Dean you believe in God right yes and you believe that God in some sense can know the future well certainly some of it he knows how could he know any of it well uh so if God is all knowing in the sense that he knows every fact that there is maybe there are maybe there's some things open about the future that he doesn't know but he knows everything that's true right um and he's all powerful so he can do anything anything that's consistent to to suppose someone could do um well if he's uh you know
rational stable in his character and so on he can certainly make decisions about what he's going to do and if he decides that he's going to do something um he can know enough and has the power enough uh to uh to see to it that it's brought about so that's one easy way that God could know things okay so so in that sense you're you're making omnipotence that God's all powerful to be the key element because then God knows that I can make uh you know Dean zurman do anything I want so therefore I know
it because I can make it happen right uh but then you don't even need omniscience or God knowing stuff you just need to be all powerful well it's hard to see how you could you know it's hard to see how you could be omnipotent if you if you weren't also omniscient uh uh because you uh but if you don't know certain things you know your plans will go Ary and you could bring it about but if you you see how they sort of go together and a lot of people a lot of theologians have argued
that you know these are intertwined okay I mean sure but but they're not they're not too independent kinds of characteristics because if I mean there's one model that says that uh God could be omniscient without being omnipotent I mean he he could see the future and all everything that's happening if a lot of it he can't control and and a lot of it goes badly for him he I mean that's a possibility right yeah yeah and the other hand he can have total blindness for the future but he's I when I get there I can
make it happen I can do whatever I like whatever I like right so we have two separate SE things but so when you look at omniscience and God knowing everything do you see it in the sense of he knows it because he can make it happen because he really has some kind of special ability now to to see it I don't think of him as having a special ability now to see what's out there because I don't think it's out there so you know my view about the passage of time is that the present is
very special very real and uh you know the my great grandchild doesn't exist in any sense whatsoever although I will have one perhaps uh maybe maybe not uh but uh so because I I because I think the future is a sort of Realm of possibilities only um I think God just knows the space of possibilities for the future and uh in that space you know he can make decisions about what he will do if this or that or the other thing so he can know a great deal about it its contents but if he let
leaves some things genuinely up to free agents then I think there are facts that aren't settled yet so when you say God knows all the possibilities of the future do you literally mean all possibilities every conceivable possibility and interaction that could occur that God does know sure yeah so I'm thinking of God as traditionally conceived as really all knowing it's not there's no limitations on his computational powers uh you know his mind isn't isn't implemented in a computer or in a giant brain or something uh uh it's uh he has sort of basic powers of
of knowing branching possibilities that you can think of for the future uh and and the permutations among the all of them I mean it it's so many level of transcendent Infinities it it it seems absurd yeah well God is supposed to be Transcendent and uh and infinite and this would be one uh respect in which he he is infinite yeah certainly if that's true I I would agree so so so you see God as uh his all knowing as knowing all the infinite Infinities of possibilities out there but not knowing which of th branches will
be will become actual yes but knowing that he can force a few if he likes right right and maybe now he knows that he's going to force a few yeah so so if if so and so chooses this way rather than that way uh uh God might say well I'm going to have to force something there or we're going to go down a road that uh that that that I'm not willing to go down so uh so so there there there may be a good deal of constraints on on these possibilities and yet and yet
much Freedom as well uh freedom for us for us yeah uh is it fair to even ask the question how God knows about all these possible branchings is it uh you know some computational effort is it just a kind of a a uh a a a wrote All knowing that you don't even have to do anything and it's just sort of omnipresent to you it's all there um I think of God's mind as nothing like ours in the sense that it it it's not uh uh you know God doesn't think about things by having Concepts
or images or something that somehow reflect or correspond to the things um God just latches onto things and facts um and and so there's a sort of direct noetic grasp cognitive grasp uh uh between God and the facts where where our knowledge is sort of fragmentary and and mediated by sense organs yeah and and uh and images and language um now I don't pretend to know really what God's mind is like and oh disappoint me yeah and and and I don't even you know pretend to have a decent uh uh uh grasp of the theological
sort of Alternatives here but I I do think that uh uh a being who answers to the description of the kind of Western absolute Creator God who has these Omni attributes um isn't going to be uh thinking about things uh one at a time by having images or concepts and things like we uh things that we have to fall back upon does the thought that God has to sustain the Universe on a continuing basis not just created which is which is pretty much believed by most theists that it's a continuing sustaining of the creation could
that have some sort of a a relationship to uh to omniscience and by the very Act of sustaining everything you sort of also know everything through that dire yeah uh so there have been kind of mysterious doctrines about how God's knowledge and God's power you know God's God's knowledge that there's a a a a candle there and God's sustaining it his are not distinct acts right um and maybe there's some truth in that but it's it that's it's hard to understand that's for sure um at least this much seems true if you're going to sustain
everything you better know what it's all like you better know where it is
