It seems to be a pretty common idea that complete omniscience, to include knowledge of future events, excludes the idea of free will. While intuitively, I understand this objection, I am not sure that it is a logically necessary conclusion. Here is the basic argument I typically see put into a simple syllogism:

Premise 1: Omniscience as is typically ascribed to God includes the knowledge of events to happen in the future.

Premise 2: The foreknowledge of events include those involving an apparent choice.

Premise 3: Since the events and their outcomes are fully known by God, prior to the occasion of the apparent choices, those choices must be predetermined.

Premise 4: Given the choices are predetermined, there can be no free will.

Conclusion: Given omniscience, free will does not exist.

If someone who holds the view that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible can make the argument better, please do so. If this syllogism expresses the sentiment well enough, then I believe the point that is unsupported is the phrase in bold. I have not seen an argument demonstrating that foreknowledge necessitates a predetermining. If God is not constrained by time as we are, could His foreknowledge not be a product of the choice that we will make in the future without any predetermination on His part? If I will choose A, then he foreknows A. I am free to choose B, and if I were to do so, then He would foreknow B. How does that foreknowledge necessitate predetermination?

I believe God is omniscient but allows us to have free will to work with and for him.

I believe you either don't properly understand the argument or simply haven't clearly laid it out in this post. Omniscience alone couldn't negate free will and I've never seen a convincing argument that it could. For instance, we could imagine that there is an omniscient being living on another planet that truly does know everything but does not interact with our world in any way. Does that beings' omniscience really affect us? I'd argue no.

But we don't have that situation with the claims of Christianity and some of the other monotheistic religions. In these, God isn't simply an omniscient bystander but an omnipotent creator of all that exists as well. The impossibility of free will is a result of how those qualities interact with each other.

Let's simplify and say that we have a person whose entire life can be defined by a small series of binary choices. We'll say five. So if in his life he chose one way at all those times we could describe him as 0-0-0-0-0, if he had chosen the other we'd describe him as 1-1-1-1-1. Or there could be any mix of those you could imagine. Now imagine that God goes to create this person but in the moment before that happens he reflects that with the personality the person will have and the environment they will grow up with that person will definitely use their "free will" to make the choices 1-0-0-0-1. So God's choice becomes either to create that specific person or not. Alternately, God could make some small changes to how that person thinks or how they will be raised and then he'd use his "free will" to choose 1-0-1-0-1. So the question is does that person, no matter what their life ends up being like, really have free will?

Can a person truly act against their own nature? Or does every choice they make just reveal what that nature actually is? The question is a bit irrelevant if there isn't an omniscient and omnipotent creator out there, but I'd argue it is pretty damn important if there is.

This seems to be begging the question. You assume that given a particular set of circumstances and a particular personality, a person will always make the same choices and is not free to choose otherwise. You have assumed determinism at the outset. There is no question whether determinism precludes free will. Of course it does. In fact, in your scenario, the omnipotent creator need not even be omniscient for free will to be absent. His knowledge of the person's choice is not the factor determining the outcome. It is his creative context. His ignorance of the outcome his creation has determined is irrelevant to the person's freedom, or lack thereof.

The alternative is that God creates people not knowing which choices they will make. In which case he is not omniscient. If he's omniscient he knows the outcomes of all actions, including those of creation, before he takes them. If he's omnipotent and omniscient any action he takes will by necessity create the exact outcome he expected it to.

From the perspective of an omniscient being there is no such thing as random chance. X action produces Y result with 100% certainty. How do they know that? Because they're omniscient. A person might look at the same scenario and say "Well sometimes X action produces Z result". That's irrelevant because the omniscient being will know that won't happen in this particular case. And if a result is produced that the so called omniscient being didn't see coming then they were never really omniscient to begin with.

I think Rocag makes the point well. Omniscience on its own isn't necessarily incompatible with free will. Imagine the Watchers from Marvel. They know everything that has happened and is happening, but they do not interact with what they are observing in any way. If we stretch that to include the knowledge of things that will happen, then we have a completely independent observer that knows what will happen without affecting it in a causal way at all.

The problem happens when you mix the omniscience with both omnipotence and the function of being the Creator. Take the example of the Deist "clockmaker God". In this scenario, God creates the universe and then steps back and doesn't interfere at all once the universe is in motion. Free will is still not possible in this scenario. God decides at the moment of creation that pi= 3.1415926... As soon as He does that, His omnipotence tells him the entire story of the universe all the way up to me hopefully getting barbeque tonight. Let's say instead he decides to swap the 1,678,234 the position of pi by 1 at creation. Maybe when He does that He sees that I will instead eat Chinese food tonight. Or altering a different minuscule value of a fundamental constant and seeing me get Mexican. In such a case my decisions can be said to be dependent on God's decisions at creation.

I haven't seen any argument made that reconciles omniscience, omnipotence, the Creator function, and human free will. The two current theological systems that address this both make compromises in some way. Open theism makes compromise with the power and knowledge of God but preserves real free human will in a limited way (man can't will to breathe underwater or fly in space). Calvinism makes compromise with the free will but preserves God's knowledge and power. Any defense of free will pretty much boils down to the fact that you really need to build an entire system of existence to allow and maintain free will. Luckily, such systems are compatible with both Christian scripture and common life experience.

