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Free will and omniscience

Avalon, let's say god knows you will pick X.

You pick Y.

Either god is wrong, and therefore not omniscient and free will is safe, or you have just destroyed the universe with an unsolvable paradox.

If you can think of a way around this, please tell me, because from where I sit, you're in a corner.
 
Let's put it differently. God creates a universe in which, at some point, you have two possible courses of action: X and Y. Taking course X will lead to your eternal salvation, and taking course Y will lead to your eternal damnation. At the time of creating the universe, being omniscient, God is aware that you will take course Y, and, being omnipotent, he is equally capable of creating the universe in such a way that you will instead take course X.

Who is responsible for your course of action, and did you have any choice in it?

Dave
 
joobz said:
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

And Avalon's god knew that you would make it. No matter what it is.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Sure there is.

Again, since when is freedom defined by foreknowledge? Freedom is defined by lack of constraint.

There is nothing about someone's knowledge of your decision that magically removes your choice from the process of getting to it.
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What you seem to be dancing around in your analogies is the fact that he not only has the knowledge but set the whole thing up himself. Your analogy of a time traveler is incorrect in one major facet.

For your analogy to be correct you would have to choose a specific situation, lets say what someone is going to do on a tuesday, and then set up a series of events that will lead them to doing this, the one way time travel is a horribly flawed analogy, in that the person time traveling has no control over what the person will do, god on the other hand, from what i hear created the universe thereby setting up the exact series of events that lead to whatever it is your doing on a given day.

Only if you ignore half of god's character sheet, can you legitimately hold this opinion. He set up the universe, and as such, we would have no more free will, than baking soda and vinegar do. He set up the elements of the experiment, and not only that but set up all the physical rules of the universe from scratch, adding in he already knows the outcome, its a pretty strong destruction of the free will argument.

Assuming god exists, he could have set up the universe in such a manner that he does not know what is going to happen, legitimately giving us free will. But as the bible clearly states this is simply not how he rolls.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Let's put it differently. God creates a universe in which, at some point, you have two possible courses of action: X and Y. Taking course X will lead to your eternal salvation, and taking course Y will lead to your eternal damnation. At the time of creating the universe, being omniscient, God is aware that you will take course Y, and, being omnipotent, he is equally capable of creating the universe in such a way that you will instead take course X.

Who is responsible for your course of action, and did you have any choice in it?

Dave
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I think that's the crux of it. Presumably if god is omnipotent he has infinite options when creating something. He knows ahead of time exactly what his creation will do. Out of an infinite number of possibilities he chooses to create it in a certain fashion. He is essentially pre-choosing every choice that will be made by his creation. He doesn't just know what's going to happen, he makes a conscious choice that it must happen.
 
sadhatter said:
What you seem to be dancing around in your analogies is the fact that he not only has the knowledge but set the whole thing up himself. Your analogy of a time traveler is incorrect in one major facet.

For your analogy to be correct you would have to choose a specific situation, lets say what someone is going to do on a tuesday, and then set up a series of events that will lead them to doing this, the one way time travel is a horribly flawed analogy, in that the person time traveling has no control over what the person will do, god on the other hand, from what i hear created the universe thereby setting up the exact series of events that lead to whatever it is your doing on a given day.

Only if you ignore half of god's character sheet, can you legitimately hold this opinion. He set up the universe, and as such, we would have no more free will, than baking soda and vinegar do. He set up the elements of the experiment, and not only that but set up all the physical rules of the universe from scratch, adding in he already knows the outcome, its a pretty strong destruction of the free will argument.

Assuming god exists, he could have set up the universe in such a manner that he does not know what is going to happen, legitimately giving us free will. But as the bible clearly states this is simply not how he rolls.
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I agree, but when I introduced the time traveller idea I was only responding to the specific point in the OP about omniscience and free will, not about a God.

Free Will just seems to be a fudge to explain why perfect God created imperfect beings and to give an excuse to punish them.
 
Relevant and always worth repeating in a discussion of omniscience and omnipotence:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
 
AvalonXQ said:
Or... the blind guy had every choice, and God knew he would end up there anyway. Just like I would if I came from the future.
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Except that if you can come from the future, and know exactly what I'll do next, that is the very definition of predestination.

Which, by the way, opens its own theological can of worms, and that's exactly why the "free will" excuse is there. Because if God knows everything that you will decide, then, just off the top of my head,

- he already knows which people will be good and which people will be naughty. He knows who'll accept Jesus and who won't. Which negates the whole point of having this life as some sort of exam, because God already knows what you'll do on that exam.

- he already knows which people will go ahead and act on the brain wiring problem that makes them attracted to the same sex. So why bother railing against gays, instead of just fixing or aborting those who are going to act on it? There is exactly zero need to test them, if he already knows the outcome.

- he already knew what Job's reaction will be. So why bother doing cruel stuff to him and his family, including murdering his children and slaves, in the name of testing his faith? WTH point does it make to test anything, if the outcome is already determined and known?

- he already knew what Adam and Eve will do in the garden. In detail. So (A) why not just move the tree or something, and (B) how insane does he have to be to still get pissed off at them, when he just allowed the whole thing to happen? For that matter, if he knew exactly what they'll do, why not create different people who'd do something else? What insane sense does it make to create something that you know with 100% certainty that it will annoy you... and then get annoyed at it anyway?

- he already knew that humans will get all wicked and need a complete genocide by Noah's time. So why bother making those generations in the first place? Why not start directly at Noah? Just for the sake of having some people and their babies to drown?

- more importantly, he knew that people like Ted Bundy or the BTK serial killer ("Bind Torture Kill", and yeah, he tortured people to death) and so on will commit those atrocities. There is no point in testing them or anyone else, if God already knows the outcome. What remains is that they were allowed to go do all that evil stuff, while God was already knowing both what they will do and what reactions it will cause in anyone else. It becomes just allowing some evil for no sane reason.

Etc.

Basically "free will" is discussed in the first place only because predestination is a worse can of worms. It's only of any use whatsoever if it's instead of predestination.

Arguing for some way to keep both free will and predestination, is a pointless exercise, because if you have predestination anyway, then your redefined version of free will is fully irrelevant anyway. It becomes just an irrelevant entity on the side, no more than a red herring to distract from the real problem.
 
AvalonXQ said:
That's exactly right.

My capacity to pick Y is not eliminated by the fact that, as it happens, I will actually pick X.
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But since you're predestined to pick X, you are not actually free to pick Y.

You've been assigned to pick X. It's part of the plan, and you can't change that plan.
 
Good Lt said:
But since you're predestined to pick X, you are not actually free to pick Y.

You've been assigned to pick X. It's part of the plan, and you can't change that plan.
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Exactly. With an omniscient god, free will is only an illusion.
 
AvalonXQ said:
That's exactly right.

My capacity to pick Y is not eliminated by the fact that, as it happens, I will actually pick X.



Yes.
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But if god created you such that you would pick X, and he had the option to create you such that you would pick Y, then he made the decision, not you.
 
AvalonXQ said:
That's exactly right.

My capacity to pick Y is not eliminated by the fact that, as it happens, I will actually pick X.
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Yes it is.

You can't pick Y. It's impossible for you to do so. Your hands are tied.
 
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