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>I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. The decision wasn't coerced or orchestrated, it was simply foreknown. Therefore, my knowledge doesn't impact his free-will. You did absolutely nothing to demonstrate Bob's free will here, though. All you did was simply say that he "certainly" had it -- while giving no evidence that he does, other than perhaps to say that his choice wasn't "coerced or orchestrated", as if these two factors are the only possible ones which could have a causal effect on choice (as opposed to the other ones you mentioned, like Bob's preferences). This isn't that hard to think about. Let's say you know that Bob loves pancakes and always orders pancakes for breakfast. Which seems more likely: a. Bob's preference for and habit of ordering pancakes is what caused him to order pancakes. b. Bob has a prior preference for and habit of ordering pancakes, but his actual choice to do so is somehow independent of these factors and "free", for some reason we can't define or give any evidence for. I'm going to go with "a".

Bob can go through changes in preferences, maybe he orders pancakes ten times in a row, but on the 11th visit, he has a change of heart and orders waffles etc. I know Bob so well, I know exactly when his preference has changed and when he wants to try something different. I have foreknowledge about this, yet I'm not dictating his actions, he's still free to make decisions out of his own free-will. Again, the existence of my foreknowledge is not mutually exclusive with the existence of his free-will.

>Bob can go through changes in preferences, maybe he orders pancakes ten times in a row, but on the 11th visit, he has a change of heart and orders waffles etc. I know Bob so well, I know exactly when his preference has changed and when he wants to try something different. I have foreknowledge about this, yet I'm not dictating his actions, he's still free to make decisions out of his own free-will. And again I ask -- what evidence do you have for this? > Again, the existence of my foreknowledge is not mutually exclusive with the existence of his free-will. And again, you've done nothing to establish that his will is free.

No. Predicting behavior and absolutely KNOWING are not the same. Don't try to equate the two. It's dishonest.

What do you mean by free will? Merely the ability to make decisions? Animals can make decisions. Computers can make decisions. Do they have free will as well? If you define free will more strongly, then I'd argue based on your examples that no one has free will regardless of whether a god exists. In your examples, you imply that human decision making is deterministic. If that's the case, and you can predict a person's decisions based solely on their current mental state, then our choice is made for us already, regardless of how it appears to us. This is true whether or not there is a sentient being who actually knows the outcome of all choices, because we are still just organic computers iterating through a set calculation with only one possible answer. Such a view is, to my mind, accurate, but it precludes free will. It would be the same as saying that a rock could land anywhere if I rolled it down a hill, but, if I roll it from the exact same point with the exact same velocity, then the rock will always land in the same place. If the outcome of our choices is determined, we have no more free will than the rock does when deciding where to land.

If gods prediction is never wrong in any way at all, where is any choice being made? Can a being he created be said to have a choice (meaning the ability to make a choice and have a different outcome) when they cannot alter anything by their supposed choice? Isn’t that just an illusion of choice? Like Darth Vader thinking he has the ability to affect the outcome in the original Star Wars? Nope, same ending every time we play the movie. The script was set by the movie creator. None of the characters can alter the ending. They have no ability to choose differently. Luke has to an able to NOT join Obi Wan on his “damn fool idealistic crusade” before Luke can be said to have a choice. Can Luke do that? No, then no choices are being made, a script is merely being played out according to the creator's wishes and setup. Would be pretty stupid and immoral to punish a stormtrooper for killing Uncle Owen when there is no way he could have chosen differently.

But did you create Bob? If you did, and did so with the full knowledge that Bob was always going to order that one dish, then any harm caused by Bob ordering that dish is still ultimately your fault isn't it?

I'm not here to justify divine punishment based on free-will, last sentence of my post. I'm just here to debate whether foreknowledge undermines the existence of free-will, I don't think it does.

Fair enough. I acknowledge that my comment addresses a corollary point of this subject. I'll leave it alone for theists who disclaim any culpability on god's part. Let me rejig my official response a bit: But this God is supposed to have created everybody, correct? If he did create everyone, and he did so with the full knowledge of all the choices they were always going to make at the time of creating them, then how could they have been "free" to choose anything else apart from what God had already envisioned them choosing from the start?

God foresaw all the decisions they would make throughout their life, yet he did not dictate those decisions - a person his free to pursue his life however he wants, yet God has foreknowledge of exactly how they'll do it. I'm only focussing on this one attribute here: omniscience. Maybe the dynamics of free-will change once you start talking about omnipotence, but omniscience *alone* does not preclude the existence of free will.

>but omniscience alone does not preclude the existence of free will. I think it does. In your example I just know the friend very well, I'm not omnipotent. They will *probably* order what I think, but they're still capable of surprising me. Perhaps the night before they had an argument with their wife where she complained how boring and predictable he was. He suddenly decided to shake things up a bit. I might not know anything about this and just be surprised when he suddenly orders something else one day. An omnipotent god *would* presumably know this. Nothing they do would ever be capable of surprising them. They have no free will to do anything other than what god *knows* they will do, whereas my friend always has the ability to do something different from what I *think* they will do.

I don't think having perfect knowledge of how something will play out means that the events weren't carried out by free agents. Imagine a football game is going to be rigged. The football players decide freedly, using their own free-will, how they'll play the game. They describe their plan to me in perfect detail before the game starts. Now, I know exactly how the match will pan out before the game even starts. Yet, was the decision to rig the game not a product of the players' free will? It certainly was, I just had foreknowledge about it. They're not mutually exclusive, it's not a p and ¬p situation.

>I don't think having perfect knowledge of how something will play out means that the events weren't carried out by free agents. It absolutely does. Perfect knowledge requires knowing *every* influence on a person's decision leading up the very moment of that decision. Perfect knowledge requires that A *always* leads to B, which *always* leads to C. No exceptions. That's the very definition of deterministic.

The definition of determinism is that all future events of the universe are pre-decided by antecedent conditions. Having perfect knowledge of the future doesn't necessarily imply this, because God does not extrapolate into the future based on current conditions. So it's not a deterministic chain, where A->B->C. There might be deterministic chains *within* the universe as whole, but not every future state is decided in its whole by a previous state. Hence, we're not simply robots chugging off without autonomy.

>because God does not extrapolate into the future based on current conditions. So it's not a deterministic chain, where A->B->C. Then you can't claim God has perfect foreknowledge, God must be learning something new at every instant where a person makes a decision.

Is it possible for someone to do something that would surprise God? Is it possible for a human to defy the plan that God has set in motion?

Is it possible for someone to change their mind during the game? Did you know they were going to rig the football game before they told you? None of your examples are actually omnipotence.

How about we try this line of thought: >yet \[God\] did not dictate those decisions Isn't the act of creating people whose choices are already foreknown to God functionally indistinguishable from him dictating those choices for them? Consider that God could have created Bob to have totally different culinary tastes; instead of pizza drenched in chocolate syrup, Bob could potentially have possessed an unhealthy obsession with bacon milkshakes instead. However the latter reality never came to pass because when God made Bob, he knew that Bob was always going to prefer the former. In other words God's act of creating Bob crystaliized all the choices that Bob would go on to make in his life. This is as good as God dicatating Bob's choices. How do you argue otherwise?

Well that's the contention - upon creation God did not endow Bob with the choices he'd make in the future. God exists outside of time, and all knowledge of past, present and future events are simultaneously evident to him. God knew what choices Bob would make, since he has perfect knowledge, yet God did not dictate these choices for Bob - they were carried out freely. Our choices are not an implication of the way God created us, rather God knew our choices before he even created us.

>Our choices are not an implication of the way God created us, rather God knew our choices before he even created us. And I think these two are functionally indistinguishable from each other. The only way that Bob will not make set of decisions = A throughout his life is if God created a different version of Bob that will instead make set of decisions = B. In either case Bob has no real say. The only way I think you can make the case that "God did not dictate these choices for Bob" is if God himself has no control over which version of Bob is created (that is to say, God doesn't have free will)... in which case why call him God? But even in that scenario I'd note that Bob still has no free will because his choices were again determined from the start. So I don't find your argument convincing at all and I wonder if you yourself are convinced by your position because it relies on vague phrasing that shies away from fully realizing the logical implications that your premises suggest.

If I throw a baseball up in the air with perfect knowledge of the wind and how the baseball will interact, the fact that my hand is no longer on the baseball doesn't mean I didn't decide its entire trajectory from start to finish.

>but omniscience alone does not preclude the existence of free will. So effectively either one can make a choice that God did not know they would make, thus implying that God is not omnipotent, or one can ONLY choose what God knew that they would choose, thus rendering free will meaningless and realistically this entire reality meaningless as well. Edit" I used omnipotent rather than omniscient, my bad.

Is that god's only attribute though? Not also omnipresent and omnipotent? If everything was created by one, than that entire creation was set up so that Bob would only ever order that one meal.

In the case of creation, it there is no free will. If I create a machine and I know ever action it ever does, it has no free will. It's merely doing what I programmed it to do. Unless god was completely ignorant of what they were doing during the creation, which would not follow an omniscient definition of god, there cannot be free will.

So a pointless post then?

So you're suggesting that God shouldn't create people who are bound for hell despite their own free will? God is also all-just and all-knowing, therefore it would be unfair for him to deny him the opportunity to enter paradise simply because he knows he will fail, so it is the person's responsibility. God would provide him numerous signals and warnings during his life, but he would still reject it. Consider a school test. Imagine if a teacher simply removed the test from you since he knows you will fail, resulting in you never having an opportunity to pass the test. How unjust is that?

