[Avodah] God who knows the future

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 05:26:08PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: The reason some people are bothered by Hashem's foreknowledge (or,
: alternatively, those who would be bothered by the presence of tomorrow's
: newspaper, even if it stays unread) if that they think the foreknowledge
: determines the choice...

IOW, we have a natural assumption that causes precede effects in time
to the point that even when we know that the usual rules of time have
been violated, we still imagine that causation runs in that direction.
That assumption is being violated, creating the illusion of a problem.

In the case of getting tomorrow's newspaper, or being told by HQBH
the future, or even if He simply treated us in a manner that reflects
our future decisions, there is a problem -- the grandfather paradox.
This is a famous problem among philosophers and science fiction fans,
a basic problem with time travel. What if someone went back in time and
killed his own grandfather before his grandparents event met. In which
case, the father is never born, the killer is never born, there is no
one to kill the grandfather, and so the father and son DO exist...

Similarly where the cycle is consistent. Someone goes on a trip to the
past, and loses his ball point pen. Mr Bic finds that pen, takes it
apart, and patents this idea. Who invented the ball point pen?

It would seem that either time travel is impossible, or it causes a
constriction of free will -- killing one's grandfather would simply
never succeed. (Science fiction writers tend to take a version of
the former -- time travel puts you back in time, but thereby causing
a new parallel universe. You don't act within your own past.)

This is why I would remove the concept of Hashem knowing now what will
happen in the future. It avoids understandings in which HQBH is the arrow
closing a cycle in causality. The cycle would only be closed if HQBH
would act today based on that knowledge of the future, thus causing an
effect that precedes its cause within time.


This begins to answer the question RDR asks about my position in his
reply.

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 05:41:37PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> The problem for RMB is why a prayer before pregnancy is different from a  
> prayer after pregnancy.

The prayer doesn't change G-d or His knowledge, it is attempting to
determine the baby's gender. Which is where Hashem inserts an effect
within the timeline.

A prayer before pregnancy creates a world in which a child of the desired
gender is more likely to fit Hashem's plan. Cause precedes effect.
A prayer after 40 days of pregnancy places the effect that Hashem
inserts into the timeline before the cause, and thus would be demanding
a causal loop. If Hashem were to do that, free will would be curtailed
(as I tried to show with the Grandfather Paradox).

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A sick person never rejects a healing procedure
micha at aishdas.org        as "unbefitting." Why, then, do we care what
http://www.aishdas.org   other people think when dealing with spiritual
Fax: (270) 514-1507      matters?              - Rav Yisrael Salanter