I tend to go the open theism route, as I think God's most important attribute is not His power or knowledge but His love. Love of something that has no free will is inferior to something with free will. Compare the love of Tolkien for Frodo Baggins to the love of Tolkien for his wife and children. There's no comparison. Frodo Baggins is a completely dependent creation of Tolkien, and his fondness for him as his creator really doesn't match his love for the independent beings.

God has no past, present or future. God is not the supreme being. God is not a being at all. God is ipsum esse, existence itself. God exists outside of time. Maybe it's useful to think of God as being in the eternal present …

Rocag and Ramblin, it seems to me with both of your positions that the omniscience part is irrelevant. You both are describing determinism as a result of creational context. God creates one set of circumstances, and your choices are permanently locked, regardless of whether or not He is cognizant of those choices.

We can go back to Rocag's hypothetical person facing 5 binary decisions. The pertinent question is whether or not each of those decisions is entirely dependent on the genetics and environment of that person. Conversely, is there an aspect of actual will and volition that influences the decision in addition to genetics and environment? Facing a given set of genes and a given set of circumstances, is he locked into 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, or is it possible, in 32 different, yet identical universes, he chooses the other available possibilities? If so, it is not only the set of circumstances determining the decision. This is true regardless of whether the creator knows the outcome.

Ramblin, I'm not sure how open theism really helps the case here. In your scenario, Pi has been set, and you ate BBQ. God determined you would eat BBQ by virtue of creation, knowingly or not. His knowledge or ignorance on the matter would not change that fact.

For both of you free will is impossible given an omnipotent creator, omniscience notwithstanding.

The issue is omniscience and knowing the choice for a creator seem at odds as the very premise of free will is undetermined choice.

The simultaneous omnipotent creator aspect causes an even worse snag as any and all outcomes can be tweaked at gods preference at t=0

So for free will we have a basic premise that within the abilities of the person in question for a given event the person may freely choose of at least two alternatives.

So let's take an event, to sit in a chair at a given moment. We will consider this binary and ignore alternatives like standing on the chair. Most would argue for libertarian free will the choice must be made by the person and either alternative is and must be possible (sit or stand). As the very definition of lack of free will is for alternatives to be impossible.

Now let's talk omniscience. To be omniscient about the future (from the person's perspective) if god has a present belief about the future that belief must come true. This again is pretty straightforward. So any belief god has if infallible, means that belief becomes logically necessary. This is the type of necessity we can think about with past events. It is necessary that Neil Armstrong walks on the moon etc. So if god believes yesterday an avalanche will occur tomorrow, that avalanche must occur or he's not infallible. So it's not possible for god to believe an event p and p be false.

So let's look at a scenario.

1. Yesterday god tells a person he will sit in a chair at 2pm today. God believes this with infallible foreknowledge..

2.it is not possible that god believes p and p is false.

3. It is now necessary that p be true.

4. If it is now necessary that p is true the person cannot do otherwise than sit at 2pm.

5. If the person cannot do otherwise than sit they do not act freely.

6. If you don't act freely you don't have free will.

This is a version without even an omnipotent creator (which makes things more difficult). And even here finding the wriggle room for free will is not obvious.

Knocking god out of time changes the formulation but not the outcomes. The idea here that god doesn't have beliefs in the past, or at any time, but rather he sees time as a 4d object of sorts.

The argument then goes god timelessly knows T. For any event E in timelessly observed universe that event is now necessary (similar to how past events are necessary). It is now necessary that T.

The rest follows the same.

Aggrad08 said:

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Now let's talk omniscience. To be omniscient about the future (from the person's perspective) if god has a present belief about the future that belief must come true. This again is pretty straightforward. So any belief god has if infallible, means that belief becomes logically necessary. This is the type of necessity we can think about with past events. It is necessary that Neil Armstrong walks on the moon etc. So if god believes yesterday an avalanche will occur tomorrow, that avalanche must occur or he's not infallible. So it's not possible for god to believe an event p and p be false.

So let's look at a scenario.

1. Yesterday god tells a person he will sit in a chair at 2pm today. God believes this with infallible foreknowledge..

2.it is not possible that god believes p and p is false.

3. It is now necessary that p be true.

4. If it is now necessary that p is true the person cannot do otherwise than sit at 2pm.

5. If the person cannot do otherwise than sit they do not act freely.

6. If you don't act freely you don't have free will.

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It is the portions in bold that I believe are just assumed to be true without being logically necessary. The statement that if God believes future event A, then A must come true implies a directional causality. God believes A, and because of that, A must happen.

Why would causality in the reverse direction not be equally plausible? Because A will happen, God believes it. Here, God's belief is predicated on the fact that the event will happen and not the other way around. The person will choose to sit on the chair at 2pm; therefore, God believes it. The person if free to not sit on the chair at 2pm, and if he were going to make that choice, then God would not believe he would sit.

Every argument that divine foreknowledge entails fatalism works equally well to show that true future-tensed propositions entail fatalism. But that seems nuts.

GQaggie said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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Now let's talk omniscience. To be omniscient about the future (from the person's perspective) if god has a present belief about the future that belief must come true. This again is pretty straightforward. So any belief god has if infallible, means that belief becomes logically necessary. This is the type of necessity we can think about with past events. It is necessary that Neil Armstrong walks on the moon etc. So if god believes yesterday an avalanche will occur tomorrow, that avalanche must occur or he's not infallible. So it's not possible for god to believe an event p and p be false.

So let's look at a scenario.

1. Yesterday god tells a person he will sit in a chair at 2pm today. God believes this with infallible foreknowledge..

2.it is not possible that god believes p and p is false.

