Absolute knowledge of God versus freedom of choice
Hello Rabbi,
I'm in the middle of reading the book The Science of Freedom (I'm currently struggling with physics)
I was terribly disturbed by what it says there – that the moment God gave free choice, He gives up knowledge of the future in connection with the choice.
After all, the whole definition of God is "knowing everything"!!
And more than that – the entire future depends on man's choices (and thus God seemingly cannot know a moment in advance because someone might decide to destroy the world now).
It follows from this that it is as if God is incapable of knowing the future, even of the next second.
I would like to receive clarification on this issue…
cedar
לגלות עוד מהאתר הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
0 Answers
Hello Erez. First, where do you get the definition of God as knowing everything? Second, not all of the future depends on a person's choices, since there are also natural processes that are governed by the laws of nature. I think I explained there (Newcomb's paradox) that knowing the future in connection with actions that are done by choice is a logical contradiction, and just as God cannot make a round triangle, He also cannot know what I will choose tomorrow. Every ability is the ability to do everything that can be done. But when He cannot do what is not defined at all (a logical contradiction), there is no harm in His entire ability. Can God make a bullet that penetrates any wall and also a wall that stops any bullet? Of course not, since it is impossible for these two objects to exist together. Can He turn Himself into a human? If so, I will shoot him in the head and kill him. If he still doesn't die, then he wouldn't be a human (because a person who is shot in the head dies). Therefore, it is clear that He cannot turn Himself into a human. The Maimonides in the MUN and the Rashba (Response to Ch. D. C. Reld) wrote that God cannot do things that contain a logical contradiction (such as a square whose diagonal is shorter than its side). I explained this at the end of my book Two Carts and a Hot Air Balloon.
——————————————————————————————
Asks:
Hello and thank you for the response. Maimonides, in eight chapters, sees a need to reconcile God's knowledge of the future with free choice. Moreover, we see instances in the Bible such as God's promises to Abraham and the prophecies of destruction and resurrection in which God reveals to humans the future that will occur. What I meant to say is that the future of nature also depends on man… He has the option to destroy on the one hand or to develop on the other – as I understand it, the entire future depends on choice (as I said – a man may decide to drop an atomic bomb and thus eliminate a country, so the entire future related to it is vague and unknown because it may not even exist by then).
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Hello Erez.
I don't think much of the future is determined by our choices. Consider the law of large numbers. When you add up the influences and choices of all humans, you get roughly the expected result.
But this debate is not really important. As I wrote to you, knowing what will be chosen in the future is a logical contradiction and is not possible. There is nothing to argue about, since it is a claim that has a logical proof.
Therefore, if everything depends on our choice (as you say), the conclusion is that God does not know the future at all. That's all.
And what the Rambam finds appropriate to reconcile knowledge with choice (both in the answer to the fifth chapter and in the eighth chapter), and so do many other Rishonim, stems from their mistake in apparently not understanding that this is a logical contradiction. The Rambam, on the other hand, apparently understood this, and his answer is that God truly does not know (at least that is how the Shelah interpreted it in the introduction to his book in the section "Beit Bechirah", see ibid.). But even if this interpretation is incorrect, my conclusion would be that the Rambam was also wrong about this. I see no other way out.
In my book on theology, I will expand more on this question and the dilemma regarding the "subordination" of God to logical constraints (in the previous message, I mentioned the Maimonides and the Rashba on this point). —————————————————————————————— Asks: Hello and thanks again for the response.
I understand the logic in this argument, what was difficult for me was the contradiction between it and the familiar and known (the consensus).
I must say that I was quite surprised by the sentence "My conclusion would be that Maimonides was also wrong about this"
Why doesn't the Rabbi believe, as does Maimonides, that God's knowledge is not the same type of knowledge as ours, and therefore we cannot understand (even with this answer, I have a hard time)?
Are there other sources that claimed, like the Shelah, about Maimonides that God does not know? —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: The consensus doesn't really interest me, certainly not on these issues.
