nostalgic1

so i see it like this... if god is actually omnipotent, and he knows everything that we're going to do before we do it... then do we really have free will? personally, i think it has to be one way or the other... not both... but thats just my opinion.. whats yours?

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floonine

aren't omnipotent (power) and omniscient (sp? knowledge) two different things?
I like to think that God built this big mall, with a whole bunch of shops that are good and bad. He doesn't know which shops you are going to go into, and the devil is the guy doing all the advertisments.
Free will then is subjective to how powerful your will power is... unless of course you take into consideration that everyone you have ever come into contact with has impacted your life in such a way that almost every single thing we do is actually, in one way or another, replicated from someone else. Therefore, the possibility of actually coming up with a 100% unique thought is very small because no one is without something else they have learned from someone else that forms their idea.
But then again, I assume that if someone knew something was going to happen in the future doesn't effect you because it is you who is going to do it and that person is only reporting the information.
I guess, anyway. I don't know.

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Political arguments do not exist, after all, for people to believe in them, rather they serve as a common, agreed-upon excuse. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest and finish finally and infamously as heretics.

phukraut

if someone else knows what we're going to do before we do, then we don't have free will, it is only an illusion.

say god is all-knowing. then how can we really be held in fair judgement for our actions since we have no say in how we will do things (we only think we make choices freely)? it is unfair. maybe god is not so good?

on the other hand, say we have free will. then, as the negation would imply, god cannot be all-knowing. how can we be sure then to get the best judgement possible? god could be fallible---god is not perfect.

therefore, if we are allowed free will, then the classic judeo-christian conception of god cannot exist. likewise, if we don't have free will, then what good is the whole religious framework for salvation?

or so the argument goes.

Johnny Rotten

It could be that He knows exactly how things are going to end up, given the choices that we make, and given His own interventions.

CSflim

Yes they are, but God is allegedly both.

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nietzsche

First this question only applies to those with a belief in god. For they are the ones left with the "burden" of trying to understand this deity and what he expects of us.

I agree with everyone else, if god has a preconceived map for which our lives are to follow then his judgement of the individual at death is complelety irrelevent.

But some people subscribe to the notion that God gave humans free will and that he expects them to face choices stemming from good and evil. This thought definitely warrants the validity of a judgement at death.

All a matter of belief.

"We can either submit and be crushed, or deny and be crushed"

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Man is condemned to be free