3. It is now necessary that p be true.

4. If it is now necessary that p is true the person cannot do otherwise than sit at 2pm.

5. If the person cannot do otherwise than sit they do not act freely.

6. If you don't act freely you don't have free will.

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It is the portions in bold that I believe are just assumed to be true without being logically necessary. The statement that if God believes future event A, then A must come true implies a directional causality. God believes A, and because of that, A must happen.

Why would causality in the reverse direction not be equally plausible? Because A will happen, God believes it. Here, God's belief is predicated on the fact that the event will happen and not the other way around. The person will choose to sit on the chair at 2pm; therefore, God believes it. The person if free to not sit on the chair at 2pm, and if he were going to make that choice, then God would not believe he would sit.

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What is your alternative? If Anything other than A could happen than god could be wrong. What's your workaround?

The reverse could work in only in a deterministic universe isn't that what you are arguing against? What way does god have to know something will happen without it being determined?

The system you describe is indistinguishable from a system without free will

fat girlfriend said:

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Every argument that divine foreknowledge entails fatalism works equally well to show that true future-tensed propositions entail fatalism. But that seems nuts.

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That isn't true unless those future tensed propositions are infallible. In which case what's the difference between that and omniscience?

Aggrad08 said:

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GQaggie said:

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Aggrad08 said:

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Now let's talk omniscience. To be omniscient about the future (from the person's perspective) if god has a present belief about the future that belief must come true. This again is pretty straightforward. So any belief god has if infallible, means that belief becomes logically necessary. This is the type of necessity we can think about with past events. It is necessary that Neil Armstrong walks on the moon etc. So if god believes yesterday an avalanche will occur tomorrow, that avalanche must occur or he's not infallible. So it's not possible for god to believe an event p and p be false.

So let's look at a scenario.

1. Yesterday god tells a person he will sit in a chair at 2pm today. God believes this with infallible foreknowledge..

2.it is not possible that god believes p and p is false.

3. It is now necessary that p be true.

4. If it is now necessary that p is true the person cannot do otherwise than sit at 2pm.

5. If the person cannot do otherwise than sit they do not act freely.

6. If you don't act freely you don't have free will.

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It is the portions in bold that I believe are just assumed to be true without being logically necessary. The statement that if God believes future event A, then A must come true implies a directional causality. God believes A, and because of that, A must happen.

Why would causality in the reverse direction not be equally plausible? Because A will happen, God believes it. Here, God's belief is predicated on the fact that the event will happen and not the other way around. The person will choose to sit on the chair at 2pm; therefore, God believes it. The person if free to not sit on the chair at 2pm, and if he were going to make that choice, then God would not believe he would sit.

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What is your alternative? If Anything other than A could happen than god could be wrong. What's your workaround?

The reverse could work in only in a deterministic universe isn't that what you are arguing against? What way does god have to know something will happen without it being determined?

The system you describe is indistinguishable from a system without free will

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The statement, "Because I will choose A, God believes A," makes my choice the determining agent for God's belief. I do not choose A because He believes it, rather He believes it because I choose it. Anything other than A could happen, but then God would believe B, rather than A.

In regards to your previous example of past events, I know Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and that event being in the past is determined. That doesn't demonstrate Neil Armstrong had no free will though. The event is determined because that is what he chose to do. For a timeless being, why would this not work equally in both directions? Even if you want to use deterministic language, you could say future event A is determined because I will choose it. I could choose B instead, but then that event would be determined rather than A. Just as my knowledge of past events, being a time-constrained being, has no impact on those past events, could not God's knowledge of future events, being a non time-constrained being, similarly have no impact. Could not His knowledge of the future events be determined by free choices in the future just as my knowledge of past events is determined by free choices in the past?

GQaggie said:

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The statement, "Because I will choose A, God believes A," makes my choice the determining agent for God's belief.

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You are making a claim here and not logically defending it. These actions happen in a particular sequence. Try and stick to a syllogism. As I did but still allow god to forknow and the person to freely choose without it being determined. How does god know what is undetermined?

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I do not choose A because He believes it, rather He believes it because I choose it. Anything other than A could happen, but then God would believe B, rather than A.

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This works after the fact but not before. Time if real at all throws a major snag into this reasoning. Before you haven't chosen anything. Again try an work within a syllogism showing gods prediction allows either choice. Use the same one I did but make it work for you if you can.

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In regards to your previous example of past events, I know Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and that event being in the past is determined. That doesn't demonstrate Neil Armstrong had no free will though.

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Sure, because you are not making a statement about the future. The past is determined agreed? And the determined past caused your present belief. In such a structure free will isn't violated. So no actor has free will at all moments in time but only in the ever moving present. Neil Armstrong has no free will to change his past actions.

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For a timeless being, why would this not work equally in both directions? Even if you want to use deterministic language, you could say future event A is determined because I will choose it. I could choose B instead, but then that event would be determined rather than A. Just as my knowledge of past events, being a time-constrained being, has no impact on those past events, could not God's knowledge of future events, being a non time-constrained being, similarly have no impact. Could not His knowledge of the future events be determined by free choices in the future just as my knowledge of past events is determined by free choices in the past?

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It actually does work in both directions but not how you think. Just like the past is fully determined the future becomes fully determined in this scenario. And a fully determined future allows no free will. Again, stick to a syllogism.

