So they have actually enabled more choices... not decreased the possible choices.
Both.
Not at all. I agree that the idea that God is watching you affects you. I don't see how that removes free will. I don't see how that prevents you from making a choice.
Remove is probably the wrong word, more like affect your free will choices. Say you want to murder your neighbor, rape his wife and steal his stuff. If, for all appearances, God doesn't exist or there's just no reasonable indication that It does, you decide to do what you want. But before you can, it's announced on the news that God exists and is watching each and every one of us, and in a list of things indicaes that what you are about to do is evil. So if, as you candidly admit, that knowing God is there affects us, people are less likely to do what they would have done otherwise.. That knowledge affects our moral choices.
Is it? If the physics professor say, "I am going to drop this book." He imparts to us and to himself the knowledge that he will drop the book. We are not surprised when he drops the book. Does our knowing that he would drop the book cause him to drop the book? Does his knowing that he would drop the book cause him to drop the book?
Bad analogy. You don't really know he will actually drop it. And we don't have the divine foreknowledge that you claim God has, in order to know what he will actually do, nor the power of divine judgement to influence the professor's actions--though dropping a book is not an example of either good nor evil.
So like, if you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby would you do it? We'll just assume no temporal paradox. You have a person, who you know will be responsible for terrible things and you have the opportunity to kill him and you are saying: "Yes, go kill him."
Or like, we have futuristic telepathic super system that can determine what crimes people will commit before they commit those crimes. So we can imprison them before they do commit the crimes, maybe even justify killing them in certain cases, and you are basically saying, "Yes, let's do it that way."
Neither of those scenarios addresses why God wouldn't just pre-distribute everyone to heaven or hell. And without foreknowledge, we don't know what anyone will do. Your question assumes we can prejudge anyone. And we can't go back in time, which is just another example of foreknowledge negating natural and moral law.
These are deep philosophical questions for us. These movies have been made because we seek to know the answers to these deep questions. But ultimately, I don't think there is any mystery here. You shouldn't go back in time to kill Hitler as a baby and you shouldn't imprison people for the crimes they haven't committed yet.
Those are works of fiction dealing with impossible situations. If you could go back, would Hitler no longer have free will? If so, I'd kill him. If not, he might make different choices. But in reality, neither is a possibility, and certainly not a cause for judging profound questions like free will.
Why should God punish people who didn't do anything yet simply because he knew they would do bad things? Why should He reward people who didn't do anything good yet?
Free will is a gift, but it's also a heavy responsibility.
How would God revealing Himself remove Free Will?
Go back to the top.
Does lack of knowledge of the existence of God decrease our options? It seems to me that lacking knowledge about God does limit your options. Simply imagining that God exists already provides you with an additional option (you could choose to pray to the God of your imagination). That's an option that didn't exist before and if you were to take away the idea that there is a God, then you would remove an option.
What, prayer? Praying to a God that doesn't exist or doesn't intervene, is not an option. They both result in the same non-reaction. Of course that doesn't keep a lot of people from "seeing" that God answered their prayers--never mind all the times they weren't. Neither does it stop people from working to fulfill their prayers saying that "God helps those who helps themselves" (GAH, one of the worst religious rationalizations
ever).
In the movie
Rambo (the last in the series, and the only one I liked, a lot), one of the mercenaries on a rescue mission, says to the leader of the missionaries they'd just rescued, "God didn't save you, I did!"
Amen.
Another example of increased knowledge providing more options, not fewer options.
I guess, if you want to put it that way. All of our moral optional choices are under the free will column. And if we have knowledge that God exists, many will make different choices, and none, including God, will have certain knowledge of what they would have actually chosen if they had unfettered free will.
