An Omniscient God Negates Free Will

[Behold]

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.

The problem the Hyper Calvinist can't solve is very simple.

They are incapable of understanding that God KNOWING everything, is not the same as God Causing everything.

The word "Foreknowledge" is beyond their comprehension. = Literally, and they prove it, worldwide.

The Original Heretic, the granddaddy, who is the demonic John Calvin, could not understand that fact, and all his deceived who have followed Him into His Theological ditch, also can understand it.

 

[Lapidem]

The problem the Hyper Calvinist can't solve is very simple.

They are incapable of understanding that God KNOWING everything, is not the same as God Causing everything.

You appear to have missed the entire point of the thread in your zeal to bring in Calvinism.

No-one has accused God of causing everything though of course there's a debate to be had there that if God is Omnipotent and can prevent something from happening but chooses not to do so then he's equally culpable as whoever or whatever caused an event. But this is a distraction from the thread.

The simple point is that if an outcome CAN be KNOWN before it happens then that outcome is predetermined. No other outcomes can happen. It doesn't matter at all who causes something to happen, if it can be known beforehand, with 100% certainty, then it can not be a random event, it can not be a free choice outcome.

 

[Adam]

The problem arises from a wrong definition of free choice.

The idea of a free choice being random is wrong - nothing happens randomly. A man obeys his own internal logic. He chooses what his vision is of good. The freedom to choose good is what free will means. The outcome of a person's choice can be predetermined with absolute knowledge of that person's beliefs and environment. What makes someone "sin" is making an error in their idea of what good is. For example, is heroin good even though it makes you happy?

So yes, there is both predetermination, and free will, but free will is in the Platonic sense.

 

[Gottservant]

The problem arises from a wrong definition of free choice.

The idea of a free choice being random is wrong - nothing happens randomly. A man obeys his own internal logic. He chooses what his vision is of good. The freedom to choose good is what free will means. The outcome of a person's choice can be predetermined with absolute knowledge of that person's beliefs and environment. What makes someone "sin" is making an error in their idea of what good is. For example, is heroin good even though it makes you happy?

So yes, there is both predetermination, and free will, but free will is in the Platonic sense.

I think the problem is that free-will is different from spiritual-will.

Free-will concerns selfish ambition; spiritual-will concerns moral conviction.

So to reiterate an answer to the OP, God negates free-will, yes, but He replaces it with spiritual-will, which is better.

 

[Lapidem]

I think the problem is that free-will is different from spiritual-will.

Free-will concerns selfish ambition; spiritual-will concerns moral conviction.

So to reiterate an answer to the OP, God negates free-will, yes, but He replaces it with spiritual-will, which is better.

The same problem arises regardless of how you frame the "will" or "choice". If someone can know with 100% certainty beforehand what is going to happen or what is going to be chosen or how someone will exercise their free or spiritual will, then humans are not free at all and are little more than biological robots just running a program. Any sense that we can do what we want is self delusion. Everything must be predetermined. How that unfolds in real terms I don't know.

It might be for example that actually the real "me" is somewhere completely different and is strapped into a super computer which is then feeding me signals that manifest as the senses I think I have as a human. It might be that all of what we see and hear and experience is just a film, a recording of the progression of past civilisation of humans that happened who knows how long ago and we are just basically watching and experiencing it like going to the movies. We can't change anything in it because we aren't really there. Our existence is an illusion. Possibly I volunteered for this experience in my real existence being bored and needing a new kind of experience. Who knows.

Of course the other possibility is that this IS real life and we DO make free choices and there does not exist an Omniscient God !!

 

[Adam]

Let me give an example:

Let's say that people reincarnate. First as a rich man then as a poor man.

Your first life as a rich man, you indulge in luxuries, which don't make you happy, and you ignore the poor.

Then in your second life, you incarnate as a poor man. You suffer hunger and all the plagues of the earth, then die without hope.

Next life, you are a rich man again, and have some instinctive recollection of your past life, call it empathy, and donate to the poor. This leaves you feeling more spiritually fulfilled.

Im the next life, you are poor again and benefit from the generosity of others.

In each cycle, a man has complete freedom to act as he chooses, but begins to learn how to be happy, and makes better choices each time. This is how God transforms a man from evil to good, without removing free will.

 

[Adam]

Free-will concerns selfish ambition; spiritual-will concerns moral conviction.

I would make the controversial argument that everyone always chooses what is good (what is most rational), according to their own beliefs.

