ok: on to the problem of free will, in the context of your argument.
your construction depends on your use of free will to ‘thwart’ the prediction of God: whatever God says, you counter with “I’ll do Y instead of X”. This is the crux of the conundrum that you’ve posed. Your free will thwarts God’s ability to prove God’s omniscience.
However, you offer a particular take on free will which hamstrings your argument. (As a side point, you fail to be able to note that other, equally valid approaches to the definition of ‘free will’ exist. That’s simply sad. It demonstrates that, most likely, you’re as much of an uncritical dogmatist as the folks whom you
perceive as uncritical dogmatists. But, that’s neither here nor there…
)
See, if your notion of ‘free will’ was simply ‘will’, and not ‘will + action’, then your construction would be more interesting. However, you steadfastly hold to the notion that your exercise of free will is not complete until you act on the desire that you claim to have. In other words, when you say “God says
X so I will do
Y”, then
according to your own definition,
you have not yet exercised free will!
Your exercise of free will is only complete once you have taken your action. Here, however, you’ve simply predicted what you plan on doing.
And this is where your thought experiment falls apart. Your construction says “if God says
X, I will do
Y.” This cannot be realized
until you take your action. At the completion of your action, you will only have two choices: either you say, “God predicted
X, and I did
Y” or you say “God predicted
X and although I intended to do
Y, as it turned out,
X indeed happened!”
The latter simply proves our point that God (existing outside of time) was able to see what you would do, regardless of your stated intent.
The former demonstrates the problem that you cannot escape: this thought experiment says that at some time t[sub]0[/sub], God makes a prediction, and at some later time t[sub]1[/sub] you state your intent for an action at some still later time t[sub]2[/sub]. Your action at t[sub]1[/sub] is not an exercise of free will, according to your definition; it is simply a statement of intent. However, your thought experiment
cannot, by definition, include the action of time t[sub]2[/sub]; that result can only be revealed
after you have taken an action. In other words, your thought experiment is incapable of demonstrating your action at t[sub]2[/sub]; it can only
predict what you will do at t[sub]2[/sub]…! This implies that your thought experiment not only cannot demonstrate what you hope it will, but also is incapable of demonstrating an act of free will!
Now, you can object that your experiment explicitly states what you will do – but that doesn’t hold water. Your experiment only has
predictive value: and you, unfortunately, have defined free will in such a way that prediction (given its attempt to look into the future) cannot be considered a complete act of free will.
There is a certain wonderful irony in all this: your claim is that God’s ability to predict the future is doubtful, due to your ability to call upon free will; yet, your only opportunity to attempt to demonstrate your exercise of free will isn’t in action but only in prediction! You have become the monster that you hoped to dethrone! Your construction (claiming that God cannot predict future action) only works if you accept that one can accurately predict future action! Oh, beautiful! :yup:
