Omniscience, free-will, predestination

[Hitetlen]

Philthy:

You will have to do a little better than this my friend. I disagree with you - please show me where I am wrong. And please don’t get too far off track. Remember, my claim is that knowledge of an outcome does not preclude free will in the outcome.

I understand your claim, but I am afraid that there is no such thing as “real” knowing of an outcome, at least as far as we humans are concerned (at least not outside the exact sciences like mathematics where we can know that 2+2=4). Everything else is just a more or less substantiated “guess”, even if we do not talk about volition and free will. Even such an utterance that “I know that the Sun will rise tomorrow” is not real knowledge, just very likely guess (after all it is possible that the Earth will be destroyed tonight by a wandering black hole).

In the absence of having real knowledge we can only rely on logic (which is also an exact science): if there is such a thing as total knowledge, then the outcome of the event is not subject to variation or chance, in other words it is determined. And in a deterministic universe there is no free will only an illusion of it. It does not matter whether it is God who has total knowledge or Joe Schmoe, the existence of total knowledge would make the Universe deterministic.

I was only responding to your metaphore about going forward and backward in time, which is a logical impossibility, since it involves a logical contrdiction (the well-known grandfather paradox). It is not possible (nor necessary) to try to create examples about omniscience only analogies. There is no such thing as perfect or real human knowledge (much less omniscience), therefore examples are impossible. Analogies can be construed, but the analogies are never precise and here we have a difference in kind, not a difference in degree.

Those analogies only prove that imperfect knowledge (educated guess) is not incompatible with the existence of possible free will (if there is free will at all), and that is not the point of contention. If you wish to establish that real knowledge (omniscience) and free will are somehow compatible, you will have to show that omnisicence does not necessitate a deterministic Universe. And I don’t see how is that possible. I am all ears, but mere analogies will not do the trick.

 

[Anonymous_1]

im glad your here hitelin…always good to know arguments for and against something…

 

[Steven_Merten]

I think people confuse God’s, Omni-Presence to the whole of physical time, thinking it is some sort of predestination.

Jesus tells us He will judge mankind at the end of time. The book of life exists from before physical creation. If our spiritual God was not Omni-Present to the whole of physical time, both situations could not be true. As it is, Jesus judges mankind at the end of time and writes down the names of the elect in the spritual book of life, which, like God, is Omni-Present to the whole of physical time. Because the book of life is spiritual, though written at the end of physical time, it exists in spiritual Omni-Presence from before physical creation. Now scriptures are in sync with one another. The spiritual world is outside of and Omni-Present to, the whole of physical time.

NAB REV 13:8
The beast will be worshiped by all those inhabitants of the earth who did not have their names written at the world’s begining in the book of the living, which belongs to the Lamb who was slain.
**NAB REV 3:5 **

"The victor will thus be dressed in white, and** I will never erase his name from the book of life** but will acknowledge his name in the presence of my Father and of his angels. **NAB JOH 5:27 **

"The Father has given over to him power to pass judgment because he is Son of Man; no need for you to be surprised at this, for an hour is coming in which all those in their tombs shall hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done right shall rise to live; the evildoers shall rise to be damned."NAB REV 22:12

"Remember, I am coming soon! I bring with me the reward that will be given to each man as his conduct deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End! **Happy are they who wash their robes so as to have free access to the tree of life **and enter the city through its gates Outside are the dogs and sorcerers, the fornicators and murderers, the idol-worshipers and all who love falsehood."NAB REV 2:22

“I mean to cast her down on a bed of pain; her companions in sin I will plunge into intense suffering unless they repent of their sins with her, and her children I will put to death. Thus shall all the churches come to know that I am the searcher of hearts and minds, and that I will give each of you what your conduct deserves.”

 

[Lazerlike42]

Hitetlen:

I understand your claim, but I am afraid that there is no such thing as “real” knowing of an outcome, at least as far as we humans are concerned (at least not outside the exact sciences like mathematics where we can know that 2+2=4). Everything else is just a more or less substantiated “guess”, even if we do not talk about volition and free will. Even such an utterance that “I know that the Sun will rise tomorrow” is not real knowledge, just very likely guess (after all it is possible that the Earth will be destroyed tonight by a wandering black hole).