You are mixing and matching causality. We are beings in time and need to make undetermined choices in time whether god sees time all at once or not. Time must be real in some sense for choice to be real. We all share a particular present (with some minor weirdness for relatively).

What you seem to be imagining is time playing out freely like an unscripted movie being filmed. And then god going back and being able to look at the tape and say this happened. That's no problem.

In the other direction you have an issue. Let's say we film the unscripted movie to its conclusion. Then god can see the whole thing at once. But now, it's not an unscripted movie, it's a determined one. So if god fast forwards to time x he can say perfectly what will happen at time y because it's based on the previous choice of the actor. But this is the second viewing. So it only works if our universe is a second viewing that god enjoys playing re-runs of. In which case on this viewing our actions are determined but on this first viewing god wasn't omniscient.

So you can imagine god having this power only in so far as he didn't know or interfere with the movie the first time it was played.

That's the problem with the "outside" time argument. It's not actually coherent as to what outside time means if time and causality is real with respect to future events. Or if there is such thing as an ever changing present.

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Ramblin, I'm not sure how open theism really helps the case here. In your scenario, Pi has been set, and you ate BBQ. God determined you would eat BBQ by virtue of creation, knowingly or not. His knowledge or ignorance on the matter would not change that fact.

For both of you free will is impossible given an omnipotent creator, omniscience notwithstanding.

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I understand your point. So let me try to say it a different way. If God alters pi as I said, maybe BBQ restaurants will never exist. Or maybe I live in a small town in rural China and there is only Chinese food around. It's not always a matter of me weighing my available options. God's omnipotence determines which options I have. So I guess in that way, I don't believe humans have true free will. In addition to not being able to choose to fly, I cannot really choose to have Malaysian food tonight if there is no Malaysian food within hundreds of miles.

This is the reason I spoke before about having to engineer an entire universe to allow free will. Some choices are inconsequential, so we don't really need to worry about my options for dinner. What is important is our moral choices. So at every moral dilemma, we need to have both the opportunity and capacity to make moral and immoral choices. If God knows with perfect knowledge that I will make an immoral choice, then He knows that at the moment of creation. From the moment of creation, my choice is known. It can never be different than it will be. If God sees my immoral choice and doesn't like it, then he could change that millionth digit of pi and now my decision is different. Maybe I never meet that woman or man, maybe I catch pneumonia the night of the robbery. There are a million things that could prevent me from making immoral choices of which I have no control, but God controls that circumstance at creation.

The difference with open theism is that God doesn't know my choice. At the moment of creation He knows my options and maybe even the probabily of me making each choice, and He has engineered creation to give me both the opportunity and capacity to make a moral choice. But until I make that choice, He doesn't know what it is or what it will be. Now it's not like He will be surprised. He knows all the possible options, the outcomes of each choice, and the new choices that will arise and the outcomes of each of those choices. The analogy I've used before is a Choose Your Own Adventure book that you only get to go through once. The person that wrote the book knows all the possible outcomes, but the person reading the book still gets to choose their own path.

God sounds a lot like quantum mechanics there. That just sounds like a multiverse theory.

I think some of the issue in the discussion here could be boiled down to our understanding on deterministic vs probabilistic outcomes. From our perspective this framework makes sense but from the point of view of an omniscient (including future events) being, probabilistic events are nonsensical. Take a dice roll. From our limited perspective it is a probabilistic event, where each event has a 1/6 probability for each outcome. To someone with future omniscience, sure a string of dice rolls have that probability distribution, but any single dice roll could be viewed as 100% deterministic because with that omniscience, you know with 100% certainty what each individual roll will yield. although even our probabilistic view isn't true, if we truly knew ahead of the roll the exact air density, rotational direction speed and position of the die at release, the height, the material it would land on, etc. even each dice roll could be said to be deterministic. so maybe much of our view on probabilities is actually just a way to simplify our lack of understanding/inability to truly process every variable for each event.

So I see two paths leading from that framework.

• the first is that maybe nothing is actually probabilistic if you truly got down to a full understanding of each field of science and all the laws governing them and then were able to truly process every relevant variable. in this view, the universe is entirely deterministic at its chore, and it only seems like chaos due to our limited perspective, and free will doesn't actually exist irrespective of whether there is or is not a creator or higher power.
• the second is that even if there are truly probabilistic events, to a future-omniscient creator, each event when viewed alone will be 100% certain in its outcome, and so begs the question, if you are given agency, but then a hidden figure sits in the shadows and orchestrates scenarios where what you will choose is known, and this guides you (intentionally or not) to a fore-known destination, did you really have free-will in that journey? sure you had agency, but as your steps were guided without your knowledge or consent, but someone using a perfect knowledge of how you would use your agency, does that really count as free will?

I really don't know where I fall on this topic, as I see arguments for both sides, and I really see the philosophical appeal of open theism. But I also have to check that my desire to believe I have free will doesn't lead me to a conclusion needed to uphold that desire. Its a topic I enjoy pondering but I also don't spend too much time trying to force my way to an answer because ultimately it doesn't matter to how I proceed. If I have free will, then great, I will proceed as best I can living the truth and instruction I believe. If I don't have free will than my knowledge of that fact would be truly irrelevant as my choices are already laid out ahead of me anyways.

Dilettante said:

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God sounds a lot like quantum mechanics there. That just sounds like a multiverse theory.

