Would foreknowledge contradict free will?

[Wandered Off]

If the future can be known, doesn’t that mean it cannot change? This seems incompatible with free will. If we’re just playing out the inevitable conclusion, then the so-called “Great Commission” (or any other commandment, for that matter) is a complete waste of time. If your future can be known, can you change it? No. If you cannot change your future, do you really have free will?

I’m not saying necessarily that foreknowledge is the cause of the future. Instead, the fact that foreknowledge is possible only means that the future must already exist somewhere. It is the existence of a future, not the foreknowledge, that seems to contradict free will. The knowledge is a by-product or effect of a fixed outcome, not the other way around. If the outcome can be known, it necessarily exists. That someone could become aware of this is incidental. The choice is fixed and cannot be changed.

For a mortal analogy, let's think about a history book, say a biography. I can read the outcome and know how the person's life ends. If I know the ending, I also know that the person can't change the end. My knowledge was not causal, but the person no longer has free will for a different outcome.

Some who think foreknowledge eliminates free will believe in a different form of omniscience: God knows all that can be known, but the future does not exist yet, so it cannot be known. The only part of the future God knows in this view is that part He will directly create. Omniscience, in this definition, is forward-limited. The main benefit to this position is that it bypasses the free will objection entirely. In addition, it does away with the pointlessness of creation.

Others argue that this is terribly demeaning to their concept of almighty God. Knowing the future is an integral part of the job description. If God didn’t know the future, they say, that would somehow imply a lack of total control, which is simply bad form for an almighty deity. It also seems to make God as bound by time as the rest of us schmucks.

- - - - - -

Maybe there's a compromise that might make both sides happy. No doubt someone else has thought of this already, but I haven’t seen it elsewhere, so I’ll call it “Wandered’s Compromise”. It’s kind of a Heisenberg variation on Molinism (or maybe not).

What if the future is made up of an infinite number of possible paths, for each of which God knows exactly what the outcome would be, but doesn't know which one you'll pick? For example, God knows exactly what the future would look like if you made choice "A" and exactly what it would look like if you made choice "B", but doesn't know which you'll choose or how others will react. That kind of plays both sides of the argument... It gives the foreknowledge contingent an all-knowing image of God without surrendering free will, all in one convenient package. God specifically knows exactly what will happen and how IN EVERY POSSIBLE SITUATION and still retains the uncertainty about which of those completely known futures will occur. God doesn't have to know which one will occur to know EXACTLY what the future would look like. Foreknowledge proponents get their 'rewindable video' (an infinite number of them, in fact) and opponents get their free will. Win win! : hamster :


OK, it's all hypothetical, but any thoughts? Am I out in left field again?

 

[Random]

OK, it's all hypothetical, but any thoughts? Am I out in left field again?

Way out left, man, very very far left.

In brief, choice is the variable that unifies all predicted futures. God knows all the possibilities and outcomes of those possibilities, but not what choice you will make to arrive @ them.

It's like a junction which forks out into many roads and paths: GOD knows where all roads lead but not which one you'll take.

 

[Quiddity]

Way out left, man, very very far left.

In brief, choice is the variable that unifies all predicted futures. God knows all the possibilities and outcomes of those possibilities, but not what choice you will make to arrive @ them.

It's like a junction which forks out into many roads and paths: GOD knows where all roads lead but not which one you'll take.

Dude, are you catholic or something?

 

[KaLi]

Actually, if God is all-knowing, he does know what you will do. He knows the past, present, and future. Free will also contradicts His "master plan" for every individual on this planet. So God has no point in making a person who will turn against Him, does He?

 

[logician]

" God knows all the possibilities and outcomes of those possibilities, but not what choice you will make to arrive @ them.
"

This sentence does not make sense.

First you imply a supposed god is omniscient, then you imply it isn't.

 

[Random]

Dude, are you catholic or something?

I claim not to be, but you know what they say, once a Catholic, always...

Actually, if God is all-knowing, he does know what you will do. He knows the past, present, and future. Free will also contradicts His "master plan" for every individual on this planet. So God has no point in making a person who will turn against Him, does He?

The inevitablility of God's plan is apparent ONLY when we have Freewill. Cause-and-Effect Determinism is a fundamental of Creation, but what need of design for us would there be if the Creator overrides all our choices, and we cannot defy? Where is the story arc, the Salvation, the change and the attainment in that?

