Degree of control or power = degree of ability to predict accurately.
There is no control without the ability to predict accurately. But is it true that if you can predict accurately you thereby have control? Can’t you foresee something, such as your inevitable death, without having any control over it? If it is inevitable, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, so in what sense does your accurate prediction give you any control over the situation? The answer is that it gives you control in the only sense in which accurate prediction ever gives you control over a situation; that is, in the sense of giving you the capability of adjusting your actions accordingly. Consider the example of driving a car. If you lose control of a car, that means that something outside your predictive power has occurred—something has gone wrong with the steering mechanism, for example, or there is a sudden unexpected obstacle, to avoid which you swerve suddenly at too high a speed, so that the car spins and hits some other obstacle, let us imagine. Being and remaining in control of the car means that nothing that happens while you are driving is outside the expectations you have that enable you to adjust your actions so that the car goes or stops, continues straight or turns, in accord with what is going on in your surroundings.
Since I know it is inevitable that I will die some day, what should I do to adjust my actions accordingly? Nothing I do will enable me to evade death forever; a day will come that will be the day on which I die: that is my prediction. How does this prediction, supposing it is accurate—and I have no doubts about that—give me any control over the situation? One possibility is just to accept that it doesn’t, and there is no way in which I can adjust my actions in light of this knowledge. Then this would be a counterexample to my claim that degree of control or power = degree of ability to predict accurately. But what is the knowledge of the inevitability of death? Isn’t it in fact ignorance, ignorance of what it is like to be the one who dies. Is it possible to dispel that ignorance? It is. It is possible to dispel that ignorance. That is what I am telling you over and over again. You can realize that permanent unconsciousness is not a real possibility by realizing that you cannot imagine what it would be like. And that realization gives you power over death, in the sense that the adjustment you need to make is to acknowledge the gift of life after life.
Again, scientists can predict with great accuracy an eclipse, but this doesn’t give them any control, let alone great control, over whether it will happen. Our knowledge of when and where an eclipse will be visible only gives us control, which we wouldn’t otherwise have, over our actions in relation to it. But this is the only kind of control we ever have over anything. God can make the eclipse happen or not. We can only decide to go see it or not.
I have control over the movements of parts of my body, and this is only because, and to the degree that, I have learned through many experiences to predict accurately what will happen when I make those movements. If I move my arm in such a way as to knock a glass of water off a table, unaware that that was what would happen as a result, so that I am shocked and dismayed, then that was not an action that was under my control. It was an accident.
Suppose I knock the glass off the table to vent my anger. I know the glass is there. I swing my arm knowing that I am going to knock it off. Now I am shocked and dismayed in a different way. I am not frustrated because I didn’t notice the glass was in the way. I am frustrated by my inability to control my anger. (Let us stipulate that I didn’t choose to be angry, if it is indeed possible to so choose.)
Contrast both of those cases with one in which I reach out and pick up the glass to take a drink from it, because I am thirsty. Here we don’t have to stipulate that I didn’t choose to be thirsty. That isn’t the kind of thing one chooses. In such a case I have a high degree of ability to predict accurately and a high degree of control or power. But I didn’t always have such an ability to predict and control. I had to learn it in infancy through repeated trial and error.
Does God always know what is going to happen next? Do I, or does any human being, ever know what is going to happen next?
Suppose I make a decision to do something that is clearly within my power, and I then do it. That at least seems to be a clear case in which I knew what was going to happen next. But the problem is that in every situation there are many things that are outside my control. I may be able to predict, with a high degree of probability, that none of those things are going to interfere with my ability to perform the action in question; but I can never know this with the kind of certainty with which we suppose God would know what is going to happen next. I could suffer a fatal heart attack in the instant immediately after I made the decision. Or an earthquake or lightning bolt could strike. Or I could be interrupted in some less dramatic fashion. All it would take would be something that captured my attention and drew it away from my intention. And even though none of those things happened, and I did carry out my decision, I didn’t know what was going to happen next unless I somehow knew that no such intervention could have happened. And I didn’t know that. I know now that no such thing happened, but I didn’t know, in advance, that it wouldn’t happen. I acted on the expectation that it wouldn’t happen, and I was right. But in any situation in which I seem to know what is going to happen next because I have resolved to do something that seems to be in my power to do, there is this reason to doubt that I knew in any absolute sense what was going to happen next or that the thing really was within my power to do at that time. There are always things outside my control that could intervene, and their failure to occur and my success in carrying out my decision cannot change that fact and should give me at least a bit of caution and modesty about my powers.
When there is a question about not only what I can or can’t do but also about what I should or shouldn’t do, I need to consider not only what will happen next but also what will happen after that, and after that, and so on. This is where my complaint against extreme moralizing and political activism comes in. (I think they are the same thing.) There are simple cases in which an act is obviously a good thing to do. Suppose, for example, you are on a walk in your neighborhood, and you notice bits of trash and litter along the way. Someone has discarded a paper cup and a wrapper from a fast-food restaurant. Here is a beer can, there a plastic fork. On your way back home, you can pick up at least some of these things and take them back home to throw away, so that they will be disposed of in a better way than simply leaving them strewn on people’s lawns and along the sidewalk. Or, you can just leave them lying there, with the foreseeable result of making the area seem trashy so that other thoughtless people will also feel free to litter. There is a clear choice between immediately foreseeable results: either a more aesthetically appealing neighborhood and setting a good example for others or a trashy neighborhood and setting a bad example for others. Moderate and reasonable moralizing like this seems obvious and boring to an immature mind, which prefers grand causes involving the persuasion or coercion of large numbers of other people to take some action or other. We all continue to learn by trial and error, which is the only way we ever learn. I am trying something in writing this essay. An essay is a trial, a testing of ideas.
I don’t like it when someone else’s will thwarts my will. I want to be able to make my own decisions. But I also wouldn’t like it if I had to make all the decisions. Back to the question: Does God always know what is going to happen next? One thing that is clear to me is that if He does, then it is never up to me what is going to happen next. The only way I can think of to answer this question is to apply Anselm’s conceptualization of God as the being than which none greater can be conceived. Then it comes to the question of what we understand to be greater: to always know what is going to happen next or at least sometimes not to know. Suppose that God can choose which of these ways it is going to be for him. I think he would choose to be able to be surprised. If this implied that there was some other God who had a greater power and that that was why God sometimes doesn’t know what is going to happen next, then it could be argued that that other God was the true being than which none greater can be conceived. But why can’t it be that the reason God can be surprised is that he has created creatures who can act in ways he cannot completely predict because he has chosen to make them this way? I don’t see that this would make any of them any greater than him. After all, we are supposing that they wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t created them. But he would be greater by being able to choose to create creatures who can act in ways that he can’t predict than he would be if he could only create creatures who were perfectly predictable. We only need to suppose that he could destroy them at any time if he wanted to. This would put a safe limit on their unpredictability.