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is a knowable future necessary?

loci
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Posted 04/21/05 - 02:16 PM: Subject: is a knowable future necessary?	#1
I have eliminated my prior argument, as I did not expect nor intend for it to be a free will debate. So, is a knowable future necessary? If God acts outside of time, what need of a defined past, present, future does God have? If God acts within time, why could a knowable future not be a logical impossibility? What does constitute a need for a knowable future?

180 Proof
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Posted 04/21/05 - 04:07 PM:	#2
loci wrote: If God acts outside of time, what need of a defined past, present, future does God have? "acts outside of time" is nonsense since action presupposes temporality. If God acts within time, why could a knowable future not be a logical impossibility? What does constitute a need for a knowable future? if a 'god' acts at all, then it is temporal. "the future" would confine an active (or interventionist) 'god' no less than it confines mortals to an existential (as well cosmological) horizon. as spinoza said, in contrast to the othodox incoherent, self-contradicting notions of the biblical deity, "deus, sive natura". like maimonides before him, spinoza suggests that whatever we call 'god' is the source of all attributes and yet beyond any (self-consistent) attribution we can make. "god or nature" does not cause but consists of causes. the anthropomorphism of (any) source or ultimate condition of the anthropos merely begs its own question, and leads back to the scholastic impasse of debating the number of stain-glassed angels dancing on medieval pinheads ...
If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sound -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

loci
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Posted 04/21/05 - 04:27 PM:	#3
Yes and what if it read "if God EXISTS outside of time, what need of a defined past, present , future does God have?" still nonsense? ...you should already know I don't agree with this 'outside of time' idea, but I don't have a problem asking questions that meet people on their own ground. To add, "if God Exists within time, why could a knowable future not be a logical impossibility. What does consitute a need for a knowable future?" ............so what say you of this knowable future?

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Posted 04/21/05 - 04:54 PM:	#4
loci wrote: Yes and what if it read "if God EXISTS outside of time, what need of a defined past, present , future does God have?" still nonsense? ...you should already know I don't agree with this 'outside of time' idea ... explain what you mean by "EXISTS outside of time". ...so what say you of this knowable future? the future is no more 'knowable' than the horizon. as shakespeare pointed out it's "the undiscovered country". it's an asymptotic concept, like the infinite: incomplete, open-ended, approximate, indefinite.
If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sound -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

loci
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Posted 04/21/05 - 05:56 PM:	#5
explain what you mean by "EXISTS outside of time". It was posited by more than one person, who is not me, and who I do not agree with. --This is not the point though, and I'm not going to get wrapped around the axle thinking about it. What I am doing is assuming the person who does supports the idea of a knowable future is at least entitled to believe it. Then I'm asking them....read the above. I forgot to answer your question. I don't know what that could mean to those who believe it. So for the sake of the main question, and our inability to agree on what "outside of time" means, I decided to move past it. Kind of like "Here, you can have it. Now why do you need it?" It's futile to question why we exist or why plants exist, but at least we know we and they do. For a knowable future, there is neither empirical proof, nor a divine necessity we can posit. Beyond 'just wanting to' we have no reason to think that a knowable future exists. It is absurd. Edited by dreamweaver on 04/29/05 - 10:27 AM. Reason: combined posts

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Posted 04/29/05 - 10:00 AM:	#6
Is a knowable future necessary, posed by an individual who doesn't know the future, already has a personal answer to the question. No offense, but it is quite obvious that you do not need to know the future, or you already would, out of necessity. You seemed to be functioning fine without knowing the future. You wrote this afterall, which leads me to believe that you ate today, went to the bathroom, typed on your computer, etc.... Don't worry so much. God's not on vacation. You a testament to the fact that a knowable future, at the very least, is not necessary to everyone.

loci
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Posted 05/15/05 - 02:47 PM:	#7
I think your response is off center. You are right that we do not need to know the future, yet theists you do understand are living in light of it. The subject is not who knows the future, because even God could 'close God's eyes to it', but the necessity of a future condition that exists and is knowable for God. For those opposing predeterminism lets suppose a knowable and thus definite future, doesn't entail a set series of events leading up to this knowable future. How could a definite future result from events that are yet changeable? I.e. How can we say that Satan will have an army, yet still believe everyone has the chance to be saved? A solution palpable to our little minds seems to be that there is a difference between knowing what will happen and having the power to actualize a will. This difference is that the former implies something already in existence, where the later recognizes nothing beyond the present moment and the whim of a very powerful will. Divine Foreknowledge isn't resultant of omniscience, it is resultant of omnipotence. For a mind that cannot grasp things like "outside of time"...time as it is connected to space and gravity is a complex thing, and to allude to something outside of it is a naive oversimplification. Thus for the theists that originally took me as a predeterminist trying to refute God and who offered a staunch defense of 'outside time'...I offer you a better defense, one that you can truly comprehend. That is this: There exists no knowable future, God only knows what will be the future because God is powerful enough to affect the present to God's will and thus shape the future in our own free will. If you've ever wondered about time travel forward, or the legitemacy of psychics this refutes them, and yet agrees wholly with science, free will, and religion.

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Posted 05/15/05 - 04:57 PM:	#8
Contrary to popular (mis)conception, I believe that time is non-existent. Is it so proposterous to think that man created time to describe the passing of events just as he created God to justify his own existence? I think not.
light and darkness are a fire and wind; fire brings warmth and comfort, yet it burns and withers everything it touches. Wind blows cold, lifting soil into the air, yet it also bears the seeds of the earth. Each then brings both life and death.

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Posted 05/15/05 - 04:58 PM:	#9
You cannot prove that a past or a future exist any more than you can prove that a God exists.
light and darkness are a fire and wind; fire brings warmth and comfort, yet it burns and withers everything it touches. Wind blows cold, lifting soil into the air, yet it also bears the seeds of the earth. Each then brings both life and death.

loci
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Posted 05/16/05 - 01:40 PM:	#10
No one's interested in proving anything, just rationalizing. For nonskeptics a future is self evident. If there is a present (even a skeptic must concede their existence and thus the present), something will continue, change, or end the state...that is the future. I.e. two nanoseconds from now existence will cease, two nanoseconds from then...well there are no two nanoseconds from then. You might be hanging on the wrong string though, as the original question is posed to those who already believe in a future, however insignificant that future may be.

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