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From: 54375rr@hou2a.UUCP (R.RENNINGER)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Omniscience and Freedom
Message-ID: <423@hou2a.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 12:33:55 EDT
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Posted: Mon Oct  1 12:33:55 1984
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>	... incompatibility between omnipotence and omniscience:
>	if you are omniscient, you already know
>	everything you are going to do.  Therefore, you have no
>	freedom to do anything else. --Bob Renninger	hou2a!54375rr
>
>... let's focus on "already knowing what you're going to do."  Does
>such knowledge rule out freedom?  Not at all.  If you know that you
>are going to do such-and-such at time t, and you rationally judge that
>that's the best thing to do, and you act on this judgement at t, then
>your doing such-and-such is free... 
>"[D]eterminism" and "predestination" [are both] compatible with freedom.
				--Paul Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047

To be sure, having the power to decide to act in a particular
way and not another is a manifestation of freedom, not of
unfreedom.  However, it seems to me that our freedom is
located in that moment of decision:  to the extent that we
have made an irrevocable decision, we are the servants of our
past resolve.
There can be no time at which an omniscient being makes a
decision,  because otherwise previously he would not know what
his future action would be.
For those who would answer that God operates "outside of
time," I reply that the idea of a "consciousness"
that doesn't operate in a causal sequence is simply
unrelated to anything I associate with consciousness.
If God's mind operates in some kind of "meta-time," then the
paradox is unresolved; it just retreats to another realm.
On the other hand, if His mind is unchangeing, I don't see how
to justify calling It a "mind" at all.  Consciousness to me
is inextricably caught up in the idea of continual new
reactions to the world or at least in reminiscences about past
knowledge considered in a new light.  The idea of a mind
without any mental activity needs some justification, to say
the least.

				Bob Renninger
				hou2a!54375rr