Mark has suggested that we can escape the argument for fatalism by holding that God is outside of time. If God were outside of time, then he would know events timelessly, and so would not literally know them before they occur. Therefore he doesn't literally foreknow anything, and our actions are not fated by his knowledge.

I have already explained (partially in any case) why I think God must actually be inside time rather than timeless. This mainly due to the fact that I think that a dynamic view of time must be correct, and the consequence of this is that God must be temporal (otherwise he cannot be omniscient as he would be unaware of tensed facts).

So I do not accept the premise here.

However, let's assume for the moment that God is timeless. Does that really solve the problem with fatalism?

I don't think it does. Even if truth itself is timeless, it may still be asserted in advance of some event, that the event occurs at some future time. For example, it may be asserted in 1995 that "Labour wins the 1999 New Zealand general election", even though the statement itself is timeless. All the fatalist needs to get his argument going is that it is possible to assert some timelessly true statement about future events.

Even Paul Helm, an adovcate of divine timelessness, agress with this. He explains that the statement "God knows timelessly that some event occurs in my future" would still be true even in advance of that event occurring.

So I don't see how advocating God's timelessness avoids fatalism. How does saying that God knows from eternity that Jones will mow his lawn on Saturday (rather than God knew this at an earlier time) solve the problem? Surely if God knows everything from eternity we are in the same predicament.

Let's rephrase the argument as if God is timeless (changes are marked in bold or struck out).

1. God's being omniscient implies that if Jones mows his lawn on Saturday afternoon, then God knew from eternity that Jones would mow his lawn on Saturday afternoon.
2. Necessarily, all of God's beliefs are true.
3. No one has the power to make a contradiction true.
4. No one has the power to change God's timeless knowledge.
5. No one has the power to erase someone's existence in the past, that is, to bring it about that someone who did exist in the past did not exist in the past.
6. So if God believed that Jones would mow his lawn on Saturday afternoon, Jones can refrain from mowing only if one of these conditions is true:
   (i) Jones has the power to make God's belief false.
   (ii) Jones has the power to erase God's timeless belief.
   (iii) Jones has the power to erase God's past existence.
7. Alternative (i) is impossible. (This follows from steps 2 and 3).
8. Alternative (ii) is impossible. (This follows from step 4).
9. Alternative (iii) is impossible. (This follows from step 5).
10. Therefore, if God believes that Jones will mow his lawn on Saturday afternoon, Jones does not have the power to refrain from mowing his lawn on Saturday afternoon.

It appears to me that we end up in the same situation. Claiming that God is timeless rather than temporal does not help - the conclusion is still that fatalism is true, unless we can find an alternative escape in premise (6).

Posted by Dave Bryant at 11:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)