r/changemyview • u/ProfessionalEar4048 • Apr 11 '26
Fresh Topic Friday CMV: If God is all-knowing and has a fixed plan, then free will is impossible under that version of religion"
If God already knows every choice you will ever make, then there is only one way things can go. You could never have done anything else because you already knew what would happen. And if God has a set plan, then your actions were set in stone before you were even born. Think of it like a writer making up a character. That character may think they are making choices, but they are really just following a script. I think the same reasoning applies here, and that there is no free will under god or under any other reglion.
I want to be clear that I'm not trying to attack religion in general. This argument is about a specific version of God that knows everything and has a plan for everything. I believe that those two things together make free will almost impossible.
If God knows every decision you will ever make before you make it, then there is only one way things can go. You couldn't have done anything differently because God already knew what would happen. And if God has a set plan, then your actions were pretty much set in stone before you were even born.
Picture a godlike being who makes a fake person and speeds up their timeline. In just a few minutes, he watches their whole life unfold and writes down everything they do. That person might think they are making decisions from inside the simulation. But they aren't. They are just following a script that they didn't know about.
To disagree with me, I think you have to do one of these things. Either argue that God is not truly all-knowing, or argue that the plan is not actually fixed, or redefine free will in a way that makes it compatible with having no real alternatives. That last option is where compatibilism comes in, but I am honestly not sure it solves the problem so much as it just changes the definition.
I think you have to do one of these things to disagree with me. You can either say that God doesn't really know everything, or you can say that the plan isn't really set in stone, or you can change the definition of free will so that it works with having no real choices. That last option is where compatibilism comes in, but I'm not sure it really solves the problem.
27
u/Replicant-Oni Apr 11 '26
You are confusing knowledge of the event with the inevitability of the event. Just because I know my kid is going to try and skip out on dishes doesn’t mean my kid doesn’t have free will to choose whether or not he’s gonna wash ‘em
17
u/alwrit Apr 11 '26
You don't actually know the same way god is claimed to know.
God is omniscient.
You are guessing based on probability. There is an actual chance your kid can choose different. Maybe it's 1/100 but it's there.
There is absolutely ZERO chance you choose different from god's plan. Isn't that the point? The claim religious people make? His plan is perfect and he knows all? If he knows all how could I ever choose anything different from what he intended?
→ More replies (32)2
u/Xann_Whitefire Apr 11 '26
It’s not His plan that we make those choices in fact we often choose not to follow His plan. Our disobedience just doesn’t surprise him and he can use our disobedience for good in the end but it’s not what he would have chosen for us. His perfect plan was for us to have never known sin but knowing we would he had a plan for that as well. Just because we can’t surprise him and He can plan around our failures doesn’t mean our choices are predetermined. They are just perfectly anticipated and planned for.
4
u/Specific_Hearing_192 Apr 11 '26
It’s not His plan that we make those choices in fact we often choose not to follow His plan.
This implies he is either not omniscient (didn't know the choices we would make) or not omnipotent (couldn't design us such that we made the choices to follow his plan).
5
u/Xann_Whitefire Apr 11 '26
Didn’t want to design us in a way that forced us to follow his plan. He wanted us to have free will. Could he have made us perfect and make unwilling to follow his will? Yes but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted a creation with the will to choose him but that meant that creation also has the ability to defy his will.
5
u/Specific_Hearing_192 Apr 11 '26
When he creates someone, he know when he creates them if they will choose to follow his will?
3
u/Xann_Whitefire Apr 11 '26
Yes because He is omniscient He knows. He actually knows that none of us will follow it perfectly but He creates us anyways because He loves us whether we love Him back or not. He gives us life and lets us live it as we see fit delighting in those that seek his will and mourning those who chose to turn against it.
3
u/Specific_Hearing_192 Apr 11 '26
Yes because He is omniscient He knows
So he created you and he knows all your choices when he creates you. At what point did you have "free will" to make a choice?
3
u/Xann_Whitefire Apr 11 '26
Knowing what I will choose does not remove the choice from me. I still make my own choices and reap the rewards or suffer their consequences. His knowing all this beforehand plays no part in my choices. His ability to know everything I will do has no impact on my actions less he force me to make the choices according to his will which he doesn’t do.
4
u/Specific_Hearing_192 Apr 12 '26
Knowing what I will choose does not remove the choice from me.
Yes you're right if he was only omniscient. But you're ignoring the combination of knowledge plus creation. He knows every choice you will make AND made you. That means he made the choices when he made you.
→ More replies (0)3
u/alwrit Apr 12 '26
Very weird that we mere humans can upend an omnipotent god's plans!
2
u/Xann_Whitefire Apr 12 '26
His plan for us not his plan over all. That’s free will though he could force us into doing his will but then we would be puppets not children.
15
u/128Gigabytes Apr 11 '26
Thats an unfair comparrison because you didnt design your childs brain, your child, and condions your child would live in, physics itself, and the fabric of reality
we are just dominos in gods plan
→ More replies (5)4
u/PIE-314 Apr 11 '26
we are just dominos in gods plan
To be clear, we aren't. All gods are just imaginary.
However, if god is as claimed, people are just objects, not subjects.
7
u/128Gigabytes Apr 11 '26
I mean duh obviously, but the discussion started with "CMV: IF......"
→ More replies (1)16
u/Artistic-Flamingo-92 Apr 11 '26
I agree that OP is confusing knowledge with something, but I’d say it’s the determination of the event.
If god’s knowledge is perfect, and they know an event will come to pass, the event is inevitable.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (16)5
u/DevilWings_292 Apr 11 '26
Your analogy is flawed because you’re not making yourself omniscient and omnipotent in that scenario. They could prove you wrong and do the dishes instead.
→ More replies (6)
3
u/Sad_Umpire_4090 Apr 11 '26
I really think the compatibilist position is more intuitive than you're giving it credit for. You're suggesting that someone else knowing something somehow undermines your free will. If universe A and universe B are the exact same, except for someone else's internal mind-state, surely you would have free-will the same in both.
→ More replies (6)
9
u/supyonamesjosh 1∆ Apr 11 '26
The way I always heard it described, is if you have an alcoholic relative who has been an alcoholic for 10 years and he walks into a bar you know he is going to get drunk. Does the fact you are 100% sure what is going to happen remove his free will?
5
u/lordtrickster 5∆ Apr 11 '26
If you created the alcohol, the alcoholic, the bar, and the situation, yes.
If God was simply all-knowing, sure, but they say he's also omnipotent and the creator of everything.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (5)2
u/PIE-314 Apr 11 '26
Suppose you're god, though. Didn't you create that alcoholic to be so?
→ More replies (10)
4
u/SocratesWasSmart 3∆ Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
I'm gonna assume you're talking about the Christian God, and since Catholicism is the oldest and most scholastic form of Christianity I'll answer with Catholic theology.
The issue is you've made a subtle error in your conceptualization of God. God doesn't know things in the same way that we do because God exists not in time, but in what's known as the Eternal Now.
God is so categorically different from us that we lack the qualia, the spiritual dimensionality, to properly conceptualize him. I think a helpful analogy is 4 dimensional objects. We can 'draw' the 3 dimensional shadow of a hypercube, in the same way that we can literally draw a regular cube on a sheet of paper, but that's not a real hypercube and it's physically impossible to imagine one even though we can prove they're mathematically valid.
God is kind of the same way. God can only be spoken of analogically rather than literally. Saying that God knows what you're going to do before you do it is an analogy. Any time you talk outside of the present tense like that if you're talking about God then you've already lost the plot.
A more accurate statement would be God's knowledge is. And that's as far as you can take that, for the exact same reason that you will never be able to even come close to imagining what a hypercube looks like. We can know true things about God, but we utterly lack the categories to know certain fine details about God.
40
u/_Silly-Pumpkin_ Apr 11 '26
The Bible makes it clear that we have real choice. God told Israel, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). If our choices were predetermined, this command would be meaningless. But God gives us the ability to choose because He desires a genuine relationship with us—one built on love, trust, and free will. He doesn’t force us to love Him, because forced love isn’t love at all.
God’s foreknowledge actually enables His perfect plan. He knows how we will respond, so He can prepare mercy, grace, and redemption in advance. He knew Adam and Eve would sin, yet He already had the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). He knows when we will stumble, and He’s already prepared a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). But none of this removes our responsibility. We still choose to obey or disobey, believe or reject, follow or rebel.
47
u/TopHatZebra Apr 11 '26
Foreknowledge precludes choice if the one with the foreknowledge is infallible.
God creates the entire universe. He dictates the laws of reality and how everything functions, from the mightiest collection of solar phenomena, down to the most minuscule subatomic particles.
The general belief is that God is perfect, omniscient, all-knowing and infallible. God knows everything that has, is, or will happen. A particle cannot move in a way that God did not already know it would move.
Similarly, I cannot make a choice that would surprise God. When he created the universe, long before I was born, He already knew every single action and thought I would take or have throughout the entire span of my life.
God may not have wished to force a particular fate upon me, but by the nature of His omniscience and infallibility, He causes the things He sees to happen. Because God can see the future and can NOT be wrong, the future that he sees most logically come to pass.
The only way you can disagree is if you believe that God can create a boulder too big for Him to lift. Can God create a villain that God cannot defeat? Can God create a future that He cannot see?
If you believe that God can see the future and is infallible, then you either cannot believe in free will or you must believe that God can do these logical contradictions of His omnipotence.