In the absence of having real knowledge we can only rely on logic (which is also an exact science): if there is such a thing as total knowledge, then the outcome of the event is not subject to variation or chance, in other words it is determined. And in a deterministic universe there is no free will only an illusion of it. It does not matter whether it is God who has total knowledge or Joe Schmoe, the existence of total knowledge would make the Universe deterministic.

I was only responding to your metaphore about going forward and backward in time, which is a logical impossibility, since it involves a logical contrdiction (the well-known grandfather paradox). It is not possible (nor necessary) to try to create examples about omniscience only analogies. There is no such thing as perfect or real human knowledge (much less omniscience), therefore examples are impossible. Analogies can be construed, but the analogies are never precise and here we have a difference in kind, not a difference in degree.

Those analogies only prove that imperfect knowledge (educated guess) is not incompatible with the existence of possible free will (if there is free will at all), and that is not the point of contention. If you wish to establish that real knowledge (omniscience) and free will are somehow compatible, you will have to show that omnisicence does not necessitate a deterministic Universe. And I don’t see how is that possible. I am all ears, but mere analogies will not do the trick.

I would say that you need to show that omniscience does require a deterministic universe. I dont see any necessary or logical connection between the two. You are making the logical assumptiom that omniscience implies a deterministic universe. I see no reason to accept this as an axiom. It must be proven.

In fact, I think it makes far more sense that it does not imply a deterministic universe than the idea that is does. You are creating an implication from two unique and seperate things: the knowledge of one entity, and the actions of another. For a variety of reasons, it is pure logical nonsense to assume that one implies the other without showing a connection.

 

[Hitetlen]

Lazerlike42:

I would say that you need to show that omniscience does require a deterministic universe. I dont see any necessary or logical connection between the two. You are making the logical assumptiom that omniscience implies a deterministic universe. I see no reason to accept this as an axiom. It must be proven.

If the outcome of an event is known (not simply guessed with a certain level of probability) then there is no possible different outcome. There might be a theoretically different result for sure, but no practically different one. That is what a deterministic Universe is, with no alternatives.

The simplest way to visualize this: consider the past. The past is unchangable. What happened is done and cannot be changed. The is no free will in the past. And since according to the assumption that God is somehow “outside” the time (which is also an unreasonable assumption, much less a provable one) everything is past as far as God is concerned.

I think that your position needs more proof. For one, you assume that we actually have free will. How can this be proven? There is no way to do that. It is a reasonable assumption, certainly we all think that we have freedom to choose, but that is not enough. We may very well have this illusion of free will and nothing more.

Here is the problem with proving the assumption: we should be able to record an event of a decision making process and store it somehow. Then we would have to “rewind” the Universe, and observe the same decision making process again and see if the result is different from the “recorded” one. If there is a discrepancy, there is free will. But this experiment cannot be actually conducted, there is no way to “rewind” the Universe. “You can never step into the same river twice” as a Greek philosopher once said.

Some apologists try to argue differently. They say that God’s foreknowledge does not determine our actions, rather our actions determine God’s foreknowledge. That track does not work either, it assumes that causality works in a reverse fashion, contrary to our current knowledge of the Universe.

Besides, it makes no sense to assume that God is somehow in a “dimension” where there is no time. An existence without time imples an unchanged existence, and that should be nonsense even to belivers. After all God was supposed to have created the Universe, and that required an action: therefore there was a point in God’s “meta-time” when there was no Universe, then God did something, and the Universe came into existence. This meta-time is not necessarily the same as our time, I am willing to consider that. But its existence is undoubtable.

 

[Hitetlen]

Anonymous_1:

im glad your here hitelin…always good to know arguments for and against something…

Thank you for your kind words.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Your analogy to the past as determined event has a flaw, I believe. . .yes, the actions are known NOW, in the future. No, they were not known THEN, in the past. And they were DONE in that individual’s present.

As far as GOD’S knowing them AS IF they were all “past” and therefore unchangable, I believe another poster referenced the fact that God does not operate on a “time” system–He does not, in view, view events as past, present, and future. God created time, therefore He exists outside of time. Eternity is not going to be, therefore, something in which we have past, present, and future, as we do on earth.

The major premise appears to be that “God knows your actions TIME WISE–meaning, past, present and future”–therefore all of your actions, being preknown, are predetermined.

BUT: take “time” out of the equation, and we have X the unknown. WE simply cannot imagine being “out of time” . We can theorize but we lack the experience of being “out of time”.

