The Empty Place and Her Citizens

Almost three years have elapsed since my last post on this digital wall. This outpost. Not much has happened here since then. No new comments. Just a few flickers of wayward browsers in the dark. This is an archaeological site. Something doomed. Everything will drown out everything else. The pile will increase.

Most bloggers, I imagine, relate tenuously to today's super-excess of immediate information; it is competition. The blogosphere is a place of "perfect competition." Most lose. This whole place is littered with this most. Digital debris. All orbits deserve our debris.

This post is not meant to end things for "phenobarbital9000." It might, but it is not meant as a send-off. It feels somewhat like an overture. How many overtures does one get? An entire career of overtures...

So, to you hitchhikers, and internet cryptozoologists, and archivists, insomniacs, accidental tourists, and to you torrents, streams, bits, I bid hello or farewell. Come again. Nothing lasts, except the landfill.

Miracles

A three-year-old girl nearly falls off a cliff, but is saved by a hedge. A four-year-old boy falls off a cliff & dies. Translated into Christian: The three-year-old girl was miraculously saved & the four-year-old boy was called home to God. Translated deeper: The three-year-old girl was miraculously saved from being called home to God. It seems like the four-year-old boy who died received a better deal than the three-year-old girl who lived.

Thermonuclear Theology

“The X is such-and-such.” Did this sentence exist before the formation of the solar system? If the eternal God were in fact omniscient, then the answer would be yes. Furthermore, this sentence has existed into the eternal past. Apply any content: the narrative of a novel, the lyrics of a poem, etc. Then what sense is there in the claim that “this poem is new” or “this is a recent story?” The content was always coexistent with the infinite mind, and so was never nonexistent.

In other words, this last paragraph has always existed. If there is an Omniscient God, then there is no “time” at which that God would not know the contents of this last paragraph. The play Hamlet existed “before time.” Extending this, the content is not only existent eternally into the past, but simultaneously eternally into the future.

Did Shakespeare create Hamlet if Hamlet existed before (infinitely before) Shakespeare existed? This, so far as I can tell, is applicable only to intellectual things; thus I can say, “Before Shakespeare existed” while also denying a “time” before the play Hamlet existed.

Consider this: God did not create Hamlet, yet Hamlet existed before Shakespeare existed. So, who created Hamlet?

Extending this: What about our thoughts? Any thought I have is subject to this omniscience. Could I have any new thoughts? One begins to catch the scent of determinism, of a theistic fatalism. Are my thoughts mine? I have this particular thought Y, yet this particular thought Y predated me. If such an omniscient God could foreknow these things, then what does this mean for the independence of my mind? My mind, being indistinguishable from its thoughts and expressions, therefore has its full disclosure, its entirety examined infinitely, infinitely prior to my existence.

Richard R. La Croix discussed these ideas at some length.

If this is true, then already at the beginning of things made, God had mulled and scrutinized over all of human history (and then some) infinitely; no detail failed to be infinitely considered. One can only imagine, and inadequately too, how unfathomably sterile and redundant our history must seem to God. It is a broken record.

Moreover, what does this entail for God’s own interaction in history? God knew his own activities before creation, and knew them in infinite contrast, if you will. If he did X, then he would know everlastingly prior to X. If he did non-X, then he would know everlastingly prior to non-X [The degree of applicability of the qualifier “prior” is possibly, but not necessarily zero. For it to be necessarily zero, you might have to invalidate God’s omnipotence.].

To know one will do such-and-such (not merely expect or intend) is to know that one will not do the negative of such-and-such. A condition of knowledge is its correspondence with truth. If you know X, X is true. If you merely believe or think X, there is no necessary inference to X’s truth-conditions. So, if you know that you will do such-and-such, then it is true that you will do such-and-such. You cannot, therefore, know such-and-such will happen and then such-and-such does not happen! This is effectively: such-and-such is true, yet such-and-such is not true.

If this omniscient God knows that such-and-such will¬ occur, then it is not possible that such-and-such will not occur. One must not forget the key importance of the term “know” in the proposition; it is not merely speculative or probabilistic projections. When, in common conversation, a person says, “I know you will die” this is a probabilistic projection. It is not impossible that you are some divine exception to the rule, and you will in fact not die. There is a nonzero chance of your immortality. Now, we agree that it is very unlikely that you will live forever, but this in itself is insufficient to disclude the possibility. To truly know X is to disclude the possibility of non-X.

This is, of course, not an uncontroversial review of some epistemic concepts.

Returning to the fundamental issue: if God knows that He (and you) will do such-and-such, then it is impossible that He and you will not do such-and-such. Consider the implications of this: suppose God knows that He will push a small rock over a cliff at time y. This would mean that it is impossible for God not push a small rock over a cliff at time y. What sort of omnipotence is this?

If God knew he would push a small rock over a cliff at time y, and yet he did not push a small rock over a cliff at time y, then God’s omniscience is emptied of significance and legitimacy. In other words, for God’s omniscience to be legitimate the following conditions must obtain: If God knows X to be true, then non-X cannot be true.

This, however, in application, invalidates omnipotence. If I know I will do X, then I cannot prevent X from being done by me. An omniscient God is a species of determinism, determining itself and everything besides.

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If Hell is separation from God—that is, a place where God is not—then, if Hell exists as such, God is not omnipresent. God may have the power to be omnipresent, and opt to avoid such-and-such location, but in that case he is technically not omnipresent.

“Separation from God” – what of self-awareness in hell? What of regret? What of memory? Did I create these things? In the Christian system: God did. Thus, the artifacts of God are inexorably bound to me—I am such an artifact! Thus, if hell is complete separation from God, it would more coherent to call Hell “oblivion.”