JumpinJesus

I did a search for this topic and came up with nothing, so if this has been discussed before, then accept my apologies, as I am not omniscient.

Before I start, allow me this caveat: This discussion is not about the Christian god or Jesus, but about every religion with a supreme, omniscient being. To this end, I will not capitalize the word "god" so as not to give the impression that this discussion is about the Judeo-Christian god.

Once, during an argument, a friend and I were discussing the power of god. My friend insisted that god knows everything about me, including what I will do in the future. During this same argument, my friend was also holding to the insistence that god gives us free will, because he wants us to choose to love him, not force us. To this I retorted with the following: god cannot be omniscient if we have free will, or, if god is omniscient then free will does not exist.

If, as the argument goes, god exists in the past, present, and future simultaneously, then he knows our future choices. This knowledge prevents us from choosing anything other than what he foresees us choosing. However, if we truly do have free will, then it follows that god cannot know what we will choose, thus eliminating the possibility of omniscience. Even if god chooses to ignore this knowledge, it's mere existence prevents the exercise of free will.

So, we either have free will or we have god, what's it gonna be?

Your thoughts?

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Suave

If you apply string theory and the concept of a multiverse to this discussion (and then warp it to suit your needs like I will), it makes things easier. God(s) can be omniscient because they know what will happen, and you also have free will, because you can make a different choice in each of an infinite number of parallel universes.

I wrote the paragraph below before reading your post. It refers to free will versus determinism in the vein of societal and genetic behavioural control factors.

Yes. No one will ever discover conclusively that there is or is not free will. One of the major scientific paradigms is that "yes, we have free will but with limits." I believe this partially true, in that most of the time is is correct, though we have the potential to exercise complete free will; it is merely an extremely difficult, nigh impossible to do.

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

pennywise121

ah, good i can catch a thread like this before it explodes (i always seem to have the worst luck).

now, the presupposition here, and with your original post is the concept of time. if time applies to god (in whatever form/type/religion) as it does to us, then there is no free will, as god knows what will happen in that little book of hers/his/its where everything is written (be it a physical, mental, metabolic, whatever type of book/mind, etc. it may be), and we are bound to it. if, however, time is meaningless to this diety, we are free to have all the free will we wish, because we cannot ascribe the concept of before or after to such a being (this is the most clever explanation i have heard for having both a god and free will, even christians hate to think they have no control -except for in AA )

anyway, with that out of the way, here is my answer: ........maybe.
see, think about some of the major things that influence the course our lives take- we could not choose our parents, our ethnicity, our socioeconomic status, our birth country/area, etc. these things inherently limit (or expand) our possible life acheivements. so on that count, no. no free will.

we are, however, able to transcend many of these problems. besides, we chose what to eat this morning, didnt we? (that is, within the confines of what we had in the house or within driving distance, given the limitations of our income, transportation, what the store had in stock, etc.) now you see how complicated this gets, and very quickly but in this regard, yes, free will.

my two cents

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Food for thought.

CSflim

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/search.php?searchid=406937


I'm not sure which forum you searched...

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Seeker

So if we make a choice today, then simultaneously we are changing the future... because god exists in all, god will see us make the choice and see the future that choice brings for us.

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~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

Charlatan

There is no God(s). We are adrift and must choose to act how we will.

If, however, there is a God (which there isn't) it would act in much the way as Seeker describes. For if there is no free will there is no need of faith. If there is no free will we are free to do what we want because it is preordained that we should behave in this manner, make the choices we made. It aliveates ALL responsibility.

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Ustwo

What does omnipotence have to do with free will?

If you offer a child candy or a fish head you understand a child well enough to know they will take the candy.

Likewise God would know you, much like you know a child, and know your motives. You still have free will, much like the child, but God would know your desire. Even if your personality was to take the 'fish head' to prove a point God would know that as well.

Now I am an atheist myself, but I think using free will vrs omnipotence as a test for God seems silly to me.

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spongy

I always likened free will to a movie. God watches our lives outside our perception/limits of time, so while we have the free will to make choices, god can merely observe it as it unfolds, fast forward to the results, or just skip to the end to see how it turns out.

By the way, I came up with this pretty much on my own as a teen, now that 20 years have past as I post it, I don't feel nearly as bright about the idea.

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Stephen King

RCAlyra2004

Kind of a sticky subject... this whole "god" thing.

