Omniscience and Free Will
Theists often tell me that God knows everything. They also tell me humans have free will. Thinking about this, I became confused. If we define free will as the ability to choose between more than one possible action, then omniscience kind of ruins it for us. The problem is that, if God knows what action I will take in the future, then it is not possible that I will take any other action. When the moment arrives for me to “choose” what I will do, there is only one possible option and that goes against our definition of choice.
Theists will often respond to this by saying that, while God knows what we will do, he does not “make” us do it, but in the end that is irrelevant. If knows what we will do, then that’s what we’re going to do. If we do anything else, then God is wrong and God cannot be wrong. This is the kind of problem one faces when one thinks an outlandish claim through.
Congrats on discovering Calvinism! Would you like me to send you back in time so you won’t be 400 years late? Predestination was the core to French, Dutch, Swiss, and Scottish Protestantism (which took everywhere except for France, as per the revocation of the edict of Nantes).
Oh, I understand that this fits Calvinism. The problem is, most people who claim God’s omniscience are neither Calvinists nor determinists in the general sense.
Good Burn Dan. This is true.
I stumbled upon this because i had posted a blog entry by exact same name “Omniscience and free will”. But my arguments are different.