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I say so but in the opposite direction. Typically in multiverse discussions, each potential outcome happens and the universe splits to accommodate the existence of mutually exclusive outcomes. In my concept of open theism, each outcome reduces the number of alternatives as only one outcome actually happens. So you're quantum mechanics comparison is more accurate in my mind. All possibilities are happening until the waveform collapses, and then they aren't

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the first is that maybe nothing is actually probabilistic if you truly got down to a full understanding of each field of science and all the laws governing them and then were able to truly process every relevant variable.

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Nope. Hidden variable theories do not explain the universe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem

Dilettante said:

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the first is that maybe nothing is actually probabilistic if you truly got down to a full understanding of each field of science and all the laws governing them and then were able to truly process every relevant variable.

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Nope. Hidden variable theories do not explain the universe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem

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So i will premise this with the caveat that I only have an incredibly shallow awareness of quantum mechanics, so I am happy to be educated where I am mistaken. But a brief reading of what you posted seems to only disprove the Local hidden-variable theory. The premise of my statement could still be true without invalidating what men and women much smarter than myself have theorized and shown. The general premise being that it is a possibility that the universe is entirely deterministic and that anywhere we rely on probabilities is simply due to our lack of understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing them or an incomplete data set of the controlling variables.

as i continue reading, it seems like what is being shown is that the frame-work of understanding known as "local Realism" was in fact either wrong or simply incomplete. this is a perfect example of a belief about the mechanisms of the universe being unable to fully explain the observed due to being lacking in some way.

edit: as i continue to read, it seems like what i am saying (though maybe poorly) falls in line with De BroglieBohm theory. especially these excerpts on the topic:

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Bohm's original aim was not to make a serious counter proposal but simply to demonstrate that hidden-variable theories are indeed possible. (It thus provided a supposed counterexample to the famous proof by John von Neumann that was generally believed to demonstrate that no deterministic theory reproducing the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics is possible.) Bohm said he considered his theory to be unacceptable as a physical theory due to the guiding wave's existence in an abstract multi-dimensional configuration space, rather than three-dimensional space. His hope was that the theory would lead to new insights and experiments that would lead ultimately to an acceptable one; his aim was not to set out a deterministic, mechanical viewpoint, but rather to show that it was possible to attribute properties to an underlying reality, in contrast to the conventional approach to quantum mechanics.

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emphasis mine


also, thanks for sending me down the rabbit hole of quantum mechanics reading... i really hoped i'd get some real work done today

Are you in the book exchange thing? Regardless, I have a book I'll send you if you're interested. It's our mathematical universe by Max Tegmark. If you enjoy reading about this stuff it's very good.

I appreciate the discussion. It has been helpful for me to better appreciate what the perceived contradiction is.

I am not capable of offering a syllogism detailing how God can foreknow without predetermining without assuming certain premises I can't logically support. To do that would require me to understand omniscience itself. I can't explain any of the omni-s. I can't explain how a being can speak matter into existence where there once was no matter. I can't explain how a being can be present everywhere in both physical and spiritual realms (whatever that means) at all times. I can't explain how a being can know all propositions. It becomes even more unfathomable if you hold to Molinism where God knows all counterfactual propositions as well.

What I can try to do is poke holes in the argument for fatalism. You made a good suggestion regarding going back to the syllogism. Let's use the Theological Fatalism argument as posted on Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosphy. It is just a slightly expanded version of the syllogism you posted. I will type it with the timeless modifications:

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(1)God timelessly knows T
(2)If E is in the timeless realm, then it is now-necessary that E.
(3)It is now-necessary that God timelessly knows T.
(4)Necessarily, if timelessly God knows T, then T. [Definition of "infallibility"]
(5)If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p q), then q is now-necessary. [Transfer of Necessity Principle]
(6)So it is now-necessary that T. [3,4,5]
(7)If it is now-necessary that T, then you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [Definition of "necessary"]
(8)Therefore, you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [6, 7]
(9)If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]
(10)Therefore, when you answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am, you will not do it freely. [8, 9]

They define "now-necessary" as a fact no one can alter.

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I believe this to be a logically coherent argument, so I would have to believe one or more premise to be false to disagree with the conclusion. My big issues here are with premises 2 & 3. It is relatively straightforward in certain instances for me to conceive of man's actions in time effecting God's timeless knowledge. For instance, because man would choose to sin, God knew timelessly that He would need a plan for redemption. God would not know He needed a plan for redemption if man was not going to chose to sin. Because I believe that man's actions in time are capable of effecting God's timeless knowledge, I do not see His timeless knowledge as "now-necessary" in the sense that it is unalterable. For us, in time, causes generally precede their effects, but I don't know why such would be expected when dealing with timelessness.

I think the difficulty here is attempting to discuss anything existing or happening in a timeless realm. It is impossible for me to truly wrap my head around.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Ramblin, I'm not sure how open theism really helps the case here. In your scenario, Pi has been set, and you ate BBQ. God determined you would eat BBQ by virtue of creation, knowingly or not. His knowledge or ignorance on the matter would not change that fact.

For both of you free will is impossible given an omnipotent creator, omniscience notwithstanding.

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I understand your point. So let me try to say it a different way. If God alters pi as I said, maybe BBQ restaurants will never exist. Or maybe I live in a small town in rural China and there is only Chinese food around. It's not always a matter of me weighing my available options. God's omnipotence determines which options I have. So I guess in that way, I don't believe humans have true free will. In addition to not being able to choose to fly, I cannot really choose to have Malaysian food tonight if there is no Malaysian food within hundreds of miles.

