Just how exactly can an omniscient god give his creation free will?

Question

They are mutually exclusive. If God knows and plans everything, all our actions are at his command. If our actions are our own and have nothing to do with God's will, God's power is limited by human will.

Therefore:

1) Either God is responsible for every act of evil carried out by humankind, and should plunge himself into Hell out of common decency, or

2) God is responsible for precisely NOTHING good that happens to human beings, or that human beings do.

Divine omiscience is perfectly, absolutely incompatible with free human will. But I invite anyone to show me how they think this is not the case.

Answer 1

Your argument is far stronger than many people are interested in accepting.

The original Hebrew texts were written in a social context of competing deities and competing societies. And like most historical accounts, wars and conflict get more attention than peaceful interludes. So the question of 'Why should we worship X?' comes up a lot.

Healthy flocks, good harvests and military successes were offered as proof of a deity's abilities to help his followers. Which leaves the problem of how to continue the persuasiveness when there isn't enough to eat, some one else controls your land and the people are enslaved.

So it wasn't that Yah wasn't a weak god, but because the Hebrew people had transgressed the convenant. It wasn't that Pharoah (and implicitly his gods) was militarily stronger, but because Yah was powerful enough to 'harden his heart.'

In other words, Yah rules over all, including other countries' rulers, and his people have some influence via their actions / adherence to the rules.

The Christian version of monotheism was the Roman Empire's weapon of mass subjugation. The legacy of their conquests is a deradicalized monotheism and the lingering ideal of a single, all-powerful ruler.

History has proven that people will find ways to exert their free will under the most oppressive circumstances. A religion which holds that people have no influence will not survive.

Hence your paradox.

Answer 2

I'm not going to attempt an answer because I happen to agree. reading the responses, though, the best that has been accomplished has been reconciling omniscience with the illusion of free will. RW has a decent grasp on the situation, but I feel he comes to the wrong conclusion (he equates the perception of choice with actual ability to choose). He's even gone one step further and questioned the existence of free will in the absence of an omniscient. Thumbs up for a well thought out answer, even though I don't agree with the conclusion.

Answer 3

How exactly can God be 3 and 1 at the same time? How could he be his own father AND his own son at the same time? Believing in God involves believing in the unthinkable. It's like saying (as scientists often do) that an electron is both a wave in a mysterious medium and an individual particle at the same time.

We are always forced to believe the unthinkable/unreasonable. It's just a matter of which beliefs have greater utility for us. The gods of Homer have the same kind of epistemological status as the idea of matter itself; the idea of matter just has a greater quantity of utility in our lives. Reason is the faculty of justification of our "experience", which is really only a confused manifold of sense-perceptions. Therefore, reason is defined by the goals we hope to achieve in life. The focus of our lives, our goals and aspirations, are the only court of appeal to which we can look for a test of "reasonableness".

For example, if my goal is to build a house, I would look to Euclid as my standard of geometry. However, if my goal is to map the distance and angles between stars in outer space, Lobachevsky would be a better standard. Both geometries are equally true, that is to say they fulfill the goals and justify the assumptions on which they are based; but neither one can claim to have "more truth" or more "objectivity" than the other.

Answer 4

Santa knows when you are naughty or nice... I mean God knows all see alls (Same season wrong old guy).

So if you have two doors a red one and a blue one. You need to go through one to ge out of the house. It doesn' matter which (nothing moral or evil about a door). So you choose Red becasue it reminds you of Santa.

Now if Santa (sorry God) said that you would pick Red.

This doesn't mean that GOD is all knowing he could be just lucky. (50/50 chanc of being right) But If you picked Blue it would mean that he doesn't know everything. And God has a fault. So people who believe in Santa (er God) can't allow the possibility that he has faults else thier whole faith is shakened. So they convince themselves that God really knew that you were going to pick Blue. The doors are just a test of Faith.

Answer 5

I take it that you have never been a parent. Here is the stuation we face as parents. Often, we give our kids an option on what to do, but hope that they will make the right choice. Because we love our kids, we want them to learn responsibility, instead of just forcing them to be good or to do the right thing. Because we want them to learn from the experiences. For me, it's the same way with God. How would it be if you were forced to obey God? Would you do it because you wanted to, or would you do it because you had no choice? God says that he knows our hearts, and he wants us to choose to be there with God. Besides, it takes more than a prayer or a baptism to have that relationship with Jesus to get to heaven. The Bible speaks about those that know his voice are the ones that go to heaven. That means that you need to have a close relationship with God in order to Go. People need to remember that heaven in our religion is not just a reward. It's going to His home on a permanent basis. So, doesn't he have the right to only have those who want to be with him, there? Why would he want to have someone there who doesn't even like Him? As a parent, would you want any teen hanging around your house that hated you? Probably not.

