An Omniscient God Negates Free Will

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Lapidem

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He died Spiritually that day and like a cancer took its toll on the body later. They saw things very differently after Adam ate.

There was no need for Adam or anyone else to die. God could prevent it in an instant. He created playthings, then let them die.
he set them up so they would die by putting the forbidden tree in the garden. What does this make God???
 

stunnedbygrace

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I'm afraid that's no answer. It merely shows you can't resolve the paradigm presented and it presumably challenges your belief system.
I quite literally have no idea what you tried to say here. I suspect you don’t either. You are saying I can’t resolve your assumption? It’s a logical fallacy. There IS no resolving it…
Additionally, you have not challenged any beliefs I hold. I still think knowing what choice someone will make does not mean they haven’t made a choice.
There's a difference between YOU thinking you know what choice I will make and an Omniscient God knowing what choice will be made. The latter is supposedly infallible in which case no matter what happens, choice A is going to be made. B and C are not therefore real possibilities. There is no real choice, though quite possibly it might appear to be a choice to a human.

Humans think dice are random but of course they are not. Dice are totally predictable because their movement is governed totally by physics. Dice appear to be random to humans because we can't compute the millions of factors that are impacting their movement.
But an all-powerful God could compute it all and therefore know in advance how the dice will end up. But it does therefore mean that the dice are predetermined.
Tsk! Now you’re just trying to be a clown on purpose, right? We are supposed to…compare a person, who can make choices, to a die that is not capable of making a single choice…?

I wouldn’t have thought it possible to get any more illogical than your first silly assertion but you just did It.

Do you know anyone who actually takes you seriously?
 

Charlie24

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Yup

God created everything did he not? That must therefore include sin and evil. He's responsible for creating Adam the way he was, and Eve.
He must hvev known when he created them what they were going to do and he must have created them in such a way as to ensure they did it.

It's difficult to not believe that God in his infinite power is uttlerly utterly bored stiff and all this creation was little more than a goldfish bowl to amuse him for a while. Everything in that goldfish bowl is fixed by God. Everything in it affects everything else in it. Cause and effect. There can be no real free will.

No, everything is not fixed by God! There are many things that take place in this world daily that is not the will of God.

It happens because God honors the free will of man.
 
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Lapidem

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. I still think knowing what choice someone will make does not mean they haven’t made a choice.

You're welcome to think and believ anything you want even if it holds no rational water or logic. You're unable to see that if an omniscient God knows a choice before it's made then that choice is predermined in some way. It's impossible for the choice to be made any other way for that would expose God to be fallible. If you can't see this simple precept then I can't help you.

stunnedbygrace said:
Tsk! Now you’re just trying to be a clown on purpose, right? We are supposed to…compare a person, who can make choices, to a die that is not capable of making a single choice…?

I wouldn’t have thought it possible to get any more illogical than your first silly assertion but you just did It.

Do you know anyone who actually takes you seriously?

This is all just childish insults and disparagement which underpins that you have no argument to offer in the debate. Disappointing but you see this often. It's much like the people who can't abide the facts presented by people that don;'t support the Covid vaccine narratives. They just resort to disparagement and call them "anti-vaxxers" and the like.
 

Lapidem

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No, everything is not fixed by God! There are many things that take place in this world daily that is not the will of God.

This is bordeline blasphemy. You must belong to a strange sect? Nothing happens but by God's hand and design. According to the Bible and Christian doctrine. Nothing happens that is not the will of God. All the evil in the world he permits. He stands by whilst it happens.
What does that make God???
 

jeffweeder

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There was no need for Adam or anyone else to die. God could prevent it in an instant. He created playthings, then let them die.
he set them up so they would die by putting the forbidden tree in the garden. What does this make God???
God wanted fellowship/relationship with man. Without freewill it's meaningless relationship.
We are hardly just playthings to him as he became a Man himself in the person of Jesus to die a death that would free us from our predicament. That is LOVE, the foundation to any meaningful relationship.
May God bless you again.
 
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Charlie24

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This is bordeline blasphemy. You must belong to a strange sect? Nothing happens but by God's hand and design. According to the Bible and Christian doctrine. Nothing happens that is not the will of God. All the evil in the world he permits. He stands by whilst it happens.
What does that make God???

Does God will that those little kids in Chicago keep getting shot and killed? Why doesn't He do something about such things?

Mans free will is why!

The whole plan of God is based on the free will of man. God created man knowing he would fall. God had to allow man to fall in order for man to love and worship Him of their own free will.

Those who choose God of their own free will are predestined to be the sons of God. It can be no other way.
 

stunnedbygrace

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You're welcome to think and believ anything you want even if it holds no rational water or logic.
That’s exactly what I have been unable to do. Your rule holds no logic. Its not logical to say if someone knows a choice I will make before I make it, it therefore means I made no choice.
You're unable to see that if an omniscient God knows a choice before it's made then that choice is predermined in some way. It's impossible for the choice to be made any other way for that would expose God to be fallible. If you can't see this simple precept then I can't help you.