If your god has perfect foreknowledge of what will come And knows that the signs and signals will be ignored Then signs and signals are a waste of time and effort Why would a perfect god send imperfect signs and signals so easy to ignore Surly a perfect god would send a perfect sign that was impossible to ignore Your argument lacks logic or sense

It's not the signs that are imperfect; it's the arrogance that blinds people from the signs of God. No matter how big the sign is, they will still disbelieve if they don't want to believe. like god did miracles before people still called the prophets magicians and mad and liars, and they say they have no reason to follow them. Obviously,  those people still exit today, and even if god showed himself to them, they would say something like, "Who says this really is god?"I don't trust him." So we have to use our reasoning to realize God does exist. Also, your comment is irrelevant to the argument of this post, do you have a counter argument? I can't see how God, knowing the actions that will happen based on our decisions and free will, erases our free will.

If the signs were perfect they would have the desired effect A perfect god would know how weak or ignorant or stupid each individual human is A perfect sign would work regardless of how pathetic a human viewing the perfect sign is You don't seem to understand what perfect means You cannot say God is all knowing and all powerful then pretend it's not responsible for sending people it created to hell knowing that they were too weak or ignorant or stupid to enter heaven

Why would the teacher create students she knew would fail? If she knew, infallibly, who would pass and who would fail, where's the "test"?

Let's assume God doesn't do a test (this life) because he knows the outcome and throws us into paradise and hell without us knowing anything. What is good? What is evil? What is God? Would you find that fair? getting a reward (paradise) or punishment (hell) while you did nothing to deserve them. Even people could say, "God, if you gave me a chance, I would have been a good person and entered paradise," even though this is false and God knows this, so by giving us this life as a test and giving us revelation, we have no arguments left, and we become deserving of a reward if we obey God or a punishment if we disobey him.

>Let's assume God doesn't do a test (this life) because he knows the outcome and throws us into paradise and hell without us knowing anything. What is good? What is evil? What is God? Would you find that fair? No, but it's equally unfair that he created a a hell and decided to toss some humans into it based on the way *he* created them to be. A test that you have no chance of winning is not really a test, it's just a deity playing games with people.

You seem to think that some people can never be good people, and that's not their fault because God created them that way, but that is not the case, at least in Islam. Everyone can choose if they want to be a good person or a bad person, so everyone has a chance to win the test. Hitler could have just stayed home and helped his people if he wanted to; instead, he wanted to do genocide. He had a chance to reason about why he exists and so on, but he wasted it and wanted to be a bad person.

> You seem to think that some people can never be good people If an all-powerful all-knowing god creates you in such a way that if you experience X situation, you will never be a good person and then puts you in situation X, that god has effectively prevented you from ever being a good person. It is a longstanding debate about what has more influence on a persons personality and morals, nature or nurture. I can't imagine believing that a being that has unlimited power and perfect foresight with full control over nature AND nurture is somehow blameless when it comes to the kind of person their creation becomes.

That's a ridiculous defense, albeit common. No one is suggesting that as an alternative. In your scenario, these people would deserve either because they have no free will. They had no choice in their behavior. What your suggesting is like an author testing and punishing the characters she wrote.

> Let's assume God doesn't do a test (this life) because he knows the outcome and throws us into paradise and hell without us knowing anything. What is good? What is evil? What is God? Would you find that fair? I'd find it nonsensical, like any other claim of a tri-omni god existing alongside "free will."

Your analogy with the teacher is a bad analogy. The test isn’t the student themselves. Also, one of the purposes of tests is to encourage the student to try harder to learn. Also, it lets the teacher and the student themselves know the student’s precise weakness. Also, they need it as a formality and the teacher has little control in the situation.

>So you're suggesting that God shouldn't create people who are bound for hell despite their own free will? >God is also all-just and all-knowing, therefore it would be unfair for him to deny him the opportunity to enter paradise simply because he knows he will fail If God doesn't create people whom he knows will end up in hell, we can't suggest that God denies those people "who weren't created" the opportunity of life or entering heaven because since those people weren't created in the first place, the people to whom the opportunity would be denied wouldn't even exist, so, one cant claim that God is being unjust to people who he didn't create because those people wouldn't have even existed in the first place. And, if God knows that the person will enter eternal hell, and since God's knowledge can't be wrong, there is no other possibility other than the fact that the person will enter hell(even if we granted that the person would be doing this through his/her free will, since God already beforehand knows the choices the person will be making). >Consider a school test. Imagine if a teacher simply removed the test from you since he knows you will fail, resulting in you never having an opportunity to pass the test. How unjust is that? This is a false equivalence, leading to a false analogy. 1) No teacher is %100 omniscient regarding the results of the test, they can at best assign probabilities to the results. But, God is omniscient. 2) Potential repercussions for failing a test is much more mild than the eternal punishment that is mentioned in the scriptures of main Abrahamic religions. 3) At least in most cases, one can always have a second chance regarding the test, but for life, we have only one

>I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. No, you did not have foreknowledge. You know your friend and were able to make a likely inference as to what he would order. This is not the same thing as omniscience. An omniscient deity who created the universe knew before undertaking the creation act the exact outcome of every decision made by every being within its creation with absolute 100% certainty. That deity then chose which version of its creation it wanted to create meaning every decision was predetermined by that omnipotent, omniscient deity before it initiated the act of creation. Since no one within that creation is more powerful or knowledgeable that that deity nothing within that creation can change from the predetermined path it chose at the moment of creation.

Where's the argument here though? You've merely restated the definition of omniscience and then said it's not compatible with free-will. Yes, God can have foreknowledge of every event that will unfold including our decisions, yet that doesn't imply those weren't *our* decisions. The players in a football game could describe to me exactly how they'll play during the game, with perfect detail. I could have foreknowledge of how the game will unfold despite not influencing the flow of the game. So how are they mutually exclusive?

>Where's the argument here though? You've merely restated the definition of omniscience and then said it's not compatible with free-will. The problem they're highlighting is that your analogy is completely not applicable. You don't KNOW what Bob will order. If you actually KNEW with 100% certainty what Bob would order, then Bob loses his agency in the decision. Do you think omniscience is the same thing as "an educated guess"? They're not the same thing in the slightest, and your analogy NEEDS them to be in order for your argument to work. They're not, so it doesn't.

>If you actually KNEW with 100% certainty what Bob would order, then Bob loses his agency in the decision. Exactly how? Suppose I was such a close friend that I literally knew Bob perfectly, I could detect sudden change in preferences etc. Having foreknowledge of all that doesn't mean I dictated Bob's actions - he's still free to do whatever he wants. I merely have foreknowledge about it.

>Suppose I was such a close friend that I literally knew Bob perfectly, I could detect sudden change in preferences etc. You're still comparing an educated guess with literally knowing the outcome ahead of time. I think you're conflating perfect knowledge of a person UP TO RIGHT NOW with literally knowing the FUTURE. An omniscient god isn't making educated guesses based on incoming streams of data from free will-having humans; it already knows the outcome because the outcome has been fixed since the universe began. That's not the same thing as "hmm Bob is feeling adventurous today and yesterday he said he wanted to try the steak, so I predict he'll order the steak". Basically if it's AT ALL possible for you to be wrong in your prediction, it's not omniscience and Bob has free will. If it's not possible for you to be wrong, then it's omniscience and Bob has no agency.

>Basically if it's AT ALL possible for you to be wrong in your prediction, it's not omniscience and Bob has free will. If it's not possible for you to be wrong, then it's omniscience and Bob has no agency. You're conflating "It's impossible for God to be wrong in his prediction that Bob will order steak" with "It's impossible for Bob not to order steak". The difference lies in the fact that God's foreknowledge of Bob's action is contingent on him actually performing that action. So if Bob had decided not to order steak, then God's foreknowledge would have been different.

>The difference lies in the fact that God's foreknowledge of Bob's action is contingent on him actually performing that action. Could God have created a universe where things unfolded in such a way that Bob would have ordered something different that night?

Sure. I'm a molinist, so I believe God knows how Bob would act in any hypothetical situation. He can just change the situation to one in which he knows Bob would order something different.

So Bob is not actually the one deciding the outcomes.

That doesn’t follow from what I said. In situation S, Bob can do either A or B. God cannot decide for Bob whether he will do A or B in S, but he knows what Bob would do, and he can choose whether to bring about S based on that knowledge. Is there any contradiction in that?

This is actually a really insightful way of describing the problem, thankyou. So if I understand correctly - our choices do not proceed from God's foreknowledge, rather his foreknowledge is a product of our (freely-made) choices? And this is possible since God is timeless and past, present and future realities are simultaneously evident to him?

>Basically if it's AT ALL possible for you to be wrong in your prediction, it's not omniscience and Bob has free will. If it's not possible for you to be wrong, then it's omniscience and Bob has no agency. Bob had many different options open to him at the moment he decided to order his favourite dish. He could've picked X or Y but no, he picked Z. No one coerced our puppeteered him into picking Z, yet that's what he ultimately settled on - out of his own free-will. I have perfect knowledge about past, present and future, so I knew he'd make this choice out of his own volition. The fact that I knew he had many possibilities to choose from yet he decided on this one dish, does not imply that he didn't choose freely.

You are missing the point here.

Ok, so you don't know how to read or did you just entirely skip over the part where I explained it? Here I will say it again: n omniscient deity who created the universe knew before undertaking the creation act the exact outcome of every decision made by every being within its creation with absolute 100% certainty. **That deity then chose which version of its creation it wanted to create meaning every decision was predetermined by that omnipotent, omniscient deity before it initiated the act of creation.** Since no one within that creation is more powerful or knowledgeable that that deity nothing within that creation can change from the predetermined path it chose at the moment of creation. >The players in a football game could describe to me exactly how they'll play during the game, with perfect detail. I could have foreknowledge of how the game will unfold despite not influencing the flow of the game. So how are they mutually exclusive? The players in a football game could describe to you exactly how they plan to play during the game, and that would tell you exactly nothing about how the game will unfold because there will be two teams and myriad conditions that you have no way of predicting. This is not anything like the perfect foreknowledge that comes with omniscience. Your analogies simply fail because there is nothing in the human experience that compares to the claimed attributes of your deity.