Answer 6

Oh, u clever boy. You have just touched on the object of heated theological debate and disagreement between the churches that keeps them each insisting that they are the true church. 'Predestination'. It also leads into the question of just who is the 'elect'.
Freewill or not? Here is what the scriptures say:

Isaiah 6:10 "Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed."
Matthew 13:14 "In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, 'YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE;
John 12:40
He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

http://www.pbministries.org/books/gill/Cause_of_God_and_Truth/Part%202/chapter1/chap01_section02.htm


But, they seem to pertain to certain peoples as well as the small group of peoples that are designated as the elect.
This has shown me why these large church's members seem to think they are the 'elect' and cause them to go about with haughty attitudes and stiff-necks, because they think THEY are the elect. A question that has nagged and irritated me to no end. GOD truly does work in mysterious ways his wonders to perform....But as for the people who have a relationship with GOD and know him, you'll not get an argument out of them on this subject. Because they accept whatever GOD gives or takes away because they are aware of his power and justice is what HE says it is. Just as grace cannot be earned, it cannot be kept without good works. Another mystery of GOD which cannot be discerned by those who do not truly believe. And there is more mystery to GOD, than what is known about him. Yes, he does seem to be cruel in some respects, but don't those who don't believe, think that life is cruel in and by itself?

Answer 7

Peaceis..., your logiv is faulty. The parent KNOWS the child will be in danger and STEPS IN TO PREVENT it. The parnet not only fills the alllegorical role of being all-knowing but by stepping in has assumed the allegorical role of being "all-powerful" and ACTING to prevent it. the concept of an all knowing AND all powerful God essentially is a direct implication of God into ALL acts of eveil, either by direct causation OR by accessory. To KNWO about the commission of an evil act, AND to have the power to prevent it yet failing to take appropriate actions makes God an accessory to the evil act by default, therefore just as guilty as the person who committed that evil action. Therefore, God is just as guilty of crimes against humanity as those who actually perpetrated those crimes, as an accessory both BEFORE and AFTER the fact. ( He did not immediately detain the person who committed the acts and punish him/her immediately after the commission of those acts) (Again refferring to the all-powerful aspects). Therefore, the God of the Islamo-Judeo-Christian either does not exist OR is NOT all-powerful and all-knowing, and is therefore NOT God in that traditional sense.

Brightest Blessings,
Raji the Green Witch

Answer 8

I'm not sure that Christians say that god plans everything that happens.... they just say that god knows about it. Surely I know that Muslims say that "it is the will of Allah" and therefore they accept that Allah did nothing to prevent the evil from being done... But none of the faiths say that the evil itself is the will of god.... yet all say that the good stuff is an act of god.

So the bad stuff... caused by reason of the free will of man.. the good stuff... an act of god.. get it?

Answer 9

God's omniscience and free will are not mutually exclusive. Free will just means in its simplicity saying Yes or No to God. The fact that you can deny God shows that you have a free will which does not in any way nullify or diminish God's omniscience. Without interfering with our exercise of free will in any way God who is not under the constraint of time has knowledge of how we will exercise our free will.

Answer 10

1) God is responsible for, and the source of all that is. this is a given in Judaism and the old testament. (there is also no eternal hell or form of "hell" that applies to your second assertion in this point, in the old testament or Judaism.)

2) not needed since the first is already accepted to be so.

>>"Divine omiscience is perfectly, absolutely incompatible with free human will. But I invite anyone to show me how they think this is not the case."<<

knowlege does not mean causation.

FOR US time is linear and a string of events. our finite minds inteperet it this way so we can function.

but time does not truly exist. all that is, is truly, merely an infinite snapshot of an infinite number of momentary is-ness-es,

or in other words, lets say that God is NOT omniscient, and the timeline is real and legitimate as most people think of it.

if you made a descision, and then later time traveled back and observed yourself making that choice. ... did you have free will when you made the choice, any less, because future-you observed you making that choice, already knowing what the choice would be? in a sense its a paradox, but is it really? I don't think it is.

"God" as at least many view it, has an awareness beyond and/or apart/outside of time and continuity as we know it.... for God, theres no difference between what we see as the past present or future, it all simply is.

another angle on it could be that if you have a machine that has a number of variables. if you have this machine, know the effect and interactions of *every* variable in the machine, absolutely, assuming you have enough "computational power" to deduce the outcomes from adjustments on the fly.... you would ABSOLUTELY know the outcome of any combination of those variables, in that machine.

now, if the entirety of existance is such a machine, that simply has a number of variables that is essentially infinite and far beyond what we can "deal with", then we can't see the outcomes. in fact we can only deal with a tiny number of the variables...

but GOD knows all the variables perfectly. partially due to the above mentioned outside-of-linear-time thing, Heisenberg uncertainty principle(I think thats it, the thing where you can't know the exact position and speed of a particle or whichever) does not apply to God. God, in omniscience and omnipotence, absolutely knows the status of absolutely every variable in all of existance, all at once, thus allowing, with that absolute knowlege power and awareness, to absolutley know the current status and the current outcome of absolute infinity!

so, as a bottom line, define free will... how many variables does "free will" truly apply to?

this actually reminds me of the ending of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

if you were yourself, floating in a void, with the power to create whatever in that void that you wanted to, that would be complete free will. but every restriction you give yourself, in order to have a context, limits your free will. if in that void you created gravity and up and down, you could walk and have a vertical reference space, ... but now you can't just fly freely... ect.

how many descisions you make in a week are really a free will issue? perhaps we restrict ourselves down to an insignifigant degree of "free will" by our coming to exist in this form.

yeah... kinda long winded and existential.... but might give you something to think about.

please feel free to e-mail if you would like to discuss it further.