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God and "Free Will"

Legend

Focu Meu!
Legend
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
10,609
My first "new topic"...

I'm really condensing this argument here as I've been writing pages on the matter.

I've recently been looking into the idea of God and him giving humans free will. I initially was thinking, and I came up with the idea that, if he is omniscient, than this contradicts free will because:

Before creating us, he must have known what was going to occur (due to his omniscience). This means that by starting life he has set out what will occur because his knowledge can't be incorrect.

After I looked into it further, this theory was actually thought of way before it crossed my mind. Hell, they even used the same words as me ("omniscient").

In a nutshell, the reply I'm having trouble matching with this theory is that God doesn't actually change what's occuring at all, he merely correctly predicts what will happen, meaning he knows that, "He is going to do this at this particular time" and simply because he knows it, he won't affect it.

Do you have a plausible reply to this, or is this argument on free will flawed?

Alex.
 
This 'free will' idea contains the assumption that people's decisions have to be unpredictable, or else they are automatons. For my part, I think people ARE automatons, albeit very complex ones. The 'free will' idea goes back to the Cartesian Dualism idea of there being an immaterial component, a soul, attached to each human, making them more than a machine of flesh and bone.

As you say, the idea of an omniscient being contradicts this, so one or the other must be false.

The only other way to resolve this to resort to doublethink ('He can give us free will AND know what we're going to do with it!') at which point any attempt at coherent reasoning goes out the window.
 
The Abrahamic god has (among others) three characteristics:

He is infinitely knowledgeable
He is infinitely powerful
He is infinitely good

It's a bit like the builder who said "We build good, fast and cheap- pick any two". And the Christian theologists have spent the last 1800 years trying to sort it out, and merely digging the hole deeper. If god is omniscient, AND he encourages evil (after all, the Divil is just one of god's poor creatures), if he's "good", it's in a sense that has nothing to do with any morality that humans have so far recognised.

Christians have the problem that they never stopped to think out what infinity means, and just used it as a synonym for A Bit Big; or what creation implies (Monty Python did a good parody of All Things Bright And Beautiful recognising the implications of god's creation); and that their idea of Greatness and Majesty is taken wholesale from the expected behaviour of a Byzantine emperor, including fawning acolytes, torture chambers and bureaucratic accounting.
 
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?

If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
-Epicurus, 341-271BC
 
Legend said:
My first "new topic"...

I'm really condensing this argument here as I've been writing pages on the matter.

I've recently been looking into the idea of God and him giving humans free will. I initially was thinking, and I came up with the idea that, if he is omniscient, than this contradicts free will because:

Before creating us, he must have known what was going to occur (due to his omniscience). This means that by starting life he has set out what will occur because his knowledge can't be incorrect.

After I looked into it further, this theory was actually thought of way before it crossed my mind. Hell, they even used the same words as me ("omniscient").

In a nutshell, the reply I'm having trouble matching with this theory is that God doesn't actually change what's occuring at all, he merely correctly predicts what will happen, meaning he knows that, "He is going to do this at this particular time" and simply because he knows it, he won't affect it.

Do you have a plausible reply to this, or is this argument on free will flawed?

Alex.
Click to expand...

Whether he actively changes anything at all is irrelevant. If he knows the outcome of an event prior to the temporal occurrence of that event, then there can only be one outcome of that event (because God cannot be wrong).

Theists have tried to get around this inconsistency by claiming things like "since God is outside of space and time it may possible for him to know the outcome of an event both prior to the event temporally yet after the event causally because perhaps a causal graph doesn't display the same topography in non-spacetime as it does in spacetime," etc. But this doesn't solve the problem for free-will, it just pushes it out one level. At some point one has to face the fact that the ideas of omniscience and free-will are simply inconsistent.
 
I don't believe in God or in free will, but here's my thoughts based on the premise that both exist.

I can predict my son's behaviour quite well because I know him quite well. God can predict perfectly because he knows everyone perfectly. The fact that I know that my son will answer my next sentence with the words "That's not fair; and I'm not going to go to bed tonight" doesn't make him do it, or remove his free will. The same goes for God.

If we were able to accurately read brain states to perfectly predict a person's behaviour would that mean that they would suddenly lose their free will? Or does it mean that such an ability cannot exist? Or does it mean that they never had any free will in the first place?
 
Professor Yaffle said:
I don't believe in God or in free will, but here's my thoughts based on the premise that both exist.

I can predict my son's behaviour quite well because I know him quite well. God can predict perfectly because he knows everyone perfectly. The fact that I know that my son will answer my next sentence with the words "That's not fair; and I'm not going to go to bed tonight" doesn't make him do it, or remove his free will. The same goes for God.

If we were able to accurately read brain states to perfectly predict a person's behaviour would that mean that they would suddenly lose their free will? Or does it mean that such an ability cannot exist? Or does it mean that they never had any free will in the first place?
Click to expand...