Further, you still have not been able to prove that God’s knowledge of an action has “determined” that action. Isn’t it more true to say that any action has rather “determined” God’s knowledge? These two are NOT reciprocal.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Hitetlen:

If the outcome of an event is known (not simply guessed with a certain level of probability) then there is no possible different outcome. There might be a theoretically different result for sure, but no practically different one. That is what a deterministic Universe is, with no alternatives.

The simplest way to visualize this: consider the past. The past is unchangable. What happened is done and cannot be changed. The is no free will in the past. And since according to the assumption that God is somehow “outside” the time (which is also an unreasonable assumption, much less a provable one) everything is past as far as God is concerned.

I think that your position needs more proof. For one, you assume that we actually have free will. How can this be proven? There is no way to do that. It is a reasonable assumption, certainly we all think that we have freedom to choose, but that is not enough. We may very well have this illusion of free will and nothing more.

Here is the problem with proving the assumption: we should be able to record an event of a decision making process and store it somehow. Then we would have to “rewind” the Universe, and observe the same decision making process again and see if the result is different from the “recorded” one. If there is a discrepancy, there is free will. But this experiment cannot be actually conducted, there is no way to “rewind” the Universe. “You can never step into the same river twice” as a Greek philosopher once said.

Some apologists try to argue differently. They say that God’s foreknowledge does not determine our actions, rather our actions determine God’s foreknowledge. That track does not work either, it assumes that causality works in a reverse fashion, contrary to our current knowledge of the Universe.

Besides, it makes no sense to assume that God is somehow in a “dimension” where there is no time. An existence without time imples an unchanged existence, and that should be nonsense even to belivers. After all God was supposed to have created the Universe, and that required an action: therefore there was a point in God’s “meta-time” when there was no Universe, then God did something, and the Universe came into existence. This meta-time is not necessarily the same as our time, I am willing to consider that. But its existence is undoubtable.

You’re just not making a valid logical arguement. What you’re saying might make sense “at a glance,” but logically there is a huge disconnect between the two ideas you are trying to say are related. I’m not saying that you can’t necessarily connect them (though I don’t believe it is possible), but I am saying that you need to produce an arguement that holds to the laws of logic and which shows a necessary connection.

Moving onward, I would point out a flaw in your analogy. Just because an event happened already does not mean that there was no free will in the past. Let us examine this by cases.

Case 1: Assume that the people in the past had no free will. Then what they did was not of their own will. We now know what happened, and we are unable to change it.

Case 2: Assume that the people in the past did had free will. Then what they did was of their own free will. We now know what happened, and we are unable to change it.

We receive the same end result each time: we can’t change the past. This is true whether those in the past had free will or not. Therefore, the fact that we cannot change the past is insufficient to prove whether free will existed in the past.

Now consider God. Could God change what was in the past? We assert that He could if He wanted to, but that He will not insofar as that our past actions were based on our free will, and God wil not impair this free will. Since the past is alterable to God, the concept of the past lacking free will because He knows it is irrelevant. In fact, as Catholics, many of us pray for those whom died in the past so that they might have come to Christ in the past, before they died.

 

[Philthy]

Hitetlen:

I understand your claim, but I am afraid that there is no such thing as “real” knowing of an outcome, at least as far as we humans are concerned

Did you forget that the thread is on OMNISCIENCE and it’s relationship to free will? We are not debating whether MAN can know in advance, we are attempting to understand how the reality of an omniscient God would not exclude the exercise of man’s free will.
Furthermore, your assertion that there is no “real” knowing of an outcome for humans - is an assumption, not a fact.

Hitetlen:

(at least not outside the exact sciences like mathematics where we can know that 2+2=4).

And how exactly do we “know” this? Is it because this knowledge is not subject to temporal variations - like omniscience? And furthermore, as it pertains to this thread, does our KNOWLEDGE of the fact that 2+2=4 actually CAUSE 2+2 to equal 4? Does it cease to be true if I have a stroke and lose my knowledge of addition?

Hitetlen:

Everything else is just a more or less substantiated “guess”, even if we do not talk about volition and free will. Even such an utterance that “I know that the Sun will rise tomorrow” is not real knowledge, just very likely guess (after all it is possible that the Earth will be destroyed tonight by a wandering black hole).

