[Avodah] A God who knows the future

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 09:36:59AM -0700, garry wrote:
> You seem to be saying that God knows your initial impulse to say  
> something annoying, and therefore if you bite your tongue you will make  
> God's knowledge incorrect.  But God also knows whether or not you will  
> bite your tongue.  The choice is yours - it's just that the _ultimate_  
> outcome is known.

I agree -- but more importantly, so does the Or Sameiach
<http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=19982&st=&pgnum=28>, near
the beginning of the page. (Which is midparagraph. The section as a whole
begins on pg 25.) In particular, note the second snippet in this quote:
    ... Hateirutz nakhon
    dema shyodeia haBorei be'asid
    hu mitzad she'etzlo yisbarakh
    3 chilqei hazeman -- avar hoveh asid --
    ke'echad heimah

    ... im kein
    Tzofeh uMabit
    ka'asher yabit ha'adam al hahoveh...

I think it's only our instinct that causes precede effects,
which is not true of HQBH (or of people who know the future by using
a time machine) that causes a false instinct.

The (flawed) notion is that if I saw on my time-viewer that you wouldn't
bite your tongue, and the causal chain always flows forward through time,
the causal chain in which you speak up is already "fixed".

Once you realize that Hashem being outside time means causal chains
that involve Him do not have to flow from past to future, the error
becomes clear.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507