Are Omniscience and Free Will contradictory?

[Rational Gaze]

I do not know much about theology so please forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question. Basically some guy I was debating said that omniscience and free will are contradictory. I asked how, and he said if God knew everything then it would mean he would know what choices we would make before we made them and so therefore if God was omniscient we would not have free will. I said that God knowing what choices we make before we made them is not the same as God making our choices for us, yet this guy replied this was "meaningless word play" and I "do not understand the Free Will Paradox". Comments?

[John Goddard]

I do not know much about theology so please forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question. Basically some guy I was debating said that omniscience and free will are contradictory. I asked how, and he said if God knew everything then it would mean he would know what choices we would make before we made them and so therefore if God was omniscient we would not have free will. I said that God knowing what choices we make before we made them is not the same as God making our choices for us, yet this guy replied this was "meaningless word play" and I "do not understand the Free Will Paradox". Comments?

One solution is that God could set out lives up something like a slide. You are going to get to the bottom no matter what -- which are His ultimate plans for you. That would take care of election and predestination.

But along the way, you would have the free will to move around however you wanted. You would still have some measure of free will, even though your destiny is already decided.

And assuming God can move through space and time, He can see all those free will decisions along the way and still be omniscient in knowing exactly what will happen, without necessarily dictating every move.

Again this is only an option, I haven't yet decided what the best solution might be.

[RBerman]

RationalGaze, in order to answer your question we'd have to set up a lot of other things. For instance, what is "free will?" And what is "omniscience?" A Calvinist, an Open Theist, and a Molinist will give different answers to those questions, so that they can resolve the apparent logic problem to which your friend referred.

As a Calvinist, I believe that free will is the power to freely choose according to your nature, doing the thing you most want to do. But you don't choose your nature itself; you simply are who you are, and if put in the same circumstances, you'll always make the same choice. God the Creator is ultimately responsible for who we are, and for our circumstances, so he not only has perfect foreknowledge of what will happen, but he has ordained it to happen that way. So our free will choices are part of what God has ordained.

But as I said, others will give different answers, based on different understandings of what "free will" and "omniscience" are. I suggest a book like "Four Views on Divine Foreknowledge" if you'd like an overview of this debate.

[LthrnZack]

Arguing(or debating) with some people is like wrestling with a pig. After a while, you begin to realize that the pig likes it.

I am glad to know that God knows me better than I know myself. I still fall short of grace every day, but sometimes the Lord sees fit to intervein with what is going on in my life. God sees the current path that I am following and he knows that I may become lost to him through sin and iniquity. The Lord's intervention gives me a chance to make a decision for the better, and sometimes for the best. And when I listen to him and take his advice, I can see the changing of the paths.

Sometimes I am just vearing in to the next lane, but God is still by my side, no matter what choices I make.Bottom line, God very much so wants all of our paths to lead to him.

[hedrick]

A lot of people think that for a choice to be free, it has to be inherently unpredictable. That doesn't make sense to me, but it does to lots of people. They feel that if even God can know in advance, then you don't have any choice, because you have to do what God knows you're going to do.

I think this uses an odd meaning of "have to." Normally saying someone has to do something implies compulsion. But that's not the case here. This is just a more complete example of a common situation where you know someone well enough to know what they are going to do. "have to" simply means "we know for sure that they will." I think what's going on is that people are inadvertently confusing the two meanings. But I know from experience that you're unlikely to convince someone who is making this confusion.

I think you're free as long as your choice reflects your own character and goals, and isn't imposed on you. The more well defined your goals the easier you are to predict. At one end, we have someone who is completely insane, who just does things randomly. At the other end we have God, whose decision-making is presumably completely coherent. Normally we would assume that as someone's decision-making becomes more coherent, and more transparently reflects their goals, their freedom is increased. Given that we know them completely, I think their predictability is also increased. So I think freedom and predictability are often consistent. Of course to the extent that predictability occurs because someone is holding a gun to your head, freedom is reduced. So there are different reasons for predictability. I think the claim that if God knows what you're going to do, you're not free, fails to distinguish possible reasons for knowing what you're going to do.