Of course, but this is irrelevent to the thread.

Hitetlen:

In the absence of having real knowledge we can only rely on logic (which is also an exact science): if there is such a thing as total knowledge, then the outcome of the event is not subject to variation or chance, in other words it is determined.
And in a deterministic universe there is no free will only an illusion of it. It does not matter whether it is God who has total knowledge or Joe Schmoe, the existence of total knowledge would make the Universe deterministic.

I disagree. The fact that an omniscient God knows the outcome of a free will choice does not negate the fact that the person who engaged all of their faculties in making their choice did so on their own - in time. The perspective of an omniscient observer who’s knowledge is not limited to time does not, of necessity, create the choices that were made. I stand by my statement:
Knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome.
Again: you will need to do better at explaining why, precisely, knowledge of an outcome by an outside entity influences the real events actually causing the outcome.
What you have simply done is realized the implications of what it means to KNOW something in the absolute sense
and CHOSEN to call that “determined”. That is an observational relationship, not a causal relationship.

BTW, you do realize, of course, that to argue that knowledge causes outcomes implies that their MUST be an omniscient God to CREATE variations in the outcomes we observe. I doubt that is what you are proposing.

Con’d

 

[Philthy]

Hitetlen:

I was only responding to your metaphore about going forward and backward in time, which is a logical impossibility, since it involves a logical contradiction (the well-known grandfather paradox).

Do you mind sharing this “proof”? Time travel is relative, my friend, and it happens constantly. My suspicion is that your proof will involve impossibilities which result from INTERACTION with events in time travel rather than pure KNOWLEDGE of a future event. Those are two entirely separate issues, of course. But as I implied, I don’t know the grandfather paradox, please present it and finish justifying your “time travel” is impossible claim.

Hitetlen:

It is not possible (nor necessary) to try to create examples about omniscience only analogies. There is no such thing as perfect or real human knowledge (much less omniscience), therefore examples are impossible.

Hmmm, you seem to be under the illusion that I presented an “example” of omniscience. I dont remember doing that, I remember offering “a thought experiment”. I never claimed my example to be an example of reality but simply an intellectually illustrative means of dissecting knowledge from causality.

Hitetlen:

If you wish to establish that real knowledge (omniscience) and free will are somehow compatible, you will have to show that omnisicence does not necessitate a deterministic Universe.

Actually I have already done that. Knowledge of the future does not determine that future any more than knowledge of the past DETERMINED that past. It is you who has the burden of explaining the causal difference between a past knowledge and a future knowldedge and why that difference illiminates free will. Simply defining the universe as “determined” doesn’t cut it, and is a poor choice. All we are talking about is a “known” universe.
You have completely ignored the entire concept of potency to action, for example. What if we had an omniscient, impotent observer? How does that observer influence events in time?

Hitetlen:
And I don’t see how is that possible. I am all ears, but mere analogies will not do the trick.

I hope you are all ears - that is not the impression I get from your writing.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Let me go at this from one other angle, too.

Hitetlen, you seem to be arguing that if an omniscient God knew an event, past or future, that His knowledge of it would be deterministic. In other words, His knowledge causes it to occur.

However, I know that Hitler shot himself just as much as God knows that Hitler shot himself. Based on the analogy in your last post, this would seem to lead to the conclusion that I caused Hitler to shoot himself. Am I a god?

Your logic leads to one of two necessary clonclusions. The first is that my knowledge caused Hitler to commit suicide. If you claim that I did not cause Hitler’s suicide, there must be one whose knowledge did. However, seeing as that I did not cause Hitler’s suicide this individual would need to posses something I lack which would enable this person to cause Hitler’s death where I was unable. This would be the power to cause Hitler to commit suicide.

When we realize that this conclusion must be reached for all knowledge, than we realize that this person must have the knowledge of all things and the power to cause all things. Hence this person must be omniscient and omnipotent.

Therefore, your arguement leads to one of two conclusions: either I caused Hitler’s death, or there exists an omnipotent and omniscient God.

 

[Philthy]

Tantum ergo:

Further, you still have not been able to prove that God’s knowledge of an action has “determined” that action. Isn’t it more true to say that any action has rather “determined” God’s knowledge? These two are NOT reciprocal.