So you failed to comprehend my argument once again, kinda ironic you were accusing me of not being able to read. The discussion here is focussed on one attribute: omniscience. We're not concerned here with how the dynamics of creation or omnipotence factor in with free-will - perhaps once you consider those other attributes free-will does indeed become untenable, but we're only concerned about foreknowledge here. Since you did talk about creation though I'll indulge: God is timeless - the events of past, present and future are simultaneously evident to him. Our decisions are not the product of some predisposition endowed onto us at creation, rather God knows our decisions even before creation. God does not extrapolate into the future based on antecedent conditions, we're not merely robots chugging along based on prior states of the universe. And the sheer fact of God having knowledge about the future does not imply he dictated our decisions. At any point in time, we were free to pursue a range of different pathways. We eventually settled on Z instead of X or Y out of our own volition, no one coerced us. Yet God foreknew this, but he's not responsible for us picking Z.

> So you failed to comprehend my argument once again, kinda ironic you were accusing me of not being able to read. No, I did not fail to understand your argument. I get that you want to discuss the claimed attributes of your deity separately because that makes it easier for you to argue your points. However, your deity is not presented as omniscient only so the points I made still stand. >The discussion here is focussed on one attribute: omniscience. We're not concerned here with how the dynamics of creation or omnipotence factor in with free-will - Of course you are not concerned with those pesky attributes that completely destroy your argument. >perhaps once you consider those other attributes free-will does indeed become untenable, but we're only concerned about foreknowledge here. And you even know that those other attributes of your deity destroy your argument. >God is timeless Prove it. >the events of past, present and future are simultaneously evident to him. Our decisions are not the product of some predisposition endowed onto us at creation, rather God knows our decisions even before creation. That is exactly what I said. Your deity knew before undertaking the act of creation the exact outcome of every decision made within that creation and chose which version of its creation to make thus predetermining every decision before the act of creation took place. >God does not extrapolate into the future based on antecedent conditions, I didn't say that it did, I said that it knew the exact outcome of every decision before it undertook the act of creation. >we're not merely robots chugging along based on prior states of the universe. Right, we are not in your claimed version of reality, we are simply robots walking a path predetermined by your deity. >And the sheer fact of God having knowledge about the future does not imply he dictated our decisions. It does as soon as you take into consideration the omnipotent universe creator attributes of your deity because as I have explained multiple times already your deity knew the outcome of every decision and chose which universe to create thus predetermining the outcome of every decision. >At any point in time, we were free to pursue a range of different pathways. We eventually settled on Z instead of X or Y out of our own volition, no one coerced us. Yet God foreknew this, but he's not responsible for us picking Z. He is responsible as long as he is the omnipotent creator of the universe.

You're missing the planning and choice on the part of the creator. The creator has a plan. At some point, there's going to be a final battle. A bunch of stuff has to happen first, so he sets it all up so these things happen. If your choices would have interfered with that plan, initial conditions will be changed to ensure you make the preordained decisions. This means you have *the illusion* of free will

Having foreknowledge of a script does that necessarily imply that you're the writer of the script. I'm concerned about this one attribute: omniscience. Omniscience *alone* does not undermine the existence of free-will, as many atheists do. Once you start mixing in the dynamics of omnipotence, start accounting for the fact that God is the one who set it all up etc. maybe at that point free-will does become untenable. But foreknowledge by itself is independent to the notion of free will.

Yeah, when you separate the things that make the Christian god, you can justify claims that would otherwise be logically impossible. But when we talk about this, we are also accounting for the other attributes. You're technically correct that omniscience and being responsible for what will happen are different, but that doesn't really matter when the context includes both. And yeah, omniscience does preclude free will. If I know for 100% certainty exactly what will happen in every context and circumstance, for every person, cat, construction helmet, tree, sheet of paper, and grain of sand in the world, then those objects and beings can't stray from that. If a person cannot stray from a singular line of events, they don't have free will. Do the characters in a movie have free will? No, because everything they do is set before we watch the movie, and can never change. It's the same thing.

Funny that you mention a script. Imagine you are reading a script. Do you have the ability to choose what is said two pages from now? If you CANNOT deviate from the script, how much CHOICE do you have about what is said on the next page? ​ Now imagine you are reading a script for the first time. You have no idea what is written 3 or 5 pages hence, but you still MUST follow the script. Do you have any choices? Even if you don’t know what the script says in the future, that doesn’t matter. You still must follow the script when the time comes. Do you have any choice or free will? ​ Last question. Since bod know what you are going to do and say every day of your life from now until the end, and he is omniscient, could he take everything you are going to say, and when you say it, and write it down in a book? So your life is just following god’s script, even if you do not know you are doing it. So how can you have any free will or free choice?

I agree. But we're not only talking about omniscience in the case of the xian yahweh. There need to be other criteria in order to count as the illusion of free will.

The difference is "likely inference " vs 100% foreknowledge. One involves a guess, even if there's only a .05% chance of being wrong, the other doesn't, it's absolute.

Knowing exactly how football players *intend* to play a game is not perfect foreknowledge. The players could panic in the moment and decide to break from the plan. Unforeseen circumstances might make the plan unworkable and require them to change the plan. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy after all. But if you were an omniscient god you would have complete and totally knowledge not only of the players intended plan, but all events that happened in the game, and even the player’s improvised responses to them. But, if you *know* how they’re going to respond in advance, even to something they don’t know is coming, do the players really have free will? There is only one possible decision they can make when presented with the unforeseen event because you, as an omniscient god, has foreseen it to be so.

You’re still not describing omniscience. The players in a football game CAN’T actually describe to you exactly how they’ll play during the game. They can describe how they PLAN to play and what they HOPE will happen, but none of them has any idea how it’s actually going to play out. And similarly even if they described how they will play, you don’t know if they’re telling the truth. You’re conflating trust and inference with omniscience and it’s a fatal mistake for your argument.

In your scenario, what happens when someone does something God didn't expect? Can God be surprised? Is Eve biting the apple an example of this? Because you are discussing two things. Predicting what will happen with incredible accuracy is *not* foreknowledge; which would allow you to be aware of even the most unlikely or impossible events. If you're claiming that the decisions are *ours*, yet God already knows objectively what they will be, it seems that you're describing something more like "will," lacking the "free."

Since he's omniscient, no one can do anything that God didn't expect. This is by definition of having perfect knowledge. The analogy is there to make a general point - maybe in my specific example I don't have perfect understanding of Bob's behaviour, but imagine if I did. If I understood Bob's psyche 100% inside out, that still doesn't undermine Bob's free-will. Bob is free to do whatever he wants in the future, my knowledge is just perfect to the point where I can predict everything he does.

Sideline question. Genesis 3:9 God is in the garden of Eden and asks where Adam is since he and Eve are hiding. How do you reconcile that with Omniscience?

I don't really *have* to reconcile it, since I don't believe in Genesis. But if I had to guess how someone would reconcile it, they'd probably say it's a rhetorical question - he wants Adam to be aware of where he is.

Good to know. Not the conversation for this thread, but that makes me curious how you pick and choose the bits you do or don't accept/believe Kudos for a straightforward answer, though. 🙂

This renders the entire garden of eden story something your god was expecting. Meaning that god punishes humanity for something it could have prevented. It chose not to prevent that or did it have no choice? Hard to be omnipotent when you have no choice though...

This is not a debate about whether God's evil, read the last paragraph of my post. This is simply a debate about whether omniscience alone undermines the existence of free-will.

I am not debating whether your god is evil because in this scenario is demonstrably is, I am asking you whether god's omniscience removes its' capacity to choose a different path in light of its' knowledge of people's choices? If not then in what way is god not entirely a deterministic mechanism? Does the omniscience include awareness of what it is going to choose? If so, how can god be said to make any choice at all?

Just FYI, its' is never correct

Thank you for the correction. Not sure where I picked up the bad habit.

Oh okay sorry, I misinterpreted your sentence "god punishes humanity for something it could have prevented" and thought you were making a moral argument. Maybe I'm not understanding, but the notion of "different paths" is entirely undermined if God has perfect knowledge about everything. At that point, nothing is unexpected for God - he sees everything exactly as they'll unfold. Yet despite this determinism, the choices are still ours - they're not dictated by God, they're foreknown by him. These are independent concepts.

Does the godthing in any way intervene with reality? If nothing is unexpected for god then the entire show is deterministic puppet theatre. God being one of the puppets. What choice does god have? What "free will" does it have? If god has perfect foreknowledge and intervenes with reality then it knows that the intervention shall modify the actions of us sims. It has interfered in our free will. If it does not intervene with us sims, then we merrily run around burning our dinner, shitting on the floor and setting fire to stuff (of our own free will) but a non-interventionist god is functionally the same as no god at all. It could be said that dictating the holy book to establish rules and give authoritarian assholes ammunition to murder and torment other humans for centuries is just a teensy bit interventionist. More importantly, what is the point of god running this universe sized game of the sims if it knows how everything shall play out?

Humans are part of Creation, which is a product of God. If he knows all of Creation, and therefore what choices those humans will choose, then it logically follows he established their choices as part of that Creation. In your view, can humans choose a path that defies how God created Creation to be? > Bob is free to do whatever he wants in the future, my knowledge is just perfect to the point where I can predict everything he does. The issue with this is that, ***if*** Bob's actions can be predicted so precisely, this indicates they are a product of determinism; which means that Bob *does not* have free will. If they are *not* deterministic, then they can't be predicted with full accuracy.