The Rambam's argument has received several opposite interpretations. The Rabbi on Atar, for example, thinks that the Rambam did not answer at all (and he criticizes him for this, and offers his own answer). The Shelah believes that the Rambam did answer that his knowledge is not like our knowledge. But what does this mean? That he does not have our knowledge. What he has is something else that is not even called "knowledge" for some reason. In short, he does not have what we call knowledge.
There is also a commentary on Genesis 6 that wrote that God prevents knowledge from Himself. On the surface, this does not answer the question, because if the information exists, then even if no one knows it, it contradicts our freedom of choice. Perhaps his intention is to say that God prevents knowledge from Himself by giving us free choice (because the fact that we have free will contradicts the fact that information would exist before we chose, and information that does not exist cannot be known – not even God).
But as I wrote to you, I'm not really interested in the opinions of commentators on such matters. Even if everyone, including Maimonides, thought differently, I would hold to my opinion. Even if one can speak of authority in halakhic contexts (and even there it is important not to exaggerate the matter), regarding facts (such as whether God knows or not) there is no authority.
I don't think much of the future is determined by our choices. Consider the law of large numbers. When you add up the influences and choices of all humans, you get roughly the expected result.
But this debate is not really important. As I wrote to you, knowing what will be chosen in the future is a logical contradiction and is not possible. There is nothing to argue about, since it is a claim that has a logical proof.
Therefore, if everything depends on our choice (as you say), the conclusion is that God does not know the future at all. That's all.
And what the Rambam finds appropriate to reconcile knowledge with choice (both in the answer to the fifth chapter and in the eighth chapter), and so do many other Rishonim, stems from their mistake in apparently not understanding that this is a logical contradiction. The Rambam, on the other hand, apparently understood this, and his answer is that God truly does not know (at least that is how the Shelah interpreted it in the introduction to his book in the section "Beit Bechirah", see ibid.). But even if this interpretation is incorrect, my conclusion would be that the Rambam was also wrong about this. I see no other way out.
In my book on theology, I will expand more on this question and the dilemma regarding the "subordination" of God to logical constraints (in the previous message, I mentioned the Maimonides and the Rashba on this point). —————————————————————————————— Asks: Hello and thanks again for the response.
I understand the logic in this argument, what was difficult for me was the contradiction between it and the familiar and known (the consensus).
I must say that I was quite surprised by the sentence "My conclusion would be that Maimonides was also wrong about this"
Why doesn't the Rabbi believe, as does Maimonides, that God's knowledge is not the same type of knowledge as ours, and therefore we cannot understand (even with this answer, I have a hard time)?
Are there other sources that claimed, like the Shelah, about Maimonides that God does not know? —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: The consensus doesn't really interest me, certainly not on these issues.
The Rambam's argument has received several opposite interpretations. The Rabbi on Atar, for example, thinks that the Rambam did not answer at all (and he criticizes him for this, and offers his own answer). The Shelah believes that the Rambam did answer that his knowledge is not like our knowledge. But what does this mean? That he does not have our knowledge. What he has is something else that is not even called "knowledge" for some reason. In short, he does not have what we call knowledge.
There is also a commentary on Genesis 6 that wrote that God prevents knowledge from Himself. On the surface, this does not answer the question, because if the information exists, then even if no one knows it, it contradicts our freedom of choice. Perhaps his intention is to say that God prevents knowledge from Himself by giving us free choice (because the fact that we have free will contradicts the fact that information would exist before we chose, and information that does not exist cannot be known – not even God).
But as I wrote to you, I'm not really interested in the opinions of commentators on such matters. Even if everyone, including Maimonides, thought differently, I would hold to my opinion. Even if one can speak of authority in halakhic contexts (and even there it is important not to exaggerate the matter), regarding facts (such as whether God knows or not) there is no authority.
לגלות עוד מהאתר הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
השאר תגובה
Please login or Register to submit your answer