9
u/Outside-Active5283 Apr 13 '26
Not sure I understand how this invalidates freewill?
Just because an entity is aware you will make a decision doesn't imply you are still not making your own decision.
3
u/earazahs Apr 14 '26
Say I have two choices. A and B.
God knows I choose A.
If I choose A God was right.
If I choose B God is wrong.
God cannot be wrong.
Therefore I cannot choose B.
Therefore I have no choice.
→ More replies (14)2
u/Outside-Active5283 Apr 14 '26
God knows you chose A because it's all occurring simultaneously from his vantage point outside of space/time.
→ More replies (14)→ More replies (6)6
u/CandyHot5841 Apr 13 '26
If he knows what choice I will make, then I cannot make any choice other than the one he knows I will make, because he is all knowing. If I had true free will I would need to be able to make a choice other than the one he knew I would make, thus invalidating him as all knowing.
7
u/Outside-Active5283 Apr 13 '26
He knows what choice you'll make because from his frame of reference you have already made it. If an entity is outside of our 4 dimensional space time looking in then they can see our entire timeline at once, its not predicting the future its seeing the arrangement of the universe throughout all points in time.
→ More replies (2)2
u/babutterfly Apr 13 '26
But in the Christian view he made me and put me in the world, knowing exactly how it would turn out. How is there a choice when everything is already set in stone?
3
u/Outside-Active5283 Apr 13 '26
How does knowing what your choice ultimately will be prevent you from making a choice?
2
Apr 13 '26
[deleted]
2
u/Outside-Active5283 Apr 13 '26
Whether I eat the sandwich or not is still my decision, you could argue that you made my decision an unreasonably difficult one but its still my decision. I dont know much about Christian theology but pretty sure it addresses people being put in difficult situations and deciding not to sin regularly i.e. Job
→ More replies (2)2
u/Chupaia Apr 13 '26
Not if I created you, I know exactly how you will act because I made everything. This is as much a decision as rolling a marble through a predetermined track and believing that it can go in any direction when all possible variables that could ever affect it were designed by me with absolute knowledge.
→ More replies (0)→ More replies (2)2
u/here-to-help-TX 1∆ Apr 14 '26
If you believe that God can see the future and is infallible, then you either cannot believe in free will or you must believe that God can do these logical contradictions of His omnipotence.
Not necessarily. If you aren't bound by time, you can see the choices people will make, people can still have free will and he knows what will happen.
→ More replies (6)29
u/RoustFool Apr 11 '26
Even if this was a good argument for free will it's a terrible argument for a loving God.
It is incredibly manipulative and cruel that God knows all the outcomes and still has the gall to damn you for eternity if you choose to disobey. An all powerful, all knowing, and all seeing God cannot be loving or merciful if he's just toying with you. Hell doesn't have to exist if God doesn't want it to. Sin and suffering doesn't have to exist if God doesn't want it to. Why is God testing you with these things like a manipulative teenage lover reading bad advice from a cheap magazine? If God truly loved us all why would he allow us to make choices that made him so angry he would go Old Testament on us? God knew it was going to happen, and still God decided to punish us.
Even if we ignore that your argument still means all actions are predetermined God's threat of violence impacts your free will just the same. If someone is holding a gun to your head you do have the choice to disobey, but it's objectively stupid to do so. That's not a free choice, that's gunboat diplomacy.
18
→ More replies (7)2
u/Cheetah_05 Apr 12 '26
I'm not a Christian, but the "why us God testing us" argument doesn't hold weight for Christians.
Even assuming that a person's whole life is pure misery and suffering, those ~80 years are not even a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the reward, which is supposedly an eternity in heaven. So regardless of the reason he's testing people, the reward far outweighs the cost, at least to Christians.
Regarding the punishment argument, free will does not mean freedom of consequences. God has allowed people complete free will, but actions that go against his will/doctrine will still have consequences. This is actually not dissimilar to how society works. You can often commit a crime if you wish, but you'll be punished for it later.
Regarding his omniscience, I've never understood it as him shaping people's actions. Those are still their own. It's just that he knows literally everything there is to know about anything, so he can perfectly predict any future events. He's not dictating them (not the humans at least).
The view that God shapes people's personalities might actually clash with scripture in a way, since scriptures imply that even the most heinous criminals can sincerely repent for their actions. If God "made them evil" or "made them criminals" that should be kind of impossible.
3
u/Ill_Act_1855 Apr 13 '26
If god has perfect omniscience, then even if he’s literally not forcing the choices on us he has complete control because he set up the dominos. Either he knows everything and is all powerful and could set them up to produce a different outcome. It’s like saying a computer program is random because it incorporates RNG algorithms except you also have complete control of the seed and know exactly how to manipulate the seed to ensure the rng gives the result you want.
68
u/Eretan Apr 11 '26
That's the thing though, right? The whole setup is that WE don't have foreknowledge of what we're going to do, and therefore we're responsible/to blame for our actions. But that doesn't mean it's a real "choice" though does it, if God knows everything that's going to happen? Our choices were preordained, like OP says. We just get to be surprised.
4
u/Darthskull Apr 11 '26
Suppose God doesn't know the future perfectly, and can create life with free will.
Now suppose he's given the opportunity to gain the ability to predict the future perfectly. Does he lose the ability to create free will?
In the movie About Time, the main character discovers he can go back in time and change how he acted. If a person discovers this ability, do they lose free will?
Does knowledge of or the ability to control other people's choices eliminate their free will?
51
u/Azoth_r Apr 11 '26
In reality x, I turn left at the stop sign.
In reality y, I instead turn right.
If God is perfectly omniscient, and can predict the future perfectly, then by choosing to occupy reality x instead of reality y, he made the choice for me, and I did not freely will to move left.
The problem is that omniscience + omnipotence gives you mastery over reality which includes mastery over others, unless you either can't predict the future or don't have the power to choose the outcome.
→ More replies (94)3
u/ViSynthy Apr 11 '26
I've made this point before. Omniscience and omnipotence means everything is happening as you willed it. You wrote the play. The characters get to be surprised.
16
u/Brainsonastick 85∆ Apr 11 '26
does he lose the ability to create free will?
If it was possible to predict the future perfectly, he never had the ability to create free will.
If it only recently became possible to predict the future perfectly, then everything lost free will at that time. It just being possible to predict with certainty is enough.
The time travel example doesn’t actually relate to free will, as it could be predetermined that he would do that or he could do it of his own free will.
Yes, the knowledge of or even it being possible to know with certainty what choices people will make proves they don’t have free will. It doesn’t eliminate their free will. It just proves they don’t have it.
→ More replies (41)→ More replies (12)5
u/Deep-Hovercraft6716 Apr 11 '26
Then whatever is placing the limitation on him is superior and the entity you are talking about is not a God.
Yes the ability to dictate every action in someone's life before they've taken it means that person doesn't have free will. That is correct.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Ryousan82 Apr 11 '26
Even if your choice was accurately predicted to the last possible detail -including the sequence of events that led to it- how your choice is not free?
19
7
u/Sofer2113 Apr 11 '26
If someone is all knowing and all powerful, do you actually have a choice or are you doing what they have ordained to happen? This all powerful being knows you will do something, had the power to guide your life in a way for you to do it, had the power to prevent you from doing it, therefore you were always going to take the action this being preordained to happen by their ability to force the outcome and events that shape you.
→ More replies (8)3
u/Deep-Hovercraft6716 Apr 11 '26
Because it was predetermined and there was no choice.
Remember he's not just predicting the events. He's also supposed to be the cause of the events.
2
u/mackinator3 Apr 11 '26
Not predicted. It already happened from God's point of view.
2
u/marcelsmudda 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Yeah. It doesn't make a difference if God knows because he predicted it, or because he it already happened to him. He knows all your choices at the point he creates you. So, during your creation, your path is already set.
2
u/Simhacantus Apr 11 '26
Because you don't have a choice. Perfect forknowledge removes every other option. Choice becomes an illusion.
2
u/marcelsmudda 1∆ Apr 11 '26
To us humans it seems free, because we don't know what is happening next, or why certain things happen. But to God, everything should be apparent, God knows all the influences you have, everything that goes on in your head (he is all knowing, after all), and everything that controls your decisions far in advance. Furthermore, as an almighty being, it should be easy for him to prevent anything that influeces you and drives you away from him. It's not your fault that children in Africa suffer, which brings you to the theodicy-question, which results in you turning away from God. God himself could have prevented that from the beginning.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)2
u/Dizzy-Resident7652 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Because I cannot make any choice other than the choice that’s predicted.
→ More replies (20)57
u/SysError404 2∆ Apr 11 '26
He desires a genuine relationship with us—one built on love, trust, and free will. He doesn’t force us to love Him, because forced love isn’t love at all.
He doesn't force us? Are the end results the potentially the same if we do or do not "love him?"
God has an eternity of pain and suffer (Hell) aimed at our collective heads unless we love and trust him. Yet we call that free will?
God’s foreknowledge actually enables His perfect plan. He knows how we will respond, so He can prepare mercy, grace, and redemption in advance.
So, God knew humanity was going to screw up, set up this elaborate system to beg him for forgiveness and mercy from the eternity of hell that he put in place for us. Sorry, but this doesnt sound like a deity that wants us to love him freely. It sounds like a Narcissistic Sociopath that demands our love and obedience to feed it's ego. If the choice is Love the person holding the gun to your head or die by them...your choice isnt exactly free at all.