Bravo!!! You are right on target! All the “deterministic” argument accomplishes is a further clarification of what it means to KNOW something. It completely fails to establish a CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP between knowledge and outcome. It simply leaves hanging the root problem: well if the universe is “determined”, HOW was it determined? This is most obvious when you realize that the discussion of potency to act isn’t even in the mix!

 

[Hitetlen]

Let me just make a summary post, because you guys bring up similar objections.

Lazerlike42:

Hitetlen, you seem to be arguing that if an omniscient God knew an event, past or future, that His knowledge of it would be deterministic. In other words, His knowledge causes it to occur.

Philthy:
Knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome.
Again: you will need to do better at explaining why, precisely, knowledge of an outcome by an outside entity influences the real events actually causing the outcome. All of you misunderstand what I was saying. I did not say that foreknowledge is the primary cause of the events which are about to occur in the future. That would be nonsense. It is not the knowledge which causes events to unfold, rather omniscience (in and by itself) relies on predictability of the future.

Take an example: if I toss a die, for me it is a random event: the outcome depends of millions of factors, the direction of the toss, the strength of the toss, small irregularities on the surface the die will roll, etc. Since I don’t know these factors, for me the result is an unpredictable, random event. For an omniscient being, these are known factors, such a being can deduct the impending result, and he would know the outcome before it occurs. Therefore knowledge (as compared to good guesses) is the lack of uncertainty, the lack of randomness. The more one knows, there is a bigger lack of uncertainty, so for an omniscient being there would be no lack of uncertainty, the future would be totally predictable, however that is simply a deterministic universe - which in turn invalidates free will.

I am sure you all understand this, based upon your posts since all of you changed the premises and did not try to refute this reasoning. Rather you all expanded the goalposts, and decided to drag in yet another alleged aspect of God’s existence (observe that insofar I only talked about any omniscient being) namely that God is somehow outside the time and “sees” the future as if it already happened.

There is a problem with that: namely that you dragged in another unsupported attribute of God, and abandoned the aim of this thread, which was to analyze the connection between omniscience and free will - not all of God’s attributes and free will. This is an epistemological error, you should have stayed in the constraints of the original problem as stated in the OP.

No big deal, I will deal with that now. The main problem is that this assumption violates the laws of logic, namely the law of contradiction. The same event that is in the future for us, is in the past as far as God is concerned. So the same event has both happend and not happened yet.

No matter what God’s omniscince means, even if God is omnipotent (as Philthy alluded to when he incorrectly said that God is able to change the past) he cannot create logical contradictions, like a square circle or a married bachelor. So an event has either occured yet, or has not occured so far. If it has already occured, the choices are resolved, there is no free will (even if there might have have been in the past). If the event has not happened yet, the only way God would know its outcome with applying his total knowledge of the past and present, and using his intellectual powers to deduct (foresee) the outcome.

Philthy:
I dont remember doing that, I remember offering “a thought experiment”. I never claimed my example to be an example of reality but simply an intellectually illustrative means of dissecting knowledge from causality.Yes, and there is a problem with it. Thought experiments have a great use, but they can only be used to refute an assertion, not to support it. If you want to support an assertion, you must use real experiments (which in this case are impossible).
Tantum ergo:

God created time, therefore He exists outside of time.

That does not follow automatically. Even if God created the laws of logic (which would be another questionable assumption) he is bound by them, as most believers understand.
Tantum ergo:

Moving onward, I would point out a flaw in your analogy. Just because an event happened already does not mean that there was no free will in the past.

That is not what I said: whether free will existed in the past of not; free will does not exist now for past events. What happened cannot be changed (God’s alleged omnipotence notwithstanding).

 

[Hitetlen]

Philthy:

Do you mind sharing this “proof”? Time travel is relative, my friend, and it happens constantly. My suspicion is that your proof will involve impossibilities which result from INTERACTION with events in time travel rather than pure KNOWLEDGE of a future event. Those are two entirely separate issues, of course. But as I implied, I don’t know the grandfather paradox, please present it and finish justifying your “time travel” is impossible claim.

