God's Omniscience versus Free Will

[Willamena]

What is it you don't want to know?

The future.

Whatever it is that could be said.

 

[Koldo]

The future.

Whatever it is that could be said.

Like that quote?

 

[Willamena]

Like that quote?

The one you deleted? No. Not at all.

 

[Nakosis]

Christians regularly claim both that God is omniscient and that humans have the free will to choose their actions. I propose a simple thought experiment to explore these claims.

Suppose that you are going to ask me to choose a number between 1 and 10. Since you are a true Christian and God loves you, he tells you ahead of time that I will choose the number 3 so you write it on a piece of paper to prove to me that God exists.

When we meet and you ask me to pick a number between 1 and 10, I use my free will to choose the number 7. When you produce the piece of paper, what number is written on it?

That'd just be God trying to teach the Christian not to rely on God's omniscience.

If there is a God then God obviously doesn't want man to know the future with any clarity. If we knew the future then our choices would be different than they would not knowing the future. That additional information gets processed and would affect our choices.

So God made man ignorant of the future because God wanted us to make the choices God knew we would make if we were ignorant of that future.

Freewill is just the ability to make a choice based on what you value and what information you have available to you to decide a course of action to reach that goal. Whether any entity can or does know those choices is irrelevant to you making that choice.

Salvation is I suppose is the means God provided for man to escape the penalty of the choices we made in ignorance which God knew we would make but we didn't.

The penalty being the suffering man went through and which man caused. Man can escape the ramifications of the choices that were made in ignorance.

 

[Willamena]

In the case that God would actually talk to me and give me numbers, I'd prefer they were to this week's Lotto Max.

 

[TheKnight]

Christians regularly claim both that God is omniscient and that humans have the free will to choose their actions. I propose a simple thought experiment to explore these claims.

Suppose that you are going to ask me to choose a number between 1 and 10. Since you are a true Christian and God loves you, he tells you ahead of time that I will choose the number 3 so you write it on a piece of paper to prove to me that God exists.

When we meet and you ask me to pick a number between 1 and 10, I use my free will to choose the number 7. When you produce the piece of paper, what number is written on it?

This isn't a big problem if you consider that God's present knowledge of our future actions is informed by our future actions. God, in His infinity is beyond time and space, therefore it would make sense to say that God knows what I will do in the future because at the time that He knows I will have already done it. His knowledge is formed by what I will do.

A better way of looking at it would be to say that God knows everything about the present and exists simultaneously in all dimensions. Therefore He knows everything in that everywhere there is something to know (including the future) He is there.

 

[camanintx]

God can know whatever he chooses. He exercises that ability according to his purpose. The Bible reveals God chooses not to know everything that will occur in each person's life. Thus, he almost certainly doesn't care what number you write. Nor does he reveal to anyone what he doesn't care you wrote.

In a thought experiment you have to deal with the conditions as they are given. If God is capable of knowing what number I will choose and revealing that knowledge to you, then that is what it does. Saying that God chooses not to exercise that ability is not an acceptable answer.

God reveals his ability to foretell the future in the Bible. He foretells events relating to his purpose and to mankind's ultimate benefit. He prophesied concerning the rise and fall of world powers, down to our day. One example: He foretold centuries in advance the exact year the Messiah would appear. (Daniel 9:25)

Only if you believe that Daniel 9:25 is talking about 483 years instead of 490 years. Since we know that ancient people knew the exact length of a year, this is a big problem for your prophecy.

 

[Willamena]

In a thought experiment you have to deal with the conditions as they are given. If God is capable of knowing what number I will choose and revealing that knowledge to you, then that is what it does. Saying that God chooses not to exercise that ability is not an acceptable answer.

So, which do you think it is? Is God a liar, or just a poor guesser?

 

[camanintx]

So, which do you think it is? Is God a liar, or just a poor guesser?

I think the paper will say 3 even though I choose 7. I don't believe that information about an event can exist prior to it. To paraphrase a line from Kung Fu Panda, the past is history, the future is a mystery, only the present has real existence.

 

[PolyHedral]

Einstein disagrees with you. (Because Relativity says that which things are in the past changes depending on how you move around.)