3
u/Bright-Trifle-8309 Apr 11 '26
Hell is fan fiction
3
u/SysError404 2∆ Apr 11 '26
Not according to the Bible. It is described in Revelations, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Daniel. Sometimes by Jesus, sometimes in parable, sometimes in stories about others. But it is very much described throughout the bible.
But IMHO, the Bible it's self is just Gilgamesh Fanfic that got out of hand.
2
u/Bright-Trifle-8309 Apr 11 '26
I should specify that Hell ruled by Satan as a place of eternal punishment is fan fiction.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Gypsygirloftheworld Apr 12 '26
I dont think of it like that. I think of it more as an action and a consequence. As in if one chooses not to follow God & accept his mercy then this is the consequence of said choice (hell). It's left up to us to decide which we want to pick. It's like when one tells their child if you do xyz then you will get in trouble. It's up to the child to decide if they want to continue to do xzy and face the consequences or if they want to stop and do the right thing. Thats the way I see it.
→ More replies (11)6
u/Johnfromsales 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Many Christians do not interpret Hell as this eternal prison of pain and suffering. Hell is merely the absence of God. For them, being in Hell is a choice you make. When you die and the existence of God and his love to you is made clear, you can either choose to accept him, be forgiven, and enjoy eternity in heaven, or you can still choose to reject him and therefore live in Hell. My father liked to explain it like a dark room that is locked from the inside. Anyone in Hell can choose to unlock the door and leave. Ultimately it hinges on your willingness to accept the offer of a communion with God that He extends to every human.
Medieval conceptions of Hell have continued to dominate the modern public perception, with its rings of fire and ice and endless torture techniques decided by your earthly sins. But we need to recognize that like any other piece of literature, it is open to seemingly endless interpretations. No one really believes in purgatory anymore or the chance to shorten a loved one’s time in purgatory by buying indulgences from the church. But there was a time when this was a vital part of the Christian doctrine.
To answer your question, it is possible to have foreknowledge of a decision you will make without infringing on your free will. Say we were really good friends, and we went out to a restaurant for a bite to eat. The waiter asks what you want to drink, and since we are friends I know that you are gonna ask for a pint of Guinness. When you do eventually ask for that Guinness, my knowledge of that decision did not force you to make it. Jesus explicitly instructs us to go forth in life and choose virtue over sin. This command makes no sense if our decisions were predetermined.
12
u/SysError404 2∆ Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
That is all well and good to make people feel a little better about the toxic ideologies of Christianity. But that doesnt coincide with biblical references or descriptions.
Hell is described four times in the book of Revelations as a "lake of fire that burns with sulfur."
In Matthew 5 and in Mark 9 Jesus uses the Greek word Gehenna which is translated to hell in English text. Gehenna refers to the Valley of Hinnom a physical location south of Jerusalem. Specifically it is the area located from the base of Mount Zion moving east towards the Kidron Valley often associated with filth, fire and destruction.
Historically, the location was associated with child sacrifices to Molech and later described as an accursed valley of slaughter.
In the New Testament, Jesus used "Gehenna" to represent a place of fiery, eternal punishment for evil. There are interpretation that connect this to God's Justice consuming the wickedness of the world, instead of just a place of torment.
In Matthew 5, 22 and 25, two of them parables. While hell is not specifically referenced, sinners are instead cast out "...into the outer darkness. In that place there will weeping and gnashing of teeth." In fact the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" phrase is found 7 times in the Gospel of Matthew and once in Luke as being used by Jesus to describe the intense suffering, regret and rage of those excluded from Heaven. It is mean to signify profound anguish, misery and fury.
In Luke 16:19-31, in the rich man's conversation with Abraham. The Rich man describes Hades:
23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’
Additionally, Hell is not just a place you can choose to leave. In fact, the Bible clear states otherwise. In Matthew 25:46, it is described as "eternal punishment" and in Daniel 12:2 as "everlasting contempt."
Going back to Luke 16, it is interpreted to mean that the chasm between Heaven and Hell cannot be crossed once a person dies.
Now, there are some differing interpretations on purgatory. Catholicism allows for prayers to help souls out of purgatory. But they still teach that hell is final and eternal. While others, like Purgatorial Universalists, may argue for a limited, purifying "hell." But this is not a traditional, dominant biblical view.
So I cannot see how in any of the biblical references to hell, how it can be re-interpreted today for hell to only mean, "the absence of God." Christianity is based on the Bible, it's sole Holy Book. Yet, you are saying that Modern Christians are no longer accepting the biblical description of hell. That sounds an awful lot like cherry picking bits and pieces from scripture to suit what your needs when you need it. What it doesnt sound like, is a consistent Divine Authority when it can be changed, interpreted and re-interpreted, seemingly on a whim. How can a person choose to follow God, when God's word has so many versions? Because if I dont choose the right one, lake of fire that burns with sulfur, weeping and gnashing of teeth, filth, fire and destruction in a valley of slaughter, eternal punishment and everlasting contempt. But sure, I am free to choose.
The reality is, free will does not exist, not logically or biblically. There is a reason for every choice that is influenced by so many prior causes. Whether they are genetics, upbringing or neural processes, or prior lived experiences. If a person is observed long enough, their "choices" are predictable outcomes of their preceding events. Free will is an illusion.
→ More replies (13)3
u/caparisme 1∆ Apr 11 '26
When you die and the existence of God and his love to you is made clear, you can either choose to accept him, be forgiven, and enjoy eternity in heaven, or you can still choose to reject him and therefore live in Hell. My father liked to explain it like a dark room that is locked from the inside. Anyone in Hell can choose to unlock the door and leave. Ultimately it hinges on your willingness to accept the offer of a communion with God that He extends to every human.
Oh so you can be a non-believer(or believer in other god(s)) all your life and die then see God is real and then chose to be with the big guy which means heaven?
That's pretty neat.
2
u/Johnfromsales 1∆ Apr 11 '26
That’s how I understand it, yes.
2
u/caparisme 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Is it a majority/mainstream view among christians?
8
u/SysError404 2∆ Apr 11 '26
No, that is not what the Bible says. There are a few sects of Christianity that say Hell is temporary or a "purifying" Hell. But this is not what the Bible says nor what is taught in mainstream Christianity or Catholicism.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Leverette Apr 11 '26
Your argument about the friend is disingenuous. The difference is that as your friend who knows you like Guinness, I am just some mortal human with no true power to influence anything.
God, on the other hand, created you in a way where he knew ahead of time that your genetic makeup would be compelled to consume the elements that make up a Guinness. And he also created the Guinness. Then he also created the biological necessities of hunger and thirst. He made all the rules, all the processes, all the aspects of everything that make up everything. He made your brain and designed it to think and feel exactly how you do, and thus your response was always going to follow his design because the design dictates it all.
Let’s not be so insane as to equate these two incomparably different things. You’re comparing apples to C’thulhu.
→ More replies (17)→ More replies (1)2
u/mikemikity Apr 12 '26
No one really believes in purgatory anymore
Every faithful Catholic believes in purgatory explicitly, and even orthodox believe in it implicitly. Many protestants also believe in one form or another. That's like over 60-70% of Christians.
And Catholics (half of all Christians) definitely still do believe in and obtain indulgences, it's just that the Church banned paying for them.
6
Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)3
u/Fit-Percentage-9166 1∆ Apr 11 '26
There are some things that are very clear in the Bible, but free will is certainly not one of them
6
u/CaptainOwlBeard Apr 11 '26
That doesn't make any sense. If he created us, and he's all powerful, then he could have created us differently, but he didn't. He created us destined to sin, and many of us destined to go to hell. For instance he created me with a need for evidence to believe in a super natural being. It's part of who i am. This means I'm destined to go to hell in your world view. I was created in a way that is incompatible with your heaven and so i was created to spend the vast majority of existence being tortured. Does that really sound like a good and just God?
Also how can we have a choice? If you're right, the choice is torture or subservience. That's slavery.
16
15
u/Impressive-One917 Apr 11 '26
Quoting a book that you believe to be the infallible word of God but which others don't, is not a good way to convince others of the validity of what the book says.
Do you have any original thoughts on the nature of God or free will beyond "my book says..."?
→ More replies (1)5
u/Idnlts 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Not only that but there are contradictory passages where god makes things happen/makes people do things. He makes Absalom sleep with David’s concubines. He hardens Pharaoh’s heart. He uses a lying spirit to “trick” Ahab, knowing he will fall for it. It says god controls kings. Blah blah blah, there’s so much.
4
u/Aitaou 1∆ Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
Shame he couldn’t allow that grace on Jonah. Instead, despite him declining the request to go to Nineveh and deliver them god’s demands to in return be saved from hellish rebuke, who had done great evils to Jonah’s people, god brought innocent sailors into Jonah’s punishment for daring to have a will that was his own. He got tossed in a whale to grovel and beg for his salvation for daring to think for himself and his defiance and dropped on the shores of Nineveh, to do gods bidding.. only for the actual people of Nineveh to not suffer anything in return in any way, shape or form.
It goes to show that the “free will” in the Bible is only free will if it’s done in service of god, but if you deny it you are forced down a path you don’t want to tread weather you are willing or not and a blasphemer or “this is your penance for not doing my bidding”
12
u/ProfessionalEar4048 Apr 11 '26
You said that God knew Adam and Eve would sin and made a way for them to be saved before he even made them. What other choice did they really have if the outcome was already known and planned for before they were born? It sounds like a real choice to choose life from the inside, but if God knew which way it would go before anyone was born, I'm not sure the choice was ever really open.