Once again, knowing what someones choice will be does not mean they didn’t make a choice. It just means you knew what their choice would be. It doesn’t mean you forced them to not have a choice. It simply means they chose and you knew what their choice would be.

This is all just childish insults and disparagement which underpins that you have no argument to offer in the debate. Disappointing but you see this often. It's much like the people who can't abide the facts presented by people that don;'t support the Covid vaccine narratives. They just resort to disparagement and call them "anti-vaxxers" and the like.
Well, you will just have to think things through more if you expect anyone to take you seriously.
I have no argument to offer in response to your assertion that no man has ever made a single choice, ever? My argument is that your rule or assertion is a logical fallacy.
You can have a months long fit that no one accepts your logical fallacy/nonsensical rule, but it won’t change anything. And, in fact, if you expect men to not laugh and scoff at logical fallacies, you ask too much of men, who very naturally scoff at absurdities.
 
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ScottA

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I pose a set of simple and imo concrete logic that might inspire significant discussion among the membership.

An Omniscient (all-knowing) God by definition means that free will can not actually exist.

A person is presented with a Choice of A, B or C

But God knows, infallibly, unerringly with 100% certainty that option A is going to be the choice.


That being the case it MUST be impossible for option B and C to be chosen, for otherwise that would mean God was wrong, fallible and imperfect.

If B an C are not in fact possible options, then there was never a real choice to begin with. Hence, there is no free will because the result of all actions and choices are known to God before they happen and therefore all alternative choices are not actual possibilities.

This is a tricky argument for many Christians to face up to and they will frequently invoke the "Divine Default" saying "it just is" or "God just knows" without being able to quantify or rationally explain any of it.

Discuss
You misunderstand.

Your supposition assumes time is a factor: In other words, it assumes that a choice is given and then seconds, moments, or a lifetime later a choice is made. That is not the case. That is not the way it works.

In reality, with God there is no time. Time is rather a creation of God's, a mere "image", just as we are also, just as it is written. A better understanding would be to say that time is rather a media of revelation by God, news as it were, given to the created beings within a created image. In this way, time may appear to unfold, but that is not the case. It is merely the news or revelation of what already "is", that is unfolding.

So, no, it is not that "an omniscient god negates free will", but rather that a timeless omniscient God makes freewill possible without time, as the matter is complete outside of time. To the contrary, time is contained within a timeless God. Thus, both God and those who are His are defined in the status: "I am." In this same way, it is actually correct--not that freewill comes with being born into the world, but rather "is" before the world began.

Your supposition then, is but an inside observation based on a limited logic within a close-circuit revelation of news actually existing after the fact, of which we are last to know.
 
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Gottservant

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"An Omnicscient God negates free will" for the sake of Spiritual will.

You left out the subtext (spiritual will is better).
 

Angelina

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If God knows that you will choose option A in advance of that choice then very clearly you can not choose option B or C. If you did then God would be proven fallible, not perfect, not omniscient.

It really doesn't matter much how or why God can determine our choices in advance, the problem it gives us is that what we think are choices, can not be choices because the outcome is already determined, because God knows the result already. This is Predeterminism. No free will.
...but we do have choices and those choices are based on our free will. You have proposed that our choices are "A, B or C. Choosing A does not take away our free will to choose B or C. God may know what we intend to choose beforehand but that does not mean that our free will has been taken out of our hands.

When you view God in a third person perspective, you do so as someone who believes that they know God more than the average human [saved or unsaved] but you do not. You are a created being just like anyone of us. As such, you only know what your logical fatalistic theology can deduce, which does not know all things.
 

Lapidem

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God wanted fellowship/relationship with man. Without freewill it's meaningless relationship.

With or without free will it is a meaningless relationship because we are a construct, created by God, owned by God, with a future determined by God. Nothing we do makes any difference. We have no choice. No real choice. We are created, a gun is put to our heads which says "do this, or else you go to Hell". This is not free will. It's pure denial to suggest it is. Free will means being able to do whatever you want. Totally freely. If a controlling person or entity punishes people for not doing what they want them to do, that is no longer free will.


jeffweeder said:
We are hardly just playthings to him as he became a Man himself in the person of Jesus to die a death that would free us from our predicament.

None of which makes any sense. God created us, and thus created (purposefully, deliberately) any predicament we may have. He didn't need to become a man to solve anything. If he could create us he could un-create us or simply remove the predicament he gave us.
This situation kind of stinks in the same way as say a Pharmaceutical company inventing a poison or virus that harms people and then stretches out its arm with a cure or vaccine. That's not love.
 

Lapidem

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The whole plan of God is based on the free will of man. God created man knowing he would fall. God had to allow man to fall in order for man to love and worship Him of their own free will.
That's a very sick and wicked plan. To create something deliberately to fall so that he can offer the solution. As per previous post, much like a Pharmaceutical inventing a deadly virus to deliberately harm people and then offer a cure or vaccine. Pretty wicked.
 

