If God Knows Everything Before It's Going To Happen, How Can We Have Free Will?

[Darkover]

God is all-knowing, so He knows what we will do before we do it.

God knew Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit. He knew Hitler would cause the Holocaust. He knows who is going to Hell and who's going to Heaven.

So how did Adam and Eve, Hitler, and- for example- Christopher Hitchens- have free will if God already knew their fates? Isn't that the same as choosing for us?

If God does not know this or choose it, that means He's not all-knowing and therefore not all-powerful and therefore not God, and that's heretical to say. I apologize, but that's my train of thought.

Can anyone explain this to me?

 

[Life_and_Death]

im not going to try to begin to explain anything because i have my own views on "god"

however i did want to comment because it reminded me of this thing i read.

Stanford scientist, after decades of study, concludes: We don’t have free will

You may think you chose to read this, but Stanford scientist Robert Sapolsky would disagree. He says virtually all human behavior is beyond our conscious control.

www.latimes.com

 

[Darkover]

however i did want to comment because it reminded me of this thing i read.

i don't think we are just mindless drones i believe we have choice to choose what we eat or drink who we have a relationship with whether we go to church or not

 

[Life_and_Death]

i don't think we are just mindless drones i believe we have choice to choose what we eat or drink who we have a relationship with whether we go to church or not

i agree with you, all i said was it reminded me, so i thought you might be interested to read it is all.
i could see where he was coming from though, and it is questionable. i mean, life experiences are typically going to make you preference an option

 

[Mistiie]

The way I was taught this in Religious Studies at school was as if there was a child and they were offered vanilla ice cream, or ice cream with peas in. Or just any vile ice cream combination - let your imagination run wild.

Now, imagine if you were watching that child. You know that that child is going to pick the vanilla ice cream. Like, it's guaranteed basically. But you're still giving them free will in that regard; they can pick whichever path they want.

Then, imagine if you were an omnipotent, omnipresent, transcendental being like the concept of God. You'd know their past, their present, their future, and whatever could lie in between. You know what they will pick because you've already seen it. But you haven't altered what they're going to pick. You have absolute certainty what they'll pick but your interactions have not possibly interfered with their free will. They've picked the choice, you've just always known with absolute certainty what their choice shall be.

Observation of God on a possible choice removes the true aspect of free will, but not functional free will. He knows what you'll pick, but as far as you're concerned, and in reality, it is free will. Not to mention, before that choice is observed (if there is ever a before - wherever God resides, if he resides anywhere, there isn't likely to be an aspect of time), that true aspect of free will is not removed. Up to that point, it is entirely undetermined.

My above analogies might be quite poor, so another example is (apologies for my probably butchered quantum mechanics), electron wave function collapse. It exists in several states and will collapse when observed, in this case, by God. The only difference is that God cannot choose to when to observe it, making the collapse entirely random. He knows what's going to happen but he can't choose when it's observed and so when it does collapse, that choice is acted out. It's still free will.

 

[spirol]

exactly, most modern organized religions (with the possible exception of Hinduism) preach that life is nothing but a bizarre test of obedience to some creator whose motives seem dubious at best. the more you read about any religion, directly from the historical text, the less sense it makes.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Good point. It's a troublesome line of thought. Again- it's one of those questions where an incompetent God seems like the nicer option to a sadistic one. I think I prefer the idea that God doesn't know what we will choose. They just hope we'll pick the good path. Of course- it also brings into question why God would punish someone for doing exactly what they were designed to do.

Also- if God knows soneone is going to turn out bad, why do they inflict the rest of us with them in the first place? Again- a God asleep at the wheel seems a better thought than one unleashing psychopaths, rapists and murderers into the world- to maybe just see what happens. That sounds really sick.

Again- it boils down for me to the hope that there isn't a God because- if there is- I think we're all screwed.

 

[sserafim]

What if your free will leads you towards your fate/destiny?

 

[BruhXDDDDD]

It's always been nonsense from every angle you could look at it. Doesn't even dignify a response because it's obvious

 

[Spiritual survivor]

God did give us free will, even though he is all knowing and knows what we are going to do. When they say free will it means that God gives us the choice to obey him and love him, choose of our own free will to learn about him. This is why he will not directly talk to u or make himself obvious. If he made himself obvious and spoke directly to u so u could hear him it might freak us out lol! This is why God chooses to be more subtle in trying to get us to discover him. The Bible is overwhelming to many people and they will think it was written by man, but God was getting the Bible written through man but God gave them the info to write. God wants a voluntary relationship with us, not a forced one.

 

[nux_walpurgis]

The way I see it: God doesn't force things to happen. He just knows what is going to happen. For example, he doesn't make me commit a crime, he just knows I will, and sits back and watches me make the decision for myself, while knowing very well what I am going to choose.