There are four possibilities here:

1. Knowing the past - no problem.
2. Traveling into the future - no problem, we all do it one day every 24 hours.
3. Knowing the future - that brings up the problem: we can use our knowledge to change the “known” future, thus making it not happen.
4. Traveling into the past - also a problem, we can change events, thus invalidating the “known” present. (This is the grandfather paradox: in a simple format I could go back and kill my grandfather before he would sire my father, so my father would not be born, therefore I would not be born, therefore I could not go bak and kill my grandfather, etc…)

Philthy:
You have completely ignored the entire concept of potency to action, for example. What if we had an omniscient, impotent observer? How does that observer influence events in time?That would be changing the premises, but I already answered it in the previous post.

Philthy:

I hope you are all ears - that is not the impression I get from your writing.

Are you sarcastic here?

 

[Philthy]

Hi Hitetlen-

Hitetlen:

There are four possibilities here:

1. Knowing the past - no problem.
2. Traveling into the future - no problem, we all do it one day every 24 hours.
3. Knowing the future - that brings up the problem: we can use our knowledge to change the “known” future, thus making it not happen.
4. Traveling into the past - also a problem, we can change events, thus invalidating the “known” present. (This is the grandfather paradox: in a simple format I could go back and kill my grandfather before he would sire my father, so my father would not be born, therefore I would not be born, therefore I could not go bak and kill my grandfather, etc…)

Here it becomes apparent - again - that you are mixing KNOWLEDGE with POTENCY as if they are INSEPARABLE. Did you not read my post? Your grandfather paradox is useless in this discussion for EXACTLY the reason I predicted: ALL your “problems” with future knowledge depend upon the ability to ACT(potency) on the knowledge. Omnipotence is not a part of this discussion.
Only omnisicience is as it relates to free will. Your grandfather paradox is useless because it REQUIRES ACTION on the part of the individual to generate the paradox. I will say it again: Knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome.

Hitetlen:

That would be changing the premises, but I already answered it in the previous post.

An omniscient impotent observer doesnt change any premises - it was my attempt to redirect you to the ACTUAL THREAD. We are discussing OMNISCIENCE, not OMNIPOTENCE. You haven’t addressed this at all.
And just so we understand each other, when you say “that would be changing the premises” do you mean to imply that an omniscient, impotent observer could know the future without eliminating free will? Yes or no please.

Hitetlen:

Are you sarcastic here?

No, I am not being sarcastic. You don’t seem to be listening.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Philty:

Here it becomes apparent - again - that you are mixing KNOWLEDGE with POTENCY as if they are INSEPARABLE. Did you not read my post? Your grandfather paradox is useless in this discussion for EXACTLY the reason I predicted: ALL your “problems” with future knowledge depend upon the ability to ACT(potency) on the knowledge. Omnipotence is not a part of this discussion.
Only omnisicience is as it relates to free will. Your grandfather paradox is useless because it REQUIRES ACTION on the part of the individual to generate the paradox.

This is 100% correct. The issue is one of knowledge, not potency. Knowledge does not imply potency. If you wish to say that it does, you must prove it logically.

 

[Philthy]

Hi Hitetlen:

Hitetlen:

It is not the knowledge which causes events to unfold, rather omniscience (in and by itself) relies on predictability of the future.

This is sloppy wording. Omniscience does not “rely” upon predictability. It is a state of being where - from the perspective of one in time - the future is perfectly predictable, but for the omniscient, there is no “future” it is simply KNOWN.

Hitetlen:

Therefore knowledge … is the lack of uncertainty, the lack of randomness. … so for an omniscient being there would be no lack of uncertainty, the future would be totally predictable, …which in turn invalidates free will.

Unbelievable! I guess you are just not going to get it.
You keep stating the conclusion that free will is invalidated as a function of knowledge but you cannot tell us WHY. what is the relationship of knowledge and free will that makes them mutually exclusive? Your biggest problem, IMHO, is the use of the term “determined”. It implies that someone or something is responsible for the “determined” universe - but you don’t actually say who or what this may be! Maybe its the people making the free will choices! You havent actually excluded that. But the implication(and whats needed for your proof to work) is that it is a force apart from the individuals acting in free will situtions - but you haven’t demonstrated this at all. For your conclusion to be valid, you need to demonstrate that the individuals involved in alleged free will activities are NOT determining those outcomes, or you need to demonstrate that something else is responsible for the determination of those outcomes. Simply saying that because another entity “knows the outcome” that the outcome is no longer determined by the individuals acting in free will situations simply doesn’t fly.

