Coyote wrote:Kim O'Hara wrote:
You can stop right there, Tilt, and short-circuit all the rest with:
{c'] If God therefore knows everything that is going to happen in our future, our future is already completely determined and we have no free will.
[d'] None of our actions, therefore are virtuous or evil. None of our actions change what is already written in God's heart.
[e'] God is therefore stupid or grossly unjust to punish or reward us for our actions.
[f''] He's gonna do it anyway (it is foreordained, remember) or [f''] He never was gonna do it (it is foreordained, remember).
[g] Summing up c, d, e, f' and f'' : God's preferences are irrelevant. It's all gonna happen anyway. And, by the way, God has no free will either.
Kim
Surely there is a difference between knowing and making? God has given us free will, and knows what we will do before we do it, not because he already knows it, but because we have chosen it. God knows I will do a) because I have chosen to do a), not the other way around.
Hi, coyote, and welcome back ... yeah, things have been happening while you weren't looking
As for your question: If God - or anyone/anything - already knows everything that will happen in the future there is no free will: what we are going to do was written in stone in the first instant that the omniscient entity existed, or it can't have been known. Saying that God has given us free will is therefore meaningless - we are free to do exactly what he knows we will do, and we are not free to do anything else. If we have no free will, we can't make choices - however much we might feel we are free to make choices. God knows I will do (a) because I have been going to do (a) for the last eon or so.
Okay, it is (just) possible that our (hypothetical) God is omniscient but not omnipotent. In that case he didn't 'make' us do (a), but we still have no choice and still deserve no blame or praise for the choice.
But if he is omnipotent as well as omniscient, then yes, he 'made' me do it in that he set up the circumstances (starting with 'Let there be light,' if you like) in which I would be born, learn certain stuff and encounter the situation in which I did it.
Kim