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How God's Omniscience Robs Him From Having A Free Will

1

1213

Well-Known Member
Skwim said:
This makes no sense.

.
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Sorry if I was unclear, the point is:
1. God has free will.
2. He knows what He will choose in future, because He knows what He wants.
3. Because of 1 and 2 God future is defined by God’s free will and He knows what will happen.

If God would want freely something else, it would change the future and God would know what will happen. Free will can change the future, but God would also know that the future would be what the choices and His free will determines.
 
J

Jos

Well-Known Member
George-ananda said:
What does a wise man that has everything and is the only entity alive do? He experiences art/play/drama/thoughts. And he has to will temporary limitations on himself to experience change.
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So God is everyone experiencing itself? Eternity was so boring that It put limitations on Itself to make life more interesting?
 
George-ananda

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Jos said:
So God is everyone experiencing itself? Eternity was so boring that It put limitations on Itself to make life more interesting?
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That's kind of the idea, yes.

"Boredom caused this universe' may be kind of a a crude way of putting it. Others may call the universe an emanation of Brahman's creative aspect.
 
Skwim

Skwim

Veteran Member
Nimos said:
You made the argument, in a former post that what I wrote was irrelevant, when I said that one would have to assume that God have free will. Because you said that there was only two ways for things to happen and there was no free will of choice.

1. Cause and effect, was one of them.
2. Randomness was the other.

To me that is closely related to determinism, which says:

Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism). Determinism is often contrasted with free will.

When I write that random choice is free will, its because you have to make a distinction between things, when it comes to making a choice.

Let me give an example, which I have use before, but will extend it slightly:

I ask you to choose between (A), (A) or none of them?

You don't know what I mean with this or what the consequences of choosing any of them are. Based on determinism the cause is me asking the question, that have the effect of you having to make a choice. Which is fine. But the cause doesn't force you to choose any specific option, like the first (A). and since you have nothing to guide you in which option is the best one, you have to make a random choice. That choice, regardless of whether it turns out that you chose the worse option, is still a choice based on free will.

So In the beginning according to the common understanding of the bible, there was nothing except God, so how did God decide to make The Heavens and Earth (first line in the bible), if he had no free will and there were no first cause?
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But that isn't my problem to resolve. It's up to Christian theologians or apologists to figure out. They, not me, are asserting the eternal nature of god and his omniscient, omnipotent character. All I'm doing is revealing the problem inherent in their contentions. If god has free will then just what drives him to decide to do A rather than B? Either its caused, in which case it's controlled by that cause and wouldn't be free, or it's utterly random, and wouldn't be free.

Do you disagree with my definition of what a random choice is? if you think its wrong, feel free to adjust it, but I think mine explain it fairly well in relationship to what is meant with "without method or conscious decision".
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if it's done without consciousness then how would it qualify as a choice?

Not sure what you mean by "method." But you said

"A random choice is when you don't know what the outcome will be or even what the meaning of the question is in the first place."
​
And I fail to see where a choice without method would mean anything other than choosing without thinking about the choice; throwing a dart and doing whatever is said on the square it landed in, which I don't see as using one's free will. One's will would be at the mercy of the dart.

.
 
Skwim

Skwim

Veteran Member
1213 said:
Sorry if I was unclear, the point is:
1. God has free will.
2. He knows what He will choose in future, because He knows what He wants.
3. Because of 1 and 2 God future is defined by God’s free will and He knows what will happen.

If God would want freely something else, it would change the future and God would know what will happen. Free will can change the future, but God would also know that the future would be what the choices and His free will determines.
Click to expand...
In other words, when the future arrives he would be locked into what he intended to choose, and would not have the freedom to choose any differently.

.
 
Nimos

Nimos

Well-Known Member
Skwim said:
But that isn't my problem to resolve. It's up to Christian theologians or apologists to figure out. They, not me, are asserting the eternal nature of god and his omniscient, omnipotent character. All I'm doing is revealing the problem inherent in their contentions. If god has free will then just what drives him to decide to do A rather than B? Either its caused, in which case it's controlled by that cause and wouldn't be free, or it's utterly random, and wouldn't be free.
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I think you might confuse yourself a bit, I don't disagree with you that the theologians have an issue. However its your initial problem that I agree with. That God can't have free will. But it is assumed that he have, because he needs to. That is were the problem is.