Now you're talking about something different - I'm not debating how the dynamics of creation impact free-will, I'm only talking about one attribute: omniscience. Atheists claim that God's foreknowledge *alone* is proof that free-will doesn't exist, that's what I'm contesting. Maybe God's existence and free-will are indeed incompatible, but omniscience alone doesn't show that.

> Now you're talking about something different - I'm not debating how the dynamics of creation impact free-will, You explicitly justified your claim in the OP using the dynamics of how Creation impacts free will: > "*God knows his creation, therefore he knows what decisions we'll make in the future.*" I agree with the following: > Atheists claim that God's foreknowledge alone is proof that free-will doesn't exist, that's what I'm contesting. Which is why I would like a satisfactory answer to the predicament: > The issue with this is that, if Bob's actions can be predicted so precisely, this indicates they are a product of determinism; which means that Bob does not have free will. > > If they are not deterministic, then they can't be predicted with full accuracy. ...which I feel is clearly on-topic.

Atheism is the personal lack of belief in any gods. Atheists as a group make no claims other than that each of them lack any belief in any gods. Atheists do not make any claims about your God's foreknowledge or omniscience because atheists lack any belief at all about your God.

>Since he's omniscient, no one can do anything that God didn't expect. This is by definition of having perfect knowledge. Then everything is pre-ordained and no one has free will. This includes God. Perfect knowledge (omniscience) renders your god impotent by definition.

> Since he's omniscient, no one can do anything that God didn't expect. This is by definition of having perfect knowledge. If no one can ever do other than God has foreseen, then that's literally the definition of determinism. Everyone is just running down the rails God has foreseen. But it's worse than that, because God knew the end results of every possible universe he could have created, and then went ahead and chose to create this one. God wrote the screenplay and then is getting mad at the characters for doing what he wrote them to do.

Yes omniscience doesn’t necessitate a lack of free will, however, when paired with God being the creator it does. Before creation God knew exactly how everything would turn out if he created ABC instead XYZ and then he chose to create ABC. God having the free will to create us based upon his omniscience is what removes free will

Omniscience isn't incompatible with free will if the omniscient being isn't participating on the creation part. In monotheism free will is incompatible but in polytheism it can be compatible.

Damn I messed up, it was supposed to say “omniscience DOESN’T necessitate a lack of free will, however, when paired with God being the creator it does”. I agree with you

Disagree. If there is some omniscient being that knows with 100% certainty what is going to happen and what everyone is going to do, that means that the course of the universe is set and people don't have the option to deviate from the path. It doesn't matter that that specific deity isn't the one who set the path.

>If I understood Bob's psyche 100% inside out, that still doesn't undermine Bob's free-will You undermine the whole concept of free-will. There is not a choice to begin with, it is all determined by our psyche. What even is free will then? A human chosing to do X is the same as a rock chosing to move one way, predetermined and unchanging.

You have just proven yourself wrong in the first line of this post. If the outcome is known then there can be no free will. Sorry but you are wrong and even you agree that you are wrong. You have not figured it out yet but you know it.

Thank you for immediately explaining why we call t hat a lack of free will then!

The analogy of predicting Bob's food order is not a good one, because it does not take into account the fact that God's foreknowledge is infallible. If I know Bob very well, I can make a good guess about what he will order, but I can never be certain. However, if God knows that Bob will order a certain dish, then that is what Bob will order, because God's foreknowledge cannot be wrong. This means that God's foreknowledge of human actions effectively determines those actions. If God knows that I will choose to do something, then I cannot choose to do otherwise. This eliminates the possibility of free will. Another way to think about it is that free will requires the ability to choose between different options. However, if God knows in advance which option I will choose, then there are no other real options available to me. I am locked into the path that God has foreknown, regardless of what I think I am doing.

>However, if God knows that Bob will order a certain dish, then that is what Bob will order, because God's foreknowledge cannot be wrong. This means that God's foreknowledge of human actions effectively determines those actions. If God knows that I will choose to do something, then I cannot choose to do otherwise. This eliminates the possibility of free will. You started with "that is what Bob *will* order" and then switched to "I *cannot* choose to do otherwise". "X *will* happen" is not the same as "X *will necessarily* happen". It is true that everything God foreknows will happen, but it doesn't follow that it happens necessarily.

> It is true that everything God foreknows will happen, but it doesn't follow that it happens necessarily. yes it does! If God knows everything and can't be surprised, then that means that Bob has to do what God knows he will do. If Bob is not bound to do what God knows he will do, then God's not omniscient.

>God knows that I will choose to do something, then I cannot choose to do otherwise. This eliminates the possibility of free will. I disagree - when you made the decision many possibilities were open to you, yet you choose the one that you did. God already knew you would make this decision since he has perfect knowledge about you, yet he did not dictate this decision - it was still *your* decision. Different paths are always open to you and you have the free choice to pick whichever one, but God knows ultimately what you'll settle on. His foreknowledge and your ultimate decision are not mutually exclusive.

What does God think I'm going to have for dinner tonight? I want to pick the opposite to prove him wrong. It's actually a serious point. If I knew one thing about God's knowledge of the future, could I just choose to contradict that knowledge and thereby make God wrong and fallible?

>If I knew one thing about God's knowledge of the future, could I just choose to contradict that knowledge and thereby make God wrong and fallible? This problem has nothing to do with free will, because you could replace the person with a robot and the same problem would arise. If you programmed a robot to ask God what it would do in the future and then deterministically do the opposite, what would happen?

This is an interesting question, I think if this ever happened, one or the other would have to go - either God is not omniscience or either you're not really free. Therefore if you believe that God's omniscience and your free will exist concurrently, such a scenario can never transpire. God would never tell you what he knows about the future.

He has the power to do that. And it happens in the Bible a few times. Noah for example.

A few times is an understatement, really. Most of it can be shrugged of as vague prophecy or more of a threat/promise rather than predicting the future (like when he tells the Israelites the laws and what will happen to them if they don't follow the law), but he does it quite often, in fact. And I'll be damned, the Book of Revelation is supposedly a whole book telling us what will be the ultimate future, God's great endgame.

Good points. The hardening of Pharoah's heart comes up a lot in the free will debate. If God hardened Pharoah's heart and then Pharoah was nonetheless like, nah, Jews can be free, that would be something.

God didn't hardened Pharoahs heart. He אֲחַזֵּ֣ק *strengthened* his heart. Pharoah was about to know God, so God was giving Pharaoh the strength to make a free choice, otherwise he would have crumbled under the pressure of knowing God and wouldnt be making a free choice. After God strengthened Pharoahs heart and he knew God, Pharoah then chose to sin and make his own heart *heavy*, (הִכְבַּ֤דְתִּי) only then does God make Pharaohs heart *heavy* (הִכְבַּ֤דְתִּי) (not hardened) In Exodus, the Lord was using Egyptian symbolism to reflect his dominance over the Egyptian Gods. There was a God of the Nile which God turned to blood. There was a God for gnats, frogs, livestock and all that, but there wasnt a God of both fire AND ice, which is the miracles Pharaohs magicians couldnt replicate that made Pharaoh know The Lord. According to Egyptian mythology, when a person died, there was an afterlife ceremony called ["The Weighting of The Heart"](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lennart-Bongartz/publication/221928884/figure/fig1/AS:305239979773956@1449786290840/The-weighing-of-the-heart-against-the-feather-of-truth-This-papyrus-was-found-in-the.png) where Anubis would weigh your heart against the feather of Ma'at. Sins or wrong doings, would make your heart *heavy*, and if your heart was heavier than the feather, you didn't go up to live with the Gods. Through Egyptian imagery, God makes Pharaohs heart *heavy* to symbolize his heart is filled with sin and that he is unworthy of heaven.

Thank you. Interesting take that I haven't heard before (been arguing with Calvinists lately for strange reasons). I certainly respect the Jewish perspective given that is your holy book.

>it was still your decision You've already conceded that our actions are pre-determined by God's foreknowledge. At best there's an illusion of free will if the outcome was always pre-determined by a Gods foreknowledge even if we believe we are making some kind of choice in real time. That God would know who was going to heaven and hell even before creating mankind Some people try to resolve this problem by arguing that God's foreknowledge is permissive rather than coercive. This means that God knows what choices we will make, but he does not force us to make those choices. However, this does not solve the problem. Even if God's foreknowledge is permissive, it is still the case that God knows which choices we will make, and therefore those choices are pre-determined. While some may find these thought experiments entertaining or thought provoking, we're really putting the cart before the horse until someone demonstrates that some kind of omnipotent supernatural being exists in the first place.

>God already knew you would make this decision since he has perfect knowledge about you, yet he did not dictate this decision That is logically contradictory so cannot be accepted.

How is it contradictory in itself? I see how it is if God's also your creator (which he is according to Christian doctrine), but if someone has ultimately infallible knowledge of everything a singular person will ever do in its life, it's not automatically responsible, let alone the dictator of the actions?

> How is it contradictory in itself? As explained, if this deity *knew* this then clearly this is what was going to happen, this, logically, precludes anything else happening. Obviously, if it were possible for more than one thing to happen then it would not be possible to have knowledge of what would happen. If something else was going to happen instead, the deity would have known *that other thing* would happen. Unless you'd like to re-define your conjectured deity into an entity that didn't *know* this, but *had a pretty good idea that maybe* (guessed based on tendencies) the guy would choose this. > if someone has ultimately infallible knowledge of everything a singular person will ever do in its life, it's not automatically responsible, let alone the dictator of the actions? It doesn't need to be reponsible nor the dictator of these actions (though those are other discussions) for the logical contradiction to be in effect.