First you imply a supposed god is omniscient, then you imply it isn't.

No, read it again. Just because it doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.

 

[KaLi]

I claim not to be, but you know what they say, once a Catholic, always...



The inevitablility of God's plan is apparent ONLY when we have Freewill. Cause-and-Effect Determinism is a fundamental of Creation, but what need of design for us would there be if the Creator overrides all our choices, and we cannot defy? Where is the story arc, the Salvation, the change and the attainment in that?



No, read it again. Just because it doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.

If overriding my controls means me not burning in hell for the stupid reason of simply not believing in Him, then so be it.

 

[logician]

" God knows all the possibilities and outcomes of those possibilities, but not what choice you will make to arrive @ them.
"
Sorry, if a supposed god know the outcome, it must know what choice will be made to reach the outcome.

Of course, there is no such thing as predestination as the universe is ruled by chaos.

 

[Willamena]

If the future can be known, doesn’t that mean it cannot change?

That is what "knowledge" implies, yes.

This seems incompatible with free will. If we’re just playing out the inevitable conclusion, then the so-called “Great Commission” (or any other commandment, for that matter) is a complete waste of time. If your future can be known, can you change it? No. If you cannot change your future, do you really have free will?

I believe there is no way to actually know the future, so we're safe. The future doesn't actually exist ...yet.

 

[KaLi]

Let's put it this way. You are walking down the street and you witness a guy slip on a Banana. Five minutes later, when you look back in the past, you know he slipped on the Banana, right? But your knowledge of that did not cause him to slip on the Banana. Likewise, God's knowledge of the choices we make in the future does not cause us to make those choices.

You know he put on the banana after you saw him put it on. That doesn't mean anything.

Basically, you are saying God is guessing everything we will do.

If God has knowledge of the future, but we do not follow that future, then his foreknowledge is worth nothing.

 

[uumckk16]

You know he put on the banana after you saw him put it on. That doesn't mean anything.

Basically, you are saying God is guessing everything we will do.

If God has knowledge of the future, but we do not follow that future, then his foreknowledge is worth nothing.

I don't think that's what jmoum is saying.

jmoum, if I understand you correctly, I think I agree with you. Wandered Off, you said:

Others argue that this is terribly demeaning to their concept of almighty God. Knowing the future is an integral part of the job description. If God didn’t know the future, they say, that would somehow imply a lack of total control, which is simply bad form for an almighty deity. It also seems to make God as bound by time as the rest of us schmucks.

But I think the last sentence is a fairly valid criticism; is God necessarily bound by time? Time is a physical attribute of the universe, is it not? If God is not physical - or rather, transcends the physical - as many people believe about God, then the physical characteristics of the Universe need not apply to God.

That is why I think jmoum's scenario is valid. When we are looking back at the man slipping on the banana, we are not influencing the event; we simply know it happened. If one lives entirely out of the dimension of time, can one not simultaneously know all that is, was, and will ever be? Because none of those things are applicable any longer. There is no "is", "was", or "will ever be." There's simply...God, I guess.

That is, of course, speculation, and not something we can necessarily grasp seeing as how for us there is a definitive past, present, future. Short answer, I suppose my response to the OP would be no, I don't think omniscience contradicts free will

 

[Jeremiah61]

As for how God's foreknowledge and our freewill can coexist, I think it ill to ask such questions. All answers we can give will decieve. If you put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. None are closed. Any man may choose death or life. Those who choose it will have it. But if you are trying to leap on into eternity, if you are trying to see things from God's point of view- the final state of all things as will be when there are no more possibilites left but only the Real, then you ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which we see- small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope- something that would otherwise be too big for us to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby we most resemble our Maker and are ourselves part of eternal reality. But you can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little picture, through the lens of a telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and you in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what you might have chosen is itself Freedom. They are the lens. The we see through this lens is a symbol: but it's truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, any mystics vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. And wouldn't the Universalist do the same? One cannot know eternal reality by definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. The Lord said we were as gods. With that in mind, how long could you bear, without Time's lens, on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of its choice?

 

[Wandered Off]

God knows all the possibilities and outcomes of those possibilities, but not what choice you will make to arrive @ them.

