RE: Omniscience: A thought experiment
April 19, 2015 at 12:15 am
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 12:22 am by robvalue.)
(April 19, 2015 at 12:02 am)noctalla Wrote:(April 18, 2015 at 11:56 pm)robvalue Wrote: As a quick sideline, it's come up many times that omniscience and free will are not compatible; even god's free will. Unless you drop God knowing what will happen in the future as being logically impossible, I suppose.
What if time branches, with every possibility occurring in it's own separate reality. God may be aware of every nuance of every possible reality, but could we not still be free to choose our own path?
I don't think so. I'm about to go through one of two doors, a red and a blue one. It feels to me like I haven't decided until I'm right next to the doors, and I go through the red one. God knows I was going to go through the red one. Could I have gone through the blue one?
Make it even clearer: God appears in the room, which has only these two exits, and tells me I will walk through the red door in 5 seconds, I'll walk back through it again in another 5 seconds, then I'll walk through the blue door after 5 more seconds. He knows I will do this since he knows everything.
Can I choose to do anything differently to what God is telling me I will do?
To sum up: if a real "choice" is made, it must be one where it is impossible to predict which of multiple options will happen. (This could be because the process of choosing is random.) If God can predict it, it's not a free choice, nothing else can possibly happen. If he can't predict it, he's not omniscient.
I see no way out of that, but I may be mistaken so feel free to let me know if so


God could give me as much detail as he wants about what I'll do in between those times as well, to stop me making any choices about how to fulfil the "prophecy" by running about weirdly.
So, it seems to me knowing the outcome of a choice, assuming there is one, is logically impossible. Therefor it should be excluded from the "weak" omniscience stance.
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