Read a couple articles on Divine Providence vs. Free Will

This guy Nelson Pike made the argument that divine foreknowledge makes it impossible for humans to have free will. As Pike put it himself: “if God exists, no human action is voluntary.” Since omniscience is implied in the very nature of God, He can never hold false beliefs. If this means God knows all, he must know about future events before they occur. This is where Pike steps in, and says that if current events have been already witnessed by God, than there is a connection between the two. After all, if God knows something particular will happen in full detail, than it can’t not happen. That would be as logically contradictory as making a square circle. If God knows Jones is going to do X, than he has stripped Jones of his ability to do otherwise.

So if you're anything like me, you wonder about the difference between simply knowing the cause and causing by knowing. Did God’s foreknowledge mean anything other than God simply knew ahead of time? Does God’s foreknowledge necessarily cause the event to happen? In the article, Pike first finds the need to define “necessary” as the antonym of “voluntary.” Whenever an action is not voluntary, it is necessary. Jones doing X was not necessary in the modal-logical concept, but because it was not voluntary, because of the argument Pike presented above. Jones may not have needed to do X but since God knew that he would ahead of time, Jones’ ability to choose not to do X cannot exist. Pike also refutes the notion that “it is because men act as they do that God foreknows what He foreknows,” due to the fact that it claims men actually determining what God thinks, violating God’s essence as being self-sufficient. Besides, the present cannot change the past.

So I looked for a debunking article. Turns out this dilemma posed by Pike has been answered by Hugh J. McCann, who argues that God exists atemporally, in an eternity outside of time. He agrees with Pike that an omniscient God should know every proposition that is true. However, with God existing atemporally, outside of time as we know it, God cannot know events either before or after they occur, or even simultaneously! His knowledge is timeless, so His knowledge encompasses all of existence. However, since He is by very nature outside of time, this does not mean He knows the event occurring (let’s say John mowing his lawn) before it does. But He does know about John mowing his lawn because he has always been aware of that fact. God, by his very nature, cannot differentiate which moment in time is present, past or future, therefore God is unable to know any tensed proposition.

This argument concurs with something I've read about called "Open Theism" by claiming that God does not foreknow that Jones will cut the grass. But Open Theism offers a different argument for the explanation. Open Theism argues that no one can know certain things in the future because nothing is yet to be true about them, due to the fact those certain things in the future simply don’t exist yet. The future is coming; that much is unquestionable. But what will happen is still up for grabs, and this preserves libertarian free choice (meaning simple, voluntary choice). Yet God can predict the future, based off a particular person’s character or based off the plan He has set up for the future, but He cannot know it.

Another guy named Alvin Plantinga offers a rebuttal of Pike’s dilemma as well, but his defense differs from McCann’s and Open Theism’s. He draws questions not with God’s omniscience, nor with Pike’s points of the impossibility of logical contradiction, but with God’s omniscience determining Jones’ mowing his lawn. But instead of saying Jones might defy God’s omniscience, thereby making Him wrong, Plantinga argues that Jones still has the ability to do something other than what God had foreknown, and that God simply knows he won’t.

Interestingly enough, Plantinga incorporates other worlds to explain his response to the notion of men’s actions determining what God can know. God knows before Jones does that in the actual world Jones will mow his lawn. But that there can be other worlds where Jones does refrain from doing what God foreknows. If those other worlds were actual, God would have been wrong. But how do we know what God would believed in other worlds? It’s still possible that God has correctly foreknown what will occur in other worlds, even as He knows what will occur in this actual one. So in all worlds God can still know on His behalf without depending on Jones to determine the knowledge for Him.

I'm still kind of torn on the issue. Anybody have any additional thoughts on the issue?

But that the future is unknown even to God, because of the unpredictability of our ownfree will, and of the unpredictability of the rest of the universe on the microscopic realm: that is, at the level of particles, which are all unpredictable, all run on probability, and do things that hsouldn't be possible, like creating themselves ex nihilo.

And I think that's how God wants it, because God would be very bored to know everything that was gonna happen, and I, for one, don't believe that God created us without free will. I don't think God is into puppetry, but is more interested in process - "Let's create a universe and see what happens!"

That's my theological understanding of free will.

I don't do predestination, because, as I said, I don't think God is into puppetry. It just makes no sense, since there would be no need for repentance or forgiveness, there would be no need for Jesus, there would be no need for Moses and the Exodus...

I'd very much like to read them.

TIA

But here are a few citations:

Nelson Pike
"Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action"
The Philosophical Review, 74
January 1965

Hugh J. McCann
"The God Beyond Time"
Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (Editor: Louis P. Pojman)
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning
Pages 216-230

Alvin Plantinga
God, Freedom and Evil
New York: Harper & Row, 1974
Pages 66-72

By the way, "The Critic" is one of my favorite television shows.

I very much subscribe to the deist view. I have come to believe that God is neither good nor evil, since good and evil themselves products of mortal fallibility. Being that a consciousness so omniscient as the Creator is presumably infallible, that would mean that such a consciousness would be beyond such mortal qualities, ultimately impartial, and therefore removed from the process of creation it initially set in motion.