Well, in one solitary sentence you managed to capture the essence of what took me a paragraph to say. Maybe brevity is not my gift...

 

[Wandered Off]

God's knowledge of the choices we make in the future does not cause us to make those choices.

Yes, this is what I was trying to convey here:

I’m not saying necessarily that foreknowledge is the cause of the future. Instead, the fact that foreknowledge is possible only means that the future must already exist somewhere. It is the existence of a future, not the foreknowledge, that seems to contradict free will.

So you and I agree that God's knowing does not cause our choices. It's the fact that the choices already exist that contradicts free will, IMO. That God could know them already is evidence of their existence.

 

[Wandered Off]

Free will also contradicts His "master plan" for every individual on this planet.

Yes, it would if God had one. FWIW, I'm not convinced God has a specific plan for every individual on the planet, or that God obsesses over one species on our little planet anyway. That kind of thinking looks to me like an exaggerated sense of self importance, but that's another thread.

 

[Wandered Off]

"Sorry, if a supposed god know the outcome, it must know what choice will be made to reach the outcome.

Suppose God could know all possible choices and all possible outcomes but not know which among them you will choose until you do so. Maybe it's like if I memorized all possible combinations of moves for a game of tic tac toe, so whatever choice you make I know what would happen, but until you actually make it, I don't know which particular combination of moves you will make, even if I knew what the result of that combination would be.

 

[Kungfuzed]

Am I free to choose a different future than what God already knows is going to happen? To believe in an omniscient omnipotent God that micromanages the whole universe is to believe that God creates people for the sole purpose of sending them to hell.

One could argue that God only knows what could happen and not what we'll choose, but that would mean that God isn't fully omniscient. Also, consider that we live in a physical world of cause and effect, so there's really only one way things could happen. Without divine intervention there is only one possible future and one possible past.

 

[Wandered Off]

But I think the last sentence is a fairly valid criticism; is God necessarily bound by time? Time is a physical attribute of the universe, is it not? If God is not physical - or rather, transcends the physical - as many people believe about God, then the physical characteristics of the Universe need not apply to God.

True, McKenna. The question of whether God is "outside of time" is kind of related, but it would merit its own thread. Maybe I'll stick one out there.

When we are looking back at the man slipping on the banana, we are not influencing the event; we simply know it happened.

Right. This is what I was getting at with my biography example in the OP. I never intended to suggest that the knowledge directly causes the events. The knowledge is an effect of their existence, not the other way around. At least that's how I see it.

 

[Wandered Off]

To believe in an omniscient omnipotent God that micromanages the whole universe is to believe that God creates people for the sole purpose of sending them to hell.

Agreed. That's one reason I'm skeptical of the concept.

One could argue that God only knows what could happen and not what we'll choose, but that would mean that God isn't fully omniscient.

Well, one could say that God knows all that can be known, but since the future does not yet exist, it can't be known. That is, you could argue for a "forward-limited omniscience", if the future is not part of the "all" that could be known. I think that's what Willamena was getting at, if I understood correctly.

 

[Wandered Off]

As for how God's foreknowledge and our freewill can coexist, I think it ill to ask such questions. All answers we can give will decieve.

I think unanswerable questions are worth asking. Thinking is usually a good thing, and it sometimes helps me down paths I wasn't originally expecting on issues where there might be answers. I also have to quibble with characterizing the results as deceit. To me, deciet implies intent to mislead, but when we all already know we don't really have the answer, I don't see deception involved.

If you put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. None are closed. Any man may choose death or life. Those who choose it will have it.

However, if the result exists such that it can be known, then free will is an illusion because the person making the choice lacks foreknowledge.

But if you are trying to leap on into eternity, if you are trying to see things from God's point of view- the final state of all things as will be when there are no more possibilites left but only the Real, then you ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears.

True. That's the reality of being temporal. Your phrase "there are no more possibilities left but only the Real" seems to support my contention that having an existing "ending" implies the lack of free will ("no more possibilities").

That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby we most resemble our Maker and are ourselves part of eternal reality.

Again, if there exists an ending somewhere, that thing of freedom is an illusion created by limited perspective.

With that in mind, how long could you bear, without Time's lens, on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of its choice?

Hmmm... Without "Time's lens", as you put it, the concept of "how long" has no referent, so I'm kind of stumped here.