Here is the way I see the problem. If God knows everything, then He knows what we are going to do for any choice we are presented. But for a choice to be really a choice it means that we must be able to do one of at least two different things. But if God knows what we are going to choose, and He can never be wrong, then we would really have to choose that one choice He already knows. Otherwise to choose the other choice would be to make Him out to be wrong. This is not a real choice, so it is not a real free will.
There is a description of this to be found in Newcomb’s Paradox.
Newcomb’s paradox, named after its creator, physicist William Newcomb, is one of the most widely debated paradoxes of recent times. The paradox goes like this:
A highly superior being from another part of the galaxy presents you with two boxes, one open and one closed. In the open box there is a thousand-dollar bill. In the closed box there is either one million dollars or there is nothing. You are to choose between taking both boxes, or taking the closed box only. But there’s a catch.
The being claims that he is able to predict what any human being will decide to do. If he predicted you would take only the closed box, then he placed a million dollars in it. But if he predicted you would take both boxes, he left the closed box empty. Furthermore, he has run this experiment with 999 people before, and has been right every time.
What do you do?
On the one hand, the evidence is fairly obvious that if you choose to take only the closed box you will get one million dollars, whereas if you take both boxes you get only a measly thousand. You’d be stupid to take both boxes.
On the other hand, at the time you make your decision, the closed box already is empty or else contains a million dollars. Either way, if you take both boxes you get a thousand dollars more than if you take the closed box only.
The expected-utility principle (based on the probability of each outcome) argues that you should take the closed box only. The dominance principle, however, says that if one strategy is always better, no matter what the circumstances, then you should pick it. And no matter what the closed box contains, you are $1000 richer if you take both boxes than if you take the closed one only.
One can make the argument for taking both boxes even more vivid by changing the setup a bit. For instance, suppose that the closed box is open on the face opposing you, so that you can’t see its contents but an experiment moderator can. The moderator is watching you decide between one box and both boxes, and the money is there in front of his eyes. Wouldn’t he think you are a fool for not taking both boxes?
But lets modify the puzzle one more step - let’s replace the highly superior alien with the all knowing God. He knows what you are going to do – either take the closed box with a million or both boxes and He has left the closed box empty. Is there any contest in this any more? Is there any puzzle for you to even resolve? No! Because you have no real choice in front of you. What you will do is what you have been forced to do by God either putting the million in the box (based on His knowledge of what you will do) or not (again based on His knowledge of what you will do). There is nothing to even ponder, or to attempt to figure out the best solution. When it was a superior but possibly fallible being trying to predict your behavior there might have been some reason to try to figure out a way to beat the system. But with an all knowing, infallible God doing the money placement all you can do is act. And the only way you can act is to do precisely what he already knows you will do. No choice, no free will.
bogeydogg:
Remember, it is not only that God knows the future because He exists otside of time as though He had already read the last chapter in the books of our lives, but rather, it is that He simultaneously knows every thought word and deed of every person animal plant weather, etc. in the entire whole of existence. Because of this, God can know the future without authoring it in such a way that it would violate our free will.
How does this not violate freewill? This may explain how God can know all things (which is not the question) it does not explain how it leaves us with a truly free choice in any given instance.