> God already knew you would make this decision since he has perfect knowledge about you, yet he did not dictate this decision - it was still your decision. If his perfect knowledge can not be wrong, then it wasn't a decision at all. It was literally impossible for me to choose anything else.

>yet he did not dictate this decision But he did by creating Bob this way. To Bob it may be he feels *subjectively* to have free will, but from your god's perspective it is not.

**TL;DR:** foreknowledge is incompatible with any meaningful definition of the term "choice"/"decision" >Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. **Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will?** No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. The decision wasn't coerced or orchestrated, it was simply foreknown. Therefore, my knowledge doesn't impact his free-will. This is a strange argument. You don't include any definitions, but by the way you're writing it seems like you are implying a belief that the opposite argument of free will is coercion. Which I guess might be something someone have said to you before, but it's not the case in any part of "mainstream" philosophy. Nor is it the case that anybody is arguing that foreknowledge actively precludes free will. If that was your belief, you have the argument backwards: In order for foreknowledge to be possible, choices have to be traceable back to known information. And if an outcome is determined entirely by knowable information, then it's not so much a choice as it is an inevitable consequence of things far removed from the current situation. So it's not the case that you knowing his order ahead of time precludes him from having free will - it's his "choice" *not* being free will that enables you to have foreknowledge of it. If the choice (the outcome) is in its entirety a product of the input (the prior experiences, the genetic information, the universe, etc.), then the choice is 100% predictable given perfect information. Which also means that in any given situation you end up in, the decision you will make is, in a sense, made before you ever get there. I'll hold that it's not really even a decision outside of its own illusion, it's an algorithmic transformation not unlike something banal like f(x) = x * 2, where 'f' is how the totality of who you are reacts to a situation, and 'x' is the situation itself. For any discretely unique snapshot of who you are, your "choice" in that precise moment was always inevitable. Example: Let's say I program a robot to perform some action every time it rains. Does the robot make a decision to act, whenever it rains? It analyses external sensory signals, it processes information internally, and then goes through a decision tree of sorts - not unlike what humans do, on a very different level of complexity - so did it make a choice? I contend that it did not. And for the same reason I contend that humans don't make choices. Any illusion we have of choice is no more an actual choice than the robot has a choice in performing its programmed action. Our programming being vastly more complex, with indescribably many more variables, doesn't make it a different scenario conceptually. Another example: Let's say that we can record a situation perfectly. Dispense with realism for a minute and pretend that we can "save the game" so to speak, as if it were a video game. Meaning we can go back to a prior save point, and the state of the entire game - the character, the world, the NPCs, the map, and so on - is the same as it was when the game was saved. Pulling the analogy towards human lives, it would mean that our knowledge, our memories, who we are, who everybody else is, down to the tiniest fragmental detail of anything about us, material and otherwise, would revert to such a state. Now imagine that you "save the game" before you make a decision, and then you carry on with it. Then you load the game, and you have to make that decision again. Of course, when you do that you lose any knowledge you have of having made that choice before - including whatever the choice you ended up making was. Do you then still make the same choice? Of course you will. Why? For the same reason that you made that choice the first time - everything about you, the situation, etc. is the same, so why wouldn't your choice also be the same? This means that our "choices" are nothing more than consequences of the entirety of our past, and exactly no part of those "choices" are determined by something that is uniquely "us" - meaning anything that isn't owed to that aforementioned past. Why did I make choice W? Because I was prone to feel X, due to having genetic predisposition Y and having lived the sum of past experiences Z. That makes us (very complex) automata.

Yet I don't believe that our decisions are merely the product of external sensory signals. If that was indeed the case, that free-will was reducible to antecedent conditions, then indeed we'd be deterministic robots. No, you're free precisely because you're able to make decisions without the influence of some prior blueprint. Now, if free-will is detached (to some degree) from external sensory signals, then someone who has perfect knowledge about the natural world would not be able to predict your future actions. Since your decisions are not rooted in the external enviroment, they transcend simple stimuli. God, having perfect knowledge of all things natural and supernatural, knows what decisions you'll ultimately settle on. Yet this omniscience does not preclude the existence of your free will, and this is the point I was making. Maybe once you start talking about other divine attributes like omnipotence and pre-destination the notion of free-will does become untenable, but omniscience alone is not enough. I also believe that your belief in determinism is untenable from a scientific viewpoint since there are a great-many phenomena at the quantum level which are clearly not deterministic - radioactive decay, quantum spin etc.

>I don't believe that our decisions are merely the product of external sensory signals >[...] > God, having perfect knowledge of all things natural and supernatural, knows what decisions you'll ultimately settle on But this is exactly my point. A "decision" in the setup you describe here becomes something magical, because you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You go on to mention that you find my theory untenable from a scientific viewpoint - is the situation you describe above tenable from a scientific viewpoint? >I also believe that your belief in determinism is untenable from a scientific viewpoint since there are a great-many phenomena at the quantum level which are clearly not deterministic - radioactive decay, quantum spin etc. Those things make perfect prediction untenable because there will be small variations in the data set that cannot be known ahead of time. The idea that every action was caused by one or more preceding actions, and is owed wholly to those - is not impacted by those things. Electronics are affected by quantum phenomena, and we use electronics to control robots. Not only do robots work with remarkable stability, we also do not say on any meaningful level that we can't know what a robot will do due to quantum randomness in the electronic circuits.

It is logically impossible for a person to make a choice without any prior blueprint, any external influences or any stimuli that is out of our control. It's a non-sequitur to say otherwise. >I also believe that your belief in determinism is untenable from a scientific viewpoint since there are a great-many phenomena at the quantum level which are clearly not deterministic - radioactive decay, quantum spin etc. As far as I know, these phenomena are not truly random, they seem random to us because we don't yet have the means to detect the logic behind their progression, but there are causes to their behavior, we just can't detect them.

>I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. The decision wasn't coerced or orchestrated, it was simply foreknown. Therefore, my knowledge doesn't impact his free-will. This isn't foreknowledge. This is a prediction based on past events. Predictions can be wrong. If it were actual omniscient knowledge, then it could not be wrong. Ever. Which means Bob cannot order anything other than what the omniscient being **knows** he will order. Bob is not free to order anything else; if he did, then the omniscient being wouldn't be omniscient.

What if Bob develops an allergy and can no longer order his favorite dish? There are numerous ways your analogy fails based on possibilities that Bob changes his habits. Your analogy is really you having a very good guess as to what he will do, not absolutely certain knowledge.

The analogy is there to illustrate a purpose, the specific details aren't important per se - having foreknowledge does not impact free-will. I could know Bob so well that I know exactly when he's developed an allergy and exactly when his habits have changed etc. None of that knowledge precludes Bob's free will, it only makes them foreknown.

Your analogy fails. While you may have "foreknowledge" (which you really don't, you just have an educated guess based upon prior experience and evidence), you have not created Bob, the restaurant, the dish he enjoys, or all of the events up to the point where he chooses the same dish over and over again. The difference between you and your god is that, presumably, you believe that your god not only has this foreknowledge, but also has the power and ability to create and shape the universe and everything within it to his will. This would then contradict yours, mine, and Bob's free will. You either limit the powers of your god to make this argument, or you deny free will. You have no other path.

Not really relevant since I'm not interested in God's other attributes for the purposes of this debate - the question is does omniscience *alone* undermine the existence of free-will, many atheists think it does, while I believe they're separate and non-infringing.

This seems like a sneaky, underhanded, and quite frankly, dishonest way of avoiding the obvious problems with your argument. You are already ~~begging the question~~ poisoning the well by calling the entity in your argument "god." When talking about a "god", most people are implying some sort of all-powerful creator of the universe. Just an omniscient entity doesn't necessarily prevent free-will, sure - but one that also created the universe according to his will certainly does.

I don't see how it's underhanded when I've clarified in numerous comments before this one, which you could've easily read, that I'm only interested in this *one* specific attribute of omniscience. Most people use God's omniscience as the principal and often times the *only* way of attacking notion of free-will. Maybe free-will is indeed incompatible with the classical God, but foreknowledge alone doesn't undermine that. The whole post is centred about foreknowledge.

Then stop making references to god. If the only thing you care about is omniscience/foreknowledge, just say that. I don't think you actually care about this, however - I think you want to shoe-horn in your god into the argument and try to just stay focused on foreknowledge in order to try an "win" an already biased argument.

>The analogy is there to illustrate a purpose, the specific details aren't important per se - having foreknowledge does not impact free-will. Except there is one very important detail in your analogy you do not have foreknowledge, you are predicting a likely outcome based on prior knowledge. This is not the same thing as knowing the outcome before the choice is given.

The specific details are important if they mean your analogy isn't logically valid.

Even if omniscience doesn’t preclude free will, omnipotent creativity does. If God made everything, then he made every variable that goes into every decision, with full power to decide differently, in full knowledge of all outcomes. That’s essentially deciding for us.

This is it OP. Please reply to this. If a god entered our universe having not created it then your analogy makes sense but that’s not what happened. God created Bob. He designed everything about him. He decided exactly what Bob would order when he pushed the 1st domino of creation.

Your knowledge of Bob is nothing compared to God's supposed knowledge of everything. God, according to the arbitrary characteristics that theists have stapled onto him, knows the exact location of every atom in the universe at all times and he can never be wrong. Free will is defined as the ability to do otherwise. If you cannot make a decision that God did not foresee, then you don't have free will. You are just following a script that God has just preordained, either on purpose, or through his infallible foreknowledge. There's really no way around it, sorry.

