If God knows everything,......................................................?

Question

Does that mean that fate exists? If so, does that mean people can't choose their eternal destination or life events. Or is life really a blank slate?

Answer 1

One can argue, bringing God into the equation or not, that what will happen will happen, using every possible varyable since the world started.

Answer 2

You can take God out of the question and it still remains. Does fate exist? Sort of. It's not fate the way you think of it. We do make choices, but they are always the only choice we could have made because it is the way we are built. Even when we think we are choosing differently, our sub-conscious sneaks in and screws things up. Some try with all their might to thwart that little monster, but he always wins. He was created long before we born. His beginnings go back to the moment of the universe's creation. So, fate does exist, sort of.

Life is a blank slate in that the future has not yet been written, but once begun the outcome is set in stone. Because it is but an extension of yesterday's minute changes. Changes that we will put into effect in today creating those slight changes for tomorrow.

Answer 3

I disagree with a previous answer that the question of whether God knows everything is not related to fate. If God knows everything, that includes everything that has and will happen. Everything. So if a superbeing knows what's to come, it's already been decided and mapped out. What may appear as fate to humans not privvy to this foreknowledge would really just be us following a pre-ordained path like a train on it's tracks. I don't believe that's the case, but, if you believe in an all-knowing God, there's no getting around the concept of destiny.

Answer 4

BY DEFINITION an absolute foreknowledge precludes free will.

A dropped ball has no free will. It is subject to forces it cannot control. There is no mystery about where it is going and there is no possibility that it is going anywhere else.

The only point at issue is this: when you or I know something, we are not likely to know it absolutely. Even in the case of a dropping ball, there might be some other force that comes into play of which we are unaware. Your younger sibling might run in and kick the thing. And that's the rub.

IF a choice is being made, then NOBODY can be aware of what the outcome will be. Either possibility is a valid one. But, like the ball, if there is ONLY ONE valid outcome, then no free will is possible. Period. The only thing that is possible is forces of which we are unaware.

So yes. If some entity somewhere knows EXACTLY how things are going to turn out and there is NO QUESTION that it is right, then free will is completely, patently, BY DEFINITION impossible.

Anyone who says different is merely putting their head in the sand and pretending (perhaps they have no choice but to do that).

Answer 5

I think that you can choose your destination and life events but I also believe that there is a place or road that we all could visit to arrive at a much better place in this life. We receive hints and events that are unexplainable but we have the choice as to accept what is offered or choose another path.
But, I also believe that God knows so well what we are like, in all ways, that God is able to know what we are going to decide at any moment in time. This does not mean that God makes us go in one direction or causes fate to lead us, it is just that any situation we face at any given moment in time, God would know which choice we are likely to make.

Answer 6

Don't think because you stumped your fellow human beings, that you have stumbled over some hidden secret for finding that God is not all Knowing. The truth is "We see through the glass dimly" thats from the Bible, and it means, we can't really fathom the way God works, we are like first graders trying to comprehend the scientific formulas of Albert Einstein. We have all the info we need, maybe not what we want, but God knows we cannot even comprehend his being as it really is, we deal in life and death, dark and light and time. there is no time, that is only a concept of mans. God has always been, and we can't even really understand that statement. Philosophies just make little circles out of questions that no one can really answer with our limited knowledge on this tiny speck in the infinite universe, and infinity is another concept we cannot grasp.

Answer 7

God and fate are not so intertwined as religious leaders would have you think. If you agree that humans possess free will, then fate is not predetermined. However, you may say, if God is omnipotent (all-knowing) then God must be aware of every cause and effect, every path of action that existence. This is not because there is only one way that events CAN unfold, but precisely because there is only one way events WILL unfold, as in human understanding, time is a linear continuum; there are no takebacks or re-do's. The possibilities of course are infinite because of factors such as human free will, quantum mechanics of uncertainty, and chance. God may yet know the course of events, because it is more likely that an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being does not experience time in the same way as a human being does.

Answer 8

The idea that God knows everything is not related to fate. Fate exists for our purposes for understanding if we can control our own destiny or not. It is a mere contrivance. Whether or not fate exists depends one every individuals belief. The idea of a tabula rasa can be debated.

Answer 9

You should know that even the best theologians debate this.
But the consensus is that you can choose your destiny.
Just fine grades of difference as to the extent. For instance.
Predestination, Are you written in the book of life?
Consider Weatherhead's God's choices change as situations change.
Freedom with limits is mainstream theology.
And on and on.

Answer 10

This is a very interesting theological and philosophical question and an adequate answer would probably require far more space than this particular forum permits. Thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas would have been perfectly comfortable asserting predestination in terms of humanity's relationship to God, as would the protestant thinker Jean Calvin. Moderns find this position untenable and would rather God not exist if anything like predestination is true. More ancient folks, including a philosopher like Aristotle, were more comfortable with things like fate or predestination. In fact, they found their acknowledgment to be enlightening and wise. During the eighteenth century, a controversy arose between the Jesuits and Dominicans in regards to this issue called the Molinist Controversy, which became so heated a debate that representative of the two religious orders were called to Rome to explain their positions to the Pope. The Pope listened to both sides of the debate, and then retired to his rooms to make his decision-- he never returned to deliver it! The issue of God's foreknowledge and the divine will, as its relates to human freedom, remains unresolved to this day.

How to think about this predicament? Well, I find some distinctions helpful. First, in regards to human freedom itself... We possess nothing like absolute freedom in regards to who we are and the exercise of our will. Our freedom is contingent in terms of our nature and the finitude of our existence. Further, the exercise of our will is always positioned by other realities that we have made no free decision about ourselves. Therefore, any freedom we do possess, is in the first place, contingent, finite, and limited. What about God's freedom? In terms of God's freedom, that too is limited, limited by his nature. God cannot act contrary to his nature, and yet still in the exercise of the freedom proper to his nature, there is an infinite, qualitative difference between our nature and God's nature. Now, does the understanding that God knows everything make us even more "un-free" than what already contrains us by our nature and existence? In this regard one usually appeals to God's permissive will. This means that, yes, God foresees and knows all the possibilities of our existence, and yet God does not directly intervene in our particular decisions in regards to lives. Those decisions are left up to us, as are the consequences. So are we free? Only in a mitigated sense. Anything akin to absolute freedom in regards to humanity is a conceit and an illusion. As to the issue of God's foreknowledge and the exercise of the human will... I guess we are still waiting with the Dominicans and the Jesuits for something like an answer.

Answer 11

That's a good question; but what i feel is that whatever we do , that becomes our fate. so everyone has chance to make their fate in desired manner. Should not blame to Almighty.