[Rational Gaze]

Yeah, I pointed out how God knowing our actions does not equate to Him forcing those actions on us but the person I was talking to wasn't having any of it and rejected all the explantions by different Theologians I gave him. Despite being 40, (twice my age) he resroted to Ad Hominems and saying I didn't understand the "Free Will Paradox". Now I know not to let people's ages fool me into thinking they have a good understanding.

[bridgeforsale]

I do not know much about theology so please forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question. Basically some guy I was debating said that omniscience and free will are contradictory. I asked how, and he said if God knew everything then it would mean he would know what choices we would make before we made them and so therefore if God was omniscient we would not have free will. I said that God knowing what choices we make before we made them is not the same as God making our choices for us, yet this guy replied this was "meaningless word play" and I "do not understand the Free Will Paradox". Comments?

I think the first thing to ask (before even getting to theology) is what does free will mean? When you go to the supermarket & see apples and oranges and decide you want oranges .... that would seem like a free will decision; but then you could get real sophistic and try to explore why you chose oranges over apples?

Oranges are easier to eat but harder to get to (because you have to peel it); whereas you can rinse off an apple real quick and chomp away. They both have vitamin C and are generally good for you; but apples are more versatile. You can put peanut butter on them and they make for a tasty and nutritious snack, or you can go for broke and make a pie (that is if unlike me you know how to bake one).

Obviously your choice will depend on a variety of factors. What your taste buds prefer is an easy one to think of; but then what makes taste buds prefer one thing over the other? Certainly we all have different tastes so we're not all endowed with the same exact set of taste buds. Moreover, our brain is involved in the process. The way we sense taste is through electrical impulses that travel from our taste buds (through some network I can't explain) to our brain. What makes our brain prefer one thing over the other? If we're real young and lack much exposure to different foods we simply eat what our parents put in front of us right? We might have some sort of food allergy that limits our menu .... but overall mom and dad determine our diet.

We then grow to prefer things at least partially based on those life experiences. Maybe we're daring and we try new foods (whereas most people pretty much stick to a static diet); but what makes us daring? Who knows all the different things that go into our brain chemistry ... prenatal care, diet, home environment during our formative years, whatever. Heck, I could point to the bigger and more obvious things, like no one chooses their parents or the country they were born in (but this debate rarely centers on these big things. Since we all acknowledge humans can't choose where or how we're reared ... we argue over the little choices, like apples or oranges, which at least appear to be free).

I'm wondering after all of this if my choice of oranges over apples really was a free choice? Sounds sort of ridiculous when you think about it long enough ... but seriously, was it a free choice? No one forced me to select oranges, yet in reality a whole bunch of different factors I had no control over made that choice for me (even if unwittingly).

If God is omniscient (that is He is a prescient deity who sees the past, present, and future infinitely) then God knew before He formed the singularity that became the universe that I would choose oranges. In that sense you might say God engineered me to like oranges. If God has infinite knowledge then He must have known if He tweaked an atom in the creation process somewhere He could have engineered it so I chose apples.

It's still me choosing oranges right ... but it's the "me" that God created (knowing I would choose oranges). It doesn't matter much how you define free will or divine omniscience (unless you don't think God is omniscient). The result is always the same. God knowingly created everyone a certain way, and a different way in each individual case.

There's this false paradox people set up that either God compels us to behave in a certain way or do certain things .... or we have an almost unrestricted amount of free will. Neither is true (although the former could be true if God wanted it to be; and occasionally it is when He needs it to be). The bottom line is we simply lack the ability to comprehend the mind of God. However, we can understand what some of the implications of knowing everything and being all powerful are. One implication is free will is largely an illusion. There's a variety of different theories on how God governs the universe. I personally like Calvinism (because it tends to rely much less of sophistic speculation); but there's other good and viable theories out there.

