Theological Fatalism for Atheists

Foretruth is as bad as foreknowledge

The theological problem of foreknowledge is pretty well known, and anyone thinking seriously about theism will probably stumble upon it on their own. The idea is that if God infallibly knows the future, you have no choice in what happens, as he already knows what you will do.

To put it in a syllogism stolen from the SEP article on the topic (cause who doesn’t love long syllogisms?),¹ the argument is roughly the below.

Now-necessity is the sort of necessity we ascribe to things in the past. It’s in a sense necessary that I wrote an incredible parody of Hegel because it has now happened, and it can no longer possibly be changed—this is now-necessity. “S” just stands for “you will subscribe.” Anyways, the syllogism:

1. Yesterday God infallibly believed S.

2. If E occurred in the past, it is now-necessary that E occurred then.

3. It is now-necessary that yesterday God believed S. [1, 2]

4. Necessarily, if yesterday God believed S, then S.

5. If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p → q), then q is now-necessary.

6. So it is now-necessary that S. [3,4,5]

The idea is then supposed to be that if it’s now-necessary that you subscribe then you cannot have been acting freely in doing so (usually cashed out in terms of some principle of alternative possibilities). This is especially supposed to be a problem for theists, as much work on theodicies builds on the idea that humans are free and responsible agents.

---

It can be hard to see where exactly this argument goes wrong, if at all. Leaving that aside, though, I think it’s a mistake to think that this is a problem for theism specifically. A (to my mind) perfectly analogous argument can be run without theism for logical fatalism:²

7. Yesterday it was true that S. [assumption]

8. If some proposition was true in the past, it is now-necessary that it was true then.

9. It is now-necessary that yesterday it was true that S. [1, 2]

10. Necessarily, if yesterday it was true that S, then now it is true that S.

11. If it is now-necessary that p and if necessarily (p then q), then it is now-necessary that q.

12. Therefore, it is now-necessary that now it is true that S. [3L, 4L, 5L]

This get’s you exactly the same problem as divine foreknowledge, but all you need is that future contingents can be true. (8) is supposed to be less plausible than (2). Basically it’s more plausible that past events are now-necessary than that past truths about the future are.

But I’m not sure why this is supposed to be. So long as there are truths about the future, there can easily be past events that entail future truths, just like God’s past knowledge.

Suppose that I currently form the belief that it’ll rain tomorrow, and suppose that it is true. Tomorrow my having this true belief will be now-necessary. Furthermore, necessarily, if yesterday I truly believed that it will rain, then it will rain. I mean, that’s just what it means for my belief to be true. My having that true belief is clearly a now-necessary event tomorrow.

I, however, don’t have some magical power that fixes future events when I form beliefs about them. The rain tomorrow was already fixed because it was already true that it would happen, and my belief simply happened to match with it. If my truly believing is sufficient to run the argument, and my belief itself doesn’t change anything, then it must be that the truth itself is sufficient.

Perhaps there is some difference between my belief and God’s belief. God, after all, has infallible belief, while I just accidentally had a true belief about the future. It’s not clear why this should change anything though. Infallible beliefs and true beliefs are both factive attitudes (they entail the truth of their content). If it’s possible to hold factive attitudes about future events, then it can be now-necessary that someone held such an attitude about something in the future.

And given that I had a true belief about the future, it’s not like it’s truth was subject to change. If my true belief that it will rain tomorrow becomes false in an hour, then it was never true to begin with—the truth is fixed, both for God and for me, and how good we are at getting true beliefs doesn’t change how true each true belief is.

All of this of course applies equally when the proposition in question is about the action of an agent rather than about the weather.

---

Naturally, as already mentioned, theists are not quite in the same position to bite the bullet as atheists, seeing as many theodicies require responsibility. Still, most atheists also aren’t hard determinists (afaik), and preserving some form of freedom is as big a challenge for atheists as theists.

For the record I think that there are good responses to the argument both if the future is and isn’t open:

• If the future is open in the sense that there are several possible continuations of the future from the current moment, then I just think that all future contingents are false. I actually think this is very straightforward (though far from uncontroversial), borrowing an argument from Patrick Todd.³

  
  Basically for it to be true that P will happen, it must be that P happens in all possible continuations of the future. I mean, imagine that I say “it will rain tomorrow” and that there is at least one possible continuation of the future where it doesn’t. Suppose then that the no-raining future obtains. It would certainly be false that it was true yesterday to say “it will rain tomorrow.” But then it was also never true when I said it in the first place!⁴ Assuming bivalence we then get that it was false.
  
  At the same time it could also have rained tomorrow, and if that happened it would have been false to say “it will rain tomorrow.” Thus if there are both possible futures where it rains and where it doesn’t—i.e. if the rain future contingent—then it is both false that it will rain and that it won’t. “Will” then just works as a universal quantifier over possible futures.
  
  Thus we stop at the first premise of both arguments: If something is a choice involving genuine alternate possibilities, then it was not true yesterday that you would choose S, as you might have chosen not-S. Likewise God cannot have infallibly believed that you would do S, as you cannot infallibly believe a falsehood.
  

• Alternatively the future isn’t open, meaning there is only one possible continuation. In that case it is true that you will subscribe very soon. Nevertheless, I don’t think that hurts the prospects of free will and responsibility, as I find the standard compatibilist moves quite plausible. In fact this fatalism seems like even less problematic than standard Frankfurt cases: In the standard cases you could at least be coerced in counterfactual situations, but with your decision to subscribe, you are not coerced even if you counterfactually choose differently—in that case it would just be true that you (in an act of pure horror) refrain from subscribing.

  
  This points to something that just deflates the problem for me in general: The truths about what you do are dependent on… what you do, even if temporally prior. The reason that it’s true you subscribe is that you subscribe, and the facts (and Gods knowledge) conform to what you do, not the other way around. Thus there just seems no problem with saying that you freely subscribe, even if it was already true that you would, as the past truth about your action explains nothing about why you choose as you do.

Speaking of:

1. I even shortened it for you because I love you so much and respect your time!

2. Again stolen from the SEP.

3. I haven’t actually read this book, only watched some interviews 😈

4. This relies on rejecting the Ockhamist view that there is a true actual future, even if there are alternate possibilities.