God

[jleshin]

I've been thinking about god alot recently. Specifically about the difference between how god can be omnipotent and humanity have free choice. Well the following are my thoughts and internal resolutions to that problem

Comments

[kellev]

I see no conflict between G-d knowing what I will do before I do it and free will, and the G-d that I believe in does not have any the limitations that you've suggested.

[mokatz]

That's some nice pseudo/meta -physical argumentative mental-legwork around the realities of Quantum Mechanics, there. :-)

I think that you are still sort of bogged down in a semi-classical interpretation of all this, really.

The following is a gross generalization of the ideas of Quantum Mechanics, but basically, it is valid.
All the information about a particle's past, present, and (possible) futures are contained within its wavefunction. So, in order to know everything God merely has to know ALL the wave functions of all the particles in the entire universe. At this point, the distinction between knowing what the entire universe is and being the entire universe is a bit pedantic, at least from an information theory standpoint. (If you could build a computer to simulate the entire universe, what would be the difference between the computer and the universe? The computer would have to be at least as complicated as the universe itself.) One has to decide if God is extrinsic to the universe or not. If He is extrinsic, does He

[jleshin]

To this I reply,
Have you ever really thought about a crumpet. No, I mean really......
Holes within Holes....

[jleshin]

As an actual reply,
A lot of my thoughts on this are influenced by some metaphysics and also the Dune series by Frakn Herbert and a story by Isaac Asimov.
You make a good point about knowing the universe and being the universe, but I would say that traditionally Jews belive that he would be the universe.
Though I like my nodal analogy more, the wavelength one works also, as long as the future exists merely as a set of possible wavelengths based on the actions the particle takes.
All in all, it boils down to the fact I'm not comfortable with the idea that someone knows exactly what I'm going to do. But if someone ie God knows merely all the actions I could take, not necessarily which ones I will, I'm more comfortable with that.

[mokatz]

Whatever floats your boat man. I only believe whatever physics tells me (however much that might suck ;-) ).