For Christains, Jews, and Muslims only................?

Question

I am a Christain myself. Here is the question that really perplexes me: if God is omniscient, does he know what our thoughs and actions will be in the future? Where does "free-will" come into play?

Answer 1

God is not only omniscient , he is also timeless, he is in the present, past and future, just as he knew that Adam and Eve would sin, and gave them the choice anyway, and knowing, he prepared Jesus for his sacrifice before time begin, yes He does know the future, and yet he still allows you to make your mistake anyway, because he gave you free will. you chose to sin or not, and that is not predestination. Omniscient means all knowing, not all controlling.

Answer 2

Free-will is just as it is "free-will" you have the choice as everyone else on earth does some thing's you know the consequence's of others you don't....if it is that "God" is omniscient then free-will is possibly just an illusion evan though it seems as if it is just that "FREE-WILL"....does this mean that every time you walk down a street you will now question if you should turn left or right at the turn's or perhaps when deciding on something evan simpler as to haveing a drink of water or not....allways remember as being taught if you accept the lord into your life and you truely believe and confess to all your sins you shall be forgiven...the way it has been told to me is "God is just" I basically take that as if you made an honest mistake and it was not intenional then the "all mighty" shall grant you forgivness...

Answer 3

Are you familiar with the theory of alternative worlds. Under this theory there are different paths history could take. For example, if George Washington's army had not been hidden by fog when they escaped from the British on Long Island early in the Revolutionary War, the British would have won. Free will is our selection of one of many paths, each of which opens up to more changes. There are possibilities, but we make the choices that make the future definite. The Talmud discusses this very issue. One of the points is that after a while if you make too many evil choices, you lose your free will. In Exodus it says that God hardened Pharoah's heart so he did not let the Jews go at one point, which served to illustrate God's power in forcing him to let the Jews go. Because of the evil decisions he had made before, he lost his free will. He was going down the path too far to change.

Answer 4

He knows but he doesn't interfere (change our minds for us) however, He will present opportunites for us to make different/better decisions by providing more information. Most of us choose to ignore these once we have made up our minds. I know God uses people to communicate His will to me. I use this simple rule of thumb, and it has not done me wrong yet. If I hear the same thing from 3 independent sources, I take the time to examine it as possibly valid.

For instance, let's say I am angry at someone and I decide I am going to call them and tell them off. I might discuss this with someone and they might say, are you sure you're making the right decision, will this person really be open to what you have to say, or will they just shoot you down and make you angrier.

Initially, I might not give this much weight. Then maybe a second person says something similiar. Then perhaps I see something on TV that is dealing with the same topic. I have know heard it from 3 sources. So I reexamine my decision. Has this person heard me in the past? What am I really trying to accomplish? Do I expect that I will change them? If I won't get what I need from the phone call, then why make it.

So because God has provided me with more information, I make a decision not to put myself in a position that will be harmful.

I hope this makes sense to you. It is difficult sometimes to relay these things in writing.

Answer 5

Free will is the belief or the philosophical doctrine that holds that humans have the power to choose their own deeds. (The concept has also been extended on occasion to animals or artificial intelligence in computers.) Such a belief has been supported as important to moral judgment by many religious authorities and criticized as a form of individualist ideology by writers such as Spinoza and Karl Marx. As typically used, the phrase has both objective and subjective connotations, in the former case indicating the performance of an action by an agent that is not completely conditioned by antecedent factors, and in the latter case the agent's perception that the action was incepted under his or her own volition.

The principle of free will has religious, ethical, psychological and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will may imply that an omnipotent divinity does not assert its power over individual will and choices. In ethics, free will may imply that individuals can be held morally accountable for their actions. In psychology, it implies that the mind controls some of the actions of the body. In the scientific realm, free will may imply that the actions of the body, including the brain, are not wholly determined by physical causality.

The existence of free will has been a central issue throughout the history of philosophy and science.

Answer 6

This is coming from a fellow Christian.Hope it helps.

Being omniscient, he knows everything, He knows all of the decisions we will make in the future. He already knows who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. He wants everyone in heaven with him, but he will let each person make that decision for himself. He knows what we will think, will do , and will say. However, he does not control what we will do, think or say. he will let us do it ourselves, even though he knows already what we will do.

We still have the free will to do whatever we want. Just because God already know what we will chose to do does not mean we don't have free will.

Answer 7

He is the alpha and the omega. Free will began in the Garden of Eden when Eve chose to disobey the command that had been given by God. God allowed her to listen to the serpent thereby introducing free will into the world. Also, if God who is loving, fair, kind, and compassionate were to take away our free will he would automatically be feeding into satan's hands. Satan said people only serve God because of what he gives them, and not because of anything else. That is being proven a lie as millions of people willingly serve and obey him on a daily basis......

Answer 8

'Omniscience' is logically incompatible with 'free will'. 'Omniscience', all by itself, is sufficient to put the lid on 'free will'; omnipresence and omnipotence are irrelevant. It is not necessary for god to intervene in order to negate 'free will' as a possibility. Omniscience negates free will all by itself.

