, he can make adjustments to the frames in any order he wishes; in fact, its not uncommon that scenes in movies are shot in an order different from which they appear in the finished film.
However, from the perspective of the internal viewer, it is impossible to determine what order changes were made in, how difficult they were, or how long they took. In fact, every single frame is exactly the same size and lasts for exactly the same time for that perspective. And so, while viewing the finished film, the changes that the director made are seemless; they’ve simply always been that way.
More interestingly, it is trivial for the director to describe the time of the film within his perspective, as in “frame X through frame Y”, but it is impossible to describe the directors time within the perspective of the film. That is, how many frames is an hour or a day, particularly when his time and effort expended on them is necessarily different from his perspective.
That is, I believe that it is not only possible, but it is in fact necessary that God’s record will be spotless, otherwise it directly contradicts the whole concept behind him existing outside of space-time and being the creator. To question the “spotless record of God”, in my view, is equivalent to watching an amazing film and wondering how the director managed to film it all in one shot without retakes or editting. The universe, as we perceive it, is equivalent to that finished product and we are unable to perceive those “edits”.
It is my belief that one of the most important aspects of Jesus was that God willfully limited himself to the role of a human. In fact, I think a perfect analogy would be like in the movie Hancock where the protagonist easily could have broken out of prison, but willfully chose to do so.
God was specifically trying to limit himself, and I’d say that major parts of the human condition include emotions, uncertainty, and a host of other things. To that end, I think fear of his death, particular fear of the expectant pain and desire not to do it, is an absolutely expected. That God could have avoided the pain and fear but chose to endure it, to me, specifically illustrates his commitment to that end of having as authentic of a human experience as possible.
But can she make changes without physically altering the text?
This existence apart from space and time is sketchy enough. Now we’re told it’s only sometimes? Sorry. You need to pick one of two necessarily contradictory positions. He’s either in or he’s out.
Foreknowledge is foreknowledge is prescience = God is prescient.