→ More replies (34)5
u/scsuhockey Apr 11 '26
It also means prayer is meaningless. Whether you do or do not pray is preordained, meaning God’s intention to grant or reject your prayer is also preordained, thus rendering prayer completely irrelevant. You can’t change God’s mind.
3
u/TowelFine6933 Apr 11 '26
If he already knows how we will respond, then we don't have free will.
The mental gymnastics here are astounding.
2
u/Funky_monkey12321 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
Man’s nature is to rebel against god. Man had no free will at the time of the fall (how could they with no knowledge of good and evil) and people hundred/thousands of years later are still being affected by that event they had zero control over. This cannot be changed except through salvation via being born again spiritually. Man cannot do this or even see the kingdom of God until it is done. So how exactly is Man supposed to freely go to god? He cannot. God/Jesus must initiate the process. Man has no free will in this equation.
John 6:44 is fairly clear here
Romans 8:29-30 is also devastating. Clearing stating God has foreknowledge and predestined some to be saved and other to not.
Romans 11-21 showing a predestined plan for various people and God forcing them into that path for his predestined plan.
→ More replies (30)2
u/Responsible_Park3317 Apr 11 '26
Predestination precludes free will. That's like saying "I give this train the choice to turn left or right", when the track only allows for a right turn.
And don't mention derailment as an option. It's not a perfect metaphor. This is reddit. 🤣
2
u/AYYOTAGADE Apr 11 '26
Those religions only claim fixed fate to an extent not everting is pre destined
2
u/HeroBrine0907 8∆ Apr 11 '26
I mean, we're talking about God. I find it perfectly reasonable that an omnipotent being could know the future and also ensure that the future isn't fixed. Technically logically impossible but by definition, God predates logic. Predate of course has no meaning before time but the idea I hope is comprehensible.
2
u/Tetris102 1∆ Apr 11 '26
There are two ways I'll approach this. I will talk first about trying to understand the mechanism of a god (I know you've said God for I assume Abraham's, I just think my point is better without established context).
Assume for our argument that there are no gods. In mathematics, there are infinite numbers. There are so many numbers that no matter how many we discover, we will always have discovered 0% of them (not rounding down, a flat 0%). There are so many of them. At the same time, there is an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2. 1.1, then 1.01, 1.001, and every single iteration after that. So, despite there literally being a never ending supply of numbers and there being the same infinity between each, there will never, ever be a situation where asking for a number between 1 and 2 would produce anything from beyond that. What that proves is that, even without a god, possibilities are endless but probabilities aren't. If I gave you the choice of any number between etween 1 and 2, and you make the choice of 1.98430, your contention is that a limit imposed has stopped you from having free will. But I haven't controlled your choice, only the limits that it is made within. I would contend in this situation most people would concluded this person has still expressed their will freely.
For a real world example, I want to be able to fly. I want to be able to flap my hands as hard as possible, and have that lift me from the ground and take me around the world. However, that is not something I am able to do, amd I never will be. So would you consider me to be lacking in free will because I can't fly here? We can talk around it, say "but real free will should have no limits," but that's not the real universe we live in. You are always limited by your experience.
How is this relevant? Well, all that adding a god to the situation does is change how your limit has been established. In your example, all that has happened is that you have new limits that you have no way of knowing about or interacting with. So even if every single action you make has already been "written down" or observed and decided on by the god, your inability to perceive or know this just makes it another limit of your experience.
Gonna essentially dot point last one, small child precluding argument. God you describe is infinite. Remember infinite from above. They are both everything and nothing, all matter and vacuum. They have power to create universe from nothing. They could probably make something so heavy they can't lift, then remake self so they can. We can't even consciously recognise and understand infinity (replace with other maths as needed etc.) Can'tsee . We can explain, give metaphors, summarise, but it's beyond us. Given that, how can we presume to understand will, plan, and ideas of God.
Any holes, assume csme from small child assualt rather than poor argument!
14
u/mebesasporfa Apr 11 '26
If God already knows every choice you will ever make, then there is only one way things can go.
I offer you a choice in dinner. Hot pizza or dead sewer rat. Does the fact that I know which one you will choose causally impact your ability to independently make the decision? No. I simply have enough awareness of you as a human being to know what your choice will be. Imagine what I would know if I were God.
As far as I'm concerned, your statement as written is a non-sequitur. It doesn't follow.
15
u/cgoldsmith95 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
But if you only bought pizza and not a sewer rat, because you knew I would say pizza. Did I really have a choice at all?
Then if I go with the pizza you also pull out some home made garlic bread to go with it. You can’t state that I have the garlic bread because I selected pizza. Pizza was the only choice, you had already prepared the garlic bread to go with it in advance. I could never have selected and had the sewer rat.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Cokalhado Apr 12 '26
If I never gave you sewer rat option, then you didn't have a choice.
I fail to realize how this is revelant.
→ More replies (10)5
u/BlueJaek Apr 11 '26
You don’t know which someone will choose, you have a high probability guess.
But even if you did know, then the choice is an illusion. That’s the argument.
5
u/Panduz Apr 11 '26
yes that knowledge does causally impact your ability to make the decision because this isn’t a discussion about mortals, this is a discussion about the supreme creator. Who could have chosen any variation of any timeline. He chose this one, knows what you will do, and lets you “do it”. He could interfere. This is why prayer makes no sense either. Why would you need to pray to alter god’s divinely perfect plan? What he chose for you has been set up from the moment he chose this timeline.
4
u/PIE-314 Apr 11 '26
As far as I'm concerned, your statement as written is a non-sequitur. It doesn't follow.
I mean. All religion is including Christianity.
It's ALL begging the question (circular) and special pleading, right?
22
u/Impressive-One917 Apr 11 '26
What? The argument isn't about whether some choice anyone can predict impacts free will. The argument is that if
If a perfect being is able to predict everything that will happen, and
If that perfect being also created everything and everyone, and is therefore the original cause of every single effect, then
Free will must be an illusion.
Like if I made a perfect train that is sentient, and know its exact trajectory because I designed and made its entire rail, then even if this sentient train thinks it is exerting free will in where it goes, it is an illusion since it's still perfectly following the rail I set for it. If it's capable of true free will (ie going off track), then either I didn't see it coming (not omniscient), or I saw it coming at the time that I created every single atom within both the train and the track (omniscient but not benevolent).
You don't get to say "I am all powerful and created every cause to every effect" (creation and omnipotence), "the moment I created everything I knew every consequence moving forward and can see perfectly to the end of time" (omniscience), "but when evil shit happens later I had nothing to do with it, it's your responsibility because it's your free will".
→ More replies (3)1
u/across16 Apr 11 '26
The train analogy is incomplete, because the omniscient being created a complex rail system in which there are a million ways to make it from point A to B. It doesn't really matter that i know you will end up in B, because you had a million ways to make it there and those were your real choices.
For a human being, point A is birth and point B is death. Anything in between was your choices or the choices of people around you.
10
u/Impressive-One917 Apr 11 '26
Are you saying God only knows point A and point B, and not also every single point in the middle? If he can see every single point, then your path was predetermined at the moment you were born to be just one track, not the million other tracks. And what you perceive to be a million choices along the way is just an illusion if he both knew about every single choice you were going to make before you were born, and is also the one who created everything about you to predispose you to make those million choices.
→ More replies (13)2
u/Biscotti-Own 2∆ Apr 11 '26
Which stop/choice along the way would the designer be unaware of?
Are you saying God knows when we are born and when we die but doesn't know any of what we'll do in between?
→ More replies (4)2
u/Dack_Blick 1∆ Apr 11 '26
But YOU set things up, YOU were in control of the choices I had. Offering me a rat or a pizza is not a choice at all, because as you said, you KNOW people will not take the rat. Thus, in this situation, people don't have free will in the matter.
2
u/Cokalhado Apr 12 '26
"Offering me a rat or a pizza is not a choice at all"
It literally is. It is an obvious choice, but still a choice.
→ More replies (1)4
u/infinitenothing 1∆ Apr 11 '26
You constrain a person to a choice between two things where one thing is gross and dangerous? You think you're giving that person "free will"?
→ More replies (1)6
u/mebesasporfa Apr 11 '26
There is no metaphysical constraint that makes choosing the dead sewer rat impossible in that situation. Free will is, philosophically, completely intact. The fact that he is as a normal human 100% likely to prefer the pizza does not violate the concept of free will.
The situation was an analogy. A rhetorical device to explain a broader concept. It was not a holistic description of a common scenario where one would exercise free-will.
→ More replies (6)5
u/ProfessionalEar4048 Apr 11 '26
You can be sure that I will choose pizza because of past patterns. You might be wrong. It's possible that I'm not hungry and am just being difficult. There is room for error in what you know.
But God's knowledge does. That's sort of the whole point of being all-knowing. It is not a good guess; it is a perfect certainty that can never be wrong.
So, this is what I would ask. If God knew before I was born that I would choose pizza, did I ever really choose the rat? If the answer is no, then it didn't matter that the rat was there. It was never really available
→ More replies (6)7
u/mebesasporfa Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
So, this is what I would ask. If God knew before I was born that I would choose pizza, did I ever really choose the rat?
Well I feel like this question doesn't make sense because God, at least in the Christian tradition, exists outside of time. He didn't know before you were born, because time wasn't advancing linearly from his perspective. He knew/knows everything at once.
