How can Free Will exist if god created everything and knew everything that will ever be, and everything that happens is his will? Nothing can happen randomly if god knows everything and has the power to prevent anything, god decided it all.

The question of god given free will is a unique contextual hypothesis because everything that has been, is, and will be, was decided by him, he made everything, created the conditions in which everything ever will happen, and he can't make mistakes or not know anything that it's possible to know. The idea that god lives in an 'eternal now' doesn't change that. You cannot do anything that conflicts with what god willed to happen because that would mean that he's not omnipotent, you can't do something he didn't know that you were going to do because he's omniscient, therefore everything you do or choose is his will, he created it, he knew it would happen, he planned for it to happen, and he allowed it to happen.

Free will is an illusion, or god isn't omniscient and omnipotent.

What you are describing is predestination. Predestination typically holds that God is not responsible for the actions of people who do not accept grace. Nor can such people even accept Grace, because it is against their nature.

If you accelerate that to so some form of "extreme predestination" where everything is God's responsibility, then perhaps your conclusion rings true - but it is also very uninteresting because it is very obscure theological view not held by many people.

I know it as 'pre-determinism' or just determinism, and yes, but I don't see how it can be any other way. God created everything, from scratch, it can't be any other way than how he wanted it because he doesn't make mistakes. So Free will is just an illusion. Nothing can be unless it's god's will, and if it's god's will, then you didn't choose.

Or he genuinely didn't know how it was going to turn out, and doesn't have the power to intervene. This would solve the problem of the existence of the devil, and gratuitous evil, among other things.

Since you just repeated yourself, see my former reply.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/f...foreknowledge/

A God of such qualities and of which humans are a likeness and so supposed having free will, may possibly choose to perceive something. nothing , everything, in-between, and whatever, whenever.

Your reply fails to take into account that god is not only omniscient and omnipotent but that he designed everything. God didn't create the experiment and set it in motion not knowing how it would turn out, he knows everything and he doesn't make mistakes. Nothing that has ever happened happened by chance, and nothing can happen that god doesn't want to happen.

The problem is easily resolved by removing the characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence from god. Or by agreeing that Free will can't logically exist. We're simply doing what he knew since the moment of creation that we would do, and that he allows us to do.

God can't not know something that it's possible to know, that's logically impossible. He's omniscient.

Does remembering the past mean you never had free will?

No, never having had free will means you never had free will What are you aiming for here?

Does memory disprove free will? It's a simple question. Yes or no.

Unsurprisingly, it took only two posts to confirm a fundamental error of the whole free will conversation. The conflation of multiple ideas is going to get you into trouble as it always does.

When playing chess, I'm only allowed to move in certain ways and at certain times. Therefore, there's no free will in chess because I'm constrained in what's possible.

Does memory disprove something I don't think exists..... how do I answer that question... if it doesn't exist, the question is meaningless, and if I grant that free will exists so that I can answer the question, then I just contradicted myself...

It's genuinely a meaningless question for me.

God could just be modest and respectful, so using some reasonably fantastic God power illogically un-knows whatever amount of the universe is necessary to respect all privacy.

Can X be used to disprove Y? Well, I don't believe Y exists, so that's a meaningless question. But if I did grant that it existed, I would contradict myself.

Suppose X = Science and Y = God. Now throw away every single hypothetical or argument that MB has tried to construct involving God or the supernatrual or anything else he doesn't believe in.

God can be understood as prior to and transcendent of human language and logic, such that God is never fully understandable or describable by mankind. Going down this path, ~100% of objections you make to God can be dismissed.

another response: can omnipotent God not, in a manner of speaking, voluntarily blindfold himself as to future events?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTWCl32j8jM

Sam Harris admits that it is mostly determinism with some randomness sprinkled in. I would argue here that this randomness (that he claims) is the element of free will.

I agree that there can’t be both free will and omniscience.

Agree, but I wouldn’t label it randomness. More like competing values.

Nice cop-out.

Btw, your OP now makes no sense. By your own admission your statements in it are meaningless.

What free willed action did i take to enter the universe and commit original sin...

Well, what free willed action did I take to be born in Scandinavia?

I don't think the idea that you don't control your entire fate is a very controversial one to beliefs in free will.

But i have to ask forgiveness for my non free willed action of original sin. Dont seem right. If i asked for this life knowing the consonances and sin id take on and need redemption for. Fair enough.


Im not really commenting on free will and can it exist in a big brain Gods world. Im still up in the air there. I mean it does seem like there should be none but given you and others im probably wrong in my thinking.

I'm not even sure I believe in "will", let alone "free will". But I don't think some things being outside our control is that relevant to the discussion. I mean, as a bare minimum if free will existed, there would be instances where two different free wills clashed.

But the main stumbling block to beliefs in free will tend to be determinism and causality, and we know now from modern theories in physics that these are not all they are cranked up to be.

Even god can't do the logically impossible.


Sure, but then he's no longer omniscient, there would be things that it's possible for him to know that he doesn't know, which is fine with me, it partly resolves the problem.

It's not a cop-out, you're totally baffling me here. Just explain what being able to remember the past has to do with free will. You might as well be asking me "Does remembering the past mean that god never existed?"

The crux of my point is that god is a unique context, he didn't just set the wheels in motion, at the moment of creation he knew everything that will ever happen and at that point he had the option to prevent any of it, which of course he wouldn't need to do since he can't make mistakes and would have made it all 'perfect' on the very first try. So we never had the choice about anything, how could we make a better choice than god? it was all decided for us by a being with perfect judgment.