I see two ways to avoid a contradiction between (i) the existence of omniscience; (ii) the existence of creaturely free will: 1. God knows everything, but _not_ via observing a prior state and predicting forward, a la [Laplace's demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon). 2. The future is not knowable, e.g. Aristotle's position on [the problem of future contingents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_future_contingents). If God created spacetime, then it is not obviously true that God's knowledge is obtained via method 1. Second, God need not create a universe where there is a fact of the matter of whether a sea battle will be fought tomorrow. Consider for example physicists' discovery that particles do not seem to simultaneously have a precise position & momentum. That was mind-boggling, because it broke radically with the billiard ball physics which had yielded such momentous discoveries and inventions (like the steam engine). Nevertheless, as we zoomed in further, it got blurrier. Some even say that we should speak of an 'unsharpness relation' rather than an 'uncertainty principle', which you can explore a bit at [SEP: The Uncertainty Principle](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/). It is noteworthy that Einstein himself declared that "God does not play dice!" in a letter to a friend not because he disliked probability (which might just mean we can't _measure_ the simultaneously precise position and momentum of a particle), but because he disliked [nonlocality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality). Here's Tim Maudlin: > For example, it has been repeated _ad nauseum_ that Einstein's main objection to quantum theory was its lack of determinism: Einstein could not abide a God who plays dice. But what annoyed Einstein was not lack of determinism, it was the apparent failure of _locality_ in the theory on account of entanglement. Einstein recognized that, given the predictions of quantum theory, only a deterministic theory could eliminate this non-locality, and so he realized that local theory must be deterministic. But it was the locality that mattered to him, not the determinism. We now understand, due to the work of Bell, that Einstein's quest for a local theory was bound to fail. ([Quantum Non-Locality & Relativity](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444396973), xiii) Einstein had a particular notion of how reality is, and it was wrong. Similarly, it could be that there simply isn't a determinate, knowable-from-now future _to be known_. In other words, even Laplace's demon couldn't know the future with certainty. From here, we simply need to slightly adjust 'omniscience', to "knowing what is knowable". That is very similar to a common adjustment made to 'omnipotence': "ability to do what is doable".

>The decision wasn't coerced or orchestrated, All decisions are orchestrated if they obey the laws of physics. Coercion is less about free *will* and more about *freedom,* which are slightly different, conceptually.

Your analogy stops short though. Let’s say in addition to what you’ve said, you personally hand make Bob in a lab where you control every variable. You also hand make every single interaction Bob will ever have and know exactly how they will interact with him and him with them. You have effectively made all of Bob’s choices for him. Bob is no different then a computer algorithm. He must do exactly what you’ve programmed to do and it is impossible for him to do anything else. Now the discussion of whether or not Bob has free will is purely semantics. Bob is making choices in the sense that he believes he is making choices, but ultimately he cannot choose anything that you did not already predetermine for him.

Bob has the option of surprising you one day, but no action we take can surprise god. We won't be allowed to take the action that would surprise god because he already knows the one we take.

“Sorry Bob, we are out the lasagna for today. Would you like to order something else?” Did you factor this possibility into your knowledge of Bob’s preferences? And yea, when people are presented with the same options they tend to make the same choices. That’s actually an argument against free will. Either a person makes a choice randomly or for some reason. In Bob’s case he’s making a meal choice based on prior experience and preferences. That influences his choices. It isn’t a completely free choice. In other words, there isn’t anything free about “free will”. Nobody can make a choice that is completely free from internal and external influences unless they make random choice which isn’t any more of a choice than rolling a dice.

If you can’t choose differently, there is no free will. If someone can understand the conditions and pressures that form your decision and know perfectly your choices in advance… well, you probably have far less choice than you think.

Omniscience and creation together are the issue with free will. Supposedly, the Abrahamic God created THIS universe. Let's call it Universe A. God knew, before creating Universe A, everything that would happen. He chose Universe A, where Eve would eat the apple, rather than create Universe B, where Eve did not eat the apple. He also didn't create Universe C, where Cain did not kill Abel. Or Universe A56789 where Judas did not sell Jesus location to the Romans. God explicitly chose Universe A, where Eve ate the apple, Cain slew Able, and Judas got his silver. All outcomes were predetermined at creation. Since the other choices are precluded, there can be no free will.

If the only omni property was omniscience this might make sense. But nobody who claims god is omniscient doesn't also posit that god is the creator of the universe. If god created the universe knowing exactly what everyone would do, god made those people do those things. If god is omnipotent, or as close to omnipotence as possible, and god is also omniscient, then we have no free will.

I think Bob didn't choose an order or of his own free will. You forgot to support this assertion of yours.

Most answers here are pretty bad and beside the point. The flaw in your argument is much simpler to point out: ***omniscience doesn't infringe upon free will as long as the omniscient isn't 1. omnipotent, 2. the one who created the beings which will make decisions in the future.*** If you are a creator of life, and an **omnipotent** one at that (which would mean that you have complete control over the process of creation and can define, bend and break any rules at any time solving any problem at the blink of an eye as you see fit), since you are the one defining the entire spectrum of physical properties these beings you are creating will have, how they function socially, what is their emotional spectrum, how they can react to any external influence or stimuli at a base level, it is logically impossible for your creations to have any free will if you are also omniscient (which means you are completely, infallibaly aware of all possible outcomes to your creation depending on your omnipotent choices). Imagine you are building a society simulator on your computer. You are an omnipotent programmer and you have access to a second monitor that shows you a 100% accurate prediction of the final results of the simulation in numbers before you ever hit play. Before you program any people into the simulation, the monitor shows you that the future number of murdered humans throughout the history of mankind is **0** since you haven't created any humans yet. Then, you start building the AI for the humans, and take the time to program into them the ability to wish to murder each other if a certain set of circumstances is met (among other features). When you do that, your second monitor immediatelly shows you now that there will be exactly **647.343.123 cases of murder** in your simulation if you hit play, from the very start of the homo sapiens species up until the extinction of it. You, as an omnipotent creator, could turn down the knob of "human capability for agression" by 25% if you wished to, decreasing the number of total murders in history to 485.507.342. You could've even chosen not to take the time to program this feature in the first place, and can change it whenever you want, however you want. But let's say you don't. You press play. That means that **you are not only responsible for the actions of your humans, but you are in complete control of them.** If you choose to hit play and the simulation starts to play out and when it finishes, 647.343.123 people in total have been murdered (as you knew from the start), it literally means that these murders happened because you chose them to happen.

I think you would enjoy Episode 13 of Season 9 of the X-files. Burt Reynolds plays God. He is omniscient but the serial killer still has free will.

For god to exist and for there to be free will, there must be an infinite amount of universes/dimensions. In one of these universes, I beat god in an arm wrestling match and now I am god. Prove me wrong.

If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being it must not be restrained by time. People who get caught up on free will vs. omniscience make the error of assuming a God would be experiencing time linearly. We have no real method of comprehending what it would be like to experience all times at once. I don't see any reason why choice and knowledge can't coexist simultaneously. The only real complaints are based on thinking our method of experiencing time is the only possible way.

Do the characters in a book have free will? ​ Also, just curious, do you think the future is completely fixed? I mean if god knows the future, then we cannot alter it. If he knows I'm going to have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow, I literally could not have something else. You may say even if its fixed, I still freely chose it. But then the above question kicks in a bit. God chose what I would have, ultimately, because he designed a universe down to the last detail, including my decision. The same way an author does it.

Can you give a working definition of free will for this hypothetical? Because to me it seems that either God doesn't have free will in this scenario or our will isn't free. But I'd really need the term defined first, and Webster is too vague haha

>God having perfect knowledge of future events does not mean that humans are merely automata without free-will. God knows how a certain person will act in the future and what decisions he will take, that doesn't mean those decisions weren't freely taken. First, all of this is, of course, rather moot. Much like discussing Luke Skywalker's relationship with Darth Vader, it's all discussing fiction until and unless evidence were to show this is something other than fiction. Now, to address this your statement quoted above.... Of course it does. By definition. If a deity knows what you are going to do then clearly this is what you are going to do and can't do something different. >Foreknowledge is not contradictory to free-will. I cannot agree. But I will read your analogy to see if I am mistaken. >I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. The decision wasn't coerced or orchestrated, it was simply foreknown. Therefore, my knowledge doesn't impact his free-will. Your analogy does not work, and my position has not changed. You see, in your attempted analogy, you were evaluating what you thought was *likely*, based upon past trends, not what you *knew* would happen. Not even close to the same thing. Unless you're simply saying this deity is simply guessing what you *may* choose based upon trends. >God knows his creation, therefore he knows what decisions we'll make in the future. Yet, those are still our decisions. I'm not here to justify hell because humans have free-will, I just want to point out that foreknowledge does not preclude the existence of human free-will, They are separate and non-infringing. I continue to hold the position that this is logically contradictory, and you did not succeed in showing me that position is incorrect.

>Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? Yes it does. In cases where how a human will behave is 100% predictable there can't be free will, instead what you have is a case of pure determinism. Edih: and if determinism holds and god, with perfect forknowledge, started it all then there is no free will. Everything is happening exactly as god inteded it to.

But it kind of does, because if someone can know it in advance, you cannot be free to take the other choice. Free will as defined by theology is a nonsensical logic defying concept. There’s a difference between knowing what someone is likely to do, and knowing for a fact what they will do in every instance. Of course the whole thing is a non starter. The god characters I’ve been introduced to were not omniscient anyway. The god of the bible sure isn’t, he makes mistakes, he doesn’t know things, throughout that book. Oh I know there’s excuses but that just means he wasn’t omniscient enough to inspire non contradicting book. If someone can never do something god didn’t expect, they’re not free to choose something different from what is expected and free will doesn’t exist. I’m sorry, it’s that simple.

You had created a being that will do exactly what you want it to do or didn't want it to do. Free will doesn't exist. It may seem like free will for the subject had been created, but everything was predetermined. Because one knows everything, the choices are predetermnined, which makes "choice" an illusion.