Frankly, you don't even need theology to understand this. You could read secular philosophers and many of them will affirm the same thing. If I were born poor and illiterate in a third world country few people would blame me for my miserable circumstances. The fact is the more real choices we have in life the more we're blessed by our circumstances. Well, if you believe in God then you know He shaped our circumstances (regardless of soteriology). I just take these facts to their logical conclusion. I do think God is all knowing (in a very all encompassing way). I agree with Molinists insofar as God does understand counterfactuals (if you don't know what some of these terms mean please ask & I'll gladly explain). However, I take a different view with regard to election (or predestination).

God doesn't make His choices by observing our choices in a variety of different life scenarios (or alternate worlds so to speak). God makes His choice first; and if He does use His knowledge of counterfactuals it is only to put those He already chose in a desirable set of circumstances (so I would use counterfactuals, if it's valid to use the idea at all, in the exact opposite way Molinists would). I think regardless of how you would like to view divine omniscience and election, it must be viewed in a way that's consistent with the idea presented in scripture that nothing we can do, no amount of desire or effort, is responsible for our salvation.

[LthrnZack]

*Arguing(or debating)with some people is like wrestling with a pig "in the mud": After a while, you begin to realize that the pig likes it.* I just had to correct that.

[yxboom]

A lot of people think that for a choice to be free, it has to be inherently unpredictable. That doesn't make sense to me, but it does to lots of people. They feel that if even God can know in advance, then you don't have any choice, because you have to do what God knows you're going to do.

when speaking of libertarian free will for a choice to be free while not inherently unpredictable the chooser must have the option to choose A or -A.

I think this uses an odd meaning of "have to." Normally saying someone has to do something implies compulsion. But that's not the case here. This is just a more complete example of a common situation where you know someone well enough to know what they are going to do. "have to" simply means "we know for sure that they will." I think what's going on is that people are inadvertently confusing the two meanings. But I know from experience that you're unlikely to convince someone who is making this confusion.

if there does not exist the possibility of choosing A or -A even if the highest possibility is that the person will in fact choose A undermines the very definition of libertarian free will. of course you could deny libertarian freedom or come up with an ad hoc made up version of it but thats your prerogative.

I think you're free as long as your choice reflects your own character and goals, and isn't imposed on you. The more well defined your goals the easier you are to predict. At one end, we have someone who is completely insane, who just does things randomly.

if an insane persons actions are random, is God able to predict them without fail?

At the other end we have God, whose decision-making is presumably completely coherent. Normally we would assume that as someone's decision-making becomes more coherent, and more transparently reflects their goals, their freedom is increased. Given that we know them completely, I think their predictability is also increased. So I think freedom and predictability are often consistent. Of course to the extent that predictability occurs because someone is holding a gun to your head, freedom is reduced. So there are different reasons for predictability. I think the claim that if God knows what you're going to do, you're not free, fails to distinguish possible reasons for knowing what you're going to do.

i think the claim that God exhaustively foreknows in advance of what you are going to do removes anything meaningful in the definition of free will.

[hedrick]

this response has exactly the defect I described:

>when speaking of libertarian free will for a choice to be free while not inherently unpredictable the chooser must have the option to choose A or -A.

Even if God knows what is going to happen, the person has both options.God knows which they take. But they have both options.

[yxboom]

this response has exactly the defect I described:

>when speaking of libertarian free will for a choice to be free while not inherently unpredictable the chooser must have the option to choose A or -A.

Even if God knows what is going to happen, the person has both options.God knows which they take. But they have both options.

well thought out.

Of course to the extent that predictability occurs because someone is holding a gun to your head, freedom is reduced.

while having a gun held to ones head still gives a person a choice between A or -A so how is freedom reduced?

[hedrick]

> while having a gun held to ones head still gives a person a choice between A or -A so how is freedom reduced?

What we're dealing with is the definition of freedom. Most people think systems that imprison or otherwise punish dissenters are unfree. I'm trying to sharpen the definition of the word, not change it.