I think we have limited free will and here is why. (shades of grey again... sorry!)

Hypothetically:
I have just decided to jump out of the window, 7 stories down to concrete. Religion tells me not to jump because of the consequence of hell. But If I decide to go... no one will stop me.

Realistically:
From a psychological perspective I am likely to think of new things as a combination/permutation of things that I have heard and seen before and that is defnitley a physiological restraint on my ability to use free thought.

For example: Most inventors progress and build on combinations of old ideas until they have something novel and useful. The inventor of the electric furnace didn't invent electricity in order to make the first furnace, instead the person likely noticed that resistive electrical circuits heat up and then exploited this new knowledge to make heat coils.

Another way to look at it is that I use the same route to the grocery store every saturday because I already know the directions, and because it takes effort to learn the new route, even though it may be shorter or better.

For me to think that a god already knows or cares about every combination of moves I may ever make in life defies my experience of life so far. As far as I can tell, god is not anywhere to be found.

Religion, on the other hand, is abundant.

There can be no question whether or not religion has affected (sp?) the choices made by most or all people in the world, thereby determining what common behaviours you are likely to see displayed in society. (even me)

Religion has impacted the common knowledge base of people by literally imposing on us a common knowledge "set". Since any new creative thought or action is likely made up of a combination / permutation of the preprogrammed thoughts in the heads of humans all over the world, free will has been effected by religios dogma, not by god. (in my opinion)

Some would argue free will has been effected by religion in a favourable way and some would say it has been unfavourable... now THERE is a hot topic for debate!

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Suave

RCA, I believe the thread was directed at a discussion of "can we have free will if someone already knows what we will do" discussion rather than the effects of religion on our choices.

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

FuriousFever

Isn't it true in some circumstances in life you can understand your own fate? As an example, if I perform poorly in school, I know that my grades can ultimately lead to dramatic consequences, and yet I have the ability to choose whether to improve myself or not.
God is able to see the impact our choices can make in the future, so he wants us to make the best and wisest decisions in life so we are not deterred from our supreme goal.

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Everything is relative.

Sweetpea

In my understanding of religion, they believe that God GAVE us free will. If God knows everything about everyone and controls our every move, that wouldn't make allot of sense and how would we learn or grow as souls?

I don't believe in the Idea of religion, but i do believe in some greater force in our world and beyond... But i don't think this force or 'God' as others call it, controls our lives, there might be some influence here and there so we can learn lessons in this world, but for the most part, we are free beings who choose how and what we will learn while we are here. For instance, God did not make me click on this thread and answer it, i used my free will to decide that.

Sweetpea

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Xazy

Ustwo had it right (someone beat my kids analogy, though i use medicine and candy), knowing what choice someone will take does not mean that they have no free will.

I was babysitting my nephew the other day, I offered to let him stay up an hour late and watch tv if he wanted (I knew he would accept), he could have gone to bed, he did have a choice. He decided to watch tv.

The point is G-d knows us well enough to figure out what we will (or won't) do.

pennywise121

sweetpea
ah, but playing devil's advocate, so to speak, what about the fact that you have a computer, and are a member of the TFproject? if you had not chosen to join, and chosen to log in during this particular day to see these particular posts, would you have made the same decisions, and posted the same comments?

on the same page xazy, if your nephew had a different babysitter that day, would he have had the same option of watching TV that he did because you were there?

basically, if a being is omniscient, and truly knows all, there is the issue of free will even within these relatively simple choices.

omniscience implies infallability of knowledge (for if one truly knows all, then one cannot be wrong about anything or else one is not truly omniscient) with this in mind, we return to the issue of free will. if our diety-of-choice knows everything we are going to do, and is infallable in this knowledge, we cannot do anything other than that which is known to said deity, and hence, no free will.

on the other page, if a god is not truly omniscient, this argument falls apart (but assuming a god is not all-knowing leads to its own problems)
additionally, my original opposition of time-not-applying-to-god still causes problems for this argument as well.

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Food for thought.

Suave

But you see, it does mean we don't have free will if what we do is 100% predictable. It means that our choices are so constrained by whatever factors are at play, that we are no longer making the choice ourselves; we are doing what outside and internalized forces are pushing us to do.

And on the other front, this thread refers to free will versus fate. If fate were real (as suggested by taking the idea of an omniscient god at face value) then free will is simply an illusion and we all are doing what we have been destined to do.