What you are speaking of is deterministic free will, which is not the same as the undefined "libertarian" free will that theists assert exists. The essence of that type is that it cannot be predicted -- hence the contradiction with omniscience.
 
Your mind takes inputs and produces outputs.

Religion itself acknowledges this -- that's the whole point of punishment and reward.
 
rocketdodger said:
What you are speaking of is deterministic free will, which is not the same as the undefined "libertarian" free will that theists assert exists. The essence of that type is that it cannot be predicted -- hence the contradiction with omniscience.
Click to expand...

That's interesting. I hear this often. They say that God only correctly predicts the future, because he knows, "That man is going to do that", but that man has the free will to do anything.
 
Legend said:
My first "new topic"...

I'm really condensing this argument here as I've been writing pages on the matter.

I've recently been looking into the idea of God and him giving humans free will. I initially was thinking, and I came up with the idea that, if he is omniscient, than this contradicts free will because:

Before creating us, he must have known what was going to occur (due to his omniscience). This means that by starting life he has set out what will occur because his knowledge can't be incorrect.

After I looked into it further, this theory was actually thought of way before it crossed my mind. Hell, they even used the same words as me ("omniscient").

In a nutshell, the reply I'm having trouble matching with this theory is that God doesn't actually change what's occuring at all, he merely correctly predicts what will happen, meaning he knows that, "He is going to do this at this particular time" and simply because he knows it, he won't affect it.

Do you have a plausible reply to this, or is this argument on free will flawed?

Alex.
Click to expand...

How actually could any God create something that has free will? It could create something that believes it has free will, but I don't see how it could actually create free will. Do you?

Nick
 
I had this same epiphany many moons ago. Omniscience = no free will.
 
Religion needs humankind to have free will, so that they may be held responsible and punished. If humans have no free will, then god has to shoulder the blame, and the heads of the church have to waste valuable time shouting "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
 
Nick227 said:
How actually could any God create something that has free will? It could create something that believes it has free will, but I don't see how it could actually create free will. Do you?

Nick
Click to expand...

My first simplistic dumb reply to that is "why not?"

If you imagine a god that can create anything at all, why not create a creature whose behavior is undeterministic, or "free"? I'm not saying it's actually possible to create such a creature, by why is this a theological problem?

The common conception of the Abrahamic God is that he is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. My second simplistic dumb question is "why?"

Is there any inherent quality of godhood that requires this level of perfection?
 
Legend said:
My first "new topic"...

I'm really condensing this argument here as I've been writing pages on the matter.

I've recently been looking into the idea of God and him giving humans free will. I initially was thinking, and I came up with the idea that, if he is omniscient, than this contradicts free will because:

Before creating us, he must have known what was going to occur (due to his omniscience). This means that by starting life he has set out what will occur because his knowledge can't be incorrect.

After I looked into it further, this theory was actually thought of way before it crossed my mind. Hell, they even used the same words as me ("omniscient").

In a nutshell, the reply I'm having trouble matching with this theory is that God doesn't actually change what's occuring at all, he merely correctly predicts what will happen, meaning he knows that, "He is going to do this at this particular time" and simply because he knows it, he won't affect it.

Do you have a plausible reply to this, or is this argument on free will flawed?

Alex.
Click to expand...
The standard reply these days is the "God is timeless" argument in which free will does not have to be deterministic, but God is still omniscient because he views the universe from outside of time.

So God did not know about our choices "before" we made them because "before" is not a concept that can be applied to an eternal, timeless God.

I believe it can be shown that this is impossible for a God that is efficacious in the Universe.

In any case mainstream theology regards free will as being completely deterministic and so there is no contradiction.

For example in Augustine God knows precisely what a creature possessing free will would do in any given situation and so causes the creature to do that thing.

The other major treatment of free will comes from Molina, who proposes "middle knowledge" which really comes down to the same thing - that God knows exactly what a free agent will do in any given circumstances. The difference is that in the Molinist case the volition comes from the free agent rather than from God.

C.S. Lewis also has an interesting argument that the two positions (a) "God did not know man would fall" and (b) "God set man up to fail" are both false. He says that, rather, it is a sort of a dance between man and God. It sounds a bit like fudging to me.

Of course all this is rendered moot by the fact that nobody has a definition of free will in the libertarian sense.
 
Free Will by Rush is as close as your gonna come to getting a decent explanation:

There are those who think that life
Has nothing left to chance
With a host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance
 
osmosis said:
I had this same epiphany many moons ago. Omniscience = no free will.
Click to expand...
But is is not as though no theist has thought of this. There is at least 1,700 years of theology on the subject that I am aware of.

BTW have you also had the ephiphany that there is no definition for "free will" (except in the compatibilist sense). Free will is a meaningless phrase.
 
Robin said:
But is is not as though no theist has thought of this. There is at least 1,700 years of theology on the subject that I am aware of.

BTW have you also had the ephiphany that there is no definition for "free will" (except in the compatibilist sense). Free will is a meaningless phrase.
Click to expand...

Meaningless phrase? Could you explain?
 
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