For example, a robber might seem like a villainous scumbag to everyone else, but to him, he sees that others have much more than him, and perhaps justifies his robberies as a kind of equalization or as striking back at an unjust society. Nobody ever took pity on him, so he sees no reason to take pity on others. Maybe his father used to beat him, so he believes that the strong take what they can, so as one who is strong, he has the right to domineer and abuse the weak. To him, he is completely justified how he acts because it is what he has experienced done to him, it is just the way of the world in his eyes.

So there is a certain set of formulae which people use, "what do I deserve in relation to others". Now Jesus gave us the cheat sheet and the highest good is total self-sacrifice for your enemies. But most people (myself included) don't have the wisdom or strength of will to carry out on this ideal in the real world even if they accept it in principle.

So the way of God is refining away the flaws in our thinking that prevent us from acting upon the highest good.

 

[Lapidem]

Let me give an example:

Let's say that people reincarnate. First as a rich man then as a poor man.

Your first life as a rich man, you indulge in luxuries, which don't make you happy, and you ignore the poor.

Then in your second life, you incarnate as a poor man. You suffer hunger and all the plagues of the earth, then die without hope.

Next life, you are a rich man again, and have some instinctive recollection of your past life, call it empathy, and donate to the poor. This leaves you feeling more spiritually fulfilled.

Im the next life, you are poor again and benefit from the generosity of others.

In each cycle, a man has complete freedom to act as he chooses, but begins to learn how to be happy, and makes better choices each time. This is how God transforms a man from evil to good, without removing free will.

I fear you've not grasped the thread proposition.

The salient point is whether there exists a God that is Omniscient. If there does then all your choices must be known before you make them which means they can't really be choices at all. They just appear to be choices but it's an illusion just as the rolling of a pair of dice come with the illusion of being random when of course they are not random at all.

 

[Adam]

I fear you've not grasped the thread proposition.

The salient point is whether there exists a God that is Omniscient. If there does then all your choices must be known before you make them which means they can't really be choices at all. They just appear to be choices but it's an illusion just as the rolling of a pair of dice come with the illusion of being random when of course they are not random at all.

As I said before - a person's choices are never random, they are based on that person. You can have a choice that is entirely predictable, and also entirely yours.

If I say that I dare you to stick your hand in fire, the obvious answer is "no". Does this mean that I control you because I know what you're going to say? Even if you said "yes" and did it to be spiteful, assuming I knew you well enough, I could have predicted you would have done that. In neither case did I hijack your free will, I simply used what I knew of you to determine what you would do.

God should know what you would do in any situation, because:

1 Corinthians 3:16
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

God is inside all men. God caused a part of himself to forget his own divine nature in order to experience the world.

 

[Adam]

Copied from an encyclopedia article, which is more eloquent than I am:

Origen did not believe in the eternal suffering of sinners in hell. For him, all souls, including the devil himself, will eventually achieve salvation, even if it takes innumerable ages to do so; for Origen believed that God’s love is so powerful as to soften even the hardest heart, and that the human intellect – being the image of God – will never freely choose oblivion over proximity to God, the font of Wisdom Himself. Certain critics of Origen have claimed that this teaching undermines his otherwise firm insistence on free will, for, these critics argue, the souls must maintin the freedom to ultimately reject or accept God, or else free will becomes a mere illusion. What escapes these critics is the fact that Origen’s conception of free will is not our own; he considered freedom in the Platonic sense of the ability to choose the good. Since evil is not the polar opposite of good, but rather simply the absence of good – and thus having no real existence – then to ‘choose’ evil is not to make a conscious decision, but to act in ignorance of the measure of all rational decision, i.e., the good. Origen was unable to conceive of a God who would create souls that were capable of dissolving into the oblivion of evil (non-being) for all eternity. Therefore, he reasoned that a single lifetime is not enough for a soul to achieve salvation, for certain souls require more education or ‘healing’ than others. So he developed his doctrine of multiple ages, in which souls would be re-born, to experience the educative powers of God once again, with a view to ultimate salvation. This doctrine, of course, implies some form of transmigration of souls or metempsychosis. Yet Origen’s version of metempsychosis was not the same as that of the Pythagoreans, for example, who taught that the basest of souls will eventually become incarnated as animals. For Origen, some sort of continuity between the present body, and the body in the age to come, was maintained (Jerome, Epistle to Avitus 7, quoting Origen; see also Commentary on Matthew 11.17). Origen did not, like many of his contemporaries, degrade the body to the status of an unwanted encrustation imprisoning the soul; for him, the body is a necessary principle of limitation, providing each soul with a unique identity. This is an important point for an understanding of Origen’s epistemology, which is based upon the idea that God educates each soul according to its inherent abilities, and that the abilities of each soul will determine the manner of its knowledge. We may say, then, that the uniqueness of the soul’s body is an image of its uniqueness of mind. This is the first inkling of the development of the concept of the person and personality in the history of Western thought.