This is the reason I spoke before about having to engineer an entire universe to allow free will. Some choices are inconsequential, so we don't really need to worry about my options for dinner. What is important is our moral choices. So at every moral dilemma, we need to have both the opportunity and capacity to make moral and immoral choices. If God knows with perfect knowledge that I will make an immoral choice, then He knows that at the moment of creation. From the moment of creation, my choice is known. It can never be different than it will be. If God sees my immoral choice and doesn't like it, then he could change that millionth digit of pi and now my decision is different. Maybe I never meet that woman or man, maybe I catch pneumonia the night of the robbery. There are a million things that could prevent me from making immoral choices of which I have no control, but God controls that circumstance at creation.

The difference with open theism is that God doesn't know my choice. At the moment of creation He knows my options and maybe even the probabily of me making each choice, and He has engineered creation to give me both the opportunity and capacity to make a moral choice. But until I make that choice, He doesn't know what it is or what it will be. Now it's not like He will be surprised. He knows all the possible options, the outcomes of each choice, and the new choices that will arise and the outcomes of each of those choices. The analogy I've used before is a Choose Your Own Adventure book that you only get to go through once. The person that wrote the book knows all the possible outcomes, but the person reading the book still gets to choose their own path.

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Your middle paragraph here hits the nail on the head as far as I am concerned. I definitely believe that God is capable, and, at times, apparently willing to bring about circumstances that lead us in a direction. I'm not sure I see that as a problem for free agency though. It is this phenomena that allows the writer of Exodus to alternate the language of "Pharaoh hardened his heart" and "God hardened Pharaoh's heart". I believe that Pharaoh's agency remained intact, but that God, with His perfect knowledge of Pharaoh was able to place him in circumstances, in which God knew his response would be to harden his heart.

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It is this phenomena that allows the writer of Exodus to alternate the language of "Pharaoh hardened his heart" and "God hardened Pharaoh's heart". I believe that Pharaoh's agency remained intact, but that God, with His perfect knowledge of Pharaoh was able to place him in circumstances, in which God knew his response would be to harden his heart.

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Why would God does this? What does He gain by jumping through hopes to try and make it so he didn't issue the Code Red? He does not answer to his Creation on these matters.

I dont' know that the omniscious/free will argument is that complicated. We make it so because we have preconceived notions about what it might say of God.

Why is not ok to just say He hardened his heart against his own personal will?

GQaggie said:

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I appreciate the discussion. It has been helpful for me to better appreciate what the perceived contradiction is.

I am not capable of offering a syllogism detailing how God can foreknow without predetermining without assuming certain premises I can't logically support.

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I would be amazed if you did, people have been trying a very long time. At least you see if we stick to premises we can seemingly defend, omniscience provide a big problem. And that's before we even go into omnipotence.

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To do that would require me to understand omniscience itself.

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Not really. Not anymore than I have to understand it to form my own syllogism. I only need to understand enough to defend premesis. The tricky part for you is an appeal to a timeless realm you cannot begin to describe. And to entertain such a realm, we can't simply hand wave, we need to at least make some plausible assumptions on how it could work logically, otherways it's just appealing to mystery.

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What I can try to do is poke holes in the argument for fatalism. You made a good suggestion regarding going back to the syllogism. Let's use the Theological Fatalism argument as posted on Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosphy. It is just a slightly expanded version of the syllogism you posted. I will type it with the timeless modifications:

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Before we get to the timeless realm which is more confusing because it may not even be a coherent or workable idea. Let's start with the non timeless version, would you agree that in the non-timeless version the syllogism holds and the premises are true?

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(1)God timelessly knows T
(2)If E is in the timeless realm, then it is now-necessary that E.
(3)It is now-necessary that God timelessly knows T.
(4)Necessarily, if timelessly God knows T, then T. [Definition of "infallibility"]
(5)If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p q), then q is now-necessary. [Transfer of Necessity Principle]
(6)So it is now-necessary that T. [3,4,5]
(7)If it is now-necessary that T, then you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [Definition of "necessary"]
(8)Therefore, you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [6, 7]
(9)If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]
(10)Therefore, when you answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am, you will not do it freely. [8, 9]

They define "now-necessary" as a fact no one can alter.

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I believe this to be a logically coherent argument, so I would have to believe one or more premise to be false to disagree with the conclusion. My big issues here are with premises 2 & 3. It is relatively straightforward in certain instances for me to conceive of man's actions in time effecting God's timeless knowledge.

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Not for me at all. Walk me through it. Because it seems like you are trying to time travel causality. Which again goes back to my movie analogy.

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For instance, because man would choose to sin, God knew timelessly that He would need a plan for redemption. God would not know He needed a plan for redemption if man was not going to chose to sin.

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eh this is vague, I don't see this as a violation of free will more an understanding that god created man incapable of not sinning at least in a practical sense. So this doesn't hurt free will as far as I'm concerned anymore than god knowing some people would kill each other, some people would rape ect.

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Because I believe that man's actions in time are capable of effecting God's timeless knowledge, I do not see His timeless knowledge as "now-necessary" in the sense that it is unalterable. For us, in time, causes generally precede their effects, but I don't know why such would be expected when dealing with timelessness.

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Because you are trying to have your cake and eat it too, which really is the best way to have cake but it's a real mess in logic. You are bouncing god in and out of time, making his future knowledge contingent on things that haven't happened yet. So either in some way from gods perspective those things have happened or his knowledge isn't infallible. Again, I think my movie analogy is appropriate if we are mucking about in the timeless realm.