UsTwo: That's very simplistic. One may tend towards taking the candy bar, but by no means will one take it every time. If one were to take it every time it was offered, then evidently that person has no free will. He or she cannot escape his or her drive for the candy bar.

__________________
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

asaris

As I said in the previous thread that CSflim was so kind to bring up, it's obvious that there is no problem between God's omniscience and our free will. Free will simply means that our decisions are up to us; God knowing what we will do doesn't affect whether or not that decision was up to us any more than my knowing what you will do affects whether or not you have free will. This is simply a pseudo-problem.

Even God's omnipotence doesn't hurt our free will, if he chooses not to use it. The only interesting problem in the area here is, if God *controls* everything, can we still have free will. Try a search for "Molinism" to see the solution I've adopted to this last problem; my posting there is a bit long, so I don't really want to re-type it.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Yakk

Did you make a decision yesterday?

You now know what decision you made. Does this prevent you from having free will yesterday?

The self that percieved reality at that time had free will. It matters not the perspective of the self who exists today and remembers being that self, what matters is the free will, or lack thereof, of the self who acted.

Any god's knowledge, be it JHVH or a deterministic model of physics, of your choice is no more important than your own knowledge of your past.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

frogza

One day I stood on corner and saw two cars both speeding toward the intersection, their speed and direction were going to cause an accident, I knew it was coming, it was just a matter of seconds. Because of a building they couldn't see each other, or therefore, the coming crash. When they did collide, was it my fault? Did my "foreseeing" the results somehow force them to crash? Of course not, it would be absurd to assume so. Knowledge of events does not equal compulsion.

Xazy

G-d just knows what choice we will make, he does not make the choice for us. Our free will is not restricted by G-d's foreknowledge of our choice(s).

The other choice, is G-d exists outside of time, in which case he can see our life like a piece of paper.

But these are just a feeble attempt to conceptualize a being that we cannot ever conceptually ever fully grasp.

Sweetpea

i think this thread is a good example of everyone's personal belief system affecting their perspective and you cannot change what people believe.
We cannot really have a 'debate' on this issue.
i respect everyone's perspective enough to not try to challenge it or change it.

Sweetpea

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abaya

I'm with you, Sweetpea. What's the point?

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for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
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mr sticky

Plainly said- if God- or gods INFLUENCE your decision, that is a nullification of free will.

Knowing what your decision is ahead of time, well...that's just a little omniscience going on. It doesn't change YOUR decision just because the outcome of that decision is known.

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The sad thing is... as you get older you come to realize that you don't so much pilot your life, as you just try to hold on, in a screaming, defiant ball of white-knuckle anxious fury

sol1301982

Omniscience by itself wouldn't necessarily negate free will.

However if you combine it with being the creator of everything wouldn't that negate free will?

Suave

*shakes fist impotently at sweetpea* Argue damn you!

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

asaris

On the other hand, I respect people enough to challenge their perspective, and hope that they respect me enough to challenge my perspective. That's why I'm on this board.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

asaris

Sol -- only if you believe in a fully deterministic universe (and even then, it depends on what you mean by free will, and even if you have a strong view of free will, there are ways out of it).

mr sticky -- God's influence isn't enough to get rid of my free will. Consider the situation where I influence my friends to go to the bar with me -- do they still have free will? Of course! (Assuming they had it in the first place.) Even putting a gun to someone's head doesn't take away their free will, though it certainly influences their decision. But if God *causes* us to do something, that would tend to take away our free will.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Sweetpea

But to challege someone's perspective, your opting to try to change it. That is IMPOSSIBLE.
You are no sooner going to believe that we're all here to learn something on this planet and move onto another life as in my spiritual belief system than I'm going to believe that God has a plan and is just pulling strings, "fate" as others have been stating on here.

In the end, we believe what we "feel" is right. beliefs aren't centered in rational thought or we'd all need proof, they are centered in what we feel deep down is correct to us, you cannot challenge a gut feeling.

There is no debating. No one is really having a debate here, they are just jockeying to get their personal belief system to the top and have everyone agree.

I have learned, that once a spiritual belief is ingrained in someone as an adult, there is no changing it.



Sweetpea

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mr sticky

asaris- I concede you the point, but I was speaking of more of divine intervention versus influences. I should have used my words more carefully.