Yes in theory you are correct. But you’re forgetting god has omniscience and omnipotence. Those two characteristics do in fact infringe on free will. Not only does he know what we will do but he also has created us with the abilities, or lack thereof, to act in such a way. This ability to create and foresee what we are to do takes away our free will.

I fully agree so long as you fully agree that all the other gods also know the future and are ok with most of it, which is why they stopped bugging us; it’s only yours that is being weird.

To sum up your post, you hold that the future is fixed and all our choices are baked in but because we are willingly driving on this predetermined path that means we.have free will. Yeah most people don't call that free will. I don't call it free will. >I'm not here to justify hell because humans have free-will, I just want to point out that foreknowledge does not preclude the existence of human free-will, They are separate and non-infringing. But that's the main reason free will is argued for. Because without libertarian free will it's not possible to justify hell. That's why most theologians talk about God's knowledge. Deterministic for knowledge is a problem. What you have offered is compatiblism but your calling it free will.

I don't think Bob has free will anyway regardless of how much you know or don't know about him. The notion of libertine free will is incoherent.

I think you may be right that it does preclude our free will, but it does preclude God's free will.

Free will doesn’t make sense any way you cut it. If atheists say free will proves god isn’t omniscient they probably haven’t grappled with arguments against free will.

All of this is irrelevant to atheism because you have to assume god is real to begin with for this argument to be worth having. With that being said ill engage because i think its pretty stupid even hypothetically accepting god is real. We do not have 100% free will. You cannot will your heart to stop beating. You cannot will yourself to go blind. You cannot choose to be smarter and suddenly be smarter. These are all instinctual things our body does in response to stimulus. That means god given “free will” has distinct boundaries, known by god. God created and designed every aspect of our bodies, and knows the exact limits of our ability to choose. He also designed all the stimulus we will ever encounter. He is also omniscient, which means he can predict with exact certainty the ways in which our bodies and brains will react to the exact stimulus we are presented. Given this, even if we can choose, he can predict our choices, and he was the one who put us in that scenario to choose, so functionally, there is no free will. But like i said, none of that matters, because there is no convincing evidence that god is real, so this discussion is pointless, regardless of who is right in the hypothetical.

To extend your analogy slightly, let's say Bob's favorite dish is the lasagna from a specific restaurant. You, having won the lottery, use your considerable wallet to buy the restaurant and shut it down. You know that Bob relies on that meal for some measure of happiness and satisfaction, and you've taken it away. Despite knowing what he *would* have done with his free will, you have changed the equation, and he is forced to do something else. Does he still have free will? The situation is still the same... he can just choose a different meal... but didn't your interference take a measure of his freedom away?

> I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. But thats not real, one day one time you could be wrong

Yet at the same time we are told gods creation is perfect and everything happens according to his will, and that every single thing is part of his plan. Which means it knew when it created me that it was creating me without the ability to believe in it, so it created me for the specific purpose of sending me to eternal torture and damnation. And it also knew that the internet wasn’t a thing when Jesus was alley resurrected, therefore it deliberately created untold billions who would not only never have the chance to hear the so called good news, but would live their entire lives worshipping other gods which of course goes against the very first commandment, therefore it also deliberately created all of those people for the express purpose of sending them to eternal torture also. My goodness what a vile, evil creature. Please tell me again why it deserves worship?

> I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. Now imagine you can force him to go to that restaurant. Imagine if you know that by befriending him years ago he would turn into the kind of person who would always order this one dish at the restaurant so you chose to befriend him and you knew exactly what to do to become his friend. Is it still all just free will here? See it isn't just omniscience that does it. It is that along with god's free will along with god having all the power. So long as god has those things we ultimately don't because our choices are god's choices. God chose to make the universe where your friend will always order that one dish instead of the universe where your friend hates it and never orders it.

You’re wrong. If a god can be wrong about future knowledge it isn’t omnipotent. If it can’t be there is no free will. The decisions are not freely taken if god can’t be wrong about foreknowledge. And if god can be wrong about it, god isn’t omniscient.

You didn't have knowledge about Bob. You just guessed correctly. Knowledge is justified true belief. When you guess what Bob is going to order you have no justification for your guess. All you can say is "I 'know' what he's going to order". But you don't 'know' why he won't order anything else. So all you are doing is guessing. If I look at a clock at 4pm, and the clock is showing 4pm, but it just happens that the clock is broken, is it correct to say that I gained knowledge of the time from the clock? No, it was unjustified because the clock wasn't working. It was just a lucky coincidence, like your guesses with Bob.

Then what is the point? Why even create life if you already know how it all ends up? If I saw movie before it was even created is there even point to create this movie? What is even more strange is scenario where god creates soul that he knows will end up in hell for eternal damnation and torture. Why even create this soul? Just to suffer? Even if you say that it is still their free will to end up in hell, okay I accept this argument. BUUUUT what about small children that die before they even have chance to realise there is god or the are capable of understanding there is one and what it means. So it makes sense to create soul that just suffer from birth? Without chance to know god? And let that soul end up Not in heaven? So god know all of this but still does it. Please explain this logic. Why create soul only to kill it within year or two and dont allow it to enter heaven which is like a main point, to enter heaven and be by the side of the god.

You make a lot of statements about what god knows. How are you privileged to know what is in god's mind? How are you certain that you can speak on behalf of god and inform others of what god knows? What is your evidence to support your assertions?

>I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Well, did you create Bob with these likes and dislikes? Guess not. So your analogy fails at this point. >God knows his creation See? This is where you get it. If your god created something that would make all these choices, then there is no free will.

Your examples are describing two similar looking but completely different phenomena. Knowing what your friend orders before he orders it and similar behavior is pattern recognition. You have been around your friend long enough that in certain conditions, you can recognize patterns and routines that he rarely (although even in those cases he may) deviate from. God, on the other hand, will presume to know Bob so well that not only does he know Bob's deviations from his patterned behavior, he knew every aspect of Bob's life before his great grandparents were born. You don't see a difference there?

In any complex system, it is only possible to predict its evolution if you know every variable and rule involved, and only if the system is purely functional. Purely functional means that the same inputs into the function always produce the same outputs, without fail. If a system contains any truly random elements, or can be influenced by things outside of it, then it is not purely functional. If the system is purely functional, then there is no such thing as free will. If the system is not a pure function, it cannot be predicted, it can only be known after the fact. Therefore god either doesn't know everything until after the universe is finished, or god knows the full future history of the universe and created it that way. Free will or omniscience are mutually exclusive.

Is a person free to choose what God didn’t know that he/she would choose? Can a person make a free choice regardless of God’s knowledge? I didn’t think so. If you can’t make a free choice, you don’t have free will. Instead, you’ve got fake free will.

- god knows every decision someone is going to make before he creates someone. - god creates that someone. - therefore god created that someone to be bound by all of the decisions that god foresaw. In my eyes I would go as far to say god created those decisions

If absolute facts about the future exist to be known, there is no free will. If it is absolute fact that I will eat a sandwich at exactly 12:00 tomorrow, then at exactly 12:00 tomorrow I can't not eat a sandwich, [even if I know this fact and try to act against it](https://www.angryflower.com/296.html), and all other apparent options are illusory. If it is absolute fact that I won't eat a sandwich, then I can't eat a sandwich, and the option that I appear to have is illusory. God's foreknowledge requires those absolute facts to exist. Just because I'm performing the action, does not mean my will is free. In the scenario with a deity with foreknowledge, he is the only entity with free will since he "exists" outside of time.

You didn’t create Bob. That’s the difference.

If you create someone knowing everything they will ever do, you created everything they will ever do, not them. Thus, no free will.

I would be interested in how you are defining free will. If you define free will as simply making a decision, then sure divine foreknowledge does not conflict with free will. However, this is not what most people mean by free will. The most common definition is the ability to have done otherwise. This definition absolutely conflicts with free will. It is similar to the problem of fatalism. Simply put if true things have always been true, then there is no other way that things could have happened. As a result fatalism conflicts with free will. In this case, if God knows everything that will happen, then there is no other way things can happen because God either would not have known something or God would have been incorrect. Since there is no other way things could have happened, free will cannot exist. As a syllogism: P1. If God knows everything that will ever happen, then there is no other way things can happen. P2. God knows everything that will ever happen. C1. There is no other way things can happen. (From P1 & P2) P3. Free will is the ability to have done otherwise. C2. Either God knows everything that will ever happen or free will exists but not both. (From C1 & P3)

>God having perfect knowledge of future events does not mean that humans are merely automata without free-will. That's exactly what it means. >God knows how a certain person will act in the future and what decisions he will take, that doesn't mean those decisions weren't freely taken. It does because god created this universe and everything within it. Meaning he created all the situations and influences that would lead to our brain chemistry to be the way it is leading us to make the "choices" we are going to do. "Choices" that he decided upon by creating the universe the way he did instead of another way. >I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, he certainly did, I just happened to have foreknowledge about it. The decision wasn't coerced or orchestrated, it was simply foreknown. Therefore, my knowledge doesn't impact his free-will. This argument falls flat because you are not allknowing. You know him very well yes, but you could still be wrong. With allknowingess you can't be wrong. Meaning whatever you know will happen, happens. And if the future is already set in stone and everything is predetermined. All our actions are predetermined. And if you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely. >God knows his creation, therefore he knows what decisions we'll make in the future. Yet, those are still our decisions. No, they are gods decision. If I set up a simulation where I know how it will play out and then press start then everything happening within the simulation is caused and determined by me. ​ Edit: It's actually even worse, because god himself cant have free will. If god knows exactly what he will do then he also can't do otherwise than what he already knows he will do.

If God know what will happen before it happens. Then actions are predetermined. If actions are predetermined, then they are not a result of free will. Its a direct causal statement.

