Question

Hello Rabbi Michi,
 
I came up with a refutation that, as far as I know, hasn’t been made before, against the claim that God’s knowledge contradicts free choice. I’d be glad if you could take a look. It’s a counterexample that uses a style of thinking from the world of quantum physics.
 

First of all, we need to understand what “God knows” means.
Obviously, He doesn’t have a book in heaven where this is written down, or a place in the brain where it is stored. What God’s knowledge really is in itself does not matter; only the expression of that knowledge as it appears to us matters, because that is the only thing we can possibly encounter.
It is completely pointless to argue about whether God knows or does not know something when there is no common language about the concept of “God knows.”
Therefore, we need to define how a “God who knows” might behave and affect us in the world, as opposed to a “God who does not know.”

Suppose, for the sake of example, that there is only one medicine in the world for disease X.
The medicine is currently in Israel. A plane carrying the medicine is on its way either to the United States or to China, according to some random decision that God could easily take control of for this purpose.
A few hours later, a person who has not yet discovered that he is sick decides where to fly for vacation. He is debating between the United States and China.
He chooses, flies there, and discovers that he is sick and has only a few hours left to live.

We can agree that a God who “knows,” and wants the person to live, could have sent the plane in advance to the country that person would choose to fly to, and in that way save him.
In general, one could say that a God who knows can influence and behave in a way that depends on future information, unlike a God who does not know.
Now let us ask: how can God make sure the medicine will be available to the patient without forcing the patient to fly to the place where the medicine already is?
Or from the patient’s point of view: when he hears that the plane already left yesterday, should he conclude that there is no connection at all between God and the fact that he was saved, assuming his choice was free?

I would suggest a solution that explains a method by which God can make sure the plane reaches the right destination without intervening in the decision of which destination is chosen.
The solution is that the plane flies to both destinations at once.
That is, there are two parallel universes: one universe in which the plane flies to China, and a parallel universe in which it flies to the United States.
The patient lives in a “superposition” of these two universes, in a combined state, as long as he is not aware of the plane’s location or affected by its consequences. From his perspective, he is in the combined universe.
Now he chooses where to fly. The moment he chooses, the superposition “collapses” into one of the two states: either the reality in which he is in the United States and the plane also flew there, or the reality in which both are already in China. In other words, God did not know what he would choose, but made sure that in any case the solution would exist.
Another way to think about it is that there are two parallel universes: in one universe the person flies to the United States, where the medicine was already there; in the second universe the person flies to China, where the medicine is.
A God who wants to heal the patient only has to prepare these two universes in advance.
The moment the person chooses where to fly, his consciousness chooses in which universe to continue its journey.
More generally, all universes containing all possibilities exist, and our choices are decisions of our consciousness to travel along one path of universes rather than another.
That is, the body can exist infinitely many times in parallel, but what matters is where my consciousness is moving around, not the universes that in the end my consciousness never reaches.

There is no proof that parallel universes do not exist, and if we have seen that with the help of parallel universes one can solve the apparent contradiction between God’s knowledge of the future and free choice, then we have also practically proven that the contradiction is not logical. At most, it contradicts the assumption that there is only one universe, which is a physical assumption.