God's Omniscience

So the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that God is omniscient in the way we generally understand it. We generally think that omniscience means that God knows everything about everything, including the future. He knows exactly what will happen when, no matter how mundane.

I think that this definition of omniscience destroys agency. Allow me to explain. Let's say God knows that I am going to to have to choose between choices A, B, and C tomorrow. Moreover, He knows that I'm going to choose B. Now, many argue that His knowledge of my choice does not determine that choice, but I'm not so sure. I think a requirement of choice is possibility, and God knowing that my choice will be B eliminates A and C from being possibilities.


Think of it this way. Let's say you come to a three-way fork in a road. Paths X and Z, however, are covered or camouflaged such that you never knew they were there. Thus, you chose Path Y. Would you really say that you chose Path B, though? I know I wouldn't. For me it's not a choice unless I know all the options available. I can't choose Path Y unless I know that Paths X and Z are also viable options.


Now, obviously there is a difference between the two scenarios: my knowledge/understanding of the circumstances. In the first case, I know that A and C are also viable options. In the second scenario, I don't know that X and Z are. Which raises the $64,000 question: Do you need different viable options or do you just need knowledge or understanding of different viable options in order to have agency?


I think you need both. Obviously you need some sort of knowledge or understanding of the different options available to you, but I think that those options have to actually be available. However, if God knows--for certain--which option you are going to choose, then how can you call A and C actual options? You can't choose A, because it's already been determined that you will choose B, and you can't choose C for the same reason; God may not have determined it, but it has been determined. Because it can't be any other way. And because you can't have a choice determined and still have it be a choice, I'm not so convinced that God's omniscience includes knowledge of our future choices.

Hiatus

So I haven't posted anything for a rather long time, and lately I've been trying to figure out why. The best answer I can come up with is that I was trying to fully process all the stuff I was working out before. It's one thing to come to a new understanding or new way of thinking about life and how to live, but it's quite another to actually live that way; to live according to that new understanding. I think that's what I've been doing, so I wasn't really able to think about any new stuff. I think I've managed to process it enough now, though, because I've now started thinking about new questions that I'm going to be discussing here. So stay tuned. Or don't. Either way, I'm going to be posting stuff, so it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

The Self and Relationships

So in one of my psychology classes this past week we discussed the interplay between relationships and the self. The question arose of which comes first, which gives rise to which: the self or relationships. Society today generally talks about the self giving rise to relationships. He proposed the opposite to be true, however.

His main evidence for thinking this way are the many "feral" children that have been found over they years (the most famous being Victor, found in France in 1799). Whether they grew up isolated, confined, or raised by animals, they all have one thing in common: their mental capacity never passed/passes a toddler's. Not only that, but almost all language and social learning comes after they've been found (I say "almost" only because those found in confined situations sometimes know a couple words, such as the case of Genie). Moreover, as with happened with Sudam Pradhana, he grew up normally until the age of 13; he was then lost in the woods until the age of 24, by which time he had lost all social and language skills. (You can go to www.feralchildren.com to read about more cases.)

Whether he's right or not, it's a very interesting idea. If he's right--and the more I think about it the more I agree with him--then who we choose (and sometimes don't choose) to interact with very much defines who we are. Our relationships make us who we are, and we can't be ourselves (or even fully human) without them. Suddenly who we choose to associate with is a much bigger deal. If we are who we have relationships with, then we really must choose who we associate with very carefully. And we must work hard to have positive relationships, because whatever our relationships are like is what we are like.

Judging on Being vs. Judging on Becoming

So I'm just going to put this out there, in case you didn't know (in which case I'm not entirely sure why you're reading my blog, as you obviously don't know me, because it's my most apparent quality): I'm obnoxious. Ridiculously obnoxious. Sometimes offensively obnoxious.

I say this because lately some of my obnoxious comments have prompted people to stop associating with me. The comments in question were political in nature, and that did have something to do with it; they said, however, that it wasn't the comments/opinions themselves, but how they were expressed that caused them to want to break off association.

Beyond the obvious "Really??" reaction that I and others like me are prone to have in this situation, is a deeper issue. And it was actually this with relation to other experiences I've had that helped me come to this realization. (I know it may surprise you, but my obnoxiousness is not my only quality that's been criticized over the years.)

I was thinking about this idea, about how people choose who they associate with, are friends with, date, marry, what have you, and I realized a couple things. I realized: 1) that people make these judgments based on who people are; and 2) that this outlook can be severely limiting and downright wrong.

Now, obviously some judgments must be made on who a person is. For example, I know no child of mine is going to go play at a convicted pedophile's house. But this can't be the end of what judgments we make. Truly, at least as important and most likely more important than our judgments on who a person is is who a person is becoming.

