[Avodah] A God who knows the future

[T613K at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/5/2011, [R Chaim Manaster] salman at videotron.ca writes:
> I am sorry, I hit the Enter key too quickly. I meant to add to the
> previous post that I do not see how your facile answer that since we do
> not know the future, there is no problem with how bechira exists and
> is not constraned due to HKB'H's fore knowledge. What difference does
> our lack of fore knowledge have to do with it. This amounts to saying
> that in truth we do not have bechira, just we don't know it at the time
> we are making our "choice" because we are not omniscient about what
> HKB'H already knows. The question is why is our choice not constrained,
> not whether we are ignorant about the constraint.

Chazal were /acknowledging/ that there is a paradox, not attempting to
/explain/ it!

I thought I was as clear as could be that there is no /logical/ way to
reconcile the paradox. It is just that, in our daily lives, the paradox
makes no practical difference.

I was also saying that Pirkei Avos must be understood as it has always
been understood -- to express something that is true albeit paradoxical --
and that the paradox cannot be explained, or explained away, by finding
some new and original way to translate the words so as to somehow make
it come out that it doesn't mean what it says and that Hashem doesn't
have foreknowledge after all, which chas vesholom to say such a thing.

[Email #2. -micha]

In a message dated 8/5/2011, salman at videotron.ca writes:
>> A finite line can contain an infinite number of points but the   
>> traveler does not have to touch separately each and every one of those  
>> points to get to the end of the line.[--old TK]

> Just to nit pick a little, I think that statement is wrong in a
> strict mathematical sense if you are treating the line (distance) as
> a continuum....

It was to forestall just such a statement that I used the word
"separately" -- I said that the traveler does not have to touch each
point on the line "separately" -- as he would if he were to literally
attempt to get to the half way point, and before that the halfway point,
and before that the halfway point....etc....of line A..............B.

Of course you are correct that a line must be treated as a continuum,
and not as a series of discrete points, if I am ever to get from Miami
to New York.

--Toby Katz