Hitetlen:
…all of you changed the premises and did not try to refute this reasoning. Rather you all expanded the goalposts, and decided to drag in yet another alleged aspect of God’s existence

I have no idea what you are talking about. Im not sure you do either. I have been very explicit: knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome. I don’t need to expand goalposts to refute what you have provided so far. Your “grandfather paradox” fails because(as I PREDICTED) it requires our omniscient being to ACT and therefore is irrelevent since ACTION and ominscience are unrelated.

Hitetlen:
There is a problem with that: namely that you dragged in another unsupported attribute of God, and abandoned the aim of this thread, which was to analyze the connection between omniscience and free will - not all of God’s attributes and free will. This is an epistemological error, you should have stayed in the constraints of the original problem as stated in the OP.

What are you talking about? Problem with what? What attributes have been dragged in? I can’t follow you. You are the one who dragged in the attribute of potency, not me and not Lazer.

Hitetlen:

No big deal, I will deal with that now. The main problem is that this assumption violates the laws of logic, namely the law of contradiction. The same event that is in the future for us, is in the past as far as God is concerned. So the same event has both happend and not happened yet.

You cannot be serious. Let me help you: God has KNOWLEDGE of the event - that doesn’t mean it has happened. They’re different things. He KNOWS it AS IF (in human terms) it has already happened. He KNOWS it and it has not happened.
There is no contradiction. You are back to square one - do not pass Go and do not collect $200.
Piece of advice? You need to be very careful not to allow words to dictate your thoughts. You equated “in the past as far as God is concerned” with “event has happened”. They are not the same my friend. I have a new statement for you: Knowledge of an event outcome and occurance of the event outcome are two different things.

Hitetlen:

Thought experiments have a great use, but they can only be used to refute an assertion, not to support it.

You are too funny! You just made this up - and pulled it out of a hat at that! Either thought experiments are invalid for both or valid for either. Otherwise, I can simply use my thought experiment to REFUTE your assertion that knowledge excludes free will rather than using it to SUPPORT my assertion that knowldege does not exclude free will.

 

[Philthy]

Hitetlen:

There are four possibilities here:

1. Knowing the past - no problem.
2. Traveling into the future - no problem, we all do it one day every 24 hours.
3. Knowing the future - that brings up the problem: we can use our knowledge to change the “known” future, thus making it not happen.
4. Traveling into the past - also a problem, we can change events, thus invalidating the “known” present. (This is the grandfather paradox: in a simple format I could go back and kill my grandfather before he would sire my father, so my father would not be born, therefore I would not be born, therefore I could not go bak and kill my grandfather, etc…)

I know Ive beat this point to death, but I thought this should be repeated. Look at your 3rd possibility: Knowing the future. Now look at the “problem” that you use as the basis for your “contradiction”. What is it? Is it “knowing” the future that causes the contradiction? No it isn’t. Its being able to ACT on that knowledge that causes the contradiction. The same goes for the 4th possibility. You should have seen at least 2 more possibilities, no?

1. Knowing the past
2. Traveling into the future
3. Knowing the future (without acting on it)
4. Acting on the future (with or without knowing it)
5. Knowing the past(without acting on it)
6. Acting on the past (with or without knowing it)

When you look at it this way, the contradictions you mentioned remain valid for items 4 and 6 only. Item 3 (and 5), do not generate any contradictions.

 

[Hitetlen]

Too many side issues popped up so far. Let’s narrow down to the original question: are omniscience and free will mutually exculsive?

There are two possibilities for omniscience.

1. Knowledge of the past and present are not problematic, it is reasonable to say that it is possible to know both of them. From total knowledge of the past and present God can use his intellectual powers to deduct (or foresee) the future, if and only if the universe is deterministic. If the universe is NOT deterministic, the total knowledge of the past and present are insufficient to make a prediction of the future. If the universe is deterministic, there is no free will. If the universe is NOT deterministic, it is impossible to foresee it, there is no omniscience.

This was the rational approach to the problem. Now let’s examine the hypothetical one.

1. God is outside the time and can observe the future directly. This is nonsense, because the future has not happened yet. Such an assumption would violate the law of contradiction, by assuming that the same event (the future) both has already happened and not happened yet. For God it already has happened, while it has not happened for us. This is impossible, logical contradictions cannot exist.

Still, let’s examine it as if it were possible.

