Free will vs Gods omnipotence

[soadnot]

if god knows all, he knows what im about to do next.
if he knows what im about to do next, there is no free will.
if i choose my own path, god is not omnipotent because he does not know which path i choose.
if he does know my path i dont have free will.

its illogical to have free will and an all knowing god.[/code]

[McCulloch]

if god knows all, he knows what im about to do next.
if he knows what im about to do next, there is no free will.
if i choose my own path, god is not omnipotent because he does not know which path i choose.
if he does know my path i dont have free will.

its illogical to have free will and an all knowing god.

I hate to disagree with you, since I myself am a determinist. But you have not proven your second point. If he knows what you are going to choose, how does that make your choice not free? The theist will simply answer that God foreknew what you would freely choose to do.

[blowfly]

To phrase the problem differently: God's foreknowledge of event X cannot co-exist with a genuine possibility of X not occuring.

"X" can be, world war 3, my choice of sock color tomorrow, a volcano erupting, etc.

I've arguing this several times and it's inescapable IME. Where there IS room for debate is over the meaning of "free-will", but most intuitive versions of "free-will" involve a genuine possibility of you making another choice.

Perhaps a more sensible and ultimately intuitive version of "free-will" is that the circumstances are not pressuring you to make a particular choice. Of course, there are different levels of pressure, which means there are different levels of freedom in different decisions, which is also intuitive.

So a given choice isn't free or forced, but somewhere on a scale of free to constriction. Yet the fact remains that God already knows what you're going to choose, and that there's no *genuine* possibility of you choosing otherwise. It's just the circumstances at the time weren't forcing you.

Cheers,
-the forceful blowfly

[McCulloch]

My problem with free will is that in order for there to be genuine free will there must be a non-random, non-deterministic causal agent for each entity that has free will. The human brain is composed entirely of matter which is either deterministic (cells, bio-chemicals and the like) or random (on a quantum scale). There seems to be no evidential basis for this causal agent, other than the unsupported assertion that we have free will.

The illusion of free will can be compared with a very good computer algorithm for generating random numbers. The numbers are not genuinely random, they are more properly called pseudo-random numbers. They are for all practical purposes random because the algorithm is sufficiently advanced that the numbers generated cannot be distinguished from truly random numbers, let's say generated by some set of quantum events.

Our apparent free will, could only be an illusion. The processes and inputs into the decision process - environmental, experiential, genetic, neurological, biochemical, situational and perhaps even random, are far to complex to in any practical way be used to determine the outcome of any particular decision. But any particular decision we make in our brain is nonetheless completely deterministic.

How does this all relate to God and God's omniscience? If there is an omniscient God, then that God could determine the outcome of any particular decision, and we still do not have genuine free will. The argument made my many theists is that God gave us free will. Perhaps that is what is meant by "in His image". By supposing the existence of a non-deterministic non-random causal agent, God, they can then extend the one of the attributes of that God to humans, our spirit, a non-determined non-random causal agent capable of making decisions independent of materialist influences. However, it can be countered, that by giving humans genuine free will, God must give up to a certain degree omniscience. If all decisions made by our spirits can be determined ahead of time by God, then our spirits are not non-determined causal agents and we have no genuine free will. If any of our spirits' are genuinely non-determined, then even God, by definition, cannot know them in advance.

[Goat]

if god knows all, he knows what im about to do next.
if he knows what im about to do next, there is no free will.
if i choose my own path, god is not omnipotent because he does not know which path i choose.
if he does know my path i dont have free will.

its illogical to have free will and an all knowing god.

I hate to disagree with you, since I myself am a determinist. But you have not proven your second point. If he knows what you are going to choose, how does that make your choice not free? The theist will simply answer that God foreknew what you would freely choose to do.

If the choice is 'foreknown', is there any choice in the matter? To make things a bit more direct, if a 'creator' knew what the 'choices' would be of his own creation before he 'made' it, wouldn't that eliminate 'choice' also?

[jjg]

It's like a spectator watching the outcome of a football game. You can watch who wins but not actually participate in the game and affect its outcome.

[ST88]

To phrase the problem differently: God's foreknowledge of event X cannot co-exist with a genuine possibility of X not occuring.

I think the problem here is not with foreknowledge, but with the nature of your "genuineness". If you assume that space/time (past, present, future) is a fixed object and that time is merely the passing through of that object, then you would be correct. But is that the assertion? If God knows which combo plate you're going to have for dinner, does that necessarily mean that there is a specific physical point in space/time where you order the pork or chicken, or does it simply mean that god knows what you will do because He's inside your head looking around and can predict your behavior? There is no violation of free will here, because God is merely a Skinnerian Behaviorist who understands his creations.

Perhaps a more sensible and ultimately intuitive version of "free-will" is that the circumstances are not pressuring you to make a particular choice. Of course, there are different levels of pressure, which means there are different levels of freedom in different decisions, which is also intuitive.

Pressure, to me, is irrelevant. Degrees (or levels, if you like) of freedom are also irrelevant. Most choices we make are false forced choices, because there are always many different choices we could make at any given time. There is the odd There's a piano falling towards me; Do I get out of the way? choice, but even there, describing the type of choice in this circumstance does it disservice. There are many things that can be done in order to get out of the way of the piano and many things that can be done to stay in place. It's only on retrospect that we can define these myriad choices as a dichotomous statement of choice.

[McCulloch]

If the choice is 'foreknown', is there any choice in the matter? To make things a bit more direct, if a 'creator' knew what the 'choices' would be of his own creation before he 'made' it, wouldn't that eliminate 'choice' also?

Would it? It could be argued that so long as He did not do anything to influence your choice and that your choice was made freely, you had free will. Does it really matter that he foreknew what your free choice would have been?

[Goat]

If the choice is 'foreknown', is there any choice in the matter? To make things a bit more direct, if a 'creator' knew what the 'choices' would be of his own creation before he 'made' it, wouldn't that eliminate 'choice' also?

Would it? It could be argued that so long as He did not do anything to influence your choice and that your choice was made freely, you had free will. Does it really matter that he foreknew what your free choice would have been?

Yes, it has been argued that. But I say that perfect forknoweldge eliminates free will. All the choices have been made even before they ahve been presented.

This is particularly true if the one that has the perfect foreknowledge also is the creator/designer.

[McCulloch]

I think that you have hit on a very important issue.

This is particularly true if the one that has the perfect foreknowledge also is the creator/designer.

If you create something AND you have perfect knowledge of how the thing you create will behave then it cannot be said that it has free will, can it?