 

[Lapidem]

As I said before - a person's choices are never random, they are based on that person.

I am not suggesting nor have ever suggested that a person's choices are random. That's a red herring.

You can have a choice that is entirely predictable, and also entirely yours.

We need to clarify what you mean by "entirely predictable". This thread doesn't concern any kind of guessing or mostly intelligent predictions. It concerns the notion of an Omniscient God who must therefore know everything with 100% certainty. There's a marked difference between predicting the future and knowing the future. An Omniscient God must by definition know the past, present and future.

Therefore I submit again the original thread proposition which is that if a future outcome/choice is knowable with 100% certainty before it happens than that choice can not actually be a choice at all because all other choices are not possible. I'm sensing you are having difficulty with that basic concept.

The net result is that either we don't have free will/choice at all or there does not exist an Omniscient God. It's a dilemma I think Christians need to face up to.

 

[Brakelite]

Ultimately you are blaming God for your wrong choices, even when those choices result in much hurt to both you and God. So God's foreknowledge locks in those choices for evil that you make, even though God warns you to take the other options? Seems to me you have a skewed apprehension of who God is, God character, and His purposes for man. Learn who and what God is like first, then come back and proffer your theories and questions.

 

[Lapidem]

Ultimately you are blaming God for your wrong choices, even when those choices result in much hurt to both you and God.

Nope. I'm simply stating basic logic that if the outcome of choices can be known with 100% certainty beforehand then they can't actually be choices at all. They can only be illusions of choices. So there are only 2 possibilities:

1. We don't have choices or free will at all

or

2 There isn't an Omniscient God

Just to clarify this isn't to suggest that there is no God or someone or something out there. More really to suggest that I suspect we have not understood the nature of him/her/it whatever it is. Too many things just don't hold water with the defacto idea of an Omnipotent, Omni-benevolent, Omniscient being.

 

[Adam]

Therefore I submit again the original thread proposition which is that if a future outcome/choice is knowable with 100% certainty before it happens than that choice can not actually be a choice at all because all other choices are not possible. I'm sensing you are having difficulty with that basic concept.

The net result is that either we don't have free will/choice at all or there does not exist an Omniscient God. It's a dilemma I think Christians need to face up to.

I understand exactly what you are saying, and I am explaining why it is wrong.

People have choices - to act according to their logic. There is no other way that a person can act. The problem is that your definition of free will is that something is free only if the outcome is unpredictable --- why? Why does being able to predict something somehow take away from it? Look, I will make you a slave right now: put your hand in fire. I predict you will say no. Jump off a cliff. I predict you will say no. Go to vegas and bet it all on black. I predict you will say no. Look, you have no free will, I can predict all your responses. Or maybe, you have the free will to exercise your own judgement as you understand how to seek what is desirable, and that is the definition of freedom.

 

[Adam]

Free will is -not- the ability to consciously choose between good and evil, because good is wisdom, happiness, peace, etc. while evil is ignorance, pain, anguish, etc. Nobody would ever consciously choose evil, but rather evil arises out of ignorance of what is good. Free will is having a blank slate and deciding how to experience the world given your circumstances and limitations. The limitations of your humanity are the foundation of your uniqueness and personality. God, knowing all things, knows how you will develop, but you yourself don't. Being able to experience your own development is freedom. You cannot predict what will happen next. The choices you make are preordained but they are still choices because that is how you experience them as.

 

[Lapidem]

I understand exactly what you are saying, and I am explaining why it is wrong.

People have choices - to act according to their logic. There is no other way that a person can act.

People act according to a gazillion of factors and influences in the universe, but they are mostly unaware of them. It could be ambient temperature, radiation, air pressure, neurons firing in the brain at a given moment. All of it too incomprehensible for the human mind to know and compute. Everything operates on the principle of cause and effect. Everything you do is caused by something else. We just can't compute what those things are.

The problem is that your definition of free will is that something is free only if the outcome is unpredictable --- why? Why does being able to predict something somehow take away from it?

It should be obvious but clearly it isn't. And again we have to slightly correct your terminology which is poor in this case. A prediction is essentially a guess or forecast of a future event. That is NOT what we are talking about here. We are talking about an Omniscient God. That means he KNOWS what will happen with 100% certainty. God is not predicting what might happen. God must know what will happen for that is the definition of Omniscience.

