I think Ken G's point is that its present state is the only thing a thing can know. Wasn't it LaPlace or someone who said that if you knew everything about the present state, you would know everything about the past or future. God was supposed to be able to do that. The universe was like a big pinball machine. If you knew the position and momentum of the ball perfectly, as well as all of the properties of the bumpers, you would be able to project the trajectory of the ball forward or backward perfectly as if it were like a computer program that has only one choice about what to do based on any given set of initial parameters.