The key issue in defending against the 'special pleading fallacy' is whether the justification for the exception is rational and consistent with the argument’s logic. If the argument for an omniscient deity lacks rational justification, the argument stands. If it can be argued rationally, however, the argument fails.
As God can, and has been, argued rationally, then the charge of 'special pleading' fails.
Your focus on the BEFORE is where you error lies.
There is no 'before' in God, nor is there 'after' – God is not determined according to the temporal order.
From the first moment of creation, God knows you will choose to wear the blue shirt on that day, because that day is as 'present' to God at the moment of creation's beginning, in the same sense that it is 'present' in the moment of creation's end.
Put another way:
Our choices tomorrow are 'set in stone' inasmuch as we exercise our free will tomorrow to make choices.
That exercise, its outcome, is written in time.
For a consciousness (for the want of a better term) not bound by duration, a consciousness that does not experience 'past', 'present' or 'future' but simply sees all, then what appears to us as prior knowledge is not prior knowledge in God. It's just knowledge. It's prior to us because our consciousness is subject to temporal determination.
That God knows – from our temporal viewpoint – 'before', is not in question.
That 'before' applies to us, not to God. Because it does not apply to God, there is no agency pre-determining the event, there's simply a nature that is conscious of all events in an atemporal manner.
+++
On the flip side, of course, the 'choice' to wear the blue shirt is actually determined by a plethora of conditions that are simply, as we currently stand, too vast for us to quantify, because we are liable to suggestion, be it conscious, semi-conscious or unconscious. Why blue? Why a shirt? And so on ...
... And so, so often, we find our choices are entirely predictable, because we are creatures of habit.
Last edited:
