Wacek, (01)
Those are very reasonable alternatives: (02)
> perhaps god has quite a different notion of cruelty and evil
> than us, and what appears incredibly cruel and evil to us,
> may not so appear to god. (03)
Various humans have quite different views about what is cruel
for other species. Some consider it appropriate to eat any
species other than humans, but some even consider it appropriate
to eat humans. Others consider it inhumane to eat vertebrates
and higher invertebrates, but they're willing to eat clams because
they aren't as mobile. And most people are quite willing to
stomp on a cockroach, but others will carefully sweep the ground
before sitting down to avoid squashing any insects. (04)
> there is a solution (though rather arguable) which requires the
> sort of imagination that allows you to imagine that there can
> be things that you just can't imagine. for the god to be omniscient,
> the world does not have to be deterministic. if the world is not
> deterministic (not completely deterministic, at least), then free
> will is possible. but that we can, say, choose actions freely,
> this does not mean that god cannot know our choices 'in advance'
> -- sure he/she/it can, by definition. (05)
One might object that with 4 D view, time is only an illusion,
and therefore God would know which options came (or come) to pass.
But Whitehead had a 4D ontology in which everything evolves,
including God, when viewed from a 3D perspective, but not in
a 4D view. (06)
On this view, God is omniscient and omnipotent only at the end
(if there is an end), but not at the beginning. At the beginning
or even at any intermediate time slice, God's omniscience and
omnipotence are still evolving, and they only achieve their full
flowering at the end (if there is an end). But since time is
only an illusion, it is consistent to say that (a) God is omniscient
and knows everything for all time, but (b) at any particular time
slice, God does not know what will happen before it actually happens. (07)
In effect, the universe is God's computer, and we are in one of God's
test cases. Perhaps God is running a multithreaded simulation with
an infinity of universes for simulating all hypotheses in parallel. (08)
According to the parallel hypothesis, every time you (or anyone else)
makes a decision, the universe splits in two -- one (or more) universes
for each option. If you swerved to avoid a collision while driving,
the universe split into one option where you survived (and that's the
one you're experiencing), but there's a multiplicity of other universes
in which you crashed in various ways, some fatally. (09)
John (010)
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