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The sad thing is... as you get older you come to realize that you don't so much pilot your life, as you just try to hold on, in a screaming, defiant ball of white-knuckle anxious fury

qweds

jumpin jesus,

unless you happen to have your terms slightly confused then the short answer, in line with asaris is no.

if, however, by omniscience you are actually thinking about something like predestination then its clearly another story.

for an interesting take on the whole notion of free will and what it means for people I reccomend the work of a russian existentialist thinker nikolai berdyaev, particularly his book 'the destiny of man'. as a teaser he suggest, contends, holds, that man and his free will is necessary because creation is incomplete and in order for us to work with god to complete it a truly free will is necessary. one of the reasons to advance this notion is to do away with the concept that free will is really only a 'choice' between good and evil where everything is set up and all we need to do is choose our alegience (sp?).

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tim(mah)

flstf

God or no god, I will decide what TV show to watch next. If my wife will let me have the remote for a change.

Hain

I haven't been around here for some time so forgive me. I was going to post the same as sweetpea: what difference does it make to argue free will or predetermination? We'd never know the difference unless we are told the exact nature of our futures. Possibly, there is freedom of choice. If there is free will, we can change this destiny (overlooking that little... paradox... thingy... of how we were told what we now didn't do).

If there isn't free will, then any choices we "change" ultimately will lead to the same predetermined events.

Unfortunately we haven't a radio turner to the past [yet]--so I give this understanding. If a god does know all, despite free will, it is simply because s/he/it is higher than us. Two people, one on the ground and one atop a building stare down a road, metaphorically the future. The man atop the building can see much further than the man on the ground. Thank you frogza!

However, I do not believe in gods but simply higher intelligences than myself and give into the eccentric ideas like multiverse theory and alternate histories. Each verse has a set of predetermined outcomes to events, and we are given regions of choices free to us--like that of a dog on a leash. The dog has so much control in the area it has designated to crap in, like we have only so much control over the crappy lives ::bows::.

I like .

Daniel_

There is free will.

But then you KNEW i was going to say that.

I assume that there is free will, because if there is NO god then there can be nothing that causes people to do things other than their own desires, and if there IS a god (or several) then what would be the point of a creation in which there is no development?

If there is NOT free will, then we are all just the daydreams of god.

Either way - if we assume that there is free will then people can be held accountable for their acctions - oterwise they are able to say "god made me kill and eat those people"...

The choice to act or not act in any situation HAS to be the begining of all morality.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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Yakk

I can challenge people's perspective without trying to change it.

Shucks, you can challenge perspective in order to strengthen it. You can challenge perspectives in order to understand it. You can challenge perspectives in order to establish understanding in the perciever. You can challenge perspectives for the pure joy of competition.

I do not play pool in order to place balls into cups. I do not learn about schitozophrenic thought in order to duplicate it. I do not ask mathematics students questions about their work in order to prove them wrong. I do not invite critisism of my code to justify trashing it.

An unchallenged life is not worth living, and an unchallenged thought is no thought at all.

Secondly, I also do not believe what you describe -- changing beliefs in adulthood -- is impossible. One of my best friends father converted, whole-heartedly, to a new religion as an adult. I do know that most belief systems seek to close the possessor against conversion, but people are far more than mere caracatures of their spiritual beliefs. People are wonderously complex and intersting things, and claiming anything is impossible for the wonder that is a person is, to me, hubris.

I do believe that it is very easy to be rude about changing someone's beliefs, and it may even be useful if people believe that changing beliefs is impossible. But I value honesty more than utility.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

Seeker

Kudos to you Yakk!

I found your whole post to be wonderfully worded, thank you!

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To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

JumpinJesus

Sorry I've been absent from this thread. I didn't mean to post and run, I just got caught up in other things.

Now, allow me to further clarify what I intended.

By omniscience, I am referring to having all knowledge. Some have erroneously assumed I meant omnipotence, which is not what I meant. Omnipotence is the act of being everywhere at once, omniscience is the power of having all knowledge of all things.

By stating that a supreme being is omniscient, I was referring to that being having all knowledge of all choices made by all people at all times.

Some have used the analogy of offering candy to a child, but I don't believe this is a good analogy since our knowledge is not based upon omniscience but intuition. We know the child well enough to know he or she will choose the candy but we do not have knowledge of the actual choice that will be made. We are certain that the child will choose the candy, but we do not have specific foreknowledge of the choice.

