God and Free Will

[guesswest]

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This just came up on another thread....

Assuming an omni3 (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) god created you, he must know all the choices you will make in your lifetime. So it seems those choices will be made by god, not yourself.



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That doesn't follow. God's knowing what you will choose does not mean god makes the choice. I may know that my friend hates vanilla and loves chocolate ice cream, so when he's at the store and has to choose between the two, I know he will choose chocolate, but that doesn't mean that I made the choice for him.

I didn't create my friend, and I'm not omniscient, so the reasons why I know what choice he will make are different, but that just means that my knowledge is not infallible like god's is, but it still doesn't follow that we made the choices.

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The OP wasn't suggesting that god's omniscience negates free will by itself, and I agree omniscience in isolation wouldn't be a barrier to free will. The OP was suggesting that omniscience coupled with him 'creating' us removes free will, since he's essentially creating our actions.

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I'm not sure he's creating our actions in creating us, but let's say he is. It still wouldn't follow that we are not performing those actions from free will or by choice.

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Surely that has to follow. Part of the idea of free will is that person A may choose action A and person B may choose action B. If our actions are a product of who we are, and god creates us, then god creates our actions. The alternative is to say that our actions aren't a product of who we are, and that wouldn't be free will or determinism, it'd just be randomness.

[jaustin]

Not sure if it's been mentioned already, but this topic is addressed in John Perry's "Dialogue on Good, Evil, and the Existence of God." The book is an extremely easy, extremely interesting and extremely good read, addressing the reconciliation of the existence of evil w/ the existence of an omni3 god, as well as a reconciliation of the existence of free will w/ the existence of an omni3 god. The dialogue's, like, 70 pages, and very entertaining. Go read it.

[pilliwinks]

So if my mum made me, and I made a joint, then my mum made the joint? Lock her up [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[guesswest]

Our mothers aren't omniscient, though it sometimes feels like they are.

[DrewDevil]

Just because God has the *power* to control our choices does not mean that he *is* controlling our choices.

God could have created humans without free will, meaning they would all inevitably follow a certain path, but he was not required to do so.

An all-powerful God can choose to limit his power without losing his omnipotence.

Also, all these discussions of God "knowing what you will do before you do it" place an artificial time construct on God. God, supposedly, does not exist on a linear time line, but exists outside of time. So the very use of words like "before" and "after" do not apply to God. He is not looking forward into the future nor backward into the past, but at all things always.

It is difficult to understand the infinite with a finite mind, so it's confusing to me, but I think it does make it possible for an omniscient God to exist with free will.

On the other hand, if there is *no* God, is free will possible? Can free will exist without the "soul," which is supposedly created by God. Do animals have free will, or are they just acting according to biological demands and instincts? If there is no God to create free will, how can human beings claim to have it? Without God, aren't humans, also, simply reacting to chemical reactions in the brain, biological and external stimuli, and instinct?

???

[bunny]

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On the other hand, if there is *no* God, is free will possible? Can free will exist without the "soul," which is supposedly created by God. Do animals have free will, or are they just acting according to biological demands and instincts? If there is no God to create free will, how can human beings claim to have it? Without God, aren't humans, also, simply reacting to chemical reactions in the brain, biological and external stimuli, and instinct?

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You can be an atheist without being a materialist. In other words, there can still be a non-physical part of us making decisions in a non-deterministic way (a mind is probably a more acceptable term to these people than soul). If the physical world is created by some non-divine source, there doesnt seem any reason the mental world cant have been created by the same source.