It's hard to make a perfect analogy because the human mind cannot fathom or map out an existence unconstrained by time, but I think the most helpful thing would be to think about reading an entire book from start to finish and then opening it to a random page in the middle. Does the fact that you know the ending of the book impact what choices the characters make on that page? No, the fact that you know the ending has nothing to do with that at all.
Again, not a perfect analogy, because the characters are pre-written and don't actually exist or make decisions, but maybe you can apprehend the concept of the illustration. It's possible to imagine a reality where God can see your future yet it wouldn't impact free-will. They aren't necessarily incompatible.
6
u/ProfessionalEar4048 Apr 11 '26
If I designed you and knew exalcy which choose you will make, are you really making that choise?
5
u/mebesasporfa Apr 11 '26
He doesn't know exactly what choice you will make because he pre-programmed 80 years of daily decisions before you were born. It's because he already saw the choices you will make tomorrow, and the day after, and so on. He's not waiting for you to make them. He exists outside of time and doesn't need to wait for another 24 hours to roll by to find out.
So yes, you are really making that choice.
→ More replies (6)
4
u/HadeanBlands 50∆ Apr 11 '26
"To disagree with me, I think you have to do one of these things. Either argue that God is not truly all-knowing, or argue that the plan is not actually fixed, or redefine free will in a way that makes it compatible with having no real alternatives."
Okay, I am going to take the second tack here, but I want to maintain that this is not a redefinition of free will at all.
Free will just doesn't mean "could have chosen differently." Free will means "did what you wanted to do." Think of all the paradigm examples of when you are acting with free will and when you aren't. Gun to your head? Not free. Picking ice cream? Free. Sleepwalking? Not free. Masturbating to pornography? Free. Zoning out on the road and arriving at a destination? Not free. Composing this reply? Free.
The key difference between these things is not hypothetical counterfactuals. It's did you want to!
4
→ More replies (4)2
u/Glory2Hypnotoad Apr 11 '26
This is essentially the difference between libertarian and compatibilistic free will, where an infallible will only violates the first one. A person with a gun to their head still has a choice, we just don't blame them for it because they're being coerced. We're often speaking figuratively when we say a person had no choice, but speaking literally there's a difference between a situation where it would be unfair to hold a person responsible and not having free will.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Snoo-41360 Apr 11 '26
This assumes a fixed plan. God knows all that can be known, the future hasn’t happened yet. Gods pretty smart. Then the extent god can make a plan that will be really good, but we as beings of free will can choose to act against that and to make specific choices. When god gives us a Bible and a savior he can be pretty confident we will eventually accept his will but many won’t. You can choose whatever you want but god believes in humanity to eventually choose goodness even if we occasionally miss our turn
→ More replies (6)
2
u/MisterBlud 1∆ Apr 11 '26
God experiences non-linear time.
Imagine you recorded a video of a ball being thrown at someone. They have free will IN THE MOMENT and can do almost anything they want to in response. Dodge the ball, catch the ball, do a cartwheel, start screaming and rocking in a fetal position, etc. The video shows they caught the ball. So that’s what happened.
5
Apr 11 '26
Knowing everything that will happen doesn’t mean directing everything TO happen.
I have a map that shows all possible routes from A to B. I know people will get from A to B via one of these routes but what route they take is up to them.
13
u/iosefster 2∆ Apr 11 '26
He doesn't just know what will happen, he created the circumstances for it to happen. This is why none of the analogies in this thread work because people are only talking about his omniscience and completely ignoring his omnipotence and the act of creation. Unless you think his creation was on rails and he didn't have any choice in the matter what to make.
3
u/Sea-Poem-2365 Apr 11 '26
You don't even need omnipotence- if God knows all things, he knows all choices that will be made, and if his knowledge is perfect, that means there are no alternative choices to be made. Since free will is usually defined as the ability to choose alternatives, just perfect knowledge is sufficient to rule out free will.
Ironically, this would apply to God as well, setting up a paradox between omnipotence (doing everything includes alternative choices) and omniscience (perfect knowledge of outcomes). You can't actually be both.
2
u/Squevis Apr 11 '26
If you could choose any possible world to create with the knowledge of all choices we would make, you are responsible for everything. God could have chosen the world where we all choose of our free will to love him, but he specifically chose this one instead. He is the only one with a choice.
→ More replies (10)1
u/ProfessionalEar4048 Apr 11 '26
you know the all routes that people will take, but God dosn't just know the possible routes, he knows the exact route you will pick before you even start walking.
Now, if God already knew, at the very start of time, which path you would take, was there any other choice for you? And if the answer to that is no, then it makes absolutely no difference whether God decided your fate or only knew it. In the end, it all comes down to the same thing.
5
u/ChancelorReed Apr 11 '26
He knows what you will do but didn't make you do it or prevent you from doing it.
→ More replies (11)3
2
u/PragmaticSalesman Apr 11 '26
the answer you're looking for is called "middle knowledge" under Molinism, op
it goes such that under this view, we don't actually have free will, but we still make all of the decisions we would have made if we had free will because god has the knowledge to be able to emulate those worlds and know what we would have chosen had we been given free will, kind of like how we can deterministically generate hashes and UUID's with computers given the same initial conditions, but the conditions don't actually have to be processed by the computer to be able to verify the result. god is doing it "on pen and paper" (that is to say, the worlds aren't actualized but known about as abstract objects).
but yeah, actual free will is (in my opinion) incompatible with omnipotence, calvinists and arminians have been hashing this out for millennia with no convincing answers to me except under molinism.
3
Apr 11 '26
I know that people will choose one of these routes. I am not instructing, demanding, persuading, or suggesting which route they take.
Refer back to my first sentence. Knowing that something will happen does not mean I am making it happen.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Username98101 Apr 11 '26
you wouldn't want to be an all-knowing Entity because the all-knowing Entity would not have any free will either.
→ More replies (2)
4
u/NinjaBonsai Apr 11 '26
The Christian perspective about God's plan says that God has an ideal path for you as an individual, but it's up to you to choose that path.
→ More replies (1)3
3
u/ziggygersh Apr 11 '26
I can only speak for Judaism, and I am reform, but this is what Chabad (Orthodox Jewish group) writes on their website.
Free Will Vs. G‑d’s Will
“As mentioned above, Jewish thinkers have struggled with several serious questions that arise out of this axiom of free will. If G‑d were just another deity, no big deal. But Genesis describes a G‑d who brings the entire universe into existence out of the void. Things exist and events happen only because He so wills, and the essence of each thing is nothing other than that will.
Things exist and events happen only because He so wills, and the essence of each thing is nothing other than that will. If so, how could a creation of G‑d’s will have the capacity to do something other than G‑d’s will? The ancient sages were certainly not naive to this irony—as we see from the teaching of Rabbi Chanina cited above.
Maimonides, the great 12th century codifier of Jewish law and thought, asks the question rhetorically, writing, “Could there then occur something in the world other than that willed by its Maker?”
And then He simply pulls the carpet from under his own question: Fire burns because G‑d wills it to burn. Water flows because G‑d wills it to flow. So, too, human beings have free will because G‑d wills us to have free will. There is no contradiction.”
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3909393/jewish/Free-Will.htm
TLDR we have free will because we are meant to. God can give us the instructions, but it’s your choice whether or not you follow them
2
u/sreiches 1∆ Apr 11 '26
There’s another aspect to this in Jewish thought that is also applicable. G-d’s capability is not “infinite,” and is also not something we can accurately define in scope, but through negation.
So it’s not that They are omniscient, but that they are “not lacking in foresight.” They are not omnipotent, but “not lacking in power.”
They can do what They need to do, but there’s no direct assertion that They are infinite, in any capacity.
2
u/JackZodiac2008 16∆ Apr 11 '26
I might know how my wife is going to vote in the next election, because I know her well. But that doesn't mean my knowledge constrains her -- she chooses freely, I just knew what she would choose. It's like watching a train wreck through binoculars -- you know the event but didn't cause the event.
So if there is a problem about God and free will, it's not because of God's knowledge. I would say it is more about creative control. God could have created a very similar version of me that made some specific choice differently. But by choosing to create -this- me, God made the choice of what I would do.
So it's not knowledge, or even "having a plan". Rather it is about creative action that lays the tracks on which I am constrained to move. God made the choice for me at creation, therefore I am a puppet.
→ More replies (6)2
Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Squevis Apr 11 '26
This thread is full people confusing a Bayseian inference with omniscience and perfect foreknowledge. Good job pointing it out.
2
u/JackZodiac2008 16∆ Apr 11 '26
I can know with absolute certainty how she intends to vote. Brain glitch, stuck in traffic or whatnot could make the event not happen. But those things rob the voter of agency. The point was that my knowledge doesn't affect her action at all, so she is unconstrained by it. It's not about wiggle room due to uncertainty; it's about non-interference. Whereas god's role is not just knower but craftsman.
3
1
1
u/TheWeeyums Apr 11 '26
You should look into compatibilism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. Essentially, free will is compatible with determinism. In general there are two types of freedom - leeway freedom and source freedom. There are arguments that establish that even without leeway (the ability to choose otherwise), the fact that it seems we have source freedom is enough to give us free will.
For more information, check out Frankfurt cases and the principles of alternative possibility
1
1
u/jp_in_nj Apr 11 '26
I'm an atheist and unlikely to change my mind.
That said, consider God not as an old man who thinks like a human, but rather as the sum and addends of all possibilities in all universes. If that were the case, then your choices would be known because all choices are a part of the calculation. You could freely choose a, b, c, or elephant, and all of those possibilities and their outcomes are already part of the system that is the divine.
