Connection between free will and a known future?

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tonyrey said:
You have overlooked the reality of power-sharing which purposefully permits such possibilities…

Human parents do precisely what you prohibit on principle!
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Who do you think shares power with god?
 
Peter_Plato said:
Your case is bolstered slightly by an appeal to “foreknowledge,” which places God “in time” and not eternity. However, even then, as shown by the reverse engineer example, fore knowing what will happen does not causally influence what will happen. The actions of the machine are simply not affected by the knowledge of the reverse engineer even if that engineer has “omniscient” knowledge regarding what the machine will do. Knowledge is causally inert and does not bring about the actions of the machine.
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Does the knowledge of the designer affect the machine’s activity?
 
Roscoe_Turner said:
Maybe this formation is more helpful.

If we accept that god is perfect, we say he can’t err. If he creates, he does so without error. His creation is as he intends, without error.

If something isn’t how god intended either he made a mistake OR he is subject to a power that can make things happen that he didn’t intend.
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Or, He made a perfect man who also has the true power to exert upon his destiny. God is not subject to man’s power but God does not enslave a man’s mind in such a way that he cannot choose between what is good or what is evil. If that is what you think the perfect God should do, I think you are wrong. Or perhaps you think the perfect God can make a man with free will who desires no evil, but what a man desires depends on the man. That is a part of the freedom God gave the perfect man.

Perhaps you think that God should make the man, watch what he does, and if he screws up he should retract the life that the man has lived thus far and make the man so that he never was. Is this a perfect God? Should God stand over the earth and everytime someone makes a mistake, hit the rewind button and delete the person, so that everything he has ever done and every life he has touched would be relived over again without him?

Or perhaps the perfect God should create a man and look into his heart and mind and into his future and see that the man makes a mistake and then say to the man, “I have forseen you will fall into sin! I shall destroy you utterly and make it so that you never were!”

Or perhaps you think the perfect God should look into the void and see the possibility of a man and look into his future and see that the possible man makes a mistake and withhold life from all people who could have been. Is this the prefect God? For if God has foreseen the life of Adam then he has foreseen the lives of all people in every time and every place and he has made his decision. Adam lives and so do all people. Thanks be to God. I’m glad I’m here.
 
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

—Matthew 13:24-30, Holy Bible: King James Version

Then Jesus sent the multitudes away, and went into the house. His disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the darnel weeds of the field.” He answered them, "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the children of the Kingdom; and the darnel weeds are the children of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. As therefore the darnel weeds are gathered up and burned with fire; so will it be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and those who do iniquity, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
—Matthew 13:36-43, World English Bible
 
JamesATyler said:
Or, He made a perfect man who also has the true power to exert upon his destiny. God is not subject to man’s power but God does not enslave a man’s mind in such a way that he cannot choose between what is good or what is evil. If that is what you think the perfect God should do, I think you are wrong. Or perhaps you think the perfect God can make a man with free will who desires no evil, but what a man desires depends on the man. That is a part of the freedom God gave the perfect man.

Perhaps you think that God should make the man, watch what he does, and if he screws up he should retract the life that the man has lived thus far and make the man so that he never was. Is this a perfect God? Should God stand over the earth and everytime someone makes a mistake, hit the rewind button and delete the person, so that everything he has ever done and every life he has touched would be relived over again without him?

Or perhaps the perfect God should create a man and look into his heart and mind and into his future and see that the man makes a mistake and then say to the man, “I have forseen you will fall into sin! I shall destroy you utterly and make it so that you never were!”

Or perhaps you think the perfect God should look into the void and see the possibility of a man and look into his future and see that the possible man makes a mistake and withhold life from all people who could have been. Is this the prefect God? For if God has foreseen the life of Adam then he has foreseen the lives of all people in every time and every place and he has made his decision. Adam lives and so do all people. Thanks be to God. I’m glad I’m here.
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I’m glad you are here, too. 🙂
 
JamesATyler said:
Or, He made a perfect man who also has the true power to exert upon his destiny. God is not subject to man’s power but God does not enslave a man’s mind in such a way that he cannot choose between what is good or what is evil. If that is what you think the perfect God should do, I think you are wrong. Or perhaps you think the perfect God can make a man with free will who desires no evil, but what a man desires depends on the man. That is a part of the freedom God gave the perfect man.

Perhaps you think that God should make the man, watch what he does, and if he screws up he should retract the life that the man has lived thus far and make the man so that he never was. Is this a perfect God? Should God stand over the earth and everytime someone makes a mistake, hit the rewind button and delete the person, so that everything he has ever done and every life he has touched would be relived over again without him?

Or perhaps the perfect God should create a man and look into his heart and mind and into his future and see that the man makes a mistake and then say to the man, “I have forseen you will fall into sin! I shall destroy you utterly and make it so that you never were!”

Or perhaps you think the perfect God should look into the void and see the possibility of a man and look into his future and see that the possible man makes a mistake and withhold life from all people who could have been. Is this the prefect God? For if God has foreseen the life of Adam then he has foreseen the lives of all people in every time and every place and he has made his decision. Adam lives and so do all people. Thanks be to God. I’m glad I’m here.
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Nope, none of those things.

