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[B]the thread starter's statement is about how language works - not about anything else. we often see contradiction or paradox in things when the contradictions and paradoxes actually have to do with language and the arbitrary definitions of words and concepts.
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Exactly... that being said though
God has free will because he decides what he wants to happen and makes it happen. This is the highest expression of free will.
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So for God to be all-knowing, he would have had to decide everything that was going to happen all at once, aka the Divine Plan. That means that God created everything that has and is going to happen all at once. So its already been decided everything I'm going to do. This is why religion is so depressing for me.
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There is a difference between knowing the future and deciding it. If I watch a runner come to a fork in the road, see what path he chooses and then travel back in time to watch it again without changing the situation at all I know what path he will take. My knowledge does not change his will at all. He still follows the same mental decision process and comes to the same decision of his own free will. Ive just seen it before.
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If God is perfect then he does not have free will, he must be perfect.
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God's perfection as it is defined in contemporary Christian mythology is a state of being not a state of consciousness. God could change his state of being to imperfection, which he did when Jesus was born as God in human form. Jesus could have sinned but chose not to by will because he had a mission. Just like God has free will because he creates the future by his own design.