The only way someone can KNOW what will happen is if:

1. Things happen via cause and effect and it is possible to compute all those causes and effects.

For example, an Omniscient God would KNOW how 2 dice will end up if you throw them because all the movement is physics and he can compute all the infinite factors affecting the dice. The air pressure, the air resistance, gravity, earth's rotation, ambient temperature, friction of your hand and friction of the dice and table and so on. If you are going to make a seemingly free choice to drink tea of coffee God knows all the many factors that are going to make you choose coffee. He knows with 100% certainty because all those factors exist and he can compute them. That being the case you can't choose tea because that's how the cause/effect factors are lined up. You don't therefore actually have a choice. You are merely part of that cause and effect chain. You are going to pick coffee, there's no other possible outcome. Choice is an illusion.

2. Things have already happened and what we think is the present is in fact the past and God can see all past events. So he knows because he has seen it all happen before. He's effectively watching a film that he's seen before and thus knows every single thing that will happen. Thus is everything has already happened then our experience is an illusion. We are living in a film that has already been made, we're just observing it from the perspective of someone in the film. So again any thought of choice or free-will is just an illusion. All the choices have already been made. We are just reliving that history.


For you to get on-board with this you need to see the difference between a prediction and certain knowledge. We are not talking about predictions. We are talking about absolute knowledge with 100% certainty.

 

[Lapidem]

God, knowing all things, knows how you will develop, but you yourself don't. Being able to experience your own development is freedom. You cannot predict what will happen next. The choices you make are preordained but they are still choices because that is how you experience them as.

You've essentially underpinned the thread assertion here. You are admitting that we do not have free choice, that there is no free will and that everything is preordained/predetermined. It may all appear to us like choice but it isn't, it's all an illusion. What's going to happen is going to happen, nothing we can do about it.

 

[Adam]

You've essentially underpinned the thread assertion here. You are admitting that we do not have free choice, that there is no free will and that everything is preordained/predetermined. It may all appear to us like choice but it isn't, it's all an illusion. What's going to happen is going to happen, nothing we can do about it.

It's not a choice from the perspective of one with ultimate knowledge, but it is a choice from the perspective of a human. You are free to act however you want, but however you want to act, is predetermined. The predetermination is revealed through your actions. Your will and God's will complement eachother, you will, in any moment, always want to act as God's will would cause you to act. Or another way to put it is, God is so great, he wrote a play where you, as the actor, can do anything you want and make up any lines without reading a script, and the play would unfold perfectly regardless, because he knows you'll know what to say in the right moment.

So again any thought of choice or free-will is just an illusion

Does it feel like an illusion? Nothing is restraining you. You act according to your own freedom, which reveals God's will.

 

[Brakelite]

Nope. I'm simply stating basic logic that if the outcome of choices can be known with 100% certainty beforehand then they can't actually be choices at all. They can only be illusions of choices. So there are only 2 possibilities:

1. We don't have choices or free will at all

or

2 There isn't an Omniscient God

Just to clarify this isn't to suggest that there is no God or someone or something out there. More really to suggest that I suspect we have not understood the nature of him/her/it whatever it is. Too many things just don't hold water with the defacto idea of an Omnipotent, Omni-benevolent, Omniscient being.

You cannot use human logic to find out God. And you haven't really offered an answer to the premise in the post you quoted. Your first premise, that God's foreknowledge influences your decision making, is unproven.
Just because God is omniscient, does not mean He removes your choices. Just because He is omnipotent, does not mean there are things He will not, even can not do. For example, He cannot do anything that contradicts His own innate character and nature, like lie, or do anything that denies His love. And that love demands choice. To deny choice negates love, and God is love.

 

[Gottservant]

The same problem arises regardless of how you frame the "will" or "choice". If someone can know with 100% certainty beforehand what is going to happen or what is going to be chosen or how someone will exercise their free or spiritual will, then humans are not free at all and are little more than biological robots just running a program.

Except that is the beauty of it! God does not know how great your spiritual will is; He knows how great your free will is, but not your spiritual will.

He created you, He didn't predetermine what you would do, with you being you.

Now you say "that's unfair, God is watching me when I'm free-willed and not when I'm spiritually-willed" but this isn't the case: you are assuming God wants to know how "free-willed" you were, actually He wants to know how spiritually-willed you were - so God creates you, but He pays attention to what you will become (spiritually).