I think god made things as he wished them to be, or he isn’t perfect.

I will challenge you on one point. If man has “true power” over his destiny, do you believe that man, cumulatively, could befoul god’s plans. Stop whatever he has in mind as “the plan?” If “no” it is the illusion of power.
 
Peter_Plato said:
You are a fatalist with regard to the omniscience of God. Your position boils down to: If God is omniscient then free will is impossible.

Your way out of fatalism is to deny that God is omniscient.
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So arguing against fatalism makes me a fatalist? Sounds like doublespeak to me.
*Your argument, basically, is that omniscience and human free will are logically incompatible. You haven’t shown why that is the case, however.
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One argument you tried to use simply failed by affirming the consequent:
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  1. If man wills, then God knows.
  2. God knows.
    Therefore man wills.
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You tried to side step the fallacy by claiming that if God knows that X will occur, X must occur, which is to claim, trivially, that if X actually does occur, then God would know it.
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This does not demonstrate that God’s knowledge is incompatible with the freely determined choices of agents.
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It is logically possible that God could know with certainty, from a viewpoint in eternity, all the free choices of human agents without that knowledge having any causal influence.
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In other words, God, as omniscient and eternal, could know the freely made choices from eternity and those choices “could not have been otherwise” BECAUSE the free agent finally made each choice, not BECAUSE God knows the choice. The determining feature of the choice was NOT God’s knowledge, but the will of the agent, even though God knows the choice from an eternal viewpoint. The reason it “could not have been otherwise” is because the agent chose it to be so, NOT because God knows it to be so.
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There is nothing that precludes that possibility.
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You are trying to equate the finality of the choice made by the human agent with the knowledge of God, but that is not so. The choice was “final” because the agent made the choice, not because God knows it.
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I gave the analogy of the reverse engineered machine where the certain “knowledge” of the engineer with regard to what the machine will do is not the cause of the machine’s action. Even if the engineer had perfect knowledge, that knowledge would not “determine” in any causal way what the machine will do.
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If the “omniscient” knowledge of the engineer has NO causal influence even in the case of a “causally determined” entity such as the machine, why would omniscience create causal effects in the case of an autonomous agent with free will? I see no reason to think it would.*
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It’s also possible there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Nothing you have said overcomes the basic objection that it is impossible, even for God Himself, to do anything other than what He knows.

But let’s move on. How does God hold all this knowledge, which in principle extends to knowing the position of every elementary particle throughout the universe at every moment of time? Think about it, that is more knowledge than could be held in a zillion universes, yet in the next breath you’ll tell me God is perfectly simple. How can God be both perfectly simple and have all this complicated knowledge? Then you’ll tell me God is unchanging. How does He get all this knowledge?

Straight answers please, no hiding behind verb tenses.
*I think you are missing the point. When you say it “cannot be otherwise” you are not adequately accounting for WHY “it cannot be otherwise.” You are insisting it “cannot be otherwise” because “an omniscient god knows,” but that is not the only recourse. It might be that it “cannot be otherwise” because the free agent made the choice and that choice is what finalized it as the one that “cannot be otherwise” that the omniscient, eternal God knows.
You are misallocating the “finality” of the choice to God’s knowledge instead of to the free agent because the two seem to occur simultaneously.
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Your case is bolstered slightly by an appeal to “foreknowledge,” which places God “in time” and not eternity. However, even then, as shown by the reverse engineer example, fore knowing what will happen does not causally influence what will happen. The actions of the machine are simply not affected by the knowledge of the reverse engineer even if that engineer has “omniscient” knowledge regarding what the machine will do. Knowledge is causally inert and does not bring about the actions of the machine.*
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I’ve tried hard not to place God in time, as I know that’s one of the attempted solutions to omniscience, although it isn’t clear whether timelessness in that sense is even a coherent concept. It remains that omniscience is different in kind from mere predictive power since not even God can do other than what He knows.

What is the point of this doctrine, what does it bring to the party when it is so counter-intuitive and difficult to defend?
 
Roscoe_Turner said:
Nope, none of those things.

I think god made things as he wished them to be, or he isn’t perfect.

I will challenge you on one point. If man has “true power” over his destiny, do you believe that man, cumulatively, could befoul god’s plans. Stop whatever he has in mind as “the plan?” If “no” it is the illusion of power.
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Man does have true power to exert but he does not have enough power to overcome God’s ultimate plan.
 
thecone137 said:
knowledge > intention > action > machine > activity ?
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Can one deduce the opposite? namely:
knowledge < intention < action < machine < activity

If that is true then that means given knowledge there is one and only once activity possible, hence there is no room left for free will hence free will is an illusion.
 
tonyrey said:
By reproducing and sharing power with your children - if you have children but your parents certainly have done so. 😉
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I’m still not sure what you are speaking to. What power and how is it shared?
 
Roscoe_Turner said:
What effect does that have on god?
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I don’t claim to have knowledge of God but I believe He loves us regardless of how much we love Him because He created us and we are His children but He forgives us to the precise extent that we forgive others because as well as being infinitely merciful He is infinitely just.
 
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