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I think the difficulty here is attempting to discuss anything existing or happening in a timeless realm. It is impossible for me to truly wrap my head around.

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Exactly! The very idea, the very premise of a timeless realm is extremely hard to coherently argue. The initial objection, "well god isn't bound by time" seems natural enough as a broad statement, I mean if anyone can wriggle away from time it's god. But then the implication suddenly destroys any coherent idea of the present or any undermined future we write for ourselves.

The idea here isn't that we can conclusively prove that omni's break free will, we are pesky little humans after all. It's only that thus far any attempts to justify how omni's don't break free will seem to fall short, as do the attacks on the premises above. And that's if we make it easy and only talk omniscience.

I can't say I can understand timeless realms enough to say there are no possibilities, only that everything we can try to argue that's coherent at all doesn't work. And arguing something incoherent isn't arguing at all.

33 Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? 35 Or who has first given to Him, that it would be paid back to him?

To the OP. You have asked a fantastic question about a God whose character and attributes are revealed to us in the pages of the scriptures. One of the greatest attributes of God is His utter uniqueness. We do not have examples as to "how to explain Him" other than what's He's revealed and there are many concepts held in tension. (Trinity - predestination vs free-will)

The best way to understand the person and abilities and nature of God is to look at Jesus. Did he do or say anything that would help us understand who God is to answer this question? I think He did...

Matthew 20:17 As Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and on the road He said to them, 18 "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, 19 and they will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and flog and crucify, and on the third day He will be raised up."

Jesus (God) knew what was going to happen.
It happened.
Those who acted would are deemed accountable for their sin.

Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over Me at all, if it had not been given to you from above; for this reason the one who handed Me over to you has the greater sin."

Great thread.

I'm going to have some fun and insert a bunch of cultural references that are, in my opinion, germane. I'm going to quote multiple people, so I will name them:

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Rocag
Alternately, God could make some small changes to how that person thinks or how they will be raised and then he'd use his "free will" to choose 1-0-1-0-1. So the question is does that person, no matter what their life ends up being like, really have free will?

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The question is maybe better stated, if a person is about to make a choice, and then that person does, and God doesn't intervene even if he could, is there free will?

I would argue that there is definitely agency, you are acting without any divine influence.

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Rocag:
Can a person truly act against their own nature?

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Is a person's true nature 100% dictated by God? In the Clockwork scenario, biology is doing a lot of the work about who we really become, even if God knows what will happen when he created the universe. I do not believe that God 100% dictates every person's true nature. If so, the Problem of Evil becomes a lot more complicated.

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Rocag:
If he's omniscient he knows the outcomes of all actions, including those of creation, before he takes them. If he's omnipotent and omniscient any action he takes will by necessity create the exact outcome he expected it to.

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Remember that scene in Minority Report where cruise rolls the ball along the table, and the other guy catches it? They both knew that the ball was going to fall, even though they were not controlling the ball once is left Cruises hand. The ball was going to fall unless someone intervened. The guy that caught it had the power to catch it or not. You can know something is going to happen even without controlling it. Even for an omnipotent God, knowing what is going to happen doesn't mean controlling everything.

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GQaggie
Why would causality in the reverse direction not be equally plausible? Because A will happen, God believes it. Here, God's belief is predicated on the fact that the event will happen and not the other way around. The person will choose to sit on the chair at 2pm; therefore, God believes it. The person if free to not sit on the chair at 2pm, and if he were going to make that choice, then God would not believe he would sit.

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If Anything other than A could happen than god could be wrong.

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Just because the guy that caught the ball knew it was going to fall doesn't mean that he made the ball fall, even if he had a choice to let it hit the floor or not.

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Ramblin_ag02
If God knows with perfect knowledge that I will make an immoral choice, then He knows that at the moment of creation. From the moment of creation, my choice is known. It can never be different than it will be. If God sees my immoral choice and doesn't like it, then he could change that millionth digit of pi and now my decision is different.

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The difference here is the consequences of God's actions vs God's control over the universe. As stated above, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, then God has to be able to see the consequences of his actions. But that doesn't mean that those consequences don't include other things which are out of his complete control.

Remember the penny and the electric socket joke from Cosby's "Parenthood"? He sees his son playing with a penny and looking at an electric socket. He tells the kid, very quietly, "I wouldn't put that in there if I was you". Knowing full well that is exactly what the kid is going to do. He could have screamed at the kid to prevent him from putting that penny in the socket (and, honestly, he probably should have), but he chose not to. And the kid put the penny in the socket.

Did Bill have control over the kid's free will? No. The kid had the agency to make the dumb choice, even if Bill had the foreknowledge that this is what was going to happen, and didn't prevent it.

Omniscience + omnipotent does not mean all controlling.

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BlackGoldAg2011
if you are given agency, but then a hidden figure sits in the shadows and orchestrates scenarios where what you will choose is known, and this guides you (intentionally or not) to a fore-known destination, did you really have free-will in that journey? sure you had agency, but as your steps were guided without your knowledge or consent, but someone using a perfect knowledge of how you would use your agency, does that really count as free will?

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I think if you separate agency from free will, this gets a whole lot clearer. Most people think these two are the same. As you define free will above, (the ability to determine your own destiny) vs agency (the abilities to make your own choices), I think that most Christians would agree with you that you do not have perfect free will.

