Q&A: God's Foreknowledge
God's Foreknowledge
Question
Hi,
Hello Rabbi Michael,
As part of my course in advanced logic (at Harvard, Boston), I taught the strategy of logical reverse engineering. Some of the students also attend the course in "Practical Philosophy."
Below is a discussion we recently had:
T (proposition): "If God wants to, He can know the results of the election in advance" (in their case—"Trump" / "Biden").
Let A be the set of terms (in your language—"concepts"), and let B be the set of axioms ("assumptions") that operates on A in order to prove T.
- What would the minimal A and B be in order to prove T?
- Are there several pairs (A,B) that are disjoint/independent (this should be defined precisely) that solve question 1?
Do you think the above discussion is reasonable?
Answer
Hello.
In my opinion, the question is not well defined. You need to say whether His ability to know means knowing without intervening and affecting what happens, or whether He can influence it, in which case of course He can also know.
My personal view is that He cannot know unless He intervenes.
I'm not sure I understand the discussion. Are you asking whether there could be several independent proofs of this claim? (That is, after minimization we do not end up with the same proof—which would show that they are equivalent.) But it is still possible that one proof would be longer than the others, even after it can no longer be minimized.
For example, I can prove it on the basis of the following assumptions: Everyone whose name begins with A knows everything in advance. God begins with A, and therefore He knows everything in advance. You understand that there are infinitely many different proofs like this that cannot be mapped onto one another.
In short, I probably didn't understand the discussion.