See, no person on Earth is perfect. Christ was and is perfect, but He no longer lives on Earth. and Enoch and Melchizedek and their respective cities became perfect, but as soon as they reached perfection, they were taken from the Earth. So what do any of us imperfect people really know about what or who a person should be? Answer: precious little.

Of course, that doesn't stop us from trying to act like we do. We're always ready to tell people when they're doing something wrong, what Christlike faith or charity is, what the correct attitude is, etc. The Gospel explains these attributes to us in abstract terms, but no one really understands what they really mean. Even the prophet, as intelligent and wise as he is, has a severely limited understanding.

So then why do we continue to make judgments based on who people are? Rather, the more prudent route would be to make judgments based on who they're becoming. Are they becoming more like Christ or not? That is the true measure of a man. Or woman.

Faith is Trust

So I've been thinking more about what I talked about in my "Certainty" post. Mostly about it's implications on my understanding of faith. See, before I saw faith as a kind of means to knowledge. When people would say, "I know the Church is true," or "I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God," it was because of their faith they obtained that knowledge.

After all, as it states in Alma 32, "faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things." Whether accurate or not, the accepted interpretation of this seems to be that one is supposed to use that faith to obtain that perfect knowledge. Perhaps a discussion of what "perfect knowledge" means would be helpful, but that's for another post.

Either way, in Hebrews 11 faith is equated with an assurance, meaning faith is a kind of surety, even if it's not a perfect knowledge. However, since I can't be completely sure of many of the laws and principles of the Gospel, how am I to have faith in them? How is that faith supposed to lead to a perfect knowledge? What is a perfect knowledge of something that is subject to change?

I reached a conclusion that I feel really good about. Not only that, since reaching this conclusion, I've found that I'm not the only one who has; I'm currently taking Philosophy of Religion and the professor has reached the same conclusion. Not only that, the professor explained that the Greek word for faith--pistis--actually supports my conclusion.

The conclusion, as hinted at in the title to this post, is this: faith is trust.

Thus, one doesn't have faith in a what, but in a whom. As expressed so simply in the 4th Article of Faith, the first principle of the Gospel is "faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." When we have faith, we trust God, meaning all three members of the Godhead. Thus we don't have faith in principles and laws, but in the principle- and law-Giver. We do what He tells us to do, which ends up being more centered around ordinances than principles, for principles can contradict each other (just take the classic example of mercy and justice).

Either way, this is a small yet significant change in most members' understanding of faith, one that members would benefit greatly from.

Favorite Terry Pratchett Passage.... so far

So lately I've been reading Terry Pratchett books, because they're hilarious. Anyway, after reading this last passage, which comes from the book The Light Fantastic, I decided I should share some of the joy. So here goes:

"In yet another part of the forest a young shaman was undergoing a very essential part of his training. He had eaten of the sacred toadstool, he had smoked the holy rhizome, he had carefully powdered up and inserted into various orifices the mystic mushroom and now, sitting crosslegged under a pine tree, he was concentrating firstly on making contact with the strange and wonderful secrets at the heart of Being but mainly on stopping the top of his head from unscrewing and floating away.

"Blue four-side triangles pinwheeled across his vision. Occasionally he smiled knowingly at nothing very much and said things like 'Wow' and 'Urgh.'

"There was a movement in the air and what he later described as 'like, a sort of explosion only backwards, you know?', and suddenly where there had only been nothing there was a large, battered, wooden chest.

"It landed heavily on the leafmould, extended dozens of little legs, and turned around ponderously to look at the shaman. That is to say, it had no face, but even through the mycological haze he was horribly aware that it was looking at him. And not a nice look, either. It was amazing how baleful a keyhole and a couple of knotholes could be.

"To his intense relief it gave a sort of wooden shrug, and set off through the trees at a canter.

"With superhuman effort the shaman recalled the correct sequence of movements for standing up and even managed a couple of steps before he looked down and gave up, having run out of legs."

Of course, this passage is funnier if you know the history of the chest, which you can read about in The Color of Magic, but the stoned shaman is hilarious enough in itself.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Sunstone

So I've had some time to digest everything that went down at the Sunstone Symposium, and I've figured out why overall I didn't particularly enjoy it. (This isn't to say I couldn't enjoy it, just that three full days was way too much.) It was because of the hierarchy of questions posed there.

Questions on the Church's teachings on male/female roles became more important than whether it was God's church. The political and social aspects of the Church were more important than the eternal ones. Not only that, but whether it was God's church became a question of its standing on political and social issues.

This is exactly reverse of what it should be. First comes the question of whether it's God's church, then comes the question of the correctness of its stances on political and social issues.