2-A) A simple example: I have two choices to go home from the office: “route A” and “route B”. I have no idea which one I will take tomorrow, for me it is an event to be decided sometime tomorrow. Let’s suppose that God already “knows” that tomorrow I will take “route A”. If this is the case, then it is simply a misconception on my part that I “could” take “route B” tomorrow. Unbeknownst to me, that possibility has been rendered impossible: if I could take take “route B”, God’s foreknowledge would be invalidated.

Therefore all I have is an illusion that I am “free” to take “route B”, not a reality.

As for the question: “how does God’s foreknowledge eliminate my actual freedom”, the answer is simple: God uses his habitual magic to make sure that I will take “route A”; the same magic he used when he created the Universe: he waved his hand and wished that I would not take “route B” tomorrow. Such an elegant and simple solution: he eliminated my choice to make sure that his “foreknowledge” is correct.

There is yet another possibility: I do have free will to decide which route to take, and that future decision will retroactively cause God’s foreknowledge. This idea needs the nonsense of assuming that causality can be reversed, and the affected action can predate the causing agent’s action.

 

[Philthy]

Hitetlen:

…If the universe is deterministic, there is no free will.
If the universe is NOT deterministic, it is impossible to foresee it, there is no omniscience.

Could you please define your notion of what “deterministic” means? I have no idea why you believe lack of a deterministic universe excludes omniscience. But this is clearly your safe home - so you need to define what deterministic is.

Hitetlen:

1. God is outside the time and can observe the future directly. This is nonsense, because the future has not happened yet.

I dont see the nonsense, I see your words getting in the way again. God doesnt need to “observe” anything. He simply has knowledge of it.

Hitetlen:

Such an assumption would violate the law of contradiction, by assuming that the same event (the future) both has already happened and not happened yet. For God it already has happened, while it has not happened for us. This is impossible, logical contradictions cannot exist.

God’s knowledge of an event does not require that the event has happened in time. You are wrong if you believe otherwise. Therefore there is no contradiction. I have already addressed this in my last post. You apparently are not reading them. This is consistent with my concern that you are not “all ears”. If you are not interested in dialogue why are you here? Your failure (and apparent inability) to address the specific criticisms of your argument justifiably solidifies the opinions of those who disagree with you.

Hitetlen:

Still, let’s examine it as if it were possible.

2-A) A simple example: I have two choices to go home from the office: “route A” and “route B”. I have no idea which one I will take tomorrow, for me it is an event to be decided sometime tomorrow. Let’s suppose that God already “knows” that tomorrow I will take “route A”. If this is the case, then it is simply a misconception on my part that I “could” take “route B” tomorrow. Unbeknownst to me, that possibility has been rendered impossible: if I could take take “route B”, God’s foreknowledge would be invalidated.

All you have demonstrated is what it means to KNOW something. If you were going to choose route B, then that is what God would know. If you were going to choose route A then that is what God would know. Both are possibly known by God but only one is actually known, and that is the choice that you actually make. You have not demonstrated in any way that there is a relationship between your making a choice and Gods knowledge of that choice eternally. All you have shown is that one will in fact choose what God eternally knows will be chosen - you haven’t shown anything beyond that. And what does that show? It simply shows what it means for God to “KNOW” it.

Hitetlen:

Therefore all I have is an illusion that I am “free” to take “route B”, not a reality.

Completely false. You are entirely free to choose route B - but you will not! Prove me wrong!

Hitetlen:

As for the question: “how does God’s foreknowledge eliminate my actual freedom”, the answer is simple: God uses his habitual magic to make sure that I will take “route A”; the same magic he used when he created the Universe: he waved his hand and wished that I would not take “route B” tomorrow. Such an elegant and simple solution: he eliminated my choice to make sure that his “foreknowledge” is correct.

You have assumed - without proof- 2 things:

1. God has the CAPABILITY OF ACTING on his knowledge
2. God has the DESIRE TO ACT on his knowledge

All you really prove here is that God’s Knowledge - of itself- DOESNT eliminate your free will. Elimination of free will would require an ACT on Gods part according to your argument. But omniscience,per se, does not require action(by the omniscient)and therefore your entire argument fails. Im getting tired of telling you this - if you have nothing else to offer, please say so. There is no need for you to repeatedly discuss omniscience and then spin off into potency and pretend we are still on topic.