Discussion: Omniscience vs. Free Will
Saturday February 11, 2006
A forum member writes: If I put a steak in front of my dog, he's going to eat it. I know he's going to eat it. You can assume from what you know of dogs that he's going to eat it. But he still chooses to eat it. It's a choice, an option, and I have done nothing to make him choose to eat the meat. Can the same principal be applied to humans, in relation with God? God creates a situation and a human. He knows what the human will do, because he knows the human intricately enough to understand what the human will do and why. Does this mean that the human didn't choose? Simply because God knows a person well enough to know what they will do, God doesn't inherently take away the choice from that person.
Conflicts between divine qualities like omniscience and supposed human qualities like free will have occupied theologians for centuries - but can this particular conflict be resolved so quickly and easily? Read More...
Comments
we do not have free will only ignorance of the future(of what god knows). all we can do is pray to the omniscient one for strength to accept his will for us whatever that might be(good or not)
I think we covered the subject of free will some time ago.
Theists will say, in kowtowing to their god, that he/it benevolently gave humans free will.
What god/creator, in its right mind, would bestow free will upon its creations?
Gods, all mythological, governed, ruled, controlled; they did not reliquinish power to anyone or anything.
Would a god/creator make an object perfect
in shape, color, form and utility, say, a pot, pan or utensil or whatever, and then give its creation free will to transform itself into something that negated all of its creator’s efforts?
God, according to all “holy” books, had so much trouble trying to control his unruly creations. Being omniscient, he would have known the trouble they would cause by having free will, so why would an omniscient being give anything free will and thereby deliberately create trouble for him/itself?
We DO have free will, of course, but it came not as a gift from some figment of a wild imagination that supposedly dwells in the sky, but through natural evolution and an ability to adapt to our varied environments!
We are all animals in this world and we have come this far through our instincts, of which free will (free choice) is simply a part, just as all animals survive in the wild through their instincts.
GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!
we do not have free will only ignorance of the future(of what god knows). — airborne03 on June 3, 2009 at 2:29 am
That explains why I never know how the chocolate Zingers got onto my plate.