Aggrad08 said:
The way I see it it's not different than having perfect knowledge after the universe has ended everything is in the past. It all happened the causal agents all made their choices.
One of the premises in my argument is that if my future is predetermined then I cannot have free will in that future. I'm also working off the premise that if a being exists with perfect knowledge of the future then this logically implies that the future is predetermined. Furthermore, I think the symmetry between knowing the future perfectly and knowing the past perfectly is broken with regards to the free will argument because of causality. Because worldlines only travel into the future, knowledge about the past and the future have very different implications. Importantly, knowledge about the past doesn't imply any sort of predetermination.
Just to make things a little clearer let's talk about specific times. We will call them t0, t1, and t2 such that t0<t1<t2. Assume that there are actors at t1. If at t2 you have some recording of all events prior to t2 then by watching it you have gained knowledge about how the actors at t1 chose to act. Since the actors have already acted, gaining this knowledge through such a mechanism doesn't preclude the actors at t1 from acting freely.
On the other hand, let's say that somehow at t0 you have perfect knowledge of all future events in the universe. Then all events at t>t1 must transpire in accordance with your perfect knowledge, otherwise you couldn't call what you have perfect knowledge and this would create a contradiction in terms. It follows that the future of any actors at t1 is therefore predetermined, and this is inconsistent with the free will hypothesis.
I understand that neither of these scenarios are precisely what you are talking about, but I feel that they are pertinent because they demonstrate why coincidence between omniscience and free will is easier after the choice of all free actors has already been made. Perfect knowledge at t2 allows the actors at t1 to choose from a myriad of different paths, and omniscience can be acquired by gaining knowledge of their choices. However, foreknowledge of an actor's actions logically implies what particular path they must take
However, your omniscient being is neither at t0 or t2. It is somewhere "outside" of all of this. Perhaps he can look at the universe and gain knowledge about all things through history all at once. Therefore all actors can chose freely and omniscience comes by gaining knowledge of all choices through history suddenly. I think this creates a sort of grandfather paradox. Is God's knowledge of the choice primary, or is the actor choosing primary? We can also consider this from the perspective of someone within the universe. From his perspective there is an entity who knows his future. This leads to the logical implication of predetermination. If we also assert free will, this creates a contradiction.
However, we can go even further. I assert that any metaphysical "hyperreality" cannot be termed real in any sense of the word unless it has, is, or will at some point in the future interact with physical reality. Certainly all Abrahamic religions would grant me that God has at some point in the past interacted with our world. At that point the situation is identical to the omniscient being in scenario 2 at t0. If such a God is omniscient, our future must be predetermined.
In all such cases the consistency of free will and omniscience seems to create profound logical conundrums. If the omniscient being has the qualities typically ascribed to God not only does it create logical problems, it creates logical contradictions, and is therefore impossible. At least that's the way I see it.
