If God knows everything, including the future, then do we really have free will?

Yess.... how does Him knowing whats going to happen prevent us from doing anything?

Since He knows what we are going to do, then we don't have any control and thus we don't have free will? This seems to be a contradiction in my mind.

I don't believe in free will. I think a person will be most inclined to do what he or she reasons is best. No one is ever going to say "this is the best idea, but instead I'm going to get run over by a truck."

When you cross reference what one person wants, with what 6 billion other people want, people must make comprimises. This is why we don't always get what we want. But on the other hand, are you going to take a dare and try to prove me wrong. You could prove that you have free will by just smashing your computer monitor... but you won't do that. No one is ever going to do a single activity if they know there is something readily available that is better.

Yeah. Didn't Asimov's Foundation books actually center around something like this? They were very interesting writings.

Not sure. I just kind of thought of that one day. My friends all think I'm insane.

this is actully the main issue that pushes me away from being a christian. that and i dont like how god seems to brake his own rules he has placed for us.

Watch the Matrix and its sequals.

Hahahahaha

hahahaha

hahaha

ha

HA.

No. We dont. Its simple logic.. if god is "all-knowing" he has to know everything it's possible for him to know and as he exists outside time, he must know the past, present and future. He even knows what he is going to do, therefore he has no free will. Also, he always has to make the benovolant choice in every situtation. God has no free will. If he created us, nor can we.

Lets say god walks into a room. There is a book on the table he can choose whether or not to pick it up, however since he knows the future, he knows what he is going to do.

What else does this mean? It means that he knows what each of us is going to do. He controls our future because he knows what going to happen. If he let us have free will, he wouldn't be all knowing and thus cease being "god". One last point, as our destinys are set bad people are bad because god wants them to be.

So, by that logic, some people are destined for hell? Before they were even born, it was known that they would end up there?

Nope, we don't have free will. Our brains are basically computers; how much "free will" do they have? No, we have about as much choice as an XOR gate "choosing" whether to output a 1 or a 0.

my bible says "i knew you before you were born", and on a seprate occasion, "i go to prepare a place for you, and if i go to prepare a place for you i will come again to recieve you, that there you may also be"... that is pretty good proof of no free will to me.

Except that if God created the universe, then he also created the laws of logic that you are referencing and thus transcends them. He can know everything he is going to do and still have free will. Why? Because he exists outside the laws of logic.

Also, on the concept of free will:
Even without the concept of God, do we really have free will? Assuming that everything in the universe is the result of cause and effect, including our actions, then everything we do is predetermined and essentially the effect of the original cause. In this case, the original cause would be the creation of the universe (by a deity or big bang or whatever you would like to believe).

It's times like this when Deism looks really tempting.

But at any rate, I agree with SithNazgul.

CS Lewis touched upont this briefly in The Screwtape Letters. His interpretation was something along the lines that God is not bound to time in the same way that we are; he is observing all moments of time simultaneously. What we consider to be the future is still the present for him, alongside our pasts as well. He is primarily an observer- he knows our futures not because they are set in stone, but because he isnt bound by the same laws governing time that he created for his universe.

Just because God is 'all-knowing" doesn't mean He would control our actions. Being "all-lknowing", it is entirely possible that God knows all off the possibillities given any action someone takes.

EVERYBODY GET NAKED!!!!

That should answer the question

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

But then he wouldnt know which possibility actually takes place, and therefore he wouldnt be "all-knowing."

<spe> if god knows *EVERYTHING* then one of the things he must know is that god knows *NOTHING* surely this would give god a brain tumour

lassev, I think the idea in the Foundation novels is that because of free will predicting the actions of one person is practically impossible, but that it is possible to predict the actions of a large number of people with an acceptible margin of error if you have a proper understanding of sociology. The Seldon plan predicts the future this way. Unfortunately, the uncertainty of the one person creates big problems with the plan when someone like Alexander the Great comes along. That is unless you are talking about the last few Foundation books where Gaia is an issue. I need to reread those.
[/babbling]

The more I think about it (not like a few minutes, I'm talking about years), the more I think we don't have as much free will as we think we do. I think the environment and our personalities dicate much of what many would consider to be acts of free will.

Edit: It is possible to overcome environmental and other factors according to your own free will, but such an outcome is less probable. While I believe in free will, it's muddled free will because some people are more prone to excercise their free will than others, depending on the external factors they're exposed to.

