Free Will??

Question

Ok, so if God knows everything, before it happens, when it happens, and after it happens. He knows your thoughts, your emotions, you words before you speak them. Since this is all true then how do we have free will? If God knows what we are going to do before we do it, then its like destiny, its like we don't make any decisions, we just follow the path God has foreseen. OMG THIS IS SO CONFUSING!! :)

Answer 1

Good question. If I've understood correctly, your quandry is essentially: if God already knows what you will choose, then your choices are already destined to happen. But if your choices are destined to happen, how can they be free when free will essentially means freedom from destiny.

The answer is that God's knowledge of the future is not really like knowledge of the future in the way we imagine, but more like knowledge of the past.

So, to make it easier to imagine, think of something in the past. Something you did, or something someone else did, or something historical perhaps. Now, the people involved in those past events had choices, and for the sake of argument let's assume they were free choices. Ask yourself: does the fact that you now know what choices they made mean they didn't make free choices at the time?

With regard to events in the past that you are knowledgable about, you are in exactly the same position (well, not exactly, but you get my drift . . . ) as God is with regard to our future. You see, God's omniscience transcends time, so that past, present, and future all have more or less the same status for Him. Just as our knowledge of things in the past does not mean that free choices in the past were not made, God's omniscient knowledge does not mean we do not continue to make free choices.

I hope this helps. I am not arguing that this is what I necessarily believe, but merely trying to show how the idea of free will and God's omniscience can be compatible in theory. Good luck!

Answer 2

The fact that God may know everything that will happen does not MAKE IT happen. An example; if I drop a pencil, I know that it will follow a straight path to the ground, attracted by gravity. The fact that I know this is not what makes the pencil drop to the floor. It is because I have a superior knowledge that I know that every time I let go an object it will inevitably drop to the floor.
I know that the sun will rise tomorrow and that at a certain date we will have a lunar or solar eclipse. But my knowledge is not what makes these events happen.
We are able to discover and use the hidden laws of nature because we have a superior power over nature; intelligence. But it is not our foreknowledge of events that make these to happen.
A natural question that follows yours is then, what is expected from us?

Answer 3

Ok sure, God does know everything before it happens. But no one else knows do they? Therefore i suppose you can say we do have the choice to make our own decisions. Then again, even though God knows what will happen before it does, doesn't mean he chose it to happen. He gave us the choice to choose our own actions. Therefore, we DO have our own free will, and it is in the hands of the person to make what of his life.
A point to remember is that the world is filled with unanswered mysteries and the more we try to understand; the less we find ourselves to know. It is just best not to brood over things we cannot comprehend. Hope it wasn't too confusing.

Answer 4

Its not that God knows ahead of time what your choices are going to be.

God simply knows all of the possible choices that you could make in a give situation and all of the possible outcomes these choices could have. You still get to chose.

The trick is, the deck is stacked to a certain extent because eventually all of the possible choices lead to the same conclusion. Some are more circuitous than others but eventually all roads lead home to God

We were just to important to God for Him/Her to take any chances that we might become lost.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 5

As I see it, there are two things limiting us in this aspect that both still allow us free will and God the knowledge of what we are going to do before we do it.

One, our consciousness is trapped within the flow of time. We can't see all of the twists and turns of the "currents of time" that we are caught in. Just because we have free will does not mean "absolute freedom" from the currents of time. Think of it this way, we have free will in playing games. We can make any move we choose to make, but our moves are limited by the rules of the game. This creates limits on the predictable outcomes of the game. So the rules of our existence in time provides one limitation to the exercise of our free will.

Two, though humans possess free will we don't usually choose to exercise it. We are so filled with our own personal dramas, beliefs, and hang-ups, we tend to follow predictable patterns of behavior. (Imagine you enter a room that has two more doors to go through. One is colorful, attractive, with pleasant sounds and smells coming from the other side. The other is a dark, old rusty door, with the sounds of moans, screams and horrible smells eminating from it. Which door do you choose to go through? Your personality make up will determine

Thus, we place another limitation on ourselves to exercising our free will by being ego-centric beings blinded by our own preconceptions and assumptions about the universe.

Given our own awarness of the currents of time and information about someone's personality traits, even we humans can predict what that person will do before he/she does it to some degree. God would obviously be much better at that skill than us and not limited by the narrow vision of the universe we hold.

Hope this opinion helps clarify your own thoughts on the matter.

Answer 6

Assuming that there is a God, we have free will because even if He/She knows what we are going to do and does nothing to prevent our doing it, why is that not free will? If I left brownies on a kitchen table, knowing that my little son is sure to sneak one and do nothing to prevent it, then surely the little boy has the choice to sneak or not sneak a brownie. I would suppose that God judges us by our choices [such as the equivalent of not sneaking the brownie]. I would be putting human emotions on God if I think it must be rather boring for him to know how sinful I am going to be in any given situation!

Answer 7

Star question!

Yes, I agree with you.... the concept of free will does not seem compatible with the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God who is all willing... everything that happens ever is due only to God's will.... if God wills, then no one else can have any free will!!

Even otherwise, free will is a self limiting concept, because we can make choices only from available options.... even if one argues that we can create an option, that is not always possible.... and hence needs to be categorized as another available choice in a particular case which is not available in another case.

Free will is indeed a myth created by our arrogant ego.

Answer 8

I suggest you utilize your free will, and refrain from absorbing every so-called religious word that you read or hear, God does not waste his time monitoring every human thought, emotion, or decision... thus your free will is solely yours as granted by God, so place yourself at ease, and try living by the "Respect all life, so long as said life respects you" and the "Mind our own business, unless harm upon a fellow human being and or animal is directly witnessed" philosophies...

Answer 9

I believe in free will. Yeah, like you said, god knows everything, but at least he lets us decide what we want to do in life. It is our decision to better ourselves and our lives and to eat healthy and exercise. All those kinds of things.

You can still be a christian and believe in free will. After all, it is our decision to believe in god or not.

Answer 10

It's free will because he is not forcing us into anything you decide what you want to do, just because he already knows what you decide doesn't mean its not free will. he knows the heart of man and he is the beginning and the end so he knows start to finish. all we are doing is playing out what he already knows. just remember in this play you are still making your own decisions.