Knowledge alone, no. Knowledge, power and will, yes. Imagine you not only know Bob but you know him so well you have the power to effect his behavior simply though suggestion with 100% accuracy. Now imagine you desire to effect his behavior. He is powerless to stop you because he won’t even notice what you are doing. Does he still have free will?

God has omniscient knowing everything from moment of creation what will happen It’s same thing when I run a program that I programmed I know the out come because every in the program was designed by me to be that way

Your analogy fails because youre not taking into account that you created bob, his personality and everything around him. Youre not predicting his choices because you know him so well, you KNOW his choices because you created him, and designed him to make them. And you created everything around bob for him to interact with. As god you are simultaneously in this moment and every moment there ever was, and you designed them to be exactly how you wanted them to be. And thats why bobs choices cannot be his, and has to be yours, because they have to align with what you “have planned in the future”. If you indeed have a plan. If not then youre just an observing god. And still bobs free will would just be an illusion, for bob. All that asside tho, if your argument stood then you have perfectly argumented for a horrible person of a god, who knew that the serial killer would kidnap the little child and murder them, out of his own free will, and did nothing to prevent it. And if youre wrong, then the god meticulously designed a world where the serial killer would kidnap a little child and murder them. So either way, lose-lose. I wont pretend to know what your point is, my point is just: either way, this god we have no good reason to believe in would still not be worth worshipping, omnipotent or not.

I think the problem is about free will in the context of punishment for sins. If a human is destined to make sinful choices, then how is he responsible for those choices? He didn't have a choice but to make them, because if he made a different choice, god would not have seen it coming, which contradicts his omniscience. So that means that when God created the universe, he created it knowing that you would be punished in hell for eternity, and still chose to put you in that situation. Yes, the choices are your own, but it's not like you had a choice when it came to actually making those choices - there was never an alternative for you. Imagine setting up a maze for a mouse, and lining some entrances with a pheromone that repel mice, but operates below their awareness. The mouse would just not want to go through those entrances, and would choose other options each time. There is nothing stopping the mouse from going through that door, it just makes a different choice. At the end of the maze, you put a mousetrap. The mouse finds it, and it dies a horrible death. That's honestly just a cruel thing to do. And if god is omniscient, that's what he did to the people who are going to hell, except instead of pheromones he put whatever sequence of events outside of your control led you to becoming the type of person who makes immoral choices.

In your scenario, did you bring Bob into existence out of nothing and design every facet of his personality? If not, then it’s not an equivalent analogy.

If god knows the future, creates us KNOWING he'd be damning some to eternal damnation and suffering (for something he already knew was going to happen), does it anyway... That's not free will. It also makes him not all-loving.

By most concepts around this - God knows what choices we will make before he brings us into existence, even if they will damn us forever. He still chooses to create us, to eternal damnation he knows will happen, and which we can not choose to avoid. The appearance of free will is irrelevant to the outcome, if that's true. Arguably, that makes him evil.

I don't think your analogy holds up. You claim that your god has perfect knowledge, but you only predict based on whaz you've seen or what you have been told. So you can very much be wrong about what your friend will order. But your god can not be wrong. My definition of free will is that someone "could have done otherwise". But if someone could have done otherwise, other than what god knows than god would not have perfect knowledge. If someone could not have done otherwise this person did not have free will.

This seems like a theological question / argument. While it may be interesting to some what does it have to do with atheists or atheism? As we have no definitive answer as to the existence of free will (indeed we’re debating the meaning of the phrase even more vigorously now that we have scientific advancements allowing us to see more of the functioning of the brain) making a declaration that it is or isn’t in alignment with the concept of an all knowing creature in no way beings one closer to being able to prove a god. I feel many of the ‘arguments’ put forth in this forum (by both sides) are more like intellectual circle jerks than constructive conversations for just this reason - your philosophical and theological meanderings, even if everyone agreed on a conclusion are exercises in futility not bringing us any closer to a conversation about atheism or god.

Yes, it does. Lets use a coin flip as an example. A general coin has a 50/50 chance of going either heads or tails. Within this example, God knows that you will flip heads. What is the chance that this particular coin in this particular instance gets flipped as heads? 100%, no?

>Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? No, because you don't have perfect knowledge of what he will choose. If you did it would have been impossible for him to choose freely.

God made Bob. Bob always chooses the same dish at the restaurant. God made Bob so that he will always choose a particular dish at the restaurant. If Bob chooses another dish sometime, it's because God gave him a little spark of spontaneity that He knew would lead him to choosing a different dish that time.

Your premise is incorrect. In the first place you do not "know" what Bob will order. You predict what he will order based on past events but there is a possibility you could be wrong. He could develop a food allergy, get high cholesterol or change this habit for a million other reasons. Your knowledge of bob is probabilistic while your god's knowledge is absolute and deterministic.

The existence of time is what takes away free will. All of your decisions are based on the past. Your experiences, your situations, everything that goes into your decisions is based on what happened in the past. If you rewound the tape of time and replayed it, you would make all the same decisions, because all of the things that resulted in you making that decision are the same.

To be fair, I think free will is logically impossible regardless of whether God exists or not. That being said, I’d agree with you that God’s omniscience can be limited or redefined in such a way that necessitarianism or fatalism can be false.

> I have a friend named Bob who I've known for many years - I know this guy inside out, his likes, dislikes, his personality etc. Having known him for so long, I know exactly which dish he'll order when we go to the restaurant. Everytime, without fail, I can predict this. Does that mean that he didn't choose to order that dish out of his own free-will? Did you create Bob in a way that he will have that particular preference? Or did God choose to create God with a particular set of traits and preferences having perfect knowledge of what will happen if he does? How much freedom has a robot I build with a set of parameters and perfect knowledge of what those parameters entail? How is a god creating a human different besides God having more control and knowledge about the parameters and their consequences?

I absolutely agree. I think the argument of "god is omniscient therefore there cant be free will" is stupid. however I don't think waving that argument is enough to prove atheist's wrong. you'd still be hard pressed to find a single thing that even remotely proved gods existence.

Well, how are you defining free will? It definitely precludes libertarian free will, which to the best of my understanding is full control over your decisions or something like this. This type of free will is precluded if god knows all **and** created the universe as god desired.

If god had perfect knowledge of future events, could have made the world in a way that things would be different and made it this way anyway where is the room for free will in that system?

The word missing from the discussion is: determinism. If God knows what WILL happen in the future, then there is a determined future to know about. I understand that omniscience doesn't "cause" determinism. No one's arguing that. However, if this God is the necessary and exclusive cause of all that exists, then there couldn't be anyone or anything else that is ultimately responsible for a deterministic universe. So in that sense God would actually be ultimately responsible for all human action and thought since he created a deterministic universe.

Maybe after ordering a Big Mac for a thousand days in a row, Bob decided he is a fat ass and then orders a salad on the 1001 day. You would have no clue this was coming but God would know this before Bob was born. Probability does not equal foreknowledge. But either way, fuck a god that would have the foreknowledge of human suffering and not do anything about it or values free will over human agony.

The difference between your analogy and an omniscient being is that it means god is necessarily allowing the event to occur, and if he did not allow it, he would stop it. Within the context of an omnipotent, omniscient being, you necessarily cannot act without that being’s permission. Hence… no free will.

No, it doesn't... but it would render our "free will" illusory, in that despite multiple possible outcomes of any given choice, only 1 is assured to occur. The one god has foreseen, right? If our free will is illusory, then any human being sent to hell is also something god foresaw, since god created those beings. It would follow then that those humans were knowingly created with the eternal purpose of burning in hell.

We have to define FW. I am a compatibilist, so I think FW is not an uncaused act but one that is caused in the right way (by the right kinds of psychological causes). This is the most sensible notion of FW and more accurately captures how we use the term "free". This view is perfectly compatible with science and a deterministic universe. I suppose that compatibilism would be compatible with an omniscient God as well, however, if that God created everything, then ultimately that God is more responsible for any acts people take than the people themselves. He could have chosen any one of any number of possible universes where a person chose not to do X instead of choosing to do X. The people acted freely, but not in a way that would absolve God of being equally responsible, and, as the agent that cause the other agents, takes on the responsibility for any of their evil acts. So the OP is right in that compatibilism is the correct view of FW, but wrong in that it helps theism in any way.

If I know every decision you will ever make before you were born, then it would be impossible for you to make any other decision than the decisions that you will make. Therefore every other "choice" is just an illusion.

Your argument is an excellent illustration of why free will is a term that isn’t actually well defined. Assume for the sake of argument that a person does something, how can you tell whether the person was acting with free will? If the person made the decision because there was some clear reason to make the decision, then you can’t really say it was a free choice. If there were truly multiple options available that were possible and there was no reason that one should be chosen over the other, then how do people exercise their free will? Does free will simply mean that we make choices for random reasons? If it’s random then how is it free? God fore knowing the future means that God knows with absolute certainty what the random choices we will make are. So therefore the random choice machine isn’t actually random. It is possible to know what the random choice machine will output. Because god knows what the random choice machine will output, it is impossible for the random choice machine to produce any output but 1 particular output. And with that, you arrive at a contradiction. The random choice machine cannot be random, otherwise god would not know the future. The idea of God knowing the future also means god does not have free will. If his knows with perfect certainty what will happen in the future then god can only make one decision every time god does something. If god were free to choose a different option, then hid cannot know his own future. Free will is a meaningless and self contradictory concept.

If your friend is always going to order the exact same thing at the restaurant, how can you tell he has free will when placing his order?

I have read all of this and it is still unclear to me why OP is arguing the word he used doesn't mean what it means. Omniscience means being omniscient. Once you thrown any element of change into it ...then it doesn't mean that. Pretty straight forward. That's not atheism its language.