I think free will can be compatible with Gods Omniscients mainly because I don’t think knowledge is the reason why actions occur or have to occur.
To explain further, the problematic part of this argument it seems is that God knows what we are going to do BEFORE we do it. But I don’t think it makes sense to say this because of all the tensed language being used here.
If theists believe God made everything, time would be included, so it would make more sense to say God would be outside of time. So when it comes to Gods omniscience, he doesn’t know what we will do before we do it or even after we do it.
The way I like to think about it is if I had a time machine and I saw you drive a car, and then I travel back to my original time and see the same events play out, it wouldn’t make sense to say I made you drive the car. Just because I know you will drive a car doesn’t mean you will drive a car because I know it, you drive the car for other reasons, not because of my knowledge. The same can apply to God.
Comments (6)
If you say you have the knowledge of something then it means it's going to happen and not otherwise. The issue is that there is no other possible outcome, not the justifications we come up to make sense of our actions.
No, but it is false regardless
Fair enough
I totally agree with the text you wrote. If there is a God and if God is omniscient (as in genuinely knowing everything), then God will know what we will do, but won‘t be the reason we will do it. Take for example the hypothetical day of the 9th of March 2027. Imagine hypothetically that on this day I have to make a choice between either buying a strawberry pie, between buying an apple pie, between buying both pies or between buying nothing at all.
So in that situation I‘d have 4 possible choices, no matter what I am going to do, I can at the very best do 1 of those 4 things. Imagine that I‘m going to ultimately buy only the apple pie and nothing else. Now imagine God was aware in advance that I‘m going to be buying only the apple pie and nothing else. Can one therefore say that my choice wouldn‘t be free? I‘d argue no, there might be other potential factors that could make my choice unfree, but the mere ‘‘fact‘‘ of me necessarily only being able to make 1 choice and the ‘‘fact‘‘ of God knowing which choice that is going to be says nothing whatsoever about the freedom of my action. Now some might say: ‘‘But in that scenario God would know what you would do, before you actually did it‘‘. I am absolutely not disagreeing with that, but what matters ultimately is whether my choice was free. I genuinely don‘t see how God knowing my choice in advance would make it unfree
Yeah I agree that God knowing in advance wouldn’t make a difference in free will, but I also think it’s usually a mistake to suppose that God does know in advance. But even if you theologically think God doesn’t live or exist outside of time, you can still run the argument just fine.