-Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000).
Suppose that there is just a single universe without any branches. In that case, we would still be able to discuss other timelines as logical possibilities even if not as material realities. Thus, if I had attended a different University, then my life would have diverged from that point onwards. Anything might have happened. I would have met different people and would either have married someone else or remained unmarried - or I might have died in a fatal accident on my first day of attendance at a different University.
My question is this. If omniscience were not only possible but actual, would even an omniscient being know what would have happened if I had attended a different University - and if every other such contingency had occurred differently? If every sperm had met a different egg? If the entire world were populated by potential people who were neither conceived nor born in the world as we know it? Or has even omniscience got limits?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have discussed the alternate worlds hypothesis with Poul Anderson. His view, from a strictly scientific POV, lay more with discussing alternate worlds as logical possibilities, with no real means of testing it likely to ever be found. Except, possibly, in or near black holes. Needless to say, Anderson used a "looser" concept of alternate worlds, simply in order to be able to write stories.
I'm puzzled by your doubts about omniscience. It seems logical to me that if I believe (as I do) that God is omniscient, He knows not only all that will happen or has happened, but all all that MIGHT happen. Else He could not be omniscient, could not even BE God.
Sean
Defining Omnipotence in a logically consistent way is difficult if not impossible.
The old "Can God create a boulder too heavy for God to lift?" conundrum.
I can see similar difficulties with Omniscience.
Sean,
But omniscience means knowing all things. Are unrealized possibilities things?
If everything was known, then nothing would be unknown.
If nothing was unknown, then nothing would be future.
If nothing was future, then everything would be past or present.
If everything was past or present, then, in the next moment, everything would be past.
If everything was past, then the knower would be dead.
If the knower was dead, then nothing would be known.
Therefore, if everything were known, then nothing would be known.
Reduction ad absurdum.
Therefore, it is impossible that everything be known.
Sean,
Several times in the past, you have argued that, for God to BE God, he has to have certain properties. That argument does not get us anywhere. For a unicorn to BE a unicorn, it has to look like a horse but must have a long, straight, pointed horn sticking out of its forehead. But it does not follow from this that any such animals ARE.
Paul.
Jim,
There is a similar question about the British Parliament. It passed a law that the Church of England will be established forever. Does that mean that no future Parliament can disestablish the Church? No. Parliament is supreme. It can repeal any law, including one containing the Word, "forever."
Paul.
That word should not have been included and becomes null and void in this context.
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