Mr. Guthrie, in Richard Dawkins' book God Delusion he says, "If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent." (p. 78). My reply would be in a form of two rhetorical questions: #1 - God is described as the uncaused causer. So, if he caused the "course of history" why would He need to change it? and #2 - If God is all knowing (ie omniscient) why would He have to change His mind in the first place? Duh! Would you agree I have a point with my assessment? I hope I'm not misunderstanding Dawkins though.

 

 

Eddie, I completely agree with your line of questioning here (particularly your first rhetorical question).  Now Dawkins has received quite a bit of spotlighting in the last year by the mainstream media because he is representing what is being deemed as "The New Atheism."  But in an unflattering twist of fate, this "new" atheism is worse than its antecedents (much like the new "Coke" churned out in the 80's!).  Dawkins really gives no good grounds for atheism and spends more time attacking Christian principles and the Ontological Argument (he does devote a small amount of space on the Cosmological Argument).  His overall interest appears to be biological evolution - something he feels warrants atheism.  Now let's probe this point raised on page 78 a bit further:

 

 

Your first rhetorical question is absolutely correct - that since God has already providentially ordered history in one trajectory (set out in advance) why would He want to change it?  But if Dawkins means to say that if God has set history in a specific direction then it is unalterable then I might find a nugget of truth there.  This would only be the case if the history to be changed constitutes the past (in which case it is considered a hard fact in that it has transpired already).  But any future trajectory could (in theory) be altered by God.

 

Now if Dawkins means to say that once God knows which world to actualize then He cannot alter it, then I think he's mistaken here.  There is nothing in God's being omniscient that contradicts His ability to intervene in history.  Typically this objection suggests the following:

 

 

The intention here is to show that whatever God knows must necessarily happen and, therefore, X cannot possibly be other than what it is.  This implies that the events of history must be as they are because God foreknows them.  However, this argument commits a textbook case of a modal fallacy.  The mistake is that the arguer transfers the necessity of the conditional claim ("If . . . then . . . ") to the necessity of the consequent ("X will happen").  The only thing that follows from these premises is

 

 

If God wanted to refrain from X happening then God would have known that instead.  It's not God's foreknowledge that makes events unfold, it's the events that will unfold that constitute God's foreknowledge.