God's omniscience vs free-will

norman619 · Post by **norman619** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 9:56 am

My question is if God is all knowing and all seeing then why bother with this game? I mean seriously. Since he/she/it is supposed to know all and see all then he/she/it knows what the final outcome will be. There is no question. No doubt. It negates free will and the idea of random chance. Everything is "predestined" if you believe the view of an omnipotent deity. I have never understood this. I remember asking this question when I was small and going to Sunday school. They never answered my question. When I was small I didn't understand that the reason was they themselves didn't know how to address it. I figured since they had all the answers on God they should give me an answer. I thought they were just being mean and punishing me for questioning what they were teaching me.

Felgar · Post by **Felgar** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 10:18 am

norman619 wrote:My question is if God is all knowing and all seeing then why bother with this game? ... There is no question. No doubt. It negates free will and the idea of random chance. Everything is "predestined" if you believe the view of an omnipotent deity.

I split this from the thread on evolution because it is a new topic.

My view on this is that we make choices because are bound by causality. We choose, and then there is a consequence to that choice. I believe that our free-will is linked to the the fact that we are bound by time and therefore by causality. God on the other hand, by definition, is eternal and is not bound by time or causality. Therefore it is possible both for God to know what will happen and at the same time for us to make a free and very real choice.

It should also be noted that free-will is not a concept that all Christians adhere to. Puritan may be along shortly to explain his view that we are indeed, all 'predestined' to our fates and we have no choice or say in the matter. While I disagree with this view, it should be noted that it is not necessarily contradictory to the Bible (it is a matter of interpretation) and it most certainly is not contradictory to the concept of Almighty God.

norman619 · Post by **norman619** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 12:03 pm

Hmmm... It still sounds like lack of free will. Like I said before if God is all knowing and all seeing then he/she/it knows what life choices you will be making and the end result. In order for there to be free will he/she/it would need to be in the dark as to what you will do as much as you are. This goes against everyone's perception of God being in the dark about anything. As for what you said about those that feel we are all predestined then why do they go on living?

sandy_mcd · Post by **sandy_mcd** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 12:20 pm

How exactly does foreknowledge of an action preclude free will ? If you live with someone long enough, you can often predict what choice they will make in certain situations. But being confident of what action a person will take is not the same as forcing someone to make that choice. And if we imperfect humans can frequently do this, why are you saying an all knowledgable God can't ?

AttentionKMartShoppers · Mon Nov 07, 2005 12:37 pm

Yeah, I mean, there's this one argument by...can't remember, but anyways, the argument is made that you can't have free will and an all knowing Being...but that assumes that the said all knowing Being would in fact change things up when he knew you were going to something...so such arguments assume that God does not want free will, and just gives the illusion of it.

sandy_mcd · Post by **sandy_mcd** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 12:43 pm

Identical twins, even when raised in different environments, typically exhibit extraordinarily similar tastes and behaviors. So in your sense they have no pairwise free will, and so what's the point in their going on living as twins ? So does one identical twin then frequently kill the other twin so as to have free will ? No, in fact identical twins usually have very strong bonds.

SpaceCase · Post by **SpaceCase** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 2:51 pm

sandy_mcd wrote:How exactly does foreknowledge of an action preclude free will ? If you live with someone long enough, you can often predict what choice they will make in certain situations. But being confident of what action a person will take is not the same as forcing someone to make that choice. And if we imperfect humans can frequently do this, why are you saying an all knowledgable God can't ?

That is exactly how I view free will.
Imagine that you are with someone you know really well, (doesn't matter who)
Now present that someone with a choice, lets say 'select a candybar off of the table and eat it'. But before they do, you must write on a piece of paper which one you think they will choose.

Some things you may write could be:
'None of them she's diabetic'
'Definitely the peanut butter one, he hates coconut'
'Anything with peanuts!'

Now, let them choose. If your right, does that mean they didn't choose?
Of course not, It means you know them well enough to predict their choice.

Now, look at yourself, some people know you better than others... some may guess your choices more often than others... But ultimately it is based on how well they know you. Who knows you better than God? Every hair on you head... (Luke 12:7)

If God, wrote on the paper what you were about to do, He'd be right, He knew you in the womb... You are his creation... and it was still your choice!!

AttentionKMartShoppers · Mon Nov 07, 2005 3:49 pm

sandy_mcd wrote:Identical twins, even when raised in different environments, typically exhibit extraordinarily similar tastes and behaviors. So in your sense they have no pairwise free will, and so what's the point in their going on living as twins ? So does one identical twin then frequently kill the other twin so as to have free will ? No, in fact identical twins usually have very strong bonds.

But is this cherry picking?

Byblos · Post by **Byblos** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 5:49 pm

Without free will there can be no judgement. Whether or not God has foreknowledge of our actions is irrelevant.

Jbuza · Post by **Jbuza** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:20 pm

Byblos wrote:Without free will there can be no judgement. Whether or not God has foreknowledge of our actions is irrelevant.

Well it seems to me that should end this discussion. Well stated, Byblos

norman619 · Post by **norman619** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 8:26 pm

LOL you are missing the point of this discussion. If God knows all then there is no free will. He already knows what your choices in life will be even before you are born. If he knows all there is nothing to judge. It's done before you are even born. So where is the free will? Where is your chance to deviate from the path God knows you will take? If you can deviate then God doesn't know what you will do and then God is not all knowing all seeing and is fallible.

The view that God knows you like a good friend does is laughable. God is supposed to be your creator. I would expect him to know you a lil better than that. It would be more like God knows you like a programmer knows a program he himself coded but more so. So again I ask where is the free will?

Byblos wrote:Without free will there can be no judgement. Whether or not God has foreknowledge of our actions is irrelevant.

Kurieuo · Post by **Kurieuo** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 9:18 pm

norman619 wrote:LOL you are missing the point of this discussion. If God knows all then there is no free will. He already knows what your choices in life will be even before you are born.

I don't think you've argued out your case properly on how "knowledge" can take away one's decisions. If a fortune teller knows the future of what someone will do, does this mean the teller sets the future and what that person will do? I do not think such takes away a person's free will in any form, just like my knowing what someone did in the past doesn't mean they didn't freely choose make their own decisions.

Kurieuo

Fortigurn · Post by **Fortigurn** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 9:19 pm

Kurieuo has it absolutely correct. There is no causal relationship between foreknowledge and events which are foreknown.

Jbuza · Post by **Jbuza** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:59 am

norman619 wrote:LOL you are missing the point of this discussion. If God knows all then there is no free will. He already knows what your choices in life will be even before you are born. If he knows all there is nothing to judge. It's done before you are even born. So where is the free will? Where is your chance to deviate from the path God knows you will take? If you can deviate then God doesn't know what you will do and then God is not all knowing all seeing and is fallible.

The view that God knows you like a good friend does is laughable. God is supposed to be your creator. I would expect him to know you a lil better than that. It would be more like God knows you like a programmer knows a program he himself coded but more so. So again I ask where is the free will?

So then is your reasoning that God knows our decisions therefore he made them for us? I can assure you while God has known about some decisions I have made, they didn't come from him.

norman619 · Post by **norman619** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 5:32 am

This will be my last post here since someone has pretty much informed me that I'm not welcome. Anyway how can you know they didn't come from him? Are you saying you know the mind of God? I hope you aren't saying that. HE created you same as a computer programmer writes programs. That is assuming God is as they say in the Bible.

Jbuza wrote:So then is your reasoning that God knows our decisions therefore he made them for us? I can assure you while God has known about some decisions I have made, they didn't come from him.

Evidence for God from Science

God's omniscience vs free-will

Twins

Re: Twins