As for predestiny, I do not think othe future is set in stone, but I do believe the choices we make set us along certain paths in our lives. Many paths are laid before us from birth and we are free to choose which we take. And the choices we individually make combine to lay out the collective future of us all.

ON EDIT: this took me a helluva long time to write, and it probably makes no sense at all!



Well, at least on the first part. The bit about alternate worlds seems unneccecary.

Assuming that there is a God and that he is all knowing, then he would know the future. However, I do believe in free will.

I contend that God knows what you will do. As Plantinga said, humans have a vast array of choices before us at all times. Many times, its a seemingly infinite number of choices. God, however, knows which choices we will make, and how they will affect us. Does he interfere with our choices? No. Does he influence our decision making? Not actively. Ny that, I mean that God does not make decisions for us. He passively influences our decisions. The best example of this would be someone trying to help others because he believes that is what would please God. But God does not force the person to make a choice to help others.

My best explaination for my reasoning can be illustrated by the future. The future, as far as I am concerned, is already laid out before us. We can not see it, however, because we do not know what other people will do. We can get a good picture of our personal futures because we know our decision making tendancies and we know how react to different stimuli. However, our one setback is that we only have such intimate knowledge of ourselves. There are literally billions of wild cards walking around on the planet.

Imagine, however, taking such knowledge and using it through the eyes of an omnipotent being. Then extend that knowledge to all life in the universe. With such knoweldge, all that it would take for precognition is simple pattern recognition skills. I am sure God is quite capable of that.

But what prevents the future from changing on a whim? Well, consider:
Assume that a person has a set future in front of them. Any chioces they make in their daily lives leads to this future, and all external influences (other people, outside conditions such as weather and current events) would occur independently of this person as they go through their day and their life. The only reason a potential for change in the timeline would occur would be due to an influence independant from the timeline. For example, the only way one could really change the future (and not the hokey, "this is your future if you don't change your ways, Ebenezer Scrooge" future) would be if they had a precise knowledge of the future, and then actively set out to change it. Otherwise, they would just go about their routines, all the while making choices that are fit to their character and personality.

What I am trying to say (quite akwardly, I admidt) is that God gives you free will, but he knows the future because he knows you. He knows what choices will be presented to you, and he knows what options you will choose.

The only way to prove God and arrive at an alternate future would be to actively work against God. What this means is the only way one could prove God wrong would be to make decisions in their life with an attidute of "There, God, bet you didn't see that one coming." It would be a game of constantly second guessing yourself, stopping and thinking "No, that's what God will be expecting!" Clearly, this is insane.

But, chances are, he expected you would do that anyway.

And I say that for a couple reasons.

First of all, the only time I talk to you is when we're bitching over something, so I thought I'd hand you a compliment for a change.

Second of all, I really do think that was well written.

Most of the time, when I am talking on DU it is so I can bitch.

But this seemed like an interesting opportunity for some (at least mild) intellectual discourse.

Its a very interesting topic

So if you're anything like me, you wonder about the difference between simply knowing the cause and causing by knowing. Did God’s foreknowledge mean anything other than God simply knew ahead of time? Does God’s foreknowledge necessarily cause the event to happen? In the article, Pike first finds the need to define “necessary” as the antonym of “voluntary.” Whenever an action is not voluntary, it is necessary. Jones doing X was not necessary in the modal-logical concept, but because it was not voluntary, because of the argument Pike presented above. Jones may not have needed to do X but since God knew that he would ahead of time, Jones’ ability to choose not to do X cannot exist. Pike also refutes the notion that “it is because men act as they do that God foreknows what He foreknows,” due to the fact that it claims men actually determining what God thinks, violating God’s essence as being self-sufficient. Besides, the present cannot change the past.

Why does God knowing that Jones will do X remove Jones' inability to not do X?

If God is all knowing, God could simply know the decision Jones would make, given the situation.

If God knows, at 6:00 in the morning, what Jones is going to do at noon, then there is zero chance that Jones could act any other way at noon than that which God has foreseen at 6:00.

That's the argument, at least.

The fact that Jones will do what God foresaw does not mean that Jones does not freely decide to do so.

Personally, even if we take Pike's initial idea at face value (that God is omniscient and thus knows everything that WILL happen in the future), I think his conclusion doesn't make sense - just because God knows doesn't mean that Jones has no choice. At least not as I see it. All it means is that God knows what Jones is going to do; and that knowing does not - as I see it - mean that God has determined what Jones will do simply because God knows it.

In that sense I consider Pike idiotic since his conclusion, based on his hypothesis, simply makes no sense. It's like the ramblings of the insane who are into astrology or numerology.

But it's his theory, so there you go. Send him a letter. I'm really curious to hear why his logic is so fundamentally out of the loop.

... is that the same as saying that there is only one way in which
Jones could get to do whatever at noon?

(i.e., simply knowing that Jones will be crossing the Main Street and
have a near miss with a drunk driver neither precludes a wide variety
of events between 06:00 and 12:00 nor determines the reasons *why*
Jones is doing that then)

Nihil