Hugh McCann - Is the Future Open?

Why is an ‘open’ future controversial among theologians? If the future is not ‘settled’, if there is no certainty from God’s viewpoint of how future events will turn out, then God’s providence, could not be as sure. If the future is truly open, then not even God could know the future because there are no future facts to know.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[Ekam-Sat]

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
― Søren Kierkegaard

[edwardprokopchuk]

You’re free to make the one and only choice.
😂

[rameshdubey]

Predetermined would be extremely boring, even for God and pointless too.

[votingcitizen]

Any one who makes claims about what an intentional deciding god does and thinks those assertions constitute a viable explanation of anything is no where near the truth.

[mtshasta]

Of ALL the things in the Bible, free will is the greatest gift of all! The right to choose, to disbelieve or to reaffirm what we learn and discover. God granted this right to every person.
Pre-destiny arguments are a masterbullshyt scientific position to disavow free will. But how else can science and atheists try to to debunk the God theory.
Adam and Eve made a choice because GOD did NOT pre-determine our lives! What a gift!

[kallianpublico]

The fallacy is believing that the things we think are correct are correct. What if all the wisdom we possess is actually a mass delusion? Time, causation, determinism?
Remember according to the Christian tradition we weren’t always like this. We were one way in the Garden of Eden, and then we ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. What if that “temporarily” makes us ignorant? What if part of that ignorance is the obtuseness that we think of as wisdom? What if evolution, science, religion, government, are impediments to our true nature?
What if the elixir of immortality was available to us but we weren’t interested in it? Instead our rational will was more interested in vain pursuits? So interested it actually acted like a force? Turning the thoughts of people away from their freedom, to the vain purposes of temporary success/ignorance?
What if time was a disease that we could be cured of? Would you take the cure or would it be easier to spend more time in the familiarity of your “wealth”?

[villevanttinen]

In West it is not ( open) without sacrife, which needs love.

[MS-odje]

Gödel’s theorems / simultaneous infinite and finite ( Mandelbrot set/ Jacob horn)

Placeholders of reality

The descriptive language of emptiness, void, vacuum is not an indication that nothing is something.
Dualism is the understanding that the essence of anything existing in a material world is an expression of the material as a function of its immaterial state.
Definitionally essence can be argued that essence is something. However our language fails us is this logic formality.
This is the limit of language and the language of logic.
Math has its limits to our understanding via Gödel. Logic has its limits by mathematics specifically in its geometry. The Mandelbrot set is simultaneously infinite ( limitless borders) and finite ( limited area) . Other mathematical geometry is also a limit of logic( Jacob’s horn).
Reality as described in quantum theory is itself a mathematical construct which implies a limit to our understanding reality via both math and logic ( entanglement, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Schrodinger’s cat black holes, the Big Bang, etc).
This has lead to a misunderstanding by language what is meant by dualism. Consciousness too has run up against the limits of mathematics, logic and physics as a perception of this reality.
Consider numbers: we implicitly understand that when we count that there is no actual number, or numbers. We are counting things or the absence of things. We are counting forward and backwards on an “imaginary “ number line. The same is true with all maths. Maths is a placeholder, a conceptual construct of what we understand to be actual. We can placehold emotions, understanding, meaning and purpose, etc., in a similar manner with the caveat that emotions, consciousness can be materially expressed as functions of the interaction of material things. They are linguistically expressed as emergent to the material. However this too becomes cumbersome to understanding of dualism vs non dualism. So then given math and emotions can math be expressed as emergent from the material in a manner similar to emotions as expressed in terms of emergence?
Are things like consciousness, emotions, math and logic non real placeholders? Are they nonexistent? Are they emergent? Is essence emergent to existence?
This is the fundamental question of language, mathematics, logic limitations.

If we are to say that language, mathematics, logic etc are emergent to existence, as emergent to consciousness then we are left with the oddity of such language that everything material and immaterial are emergent non real expressions of reality. Thus the reality is an illusion claim.
If everything is an illusion by its fundamental physical nature and by its descriptive meaning are we then also dealing with these concepts as non real, placeholders, etc.
If everything material in existence is in a physical state of flux and entanglement ( observed, measured) is consciousness as such the generator or the emergent properties of existence?
Consider that if real things come into existence by non real existence are all things non things?
These language failures are literally death traps is we take them as perceptively true, reality. Step in front of a non real real train and suffer the consequences of the limits language, placeholders.

[konstantinos]

So whether there is god or gods or whatever make no difference other than to make you feel more comfortable. So, you feel more comfortable now, great. Now what?

[peweegangloku]

At Matthew 15:14 Jesus is recorded to have said this: "If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

[catherinemira]

The art of dancing on the head of a pin.

[kylebowles]

This guy is not equipped to have this conversation, Robert is trying to literally educate him to even ask him the question

[JohnQPublic.x]

The non-living material world is fixed; the living world is open; Christians who know what's going on know the "Dynamic Omniscience" view of GOD and the world is the correnct view.

[mileskeller]

Hugh, surely you see sir that these are grand assumptions backed by nothing but your feelings.

[sylvestermumba]

For the universe to make sense the future has to be open. Otherwise there is no point to us experiencing reality unfold. Or at least in my opinion there is no point.

[edw]

The framework of the ocean is somewhat set. But the fish within are free to swim in whatever direction they choose...within that framework

[ChristianDall-pj]

As i understood it, a ordning to him, when god created us, he instantly knew our entire lives, but Although he instantly Saw what what we did, he did not choose what we did, we did! I dont belive in god or free-Will, but I Think thats what he meant!

[NeerajKumar-ldht]

This is how Quantum System in Nature works.

[mtshasta]

Bad exists because Satan and evil exists, not because Gods design was bad or off.

[chyfields]

The future is what we, collectively, have caused to be put into motion. According to the laws of cause and effect.