Future History
Studying the Mormon religion illuminated something to me that I had never considered. The Mormons (LDS) do not believe in an omniscient God like the classical Christian doctrines concerning God. Rather, there are two conflicting views on the meaning of omniscient. First is the thought that God has no false beliefs about the past, present or future. Second is the thought that God knows everything that can possibly be known. This means that the only things possibly known are the past and the present, because the future has not yet occurred.
The classic concept of omniscience is the idea that God knows, or sees all time and knows all events. The Mormons do not believe in the classic Christian definition of God. Rather, they believe Him to be a finite being, created at one time as a mortal and ascended, or “exalted” to godliness. This line of thinking brought a strange source to recollection; Isaac Asimov.
Mr. Asimov has been mentioned several times in articles here, usually in reference to his theory of Future History. Briefly, this theory is the concept that humans are merely biological machines, operating within a system. If one could understand the system, and the machines that operate within it, then that person could theoretically calculate all of the possible permutations of actions possible. If a model could be established based on this calculation, then it might be possible not only to tell the future, but to actually influence the future. This is the central theme of Asimov’s “Foundation” series.
In that series a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw seeks to insure the security of the future of mankind by constructing a giant super-computer capable of making just such a calculation. The problem with this thought process is that in order to understand the possibilities that would influence these calculations, one would have to have a current, constant view of the entire universe at one time.
Without this constant, current view it would be impossible to re-calculate the variables and assign a new model for the future. One might think of bypassing this with assigning fixed values to certain portions of the equation. Einstein tried this when solving his problem of general relativity and found himself years later having to re-solve the problem. When we try to fix the outcome of a problem, we usually end up causing more problems. Once again, this is the unfortunate result of having a temporal view of reality.
What then of the person who has an “outside view” of reality? If a person could exist outside of reality, superior to reality, would that person not have the opportunity to see all of the conditions at one time? If that one person had the ability to see all conditions, would it be too far a stretch to infer that this person would have the ability to calculate all outcomes of those conditions as well? If that person could calculate all possible outcomes, would that same person not be able to make adjustments to the conditions, recalculate and thereby change all of Future History?
Mormons feel secure in their doctrine of God because it makes God easy for them to understand. The concept of the Trinity is admittedly not one of the easiest concepts to grasp. Among the more difficult concepts of the idea of God is what it really means when you say that He is the creator. As the creator of the natural universe, He does not reside within the universe, but remains superior to it, outside of it. This concept is not easily grasped, but what way is there to understand a being who can speak into existence all that is, was, or ever will be?
I wonder if Isaac Asimov consciously understood that what he was trying to do was understand the mind of God. Or, was it that he simply was looking for a way to be like God?
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. – Genesis 3:4-6
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