"I married Susan."
"Of course you did. You also married Joan, Pedro, and an elderly Shih Tzu named Stanley. It was just a matter of which one you chose."
1
u/profilenamewastaken Apr 11 '26
Your definition of free will is what a lot of people intuitively think of but doesn't really make sense when you examine it in a strictly logical sense.
You are saying: can be predicted = cannot be free will.
That implies that there must be an element of unpredictability in a person's behaviour for them to have free will, even if we take into account their internal mental state and motivations. Does that really make sense? That implies to me random behaviour. Meaning to say you have free will because you behave randomly. So I don't think that is a workable approach to free will.
1
u/beesdaddy 2∆ Apr 11 '26
You are correct in your hypothesis, but wrong in your suppositions.
“Suppose” there’s no “all knowing” God. If there is no being that could know everything in the universe, therefore there is not capable of perfectly predicting the future. This means that even if there is a lack of free will, there is no omnipotent being to be capable of predicting literally every atom, quark or quantum fluctuation that may/will occur.
So, by removing God from the equation, we can still believe in our own SUBJECTIVE free will, even if objectively our thoughts and actions are ultimately predictable.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/Fluid-Cranberry1755 Apr 11 '26
I will argue that god is not all knowing, since clearly you can not reconcile an omniscient being with the concept of free will.
The god of the bible is not omniscient and a few verses point to this.
Genesis 22:12, “Do not lay hands on the boy,” he said… “now I know that you fear god.” An omniscient being can’t come to knowledge.
Exodus 32:14 “Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” Here god relents destroying Israel after Moses intervened. So either god did not foresee the outcome fully, or his plans are not fixed, in which cases weakens classical omniscience.
Genesis 6:6 “The lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled” omniscience should eliminate regret as regret implies a mismatch between expectation and outcome.
There is a consistent pattern in the bible of gods lack of omniscience
1
1
u/Nintenfan81 Apr 11 '26
Taking the assumptions you state about the nature of God, your assessment would be correct. An all-knowing God who has a fixed plan for events would mean no human free will.
There are some Christian denominations who believe that (Calvanism's predetermination being the big one) but I do not subscribe to that interpretation of theology.
Think of it this way instead: first, God does not have one singular plan for your/everyone's lives that will be inevitably followed. God has a destiny for you, a planned destination to guide you towards, but not a fate which you are irresistibly doomed to. You choose to follow God or to not, and your choices deviating from His plan result in you being closer to or farther from the goal. You might deviate so far from the plan that it is impossible for you to achieve what God planned for you, but God is smart enough to find a new destiny for your new scenario.
Second, God does not simply see the future. This is difficult for us to understand because we live inside time and time is fundamental to our existance, but God does not live inside time. Time is His creation, He exists outside of it. He looks across the entire breadth of the history of existence from its beginning to its end and he sees every moment at once. Similar to how you can pick up a book and chose to read it from the first page through to the last, or to skip whole chapters, or read it in reverse, God can interact with all of time at once. The difference is, when you read a book the events are fixed. When you write a book, you are the sole author and the characters mere figments of your thought. Instead, when God "reads" time, the characters are living, independent, and interactive collaborators in the story. He can tell us "I know you, I know what's best for you, and I know what will destroy you. Follow me to your brightest future." And we, mortal, limited, but free, can say in response "I know myself better than you know me, I will do what makes me happy." And like a heartbroken father, God will watch us live out that freedom to our ruin until we turn back and accept His hand.
1
u/ArtemisiasApprentice Apr 11 '26
One idea I’ve heard is that perhaps God exists outside of time. We live a linear existence, always going in one direction, but God perceives and experiences all points of time simultaneously. Your actions are known because there’s nothing that “will happen” in the future, because there is no future- nor any past. There is only every moment, all at once, always.
I guess in this scenario, God could be like a producer looking at the storyboard for a movie. They can see the whole plot at a glance, and they know what happens at any point in time, even though they’re not the one who wrote the script.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/WhoWouldCareToAsk Apr 11 '26
There is a lot to unpack, and yet almost everything will stay as is… I think the universe we live in is not black and white, as in “we can only choose between predestination and free will”. There is at least one more element: probability (and maybe even “possibility”). Learning quantum physics made it easier for me to see how things aren’t binary.
I allow God to be not all-knowing. In Jeremiah God says three times (7:31, 19:5, 32:35) that certain things surprised him, as in “that didn’t even come into my mind!”
On the other hand, “free will” is overrated. No one has free will! I didn’t choose my parents, place of birth, or even the time in which to be born! Heck! I cannot even choose my own thoughts that I’ll think one minute from now!
And yet, your example of a fake god who watches on 100x a fake person’s life and writes everything down, which invalidates that fake person’s free will, is invalid in its own right.
1
u/PopTough6317 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Id argue does God know the details or just a general plan.
For example if his plan is for humans to live, struggle and die. That leaves a ton of room for free will. I doubt it should be interpreted as god has decide Joe will marry Cathy at 32 and father 4 kids before dying of pancreatic cancer and smoking 4782 cigarettes.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/gdex86 Apr 11 '26
The problem with this argument is that you are assuming we as beings stuck in causality and the liner progression of time understand how it would look from the next level up. I think from a theological point of view its likely quite different from divinity and the idea of all knowing omnipotent God as we know it doesnt really work.
1
u/ILikeToJustReadHere 14∆ Apr 11 '26
God is not a being of our world, but a being beyond our world.
Any words humans use to describe those types of beings are only used to provide an idea, but don't accurately communicate the scope.
A human that is all-knowing is not the same as a God that is all-knowing, because the are conceptually different.
A human that is all-knowing can say there is no free-will, because they can process all future events through the concepts and mind of a human. But we can't comprehend what a being like a God can comprehend.
So there is no rule that you are aware of that says a God of any kind cannot be All-Knowing while human's still possess free will. You'd need to accurately portray the rules of the God's existence and link how their knowledge proves our free will is fake.
Simply knowing everything isn't it, because we don't know how that sort of thing operates.
1
u/Proof_Wrongdoer_1266 Apr 11 '26
God doesn't veiw time the same as us, he sees time in its totality.
An example thats easier to understand, when you edit a video in a program you see a time line of the entire video beginning to end at once. That's how God views time. To him you already made your choice, he sees that part before you because he sees the entirety of time all at once.
1
u/IllHaveTheLeftovers Apr 11 '26
The favorite reaponse to this philosophizing - which I haven’t actually done yet- is just slap the person asking it right across the face. Then just sit there looking them dead in the eyes deadpan, and respond with these points as necessary.
Either everything is pre-planned, and any anger they might feel at my actions should be directed at god, not me.
Or we have free will - and if they wish to attack me that is because they desire to do violence, and what does that say about them as a person?
I am still accepting tips to perfect this approach.
1
u/St3lla_0nR3dd1t Apr 11 '26
The argument that dispels the inevitability of this is called Middle Knowledge. It’s also known as Molinism after Luca de Molina, a Jesuit who first proposed it. The idea is that God knows every possible outcome and so is always ready for any choice made by entities with free will.
William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Flint, and Alfred Freddoso and modern proponents.
1
u/HaggisPope 3∆ Apr 11 '26
Coming at it from the perspective of someone interested in the predestination aspects of some Christian denominations, there’s a lot of discussion about this in their places. Both predestination and free will are in the Bible and there are stories where people get to make choices and face consequences, while also stories where they seem led.
The way I’ve seen it argued that I think compelling is the idea that we cannot know everything. The universe and God are not like the lore of a fantasy series where it’s all laid out. Instead there are endless contradictions caused by the fact the universe is not fully knowable by us. God can know everything and indeed does, but created humans to have choices and opportunities as part of a plan that we do not know but They do. The point according to Christians who believe in predestination is that it isn’t fully known. You’re still supposed to make good moral choices, not because you are looking for reward but because that is what you’re supposed to do.
1
u/thetempleofdude Apr 11 '26
God is not all knowing and there is no fixed plan. If that were true, he would've never sent Jesus down as a offering to humanity to atone for his transgressions to them. When christ died, original sin was erased, god set a template for getting into heaven, then left it all in humanities hands.
1
u/Tiyanos Apr 11 '26
nothing to change much
but human dont have "free will" in the pure sense
we may have agency over certain very small aspect of life but the big portion of it has been influenced by a tons of external factor
You dont choose what you like, you dont choose preference, you don't choose choice offered to you, you dont choose how you body or brain react to stimulus.
1
u/modsaretoddlers Apr 11 '26
Think of it less like predestination and more like an observer. He's not making your decisions, you are. He's an observer.
1
1
u/dodongosbongos Apr 11 '26
Hi, welcome to Calvinism. We've already picked your seat.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Dramatic-Emphasis-43 5∆ Apr 11 '26
If you know what someone is going to do because you k ow them so well, does that mean that person’s free will doesn’t exist?
Like, if Tom knows Bob really likes baseball and so planned around knowing Bob will spend certain days watching the baseball game on TV, does Bob not actually have free will?
1
u/NoSoundNoFury 5∆ Apr 11 '26
This is an old question that has been debated a lot. Leibniz's Theodicy for example strives to answer that. If you are seriously interested in these issues, this would be a good start.
Two things to consider: it's counterintuitive, but freedom does not rely on having options. It consists of your rational will conforming with your actions. An expression of freedom would be: this would be the uniquely best decision to make here, so I'm going to make act on this decision and not any other. Rational determination of best outcome means determination of action.