Omniscience doesn't involve intuition, it involves the actual knowledge of the specifics of choice. This is from where I based my discussion.

Again, I wish to reiterate that this was not intended to be a discussion of whether or not God exists, but whether the existence of omniscience - or predetermination - would negate free will.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the responses and to those who question the worthwhileness of debating such a topic, my response would be to ask: why discuss anything? I enjoy hearing others' views and I defer to seeker's post as he said it better than I could have.


To answer a couple of specifics:

Suave, actually, I tend to lean towards the existence of infinite universes in which every choice ever made by anyone is played out.

qweds, thanks for the recommendation. I enjoy reading existentialists and this is someone of whom I've never heard.

frogza, you make an interesting point, however, your knowledge of the events is only the result of you being a passive observer. Now, had you placed those cars on those paths and then gave each driver the ability to choose their course, knowing they would choose actions leading to a collision, then yes, it'd be your fault.

and CSfilm, I swear I did another search and still came up with nothing. Maybe we're existing in those parallel universes: you in one that has this thread already in existence, and me in one that doesn't. Somehow, those universes have overlapped here in this thread. I even clicked the link you provided and got a "Sorry, no matches met your criteria" etc etc etc.

hmmmm.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

asaris

First, the fact that the knowledge of the events is merely the result of being a passive observer is sufficent to rule out simple omniscience conflicting with free will. If God merely knows everything that happens/will happen/has happened, but doesn't have any control over it, he doesn't interfere with free will.

Second, 'fault' is a bad word to use here, since it implies moral blame. It's unclear that merely by setting those drivers on that road, you should be blamed for the accident. Perhaps only by what you call 'causing the accident' could a much greater evil been averted. But more importantly, I don't see why we should think I caused the accident at all, or, if it all, then in a very minimal sense. Most proximally, the intersection of the two cars caused the accident; somewhat less proximally, the free choices of the drivers caused the accident. My actions, whatever they might have been, to put those drivers en route to the accident, are very far removed down the chain of causality. In fact, if we're keeping to a libertarian definition of free will, they're not really part of the chain of causality at all.

As far as other threads go, see if you can find my thread on Molinism (I think 'Molinism' as a search term should do it). That's very relevant to your problem, since Molinism is an attempt to reconcile a strong view of providence (God ordains all things) with a strong view of freedom.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Seeker

I would think omniscience to be the knowledge of all possibilities, the object of free will would be like sitting back and watching what each of us decide to do within that vast array of possibilities.

If we were to look at omniscient, as having all knowledge of all choices made by all people at all times, are you referring to our future choices as well? I would think that perspective would negate free will as there would be no purpose but to act out a play that was already determined... I can't see any logical reason in that.

The purpose of free will, as I understand it, is to prove that we are not merely gods puppets, we have the capacity to choose to see god's ways and learn to love god on our own, not because we were made or programmed to do so.

Another way of looking at this would be if one were to decide to perform an act that is blatently horrific, that is a choice... there is no intervention to stop that action - if that's not free will I don't know what is!

So from what I understand about god and his gift of free will, god may know all, yet will not intervene... as that would negate the free will we were given. In that I find it difficult to understand people blaming god for bad things that happen, when in actuality they happen because we have free will and god cannot intervene as that would negate the purpose of free will.

(Heh... Give 'em enough rope huh?)

Actually just reading back, I really should just agree with asaris's post above ... omniscience is very much like being the passive observer and in no way interferes with free will (our actions and choices).

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RCAlyra2004

Sorry Suave I have been out of town for a few days.

I beleive you did not read everything I wrote.

Your response was simplistic in that you avoid the major issue of whether god Knows what we think... I address that issue at the out set and further on down my post.

In fact I answered two questions.

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Peat

On this issue, I say I have do do a little agreeing with some people. Particulary Seeker and Asaris.

God can be as omniscience as it wishes, It can have all knoledge of the entire universe, but the key is the devine intervention. The funny thing here is the fact that the only thing lacking free will is actualy God itself.

If god knows all then God Knows its future. So God is the one who knows the decisions and actions of gods future.

just something else to think about for you all.

asaris

That is, if God has a future. If God is outside of time, then all times are present to God, and we don't have that little problem you mention. Even if God is inside of time, we can still say that he always had already decided what he was going to do, so it's still up to him what he does.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche