It entails a logical relationship between some x and y. Some x exists at time t1 followed by y at time t2. Temporal priority is chronological in nature, characterized by the earlier than relation. Logical priority is different than temporal priority. This raises a question: How can our free choices determine the content of God’s knowledge if God’s knowledge precedes our choices? The answer is simple but profound: God’s knowledge of our future choices is chronologically prior to us making those choices, but our choices are logically prior to God’s knowledge. If, in the future, we would have exercised our volitional powers to choose x rather than y, then God would have known x instead of y. God knows that we will freely choose y rather than x, and thus God knows y rather than x. His knowledge of the future is informed by our free choices. God simply knows what we will do – He does not determine that we do it. God’s knowledge does not determine our choices, rather, our choices determine God’s knowledge. You simply knew the outcome of their actions in advance, which brings me to the second reason. It was the performance of the winning team that caused them to win. Your knowledge of what would happen in the future had no causal influence on who won the game. Would it make any sense for your friends to say your prior knowledge that they would win caused them to win? No. When the future Super Bowl finally arrives, the team you identified as the winning team goes on to win the game just as you said they would. Then, you return to the present time and inform your friends. You travel to next year’s Super Bowl and observe which team wins. If the particular flow of time I have chosen obscures that point, then let’s reverse the flow. The point to be made is that there is no causal connection between events and knowledge of those events. I agree that it is metaphysically impossible for our knowledge of the past to cause the past, but this misses the point. In this case, however, the effect (history) precedes the cause (our knowledge). One might object that our knowledge of the past cannot cause the past because this would require backward causation, which is metaphysically absurd. They happened completely independent of our causal powers. Would our knowledge of those events make us the cause of those events? No. To understand why, imagine that humans had perfect knowledge of past events. The truth of x must precede the knowledge of x. Knowledge of some x is not what causes x to be. First, knowledge is not a cause of anything. I am not persuaded that God’s knowledge of the future determines our fate for two reasons. An infallible god that knows what is going to happen is in conflict with the idea that there is free choice and thus a responsibility for one’s actions. Either what will be is known and fixed or it is not. Collins asserts that there is still free will, but fails to explain his logic for arriving at this extraordinary conclusion. How, then, can our “choices” be free? Does God’s knowledge of the future eliminate free will, reducing us to mere actors who simply perform the parts of a cosmic play written for us by God from eternity past? Are we puppets with no control over our own destiny? Is our experience of free choice illusory? Darwinist, Robert Eberle, sums up the problem nicely: Since God cannot be mistaken, it is certain that you will stub your toe on x date at time t1 and forget your keys on q date at time t5. God has had such knowledge from eternity past. God knows that on x date at time t1 you will stub your toe, and on q date at time t5 you will forget where you placed your keys. If God is omniscient, then He knows everything that will happen in the future – including everything you will ever do.
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