Some of this is related to how you view the providence of God. One extreme is that God was very active in determining the path of Humans once upon a time, but now he is completely hands off. The other extreme is that God has a specific purpose for every person ever born, and each person was created with a specific purpose (Problem of Evil issue again. Did God have a specific purpose for Hitler?). In the latter, we can have agency but no real free will.

Regardless of where you sit on that spectrum, Christians believe that God has at least a broad overaching plan for us as a species, and that no one has the power to frustrate the will of God to complete that plan. But that doesn't mean we don't have the freedom to choose. It also doesn't mean that, as an individual, I might be just a bit part, an extra as part of that plan, and on a micro level, I personally might have perfect free will. The only time I don't is when I would interfere with God's will. I guess the question on that perspective is how detailed you believe that God's plan really is. Is it a quadrillion internets long where God is dictating exactly how each day is going to go with each person, or is it a broad outline, and we only get moved or corrected when there is a threat to that outline.

So, for example, do you believe that God dictates the outcome of football games? I don't think that detail was purposefully laid out and manipulated by changing one of the digits to Pi.

Final comment:
Frank Herbert does an excellent job of addressing this in the Dune series, especially in Dune Messiah. Paul has perfect omniscience, and he sees but one course of action that prevents the human species from being completely wiped out by future wars. He knows that his purpose is to ensure that this "Golden Path" is what actually happens, and feels trapped in several spots by the responsibility of this. If this was his reason to exist, to enact the Golden Path, and there were but one set of major decisions that led to this path, does Paul have free will? Does he have agency of choice? Does he dare choose selfishly and surely doom the extinction of the human race?

The Russel Crowe movie about Noah had a bit of this as well. In the movie (which takes some liberties, to say the least) Noah despairs of the plight of humans, and considers dooming his family and everyone on the boat, which would wipe out the remnants of the human race. He obviously chose not to. But, if that was the choice he was going to make, God wouldn't have asked him to build the boat. He would have asked someone else, or come up with a different plan. So, did Noah have free will? Did Noah have agency to choose to destroy the human race?

How about, once they were on land, Noah's first bit of industry was to build a vineyard and get really, really drunk. Did Noah have the agency to decide to get drunk? Was Noah practicing free will when he planted the vineyard? God knew that Noah was going to get drunk and shame himself when God asked Noah to build the boat.

The two Noah decisions there seem to be very different when it comes to agency and free will.

My conclusion is the same, we all have the agency of choice. The reality is that not believing in your own agency, but in a perfectly deterministic existence leads to excuses, bad decisions, and worse life outcomes, so believing in agency is the best way to go through life.

But, God has a plan, and no one can frustrate the will of God. So, no one has "perfect" free will. But, it's my belief that we do have free will for most of our decisions.

Sorry, long post, but this is a great thread.

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Conclusion: Given omniscience, free will does not exist.

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Laughs in open theist.

But in all seriousness, you should check out God of the Possible by Greg Boyd. It tackles these issues.

To be fair, all the rationalizations around omniscience and free will center around defining either of those contradictory terms so they aren't contradictory anymore.

Open theism basically changes omniscience to allow for free will.

Personally, i prefer the other way - "change" (or accept) an illusion of free will because that's sufficient for us anyway because we don't know what God is doing. We have perceived free will regardless.

I would not say it changes omniscience. I would say it simply has a different understanding of what constitutes the future. It doesn't deny the full omniscience of God.

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Remember that scene in Minority Report where cruise rolls the ball along the table, and the other guy catches it? They both knew that the ball was going to fall, even though they were not controlling the ball once is left Cruises hand. The ball was going to fall unless someone intervened. The guy that caught it had the power to catch it or not. You can know something is going to happen even without controlling it. Even for an omnipotent God, knowing what is going to happen doesn't mean controlling everything.

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Except in this scenario Tom Cruise would have also built the table and set the ball into motion along the path he explicitly designed and created. Just because he's no longer touching the ball doesn't mean it isn't still within his control.

The problems we're discussing arise because God is described as the omnipotent and omniscient creator of everything. If any one of those three qualities wasn't the case then these issues could fairly easily be waved off, but that isn't what most Christians profess. I see no way out of the conclusion that everything that has existed or ever will does so in the exact manner in which god designed it to and, presumably, wanted it to. There can be no randomness in a system created by an all-knowing and all-powerful being.

The funny thing is the commitment to absolute omni's don't appear necessary in the slightest. Change Omni, to unimaginably powerful or knowing and everything normalizes, no issue at all.

PacifistAg said:

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I would not say it changes omniscience. I would say it simply has a different understanding of what constitutes the future. It doesn't deny the full omniscience of God.

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i think it really comes down to two questions

first, does omniscience mean knowing all things, or knowing all things that are knowable?

then if you believe it is the second one, do you believe the universe is at its core deterministic or probabilistic.

because if omniscience means knowing all things that are knowable, and the universe at its core is probabilistic (even partially so), then omniscience would not include knowing all future acts with certainty. it could include knowing all possible outcomes of each event, just not how each one will land ahead of time.

if you believe it means either knowing all things period, or that the universe is purely deterministic at its core, then you get into the sticky mess of does the existence of an omniscient creator preclude free will in the system of his creation.

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The funny thing is the commitment to absolute omni's don't appear necessary in the slightest. Change Omni, to unimaginably powerful or knowing and everything normalizes, no issue at all.

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This is rejected straight out because it introduces the possibility of something higher than God.