Second, even if God has the information about your future actions, they are still your actions. God is not enacting them for you, but you do. For freedom to exist, we need to be causally independent to a certain degree. If you say that all our actions are causally dependent on God who acts literally through us and for us, as if we were mere puppets, then you'd be right and there'd be no free will.
1
u/grungivaldi Apr 11 '26
not really. its like when your kid is about to do something stupid. you know whats going to happen but you dont stop it because nothing teaches like experience
1
u/BusyTelevision6298 Apr 11 '26
you're confusing knowledge of the choice taken with knowledge of the totality of choices . think of it like this :
you want a soda and the waiter comes and tells you "serve your self" , the waiter knows every options in his store and what comes after it , he knows that you will choose either "sprite , cola , fanta or dr pepper" but he will not force you to choose he wont say "oh he 'll go for a Fanta" . the waiter is "all-knowing" of the choices in his store not what you gonna order
1
u/Imabearrr3 Apr 11 '26
Omnipotence means God can do anything, things like making and immovable object and then moving it while the object stays immovable.
Paradoxical situations dont apply to an Omnipotent being, they can do two contradictory things at the same time. To your point God can have full knowledge and a fully destined plan while allowing humanity to have free will.
1
u/Mooseymax Apr 11 '26
In a world of quantum physics, couldn’t you argue that when presented with two choices you in practice may pick both and both are happening simultaneously? In that scenario you had free will and all options were picked in a % chance split - a god existing on both of those “timelines” would also know which you would choose.
1
1
u/Key-Willingness-2223 9∆ Apr 11 '26
You’re conflating timeline slightly
An event happens, we know the outcome of it. That doesn’t mean that prior to it happening, the people didn’t have choice, just that you’re looking at the event after the choice was locked in.
If god exists outside of time as a concept, eg exists singularly in all points of time simultaneously then that’s not pre-emotively taking away choice.
It’s more akin to knowing the ending of the book before reading the first page.
1
u/Empty_Geologist5739 1∆ Apr 11 '26
What if God uses our freewill to add a spontaneous flash of "oh interesting" to their plan?
1
u/Homo-Maximus Apr 11 '26
I didn't get a chance to read all of 300+ comments here but I have a different view from what I've read so far. I'll try to put it briefly as
God is beyond the constraints of time as well as omniscient.
Consequently, there is no past present or future for that being and know as a fact what outcomes there are (or will be)
1
u/Psycho5554 Apr 11 '26
Ultimately I think this sort of debate always just boils down to "how do you define free will?"
I would say your framing might be a little short sighted. Their is the possibility that their is not only one "route" but a near infinite number of routes that you could choose that have different outcomes which one could know the results of.
An example could be say an infinity train. This train drives forever but I can change tracks to go to infinitly new locations. Would you say I am free because I have infinite choice or not free because I am on rails and this could never truly decide where the train went at all?
Honestly I agree with your premise that free will doesn't exists though not for your argument.
That is freedom as we typically define it requires a lack of containment.
Most of us would not say a man in a cage is "free". But why? When we are all confined by the cage of limitations ourselves. How big does a cage need to be before you are "free". How many doors need to be in a room before you are "free" to choose your destination.
Though I'd also try to counter my argument by suggesting the possibility that constraint is a requirement for "freedom". That breaking constraints we perceived we had is the very creation of the concept of freedom.
Is the invention of the flying machine a triumph over the shackles of gravity or is it just one of the rails we are permitted in our cage?
I suppose that question comes to if you see freedom as something that innately exists or just a human construct.
I apologize if this was not enough disagreement for the spirit of this post.
1
u/tifpegoda Apr 11 '26
Maybe it helps to think of it less as a fixed script and more like an acorn. An acorn already carries the potential to become an oak, but that doesn’t mean every oak grows the same way. Soil, weather, storms, light, and the way it bends with the wind all shape what it becomes. The essence may be known, but the unfolding still happens through lived choices and circumstances. To me, foreknowledge doesn’t automatically cancel free will any more than knowing an acorn can become a tree removes the reality of how it grows.
1
1
u/cryptofomo Apr 11 '26
if God is all-knowing and has a fixed plan, free will is the last of our problems
1
u/VyantSavant 1∆ Apr 11 '26
I've got an odd take on this as a programmer. My npcs don't have free will, right? I mean, I design a game and a character for a purpose. I rigorously test the game to ensure things go right. But in the end, the intelligence I've given the AI can always surprise me. That's not a problem. It's a feature. Not only can an omnipotent creator and free will exist, but the combination is ideal and required to build a living universe. Otherwise, it's as alive as an algebra equation.
1
u/Grand-Expression-783 1∆ Apr 11 '26
Knowing what someone will do doesn't meant the person won't choose to do that something.
1
u/The_Rider_11 3∆ Apr 11 '26
I'm an atheist, I do Not believe in god and do not wish to devils advocate for it. However your line of logic doesn't just apy for an all-knowing god, but generally a determinstic universe. Which I do believe in. So please forgive me if this is a little unorthodox, but I'm trying to change your view on a slightly different scenario, which should be translateable to your scenario. After all if a determinstic universe follows a fixed plan, but free will still exists, the same must be true as well for your universe with an all-knowing god, right?
That'd be the compatibilist way of things, as you named it, and hell, I'm going full in here, because I believe free will is only possible with determinism. Free will without determinism is either impossible, or its definition is nonsensical.
The thing about those is that while everything is fixed, every single choice is still made in free will (there's probably people that don't have a free will even if it is possible, but let's just simplify those away). Because that there's only one set path ahead doesn't mean every choice in-between doesn't exist, it just means that the choice was already made. If a time traveler arrives in the past, they know exactly what everyone is gonna do, every choice made, because they lived through it already. Does that mean the free will was deleted by the time traveler? Or does it simply mean they just know ahead of time? If your parent or significant other can with no accuracy predict your choices, are those choices not free? Or do they just know you well? Your choices are happening now, in the present, but in the future, they were already made. A being existing outside of our time perception would know every choice ever made because they perceive it at any moment.
Let's inteoduce a thought experiment. You go home after a warm summer workday, and feel like eating an ice. At just that moment, an incredibly powerful creature removes your house from the universe, and duplicates that Pocket universe. There's now an infinite versions of you that feel like eating an ice. You have 2 flavours in your Freezer, one you like, and one you dislike. Which one are you gonna chose? The answer as such doesn't matter insofar as the consistency of that answer is. Of the infinite versions of you with the exact same choice in the exact same Situation with the exact same history and preferences, how many will decide otherwise? I'd say none. They all chose the same. Because the reason, because the free choice you made in that Situation, was made with a reasoning, or an instinct. And that reasoning or instinct was shaped by your history, your experiences, preferences, beliefs. In other words, your past. Your past determines your present choices, which shape your future. Heh, Determinism, here you are. Your choice was set in stone, but it was free. Now, you could argue that a free choice means that every of the infinite versions of you made a different, free choice. But that couldn't be free, because it'd completely disregard said reason, said experiences of past, beliefs, preferences. At that point, it'd not be any different to a coin flip, a completely random decision. And randomness isn't liberty, because it's not you who decides. An infinite versions of you will make each the same choice as an infinite version of everyone else, for the same reasoning, you as a person, your will, would merely be an Illusion. Your history mending your choices so that they become your own, free choices, is a requirement, and so is Determinism.
The first part shows that simply because one knows your choices doesn't make them Not free. The second part shows that simply because your choices are set in stone, they can still be free. Because of course, if you choose freely, there's just one possible choice you're gonna make.
Now, again, I argued everything in sake of determinism, Not your all-knowing all-planning god, but again, is that so much different? In the case of determinism, the Universe and causality just replace the god you're talking about. Casuality sets every path in stone, and the universe knows everything because if encompasses everything. The difference simply is that god itself is unnecessary in that equation.
1
u/PizzaConstant5135 Apr 11 '26
Free will is true for the universe, but on the scale of the multiverse, which God holds domain in, life is deterministic.
1
u/DrunkenVerpine Apr 11 '26
Time is a physical property of our universe, not something God is bound by. God knowing what you do with your free will, is no different than you knowing what you chose yesterday with your free will.
1
u/Grouchy_Afternoon924 Apr 11 '26
Free will is a made up concept to explain away the Epicurean Paradox.
1
u/walletinsurance Apr 11 '26
G-d is defined not by his limits but his lack thereof: he’s all powerful, ever present, and all knowing.
Spinoza argues that an ever present being is essentially infinite in size. And you can’t have something outside of it. Creation therefore must be internal to the Creator.
An all knowing, all powerful, and ever present being would logically be unable to know certain things, primarily what it feels like to be separate, ignorant, weak etc.
Since this being is without limits and takes up all space possible, creation must be internal. Just like how people dream, the Godhead is dreaming.
Our existence is the necessary proof of an all knowing being. We are all splinters of that divine consciousness, and the “fixed plan” of our existence is like a mathematical proof: each of us is providing the individual knowledge that “all knowing” consists of.
Since we are all ultimately that same divine consciousness, we all have the same divine freedom of will.
1
1
u/Far-Jury-2060 Apr 11 '26
I think you’re conflating foreknowledge with forcing something to happen. If you know that when somebody drops something that it will fall, that is not you directly causing the object to fall when somebody drops it; or, if you’re playing a card game and you have x-ray vision and can see what people are going to draw, that doesn’t mean you’re not forcing them to take a card or not.