So when you ask the question:
If god has free will then just what drives him to decide to do A rather than B?

Nothing might drive him to choose A over B, except a random choice. Unless God, being what he is, in some miraculous way have another type of free will, that makes no sense to us. Which is one of the reasons the theologians run into problems. First of all because the bible say that God can't lie, just to keep it simple. Therefore he is not free to do as he please. Now if that in itself is not enough to convince people and they still claim he have it, they won't be able to explain what this type of free will is, that they are talking about. Because it contradict the bible, so either the bible is wrong about the nature of God, and therefore it could be wrong about anything regarding the nature of God or God is able to lie, so he actually have free will, but then the bible is still wrong, because it say that he can't lie. So regardless of how the theologians tries to explain it, they end up with either not understanding the nature of God, and the bible being wrong regardless of which explanation they choose. Therefore the only solution or explanation left for them is to say that God works in mysteries ways. Which, whenever you hear someone saying that, is equal to them having no clue or answer to your question.

Now this was what I tried to explain to you in the first post, where you said that it were not relevante to you, because there was only two ways to do anything, which was through cause/effect or randomness. Which I disagree with. Not your initial statement in the first post, there is a distinction here. Does that make sense to you?

Skwim said:
if it's done without consciousness then how would it qualify as a choice?

Not sure what you mean by "method." But you said

"A random choice is when you don't know what the outcome will be or even what the meaning of the question is in the first place."
And I fail to see where a choice without method would mean anything other than choosing without thinking about the choice; throwing a dart and doing whatever is said on the square it landed in, which I don't see as using one's free will. One's will would be at the mercy of the dart.
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Again I think you end up confusing yourself, because you change the words and therefore their meaning:

conscious is not the same as consciousness

Conscious simply mean that you are aware of what you are doing, that you understand and know the consequences or potentially know the consequences of what you are doing.

For instance, you are standing in a room with a red button blinking rapidly. Should you press it or not, you know what a button is, you also know that it blinking red usually symbolize that it could be bad, but you have no clue what the consequences of pressing it will be. So do you press it? In that case regardless of whether you press it or not, you are somewhat conscious about what you are doing, you know all the elements etc.

conscious
adjective

  1. aware of and responding to one's surroundings.
    "although I was in pain, I was conscious"
    synonymer: aware, awake, wide awake, compos mentis, alert, responsive, reactive, feeling, sentient Mere

  2. having knowledge of something.
    "we are conscious of the extent of the problem"

Consciousness is to be self aware.
Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined variously in terms of sentience, awareness, qualia, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood or soul, the fact that there is something "that it is like" to "have" or "be" it, and the executive control system of the mind

Method is simply that you follow a procedure, so first you do A, then you do B etc. A random choice can't follow systematic method, as it wouldn't be random.

Does it make it more clear?
 
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Road Warrior

Road Warrior

Seeking the middle path..
Shad said:
Which is a problem for God still as creation is an act thus time is involved otherwise God is statistic.
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Which is why I use the label “God” as a placeholder (like Dark Energy or Dark Matter) for an unknown force behind creation of the Universe.
 
Road Warrior

Road Warrior

Seeking the middle path..
Shad said:
Not all logic. God can not make a squared circle for example.
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Not without violating the established rules of the Natural Universe but who can legitimately claim, and prove their claim, that those rules remain the same outside our Universe or in other Universes?
 
Shad

Shad

Veteran Member
Road Warrior said:
Not without violating the established rules of the Natural Universe but who can legitimately claim, and prove their claim, that those rules remain the same outside our Universe or in other Universes?
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I can as a squared circle is logically impossible. Think about it.
 
Spartan

Spartan

Well-Known Member
Nimos said:
Im an atheist so to me, anything that claim miracles, divinity, God, Jesus as son of God, Adam and Eve...etc. All of that is made up.
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Now there's help for that outlook:

518QDyKoqPL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 
Shad

Shad

Veteran Member
stvdv said:
I said that understanding God is beyond logic (mind), still you try arguing below logic (mind)
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Nope. My point holds in all forms of logic due to the definition of the words being used. A squared circle is still impossible by definition. Squaring a circle makes it no longer a circle.
 
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