[Avodah] "God who knows the future"

[David Riceman]

RMB:

<<In RCC's edition, the sentence that runs across Iyov pp 17-18 and the 
one on Qoheles pg 195 line 5 both explicitly refer to Hashem's knowledge 
of the future as part of His Knowledge of every perat.>>

I found the reference in Iyov (the first word on p. 18 is he'asid) but I 
didn't see the relevance of the passage in Koheles. The subject of the 
passage in Iyov is whether God knows particulars, which need not be 
related to whether God knows the future (it depends both on how you 
construe God "knowing" and on how you construe the future - - see MN 
III:20-21).  I am grateful for the reference, but I wonder if there's a 
place where the Ramban specifically discusses the future, what it is and 
how God knows it.

The Ramban is particularly hard to decipher because he is not a full 
blown adherent of the Kalam - - he does think that nature exists as more 
than a delusion, but he also thinks that God regularly overrules nature 
(in fact, he thinks that the overruling itself follows laws).  That 
makes me unsure how he construes the future.

<<I have no idea what they mean by lemaalah min hazeman>>

A contemporary physicist would translate "time is an emergent phenomenon".

<<In our worldview, time is a context, a dimension, in which processes 
occur.>>

I don't know what you mean by "we", paleface! It's true that physicists 
model physical phenomena that way, but I don't know how that can be 
construed as disposative.  In particular, the question is whether the 
future is uniquely determined by the present, or whether there are 
possible futures only one of which is selected (so future and past are 
asymetric), or whether, a la Everett, there are multiple futures.  Has 
someone come up with an experiment to distinguish these three alternatives?

In the second and third alternatives, space time is not a manifold - - 
you'd need to define something vaguely like a Riemann surface at each 
cusp and knit them all neatly together in a treelike structure.  In 
particular, time cannot be construed to be a dimension in those 
circumstances.

<<Everyone (except the Ralbag and some outliers most of us never heard 
of) holds that G-d knows everything in every detail.>>

This shabbos I came across Ibn Daud in HaEmunah HaRama 2:6:2 cited in 
Wolfson "Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy", p. 217, note 15.

<<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).>>

Now look at Ta'anis 8b, cited l'halacha in H. Berachos 10:22.  "Someone 
who goes to measure his harvest prays "May it be Your will, O God, to 
send a blessing <why not "to bless"?> in the works of my hand". ... if 
he measured and then prayed it is a false prayer." (I translated the 
Rambam, not the gemara)

Why doesn't this prayer request a causal loop? He's already finished 
harvesting - - the amount of grain is determined.  I would say, naively, 
the Mishna holds that the future is not predetermined, and that God will 
listen to prayers until he's determined the gender of the baby, and the 
braysa holds that the future is predetermined, and that God will listen 
to prayers until the person who prays knows the outcome.  The Rambam 
paskens the braysa and not the Mishna based on his philosophical position.

I want to critique RAM's (and possibly also RMB's) position more 
generally.  Naively, when I say "I have free will", I mean that I could 
have written either "say" or "write" in that previous sentence, and that 
it is I who determine which of those happens.  When we say that ten 
years ago someone could predict which of those would happen, we need to 
redefine "free will".

I know of two options.  One is Spinoza's - - my will is free because I 
intended to write "say".  The other is from the Kuzari (5:20): no 
discernible causal chain induced me to write "say" (see Heshek Shlomoh 
al HaKuzari p. 520 s.v. "b'li hechreichi").  The problem with the first 
solution (which I think is RAM's) is that God created my intention.  The 
problem with the second is that it redefines free will beyond 
recognition - - not that either thing can happen, but that I don't 
understand why what happened was inevitable.

I don't find either option at all palatable (see H. Tshuvah 5:3-4), 
which is why I think it's important to retain the opinions of those 
rishonim who preserve the naive understanding of free will.

David Riceman