Indeed, that's what I had in mind (actually before posting that previous post I checked the general idea from some review...) - considering not individuals but larger masses. The only kind of prediction I can believe. The only kind of prediction that allows free will.

For me, it's something like 10 years since I read them.

Free will, of course we have it. You ever sort of "dreamt" whats going to happen, i have, and i've changed what i knew would happen - usually by just not saying what i "knew" I'd say...

It's hard to describe but you can easily change the future

I do that alot

I don't have much time, 'cause I'm off to work but imagine an infinite number of parallel universes and god knows what will happen in each one, but in each one you have the choice to make certain decisions, which change your universe, even though god already knew it would happen, since there is an infinite number of choices and combinations all of which god knows, there is still free will. PEACE

I thought that what makes us different from animals is that we don't make all of our decisions on instinct and pleasure, which would be interpreted as free will.

Well, I suppose there is always quantum uncertainty... that could contribute to some meaning of "free will".

Great question. Couple thoughts:



This assumes that God is subject to the "law" or "idea" of goodness/benevolence/justice (ie God must do what is right). This is an incorrect assumption because God is (by definition) sovereign. "Rightness" and "goodness" are defined by God not visa versa.



God is also omnipresent so he was already in the room. :p Okay, that says nothing to the point at hand. How about this: God exists outside of time; there is no future, or past, or present to God. So from God's frame of reference (to use the engineering/math term), God is never "going to do something" and has never "done something". God simply is. God defines the frame of reference of time. God can both pick up and not pick up the book "simultaneously".

If I had a time machine and went back in time and told myself that I was going to do something, would I have to do it? What if it wasn't even an action, what if I went back in time and told myself I was going to think something at a certain time, would I have to think it? As I see it, knowledge and will are not the same thing.

Another mind bender: What if I invent a time machine, then travel back in time and prevent myself from inventing the time machine?



According to the multiverse theory, all the options DO take place.

This morning I got up, and had two choices: I could surf the Internet for a while, or eat breakfast. I chose to surf the 'net. Does the fact that I in the present know that I chose to surf the Internet mean that I could not have eaten breakfast, that I was destined to surf the Internet this morning? Does knowledge of events in the past mean that there was no free will in the past (and by implication, the present)? Because that's all this question is about -- to God, (or any being outside of space-time) the present and future are the same as the past.

To put it simply, if there was free will in the past, then it is possible for God to know the future as well as for us to have free will. If not, then no.

I like how people can ramble on for pages about something they know nothing about, presenting pure speculation as fact.

No, really, I do.

This is a philosophical question. Philosophy != speculation.

Other than that, I agree completely.

Philosophy, heh. Call it what you want, it's still all a load of ****.

Logic is ****? That's all philosophy is, applied logic. Like engineering is applied science.

I'm simply stating that a good number of posts in this thread are comprised of opinions being passed of as facts. Calling it "philisophical discussion" doesn't change that. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my previous post.

But that's not proof of no free will. God Predestined us, but our life is really our decision; to spend it on ourselves, or give it back to God.



Your choice not to be christian is an example of free will. God hasn't forced you to become a christian, and you would say he can't. That's because God won't force you or take away your free will. God never made me become christian. He never forced me into it or twisted my arm. I chose it. Just like I could have chosen to walk away.

That's what I was going to say as well. He doesn't exactly know the future, because it's kind of like Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Time goes a certain way for humanity in our frame of Reference, but God has a totally different frame of reference in which the flow of time is totally different.

Actually, the Theory of Relativity comparison is something I've just thought up, and I'm not sure it works out yet. Anyway, I'll just leave it with saying that God sees the unfolding of the past, present, and future at the same time.

BTW, does it say anywhere in the Bible that God is all knowing?

I'll make another post to respond to what some of you have said here...

god hates you. he knew that when he created the universe.

I don't always do what I think will be best. Sometimes I do things that I know are very far from the best, like not doing homework even though I have the time.


God doesn't know what he's going to do anymore than we do. He has changed His mind before, so it's not like everything He does is set in stone.


That doesn't fit in with any psychology that I've heard.


So if you clean up your house for a friend, and drive over to pick your friend up than he or she has no free will?


People are not pool balls whose movements are determined by what strikes them. There is more than one way to respond to almost everything.


And then there are us christians who don't believe in predestination at all.

I forgot to mention this:
Here are the lyrics to a song that I like the way it looks at the belief that we have no free will.
***Warning, it's very explicit and disturbing***