 

[Koldo]

Christians regularly claim both that God is omniscient and that humans have the free will to choose their actions. I propose a simple thought experiment to explore these claims.

Suppose that you are going to ask me to choose a number between 1 and 10. Since you are a true Christian and God loves you, he tells you ahead of time that I will choose the number 3 so you write it on a piece of paper to prove to me that God exists.

When we meet and you ask me to pick a number between 1 and 10, I use my free will to choose the number 7. When you produce the piece of paper, what number is written on it?

If God ( omniscient ) said you would choose 3, you will choose 3.
You would never pick number 7.

 

[camanintx]

Einstein disagrees with you. (Because Relativity says that which things are in the past changes depending on how you move around.)

Relativity says that we will experience time differently depending on our velocity but it cannot reverse a sequence of events and says nothing about us experiencing different nows.

 

[camanintx]

If God ( omniscient ) said you would choose 3, you will choose 3.
You would never pick number 7.

So we don't have free will? Everything we experience is predetermined because God has seen it?

 

[Koldo]

So we don't have free will? Everything we experience is predetermined because God has seen it?

I never had the intention of defending free will anyway...
Rather, i just wanted to point out that your thought experiment wasn't particularly in conformity with what ( typical ) omniscience would entail if God made a prediction about a choice.

 

[Willamena]

So we don't have free will? Everything we experience is predetermined because God has seen it?

Being able to choose "7" when God has foreseen you will choose "3" isn't a demonstration of free will. It's a demonstration that God is a liar.

If God has said he forsaw that you will choose 3 but you choose 7, either God lied or was mistaken. If God cannot be mistaken because his foreknowledge is actually knowledge, then he must have lied.

 

[Skwim]

So we don't have free will? Everything we experience is predetermined because God has seen it?

No we don't, but not because god has seen it. (Just to stick my oar in here for a moment. )

 

[camanintx]

Being able to choose "7" when God has foreseen you will choose "3" isn't a demonstration of free will. It's a demonstration that God is a liar.

If God has said he forsaw that you will choose 3 but you choose 7, either God lied or was mistaken. If God cannot be mistaken because his foreknowledge is actually knowledge, then he must have lied.

How can any information about my choice (an effect) exist before the choice (the cause) is made without violating causality?

If God knows every decision I am going to make at the moment I am born, then isn't my life predestined? Otherwise God would be a liar like you said.

 

[Koldo]

How can any information about my choice (an effect) exist before the choice (the cause) is made without violating causality?

If your choice ( the cause ) is an effect of another event then it is possible.
However, this isn't the answer someone who wants to defend the existence of free will could give.

 

[Willamena]

How can any information about my choice (an effect) exist before the choice (the cause) is made without violating causality?

Knowledge is of things that have happened. Things have to have happened for us to be able to have knowledge of them. God is supposed, for the purposes of this thread, to have foreknowledge. If God's foreknowledge is simply "knowledge of things that will happen," it is as if God has opened a little window into the future, peeked through and seen what did happen in that future moment.

It is information.

Else, it's not knowledge, it's prediction.

If God knows every decision I am going to make at the moment I am born, then isn't my life predestined? Otherwise God would be a liar like you said.

Predestination of the type you describe is accepted by some. Not all Christians, nor all theists, toot the "free will" horn.

 

[Nakosis]

How can any information about my choice (an effect) exist before the choice (the cause) is made without violating causality?

If God knows every decision I am going to make at the moment I am born, then isn't my life predestined? Otherwise God would be a liar like you said.

Lets say God's knowledge is predictive. God knows what would know what decisions you would make, because God knows every cause leading up to the moment of you making a decision and God knows you.

Being omnipotent God could add any cause into the mixed.

For example lets take the Binding of Issac. God knew Abraham would carry through with the sacrifice God requested of him. Except God interfered with that future. Without that interference the future Issac would have been a dead son.

So God apparently can interfere with a future that would otherwise be predestined.

And...

Isn't that the Christian story/scenario?

Gave gave his Son to the world to interfere with what would otherwise be man's destiny.