If we really DO have 'free will', then an omniscient god is logically excluded. The logical fallacy lies in the premise that if god is omniscient, all outcomes are already known to god... everything that you think, decide and do... and everything that you WILL think, decide, and do.

For an omniscient being, all of existence over all of time is laid out as a tapestry before him... past, present and future, down to the smallest detail of material, of thought and of deed, and all is constantly in his awareness. There is no past, present and future from that perspective... there is only an eternal 'now'.

If that is the case, since god already knows everything that will happen, then everything is already decided... and as we go along through life, we are merely doing what has already been seen by god. Since god knows and sees everything that will happen, NOTHING that we think or do can be contrary to what god already sees and knows. We might THINK we have free will... but since we are merely acting out what god already sees and knows, this can be no more than an ILLUSION of free will.

Put another way, if you come to a point of decision, you have no choice but to take the path that god already knows you will take... there is no other option. That works all the way down the path of cause-and-effect... and, along the way, it even casts doubt on the validity of the concept of cause and effect. I don't want to get into that, though... it makes my hair hurt.

So, imagine that since before time began, since before the universe was created, god has 'known' that you would come to a point of decision at some spatial and temporal coordinate, and that faced with the possible paths A and B, you would take path A.

Now, during the course of your life, you arrive at that spatial and temporal coordinate where this choice exists. You evaluate the potential outcomes, and you have it in your head that you have 'free will', and thus, you are free to choose between path A and path B. However, since god is 'omniscient', and god 'knows' that you will take path 'A', then path B IS NOT an option... it IS NOT a matter of choice... it is a 'NECESSITY'. OF NECESSITY, you WILL take path A. Not 'must'... not 'can'... WILL take path A. You DO NOT have a choice. Path B is NOT an option... it is not even a POSSIBILITY. The best that you can achieve is the ILLUSION that you are free to choose.

So, either god is omniscient OR we have free will. It is QUITE IMPOSSIBLE for BOTH of these conditions to coexist.

The only way out of this logical dilemma is to limit god's power; i.e., start taking away things that god can see and know, until we get to a point where free will BECOMES a possibility. But when we start doing that, then he ceases to be omniscient... and thus ceases to be a 'supreme being'.

So... free will is an impossibility concomitant with an omniscient diety. The following sums up the possibilities:

1. There is no omniscient diety... therefore, the whole argument is stupid and irrelevant.

2. IF we possess 'free will' AND god exists, THEN, of necessity, it is IMPOSSIBLE that god is omniscient. (This does not preclude the notion of 'god'... it just means that he can't be as 'supreme' as one might think he is... or wish him to be.) You are (logically) obliged to acknowledge that god CAN NOT BE all knowing... and since omniscience is one of the things that makes god 'all powerful', then this means that god CAN NOT BE omnipotent, either.

3. IF god exists AND god is omniscient THEN, OF NECESSITY, it is IMPOSSIBLE that that we have free will, and you are (metaphorically speaking) nothing more than a piece on god's eternal game board; and, thus, "... man is not responsible for his actions."

Personally, I vote for number 1. You can pick any one you want... but YOU MUST PICK ONE, because there are NO OTHER possible outcomes... NO OTHER logically valid choices.

It is unfortunate (for the Abrahamic death cults of desert monotheism) that the concepts of god were solidified as dogma a few thousand years before the philosophical discipline of 'logic' was dreamed up by the Greeks. Those that concocted the religion did not have access to the intellectual tools that would have enabled them to realize that they had 'screwed the pooch' with respect to assigning god's impossible attributes. It wasn't until the 4th century that this logical impossibility garnered serious attention, and churchmen got their theological 'dancin' shoes' on, trying to weasel their way out of the logical dilemma.

They did not succeed, and this issue continues to be debated even 'til this day. This logical dilemma (and the resulting 'cognitive dissonance') was a key element in some of the various 'heresies' that were spawned in the early days of Christianity.

However, the simple observation that these impossible beliefs still exist shows that this does not seem to have been a very big hindrance, under the simple expediency that "There is no problem so big that we cannot ignore it, until it will go away." Too bad for them, though... it DOESN'T go away.

Corporate religion is helped along by the fact that most 'believers' do not employ logic or critical thinking skills; heck... that's why they're believers in the first place. If they employed logic and critical thinking, they WOULD NOT BE believers. So, even though these concepts create a logical impossibility, it does not seem to present a significant problem for them.

Answer 9

We have free will, but God knows what choice we'll make. God, being omniscient, and also outside the restraints of time, can see the beginnig from the end.

Answer 10

Until recently, most Christians didn't believe in free-will. Catholic Orthodoxy, John Calvin, Martin Luther, all believed that because God fore-knew our actions, we were predestined to them because God is infallable (he can't know what we're going to do and then be wrong about it).
They also hold to predestination because of the doctrine of original sin. The idea is that we're so sinful, that none of us is really graced enough to choose to turn to God, so if we turn to God, it's only because God chose us to.

I don't really buy it, I'm just sharing Christianity's theological history.