Lapidem

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Your rule holds no logic. Its not logical to say if someone knows a choice I will make before I make it, it therefore means I made no choice.

Once again, knowing what someones choice will be does not mean they didn’t make a choice. It just means you knew what their choice would be.

You're just not getting it. There's a very marked difference between "someone" knowing what a choice will be and an Omniscient God knowing what a choice will be and it's the latter that is being discussed in this thread. If God is omniscient then he knows that choice A will b made. If he knows that, then 100% absolutely that WILL be the choice. Options B and C are 100% not possible. This really isn't difficult to understand and blindly refusing to accept such a simple premise is an act of denial I'm afraid.
 

Lapidem

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You misunderstand.

Your supposition assumes time is a factor: In other words, it assumes that a choice is given and then seconds, moments, or a lifetime later a choice is made. That is not the case. That is not the way it works.

In reality, with God there is no time. Time is rather a creation of God's, a mere "image", just as we are also, just as it is written. A better understanding would be to say that time is rather a media of revelation by God, news as it were, given to the created beings within a created image. In this way, time may appear to unfold, but that is not the case. It is merely the news or revelation of what already "is", that is unfolding.

So, no, it is not that "an omniscient god negates free will", but rather that a timeless omniscient God makes freewill possible without time, as the matter is complete outside of time. To the contrary, time is contained within a timeless God. Thus, both God and those who are His are defined in the status: "I am." In this same way, it is actually correct--not that freewill comes with being born into the world, but rather "is" before the world began.

Your supposition then, is but an inside observation based on a limited logic within a close-circuit revelation of news actually existing after the fact, of which we are last to know.

Ok I've heard this "time" excuse before. Whether God sits inside or outside time (or both) really doesn't matter here. If he sits outside time and can see every choice that every person is making then the reality surely is that everything has already happened. Everything from the start of time to the end of time. God sees and watches it like watching a movie. He can rewind or fast forward at will and see any part of it.

If this is the case then it means the future (or what we think of as the future) has already happened. Which explains how/why God is Omniscient. Past, Present and future to us , in our perspective are real concepts but to God they don't exist. Everything has already happened, he sees it all.

This being the case, everything must be predetermined as it's all already happened. We are merely viewing a snap shot of the whole movie. Witnessing our little bit of the immensity of time though the bodies we are trapped in. So again, there is no free will here.

God set everything up. The world, humans, our "predicaments", putting us in a completely hopeless position and then offers us the solution provided we kneel down and worship him. This is not love. It's a pretty sick scenario imo.
 

Lapidem

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...but we do have choices and those choices are based on our free will. You have proposed that our choices are "A, B or C. Choosing A does not take away our free will to choose B or C. God may know what we intend to choose beforehand but that does not mean that our free will has been taken out of our hands.
I'm afraid it DOES mean our choice has been removed. It is the fact that an Omniscient God KNOWS for CERTAINTY that we will choose A that logically then means that choices B and C are impossible. There is no way we can choose B or C. You need to take this on-board.
 

Angelina

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I'm afraid it DOES mean our choice has been removed. It is the fact that an Omniscient God KNOWS for CERTAINTY that we will choose A that logically then means that choices B and C are impossible. There is no way we can choose B or C. You need to take this on-board.

In Matthew 23: 37 Jesus said regarding Jerusalem - “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Sounds like free will to me.....
 
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Charlie24

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That's a very sick and wicked plan. To create something deliberately to fall so that he can offer the solution. As per previous post, much like a Pharmaceutical inventing a deadly virus to deliberately harm people and then offer a cure or vaccine. Pretty wicked.

Since you don't believe in free will, you've taken no time to understand it!

It might be a good Idea for you to see what you're arguing against!

We can all learn and become stronger in the faith when we take time to understand the argument from the other side.

But there will be some who don't want to learn, they find fault with God when it doesn't work out the way they think it should be.
 

Grailhunter

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In Matthew 23: 37 Jesus said regarding Jerusalem - “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Sounds like free will to me.....
Agreed.
I find some humor in the belief that God did not afford humanity free-will. Besides It being an absurd idea and it makes no sense, it forced them to move Judgement Day to a time before creation. And I think the pre-orchestrated reality would bore God and would serve no purpose.

But they are missing an opportunity.....they could make a neat sci-fi movie called the Monster that attacked Christianity. A creature comes to earth and turns everyone into puppets.....kind of like the Invasion of the body snatchers. Makes an agreement with the devil to guarantee him a quota of souls and goes on to judge some to heaven and some to hell for things he made them do....because they are puppets. And then in heaven they go on serving Him as puppets......as a reward? Great movie! Laughable religious belief!
 
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Lapidem

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In Matthew 23: 37 Jesus said regarding Jerusalem - “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Sounds like free will to me.....

Do you understand and accept that a pair of dice that are rolled on a table, are not random?