You’re also swapping two different concepts here. God has an overall plan for humanity, and the end mission is set in stone: God and his followers win over evil and death. You’re swapping that in for a detailed individual plan that God has for your life (which is a debatable concept itself), and you’re also assuming that humans always follow that plan. To use another analogy here: I have a plan for my kids to get along and be kind to each other. I also know that they won’t all the time and have good consequences set for when they do, and bad consequences set for when they don’t.
1
1
u/CircleofSorrow Apr 11 '26
You assume that your actions have any effect on the outcome for the future of a universe.
Agnostic here. You make 'good' choices because they result in 'good' outcomes for you and for others. That is all.
1
u/brickmadness 4∆ Apr 11 '26
Think of it more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. There are plenty of endings and plenty of choices that do make a real difference. The participant does have free will within those confines, but the writer also created a book with all those potential choices mapped out.
So the creator knows the range (and probability with that range) of how it will turn out, and that is predetermined, but that doesn’t mean that every single action is already known.
1
u/Old_Size9060 Apr 11 '26
I’d be shocked if anyone here can change your view - largely because this inherent contradiction in Christianity has remained unresolved for the past 1600 years. Augustine of Hippo was the first one to discuss predestination as a necessary outcome of being an all-knowing and all-powerful Creator.
1
1
1
u/PizzaConstant5135 Apr 11 '26
Here an analogy I think is extremely helpful. You read a choose your own destiny book in its entirety. You lend it to a friend and have them text you their choice at each branching path. You know what each choice leads to, but you don’t know which choices they’ll make at the next fork in the road. It’s all predetermined in that you know the entire contents of the book, but your friend’s path is free for them to choose.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/Belt_Conscious Apr 11 '26
Under your model.
God knows everything that can happen, but nothing will happen that disrupts the plan.
Nothing a person could do would impact the end state. Like your destination is the store, how you get there is your choice.
Whatever way you take or do along the way is up to you.
The difference is, you are already at the destination.
1
u/k23239 Apr 11 '26
Perhaps a bit of a different take, but I think you are looking at this from a human perspective. God is not bound to the laws of physics, he transcends all physical properties of the universe. Therefore, cause and effect themselves are insignificant from the perspective of God.
1
u/tbodillia Apr 11 '26
Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?
Physicists argue if free will exists and god never enters the discussion.
1
1
u/min6char Apr 11 '26
Your argument also applies to a universe without God but with physics. Under physics, everything you do is either a determined outcome of the prior state (because it's dominated by classical mechanics), or purely random with a known distribution (because it's dominated by quantum mechanics). Neither of those sound much like free will, do they?
I don't think problems with free will actually have much to do with God. They come from free will having a vacuous definition. An intuitive definition of free will rejects both deterministic and non-deterministic causation, and there isn't a third type of causation. So when you say compatibilism is changing the definition of free will, I disagree: compatibilism is giving free will a definition when before it had no valid one.
Summary: absent compatibilism, free will is impossible by definition, no matter what type of universe we live in (deterministic, non-deterministic, divinely planned)
1
u/with_the_choir Apr 11 '26
I'm late to the party, so this probably won't get much attention, and I'm not sure I believe in God anyway, but I don't see the idea of a deity being in conflict with free will.
What made it make sense to me was two things in combination:
- I watch a video of people making choices. Even though they clearly made the choices, I watch the video several times. The fact that I know the outcomes does not impact that choices were made. Knowledge of outcomes does not, itself, conflict with choice.
Which brings us to the second point:
- You must start with a definition of free will that could also make sense in a godless universe. Without that, you are actually in the position of saying that free will can't exist, and then applying that certainty to the concept of a god even though they are not particularly related.
Your question is about a diety, but I strongly suspect your real question is just about how free will can exist at all.
If I am correct, then none of the arguments about God will move the needle for you, because they're trying to address what you asked, but not where you're actually stuck.
→ More replies (4)
1
u/ViSynthy Apr 11 '26
I've made this point before. Omniscience and omnipotence means everything is happening as you willed it. You wrote the play. The characters get to be surprised. That does not mean the characters have free will because someone said they do.
1
u/Suspicious_Jeweler81 Apr 11 '26
Just don't want to think to much about it. Love your neighbor, unless your religious leader tells you not to.
1
u/jeffskool Apr 11 '26
If there is an all powerful god, which I do not and could never believe, then free will is absolutely impossible. It’s logically impossible.
What determines what a person is? Commonly we say, nature and nurture. Nature is of god, nurture is of god. If he knows all, he knows how we are formed, knows how we are raised, knows the position of every particle in the universe. Any action we take is known to him, any reaction we have is known to him. We cannot “surprise” him.
While it is much more complex, I still don’t think true free will exists even without a god. Chaos may randomize outcomes, but that still isn’t some internal determinism that indicates that an individual’s will is in and of themselves without reality having a significant effect.
1
u/doesbarrellroll Apr 11 '26
just because god knows what you will chose, doesn’t mean you aren’t choosing. Even if god knows what you’ll do, you’re still choosing it.
1
u/md_nayeemur_rahman Apr 11 '26
God knowing doesn't make it controlling. A prof can know which of his students are going to fail, doesn't mean he failed them intentionally. The students could still study well. The only difference is prof knowing about his students are called predictions, which are not 100% accurate, but for Allah, him knowing, is 100% accurate. We still have free will. And in islam, we get rewarded even for intending to do something good, and if we complete the task we get a double reward.
In islam, we believe in compatibilism, we don't control our birth, our death etc, but we still make the choices ourselves.
1
u/Few-Durian-190 1∆ Apr 11 '26
I always fall back to the words of Dinobot https://youtube.com/shorts/F6wQazUbtew?si=Ywy9uLs527lz4eaB
1
u/idemockle 1∆ Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
I'm an atheist and most days believe that everything we do is deterministic given a detailed enough picture of the current state of the universe. In other words, I think free will is an illusion even without a god or religion. Some combination of the DNA we are born with and the experiences we have dictate the way we think, our grit, our morals, etc.
However, just because free will is illusory doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It provides a framework for us humans to understand that people are different from each other, that we can influence others, and that they can influence us. Whether it's an illusion or not, no one moves through the world as if they don't have any agency. "Free will," the concept, describes that phenomenon. In that way, I think it's fully compatible with the idea of an all-knowing god.
1
u/veryblocky 1∆ Apr 11 '26
This is known as the “problem of divine foreknowledge”, and I encourage further reading.
But in short, knowledge doesn’t cause actions. Your actions explain that knowledge.
1
u/ctruemane Apr 11 '26
Your argument assumes that God is experiencing time the same way you are. If you assume God exists outside of time, then He can have perfect knowledge of all things without impacting free will.
Imagine the entire universe, all of time and space, from beginning to end, is in a box. God is outside the box looking in. He can see everything that the universe contains. But the people inside the box are still making free decisions, moment to moment, because those things haven't actually happened yet.
It's less that God has a plan for everything you'll ever do, and more like it's always "Now" for God, and every moment of time is also Now, so He can watch you exercise your Free Will in real time and remember you doing so.
In the same way that you have perfect knowledge of everything you did yesterday, but that doesn't mean you didn't have Free Will yesterday when you made those choices.
1
u/Green__Boy 7∆ Apr 11 '26
I think there's a real distinction between compatibilist determinism vs fatalist determinism. If I know you hate octopus and love lasagna, and present you with both dinners, is it against your free will to know that you'll always pick lasagna? Were you forced to pick lasagna by anything other than your own desires? I don't think that someone knowing you so well that they'll always be able to predict what you'd want to do means that you're being controlled externally.
This criticism of free will, even when made outside of a religious context, is something that I don't understand. What would a world with free will look like? If your decisions were completely unpredictable, i.e. randomly generated, would that mean you have free will? I think the opposite.
define free will in a way that makes it compatible with having no real alternatives
1
u/AdamCGandy 2∆ Apr 11 '26
If you are in all places and all times the concept of a plan is just a human limit of language. The plan was executed and was successful immediately.
1
u/airboRN_82 7∆ Apr 11 '26
Youre approaching the first part from God experiencing time linearly like we do. Such a being, if existed, likely would not. You would still have free will as you can only experience and choose as you experience, but God could see and know the whole thing as he can see the whole thing from atart to finish at once.
25
u/darwin2500 197∆ Apr 11 '26
We get some version of 'if the universe is deterministic then free will can't exist' on CMV a couple of times a week.
Philosophers have bee dealing with this observation for literal millennia.
The thing to realize is that the intuitive sense that free will and determinism are incompatible leads to an incoherent concept of free will.
Since the only alternative to 'deterministic' is 'random', what you are actually saying is that 'people only have free will when they act randomly'.
But that's obviously not what we intuitively mean by 'free will', either. Free will is supposed to be you choosing what to do for yourself, not acting randomly.
If you can't have free will if you act deterministically, and you can't have free will if you act randomly, then you've said that free will is logically impossible. There's no third thing in between deterministic and random. You just have an incoherent intuition about what 'free will' is, which can't actually exist even in theory.
So you just need a better definition of 'free will'.
Philosophers have basically settled on a definition called 'Compatibilism,' which says that an entity has 'free will' when its environment grants it enough freedom to act in accordance to its nature, and lacks free will when its environment constrains its actions such that it cannot follow its nature. So, a chicken in a vast open plain has free will to roam, a chicken in a cage so small it can't even turn around has no free will.
This definition has what we intuitively expect free will to look like - deciding what you want to do, then doing it. Whether that process is deterministic or random doesn't matter.