That seems wrong. If the omniscient being is not making about the future then he is not very omniscient, is he?. Seems like that is the point of the thread. Omniscience doesn't necessarily preclude free will. I gave you an example how how they could be compatible. You haven't tried to think of ways that it could happen. If we are talking about a supernatural, all-powerful being, anything is possible. Open your mind.

It depends on how you've defined omniscience. An omniscient being is usually defined to be a being which will affirm all true statements. If the future is indeterminate, then it contains statements that are (not yet) either true nor false.

It's all about definitions.

How about this: libertarian free will is inconsistent with a god that knows what is for us the future.

It depends on the concept you use for something to be "possible" (which is related to the concept of a will that somehow "chooses" one decision over another). I think it's not inconsistent, but "possible" need not actually be made manifest in this universe. It only needs to have the capacity to be made manifest in a some universe with an identical state.

Let's create a simple universe consisting of me and two buttons. It is possible for me to push either button (in the sense that there is no physical constraint against it). In this universe, I push the red button. If you run time forward and backwards over and over again, your view of this universe will have me pushing the red button over and over again.

Does this mean that it was impossible for me to push the blue button? Perhaps in this universe (because I pushed the red button in this universe), but you can see that there's no constraint that would have prevented me from pushing the blue button in an identical setup. It's just that I pushed the red one and that is what has been recorded in history.

By virtue of what can God know that you will push the red button in this universe, if you could just as well push the blue button in an identical universe?

I'm sorry, but I'm having a tough time interpreting this sentence.

But if I'm reading you right, you're asking how God could know I'm picking red if I could have picked blue in an identical universe. It's irrelevant how God knows it. I think it's sufficient that God can know that in this universe I pick red and in the other universe I pick blue.

Given the universes are identical, won't you always pick the same button?

It depends on whether free will exists.

I was reading it as though you were arguing that in separate identical universes, the button-pusher could arrive at different colored buttons. If this isn't the case, I misread.

I think it's acutely relevant how God knows it. You're making a very similar move to the move libertarians in the other thread made with respect to randomness, except you're doing it with knowledge. If more than one outcome can follow from two identical states of affairs, then there's no way to know what outcome comes. There's literally no fact or condition in the past to justify any knowledge claim about the future.

To look at it another way, can God predict the outcome of a genuinely random coin toss?

A coin toss isn't analogous since it can be predicted given absolute knowledge.

No, you're reading the claim correctly. Maybe you're not quite following the full thought.

The heart of the question lies on what determines the future. If the future is determined by strictly the state of the universe at any given moment in time, then two identical universes would end up with the same button being pushed.

If free will exists (something that is not describable by the state of the universe at a given point in time), then it's possible for the person to push two different buttons.

By analogy, suppose that the universe exists inside of a computer. At any given point in time, the computer (RAM, hard drive, whatever) is in a certain state. But if we allow human input (human exists outside of the universe of the computer), it's possible for the two computers to end up in different states at some point in the future.

In your toy universe, if you have libertarian free will, and you are running time backwards and forwards, you would not push the red button each time. This is because each time you reach the point of making the decision to push the button the causal impetus would be your will, which could go the other way and is not knowable beforehand.

Thus, a god couldn't know before it happened whether I pushed the red or blue button (leaving aside eternal god complications for now).

Most of the rest of what you say here doesn't seem relevant to libertarian free will (i.e. considerations of possibility and constraint are generally relevant to compatibilist, not libertarian free will accounts). For instance, a determinist could still say that it is possible that JFK was not assassinated (i.e. there is a possible world in which JFK was not assassinated).

But even in the example of the outside humans, there doesn't exist free will inside the computer universes, despite arriving at different outcomes.

The way that the language works, the "state of affairs" refers to the physical state of the universe.

When it comes to a claim of omniscience, justification is irrelevant. The only requirement is that the omniscient being affirms all true statements. It does not require that the omniscient being have the capacity to explain how it comes to the conclusion that the true statement is true.

It depends on the definitions. If the outcome of the coin toss is a valid statement (that is, it has a well-defined truth value of either true or false) and if God is omniscient, then he does. If you hold a position (which is sometimes referred to as "open theism") that the future has yet to be written, so that the outcome does not have a well-defined truth value, then it's not clear whether God can. (This doesn't mean that he *can't* but you would have to fuss around more with what the words mean.)