[RBerman]

> while having a gun held to ones head still gives a person a choice between A or -A so how is freedom reduced?

What we're dealing with is the definition of freedom. Most people think systems that imprison or otherwise punish dissenters are unfree. I'm trying to sharpen the definition of the word, not change it.

Right. Otherwise the choice to avoid sin is always unfree, since God punishes sin.

[bridgeforsale]

If God really knows everything, if God truly created everything, and if God can actually do anything then it can only follow that God has decreed everything.

The only way this cannot be true is if at least one attribute commonly associated with God is diminished or eliminated. If God does have limitations on either His knowledge or power then libertarian free will is viable (even though I still think it would be hard to defend). If we take scripture at its word and assume nothing is impossible with God (and He declared the end from the beginning; along with other such verses) then free will is a pretty difficult proposition (that is if you think that by attributing our choices to divine decree our free will is destroyed).

This is an age old debate & we always gravitate toward two common views. If there's no free will then we're puppets and God is our puppet master. If there is free will then God's sovereignty is diminished. Then of course both sides protest & explain why their respective theory doesn't mean what the other side claims it means.

Both sides do agree God created everything, He is all powerful (and can do anything), and He is all knowing (though the definitions of divine knowledge seem to vary). Under either system it seems to me if God knew I would choose A and created me anyway then I chose A because God created me (we might be able to all agree with this premise).

Neither side wants to say that God actively caused anyone to make a wrong choice. However, it still winds up back to the fact that God created everything and everyone knowing exactly how things would turn out. He knew who would choose A, who would choose B, and so on. He knew some would follow the road to destruction while others would not. It seems to me unless you're willing to adopt the open view & veer away from the classical view of divine power these facts remain constant. I guess the reason why I ended up agreeing with Calvin is because he simply took scripture for what it states and didn't speculate beyond that. However, every theological tradition has consistency problems. The whosoever will type verses are commonly used to debunk reformed soteriology, while the volume of verses that support something like monergistic predestination (even though I'm not sure if monergistic is a great term .... but anyway) are used by reformed believers to debunk Arminian soteriology. For me I ended up asking myself how these two seemingly conflicting sets of verses can be viewed in a consistent way & Calvinism IMO does a better job (but you really have to understand it well enough .... because at first glance it seems like a harsh, maybe even a terrible system).

At first glance its the whosoever will or Jesus came to save the world type verses that stick out & draw us to the Gospel, which IMO is intended. Then we study a little more, maybe even get a little apprehensive (because of our personal guilt) but then discover the even better news that God doesn't care about how bad of a person we were. He doesn't call us based on personal merit & if we believe then we should have no fear of judgment. Wow ... we're saved, but up to here we're still sipping milk. Then if we're so gifted (with a great brain that can synthesize difficult logical problems), and if we're so inspired ... we study further and understand that we had nothing to do with our salvation. God even inadvertently made our choice for us, but I guess meat is harder to swallow than milk right?

"We are all born Arminians." It is grace that turns us into Calvinists (George Whitfield).

[princesa]

Arminius -
If there's no free will then we're puppets and God is our puppet master. If there is free will then God's sovereignty is diminished.

In what manner would God's sovereignty diminish if he grants us free will? If he does not intercede in free will could it not be b/c he elects not to, not because he can not?

Under either system it seems to me if God knew I would choose A and created me anyway then I chose A because God created me (we might be able to all agree with this premise).

You choose A because God created you but you could've also chosen B because he created you. It's possible for God to see both scenarios whilst knowing your selection beforehand.

I guess the question is, if God knows you'll choose A (path of destruction) x number of times until your death without you repenting, times that by millions of people in the same situation, than some of us are just predestined to be in hell and there's nothing we can do about it b/c God already knows, we just happen not to have that foreknowledge and keep trudging along in our pitiful sinful states with only the illusion of the hope of salvation.??

[my head hurts]