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Is Theological Fatalism Superfluous?
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Is Theological Fatalism Superfluous?
Susan Haack argues that, with regard to the question of fatalism, the theological argument is somewhat of an unnecessary or irrelevant detour to the logical component of that argument. The logical component is simply that if something was true about your future in the past, then you cannot change that fact about the future. Arguments often add in a portion that states, “if God believes that something was true about your future in the past…” and so forth. Haack finds this detour superfluous, but I disagree. If the argument is stripped down to just its logical component, then it becomes uncontentious and somewhat of a truism. An atheist who believes in determinism (I think this accounts for most atheists) should have no objection to this argument. An atheist who does not believe in determinism can reject the premise that there is a fact about your future to be known, even in principle. A theist might, likewise, accept the conclusion of the logical argument without further reflection. It seems obviously true that if something is true about the future, this entails the truth of that something. The theist, however, believes in a being with total foreknowledge of these truths. Once we add back the divine foreknowledge component of the argument for fatalism, this causes problems for many other beliefs that go hand-in-hand with theism, especially Christian theism. If God has total knowledge of the future, then how can there be free human action and moral responsibility? If the future is laid out completely in advance, does this not strip the relationship between God and his creation of its meaning? Rather than forming a relationship with his creation, that would be more akin to God watching a pre-recorded videotape depiction of such a relationship. And of course, a theist might be tempted to deny that God has foreknowledge of the future, but this would call into question his essential attribute of omniscience. So, although Haack is correct that the form of the argument is the same with or without the divine component, it is not a superfluous detour.
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