There are two ways for free will to coexist with free will that I can think of:

1.  An Omniscient being knows all possible outcomes.  That is to say, you have free will, and knows what will happen no matter what you choose.  I don't really like this one though, because, being omniscient, the being would know what choice you would make.

2.   The better explanation is this:  a being's omniscience does not affect another's free will.  For example, let's say there is no God, no omniscient conciousness out there.  We wouldn't have any problem saying we have free will(at least in this example).  Now what if you were suddenly given the gift(or curse) of omniscience.  How?  I don't know, you figured out why the chicken crossed the road.  Anyways, does your omniscience destroy the ability to choose of the rest of the world?  My answer is no.  Just because you know what they will do does not make their choices any less real to them.

Well let's go further and ask whether god can be omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent, while at the same time give you the gift of freewill with the threat of sending you to hell if you, in fact, "choose" wrong.  

Logically speaking, if god is truly benevolent, why would he send you to hell?  Forgiveness is, after all his biggest virtue isn't it?  So if he's truly benevolent and omnipotent and omniscient, then he knows you will sin (again, this forfeits free will) but should have the power to stop you from sinning and if he's benevolent, he would not send you to hell anyway.... this is the god paradox. Is he not omniscient? is he not omnipotent? is he benevolent?  If he's benevolent and omnipotent and omniscient, he knows that there are children dying needlessly in countries reaping in war, hunger and disease, yet he does nothing, does this show he's perhaps not benevolent?  Or maybe he is not aware, is he not omniscient?  Or maybe is aware and wants to help but can't, is he not omnipotent?  

 It does not make sense.  Through history the theists have built their god to such a high standard that they forgot to think things through when trying to feed this horseshit down people's throats. The logic just simply isn't there.  

I agree with tarpan..choice in this case would be an illusion.  You think you're making a choice but really you're not because no matter how many times you change your mind on a choice, it was predetermined for you to do so, and also, this predetermination will lead you to either go to heaven or hell.  Your path is set, free will is only preceived as such, according to the bullshit anyway.  

In reality we all know we have true free will, because we have no gods and no masters, just the illusion of them, based on our fear of death and the stories passed down through history. 

I don't see any conflict with the idea that one being can be omniscient and another can have free will.

Free will is more of an abstraction any way. I don't believe free will in any pure form exists in the first place. It's an illusion, totally subjective, like "love" or "perfection".

Additional insight into this can be revealed by studying how the human brain processes and reacts to information. We have a series of neurons and dedrites in our brain, which store and link amongst themselves using electrical pulses that are keyed to various combinations of stimuli. Any particular stimuli, whether it's a feeling, word, emotion, sound, action or a combination of several, is referenced in our brain by a unique array of links between cells.

What makes us "think" is a process of how our brain decodes the resulting triggering of memory cells based on a previous array of input. This array is called a "neural network." I have written software that emulates A.I. and neural networks and what's most amazing about neural networks; what makes them so special and powerful, is the decisions made by the network are always definitive and instantaneous... if there is any more substantive processing going on, it is more in the programming/learning area, and almost never in the decision/reaction area. For this reason, I do not believe there is such a thing as "free will" in the first place because our brains are effectively programmed to process stimuli instantly and definitively.

If we ever mull over something, this is usually not contemplation over the original decision, but a conflict that has been created as a result of new, additional programming. This is my theory. I think it makes sense. Often what we consider to be rumination over a decision, is not actually trying to figure out what we want to do, but rationalizing the implications of a decision our main has subconciously made, instantly.

Let's say you're a college student. You are in your senior year. You get a phone call with a really excellent job offer, but you'd have to quit school to take advantage of the offer.

What do you do?

Do you mull over the options and use your free will to make a decision?

I say no. You never had any free will to begin with.

The moment a choice was identified, your mind made a decision. A decision that was based on the neural programming you have in your brain. This decision centers around the weighted values in the neural network of your concept of the value of both sides of the offer. You instantly made a decision as if you were a train on a track, and that track is your past, your experience, the programming of your mind up until this point.

You may think you have to contemplate the issue, but ultimately you don't. You may not consciously recognize the decision has been made, but it has, and the contemplation you go through is merely reconciling the decision that's already been made.

I say there's no free will. When you really get into it, there isn't that much difference between the human mind and a computer. The output is determined by the input and it's very predictable depending upon how much you're paying attention to what's going in and out.

Good read Pile, I didn't expect that kind of an analytic repsonse.  It's an interesting perspective.

Though, as long as there are theists out there proclaiming the omniscience of their god, people like us will continue to have to point out the contradictions between that and other claims they make.

When I think of omniscience, I think of those automated recordings in Wal-Mart and K-Mart that go off about every 15 minutes, "Attention security! Scan and record zone 15!"

I guess they figure shoplifters don't know it's completely bogus and maybe if they think they're being filmed they won't rip the store off. I always find it amusing. I think the notion of omniscience is a lot like that: something those in powere made up to keep little people in line.

 Most religion simply can't work without omniscience if you you think about it.  God has to "know everything" or else there are little places you can go and get away with anything, and then there's no way the church can impose a standard of order.

However christians have devised a pretty amusing loophole with the whole jesus thing -- which again, I just find completely hilarious. God is all knowing and sees what you're doing, but hey, as long as you ask jesus for forgiveness, you're ok.  It's just the craziest, most inconsistent thing I can imagine.  I don't blame other religions for thinking the christians are wacky... even sacrificing virgins makes more sense than the drive-thru absolution offered by christianity. 

If you don't mind, allow me to put my dollar to the work:

There are two possible meanings of "omniscience" that can very well coexist with free will. Unfortunately, none of them actually applies to the biblical god, but that's a different matter.

It should be obvious that full omniscience on a matter (that is, knowing everything about something) is completely contradictory to any possible concept of free will. What most theists don't understand is that it's not a direct contradiction, but rather an indirect one. God never said we cannot choose, and probably he actually wants us to choose, but it is his condition of a fully omniscient god relative to the Universe that does not allow us free will in his eyes. Obviously, if I have to choose between A and B, and God knows that I will choose B, I therefore cannot choose A. If God knows that I will change my mind and choose A, then the changing of mind is, actually, another decision. Besides, God couldn't know that I am to choose B in the first place, since that would mean he knows wrong.

The first meaning of "omniscience" would be "omniconscience" - that means God knows everything that is and has been. He does not know the future. Theoretically, this works well with free will, but it doesn't work with the Bible. If God does not know the future, then where did the prophecies in the old and new testament come from?

Which brings us to the second possible meaning of "omniscience", that of "possibility omniscience". In this case, God knows what is and has been, and knows all possible outcomes of the future. This again works well with free will, because, although God knows possible futures, he's got a version of it if you choose A and another version if you choose B, in the example above. He has no idea what you're going to choose, he simply knows "if A, then ..., if B, then ...x2". This would seem to work with prophecies as well, prophecies being simply something that have a very high chance of happening, regardless of the possible future. It would also seem to work with the current situation (some prophecies are vague, others unfulfilled, etc., so, practically, nobody knows for sure whether the majority of the prophecies are actually fulfilled, and there are opinion differences on them). It would seem to work with various parts of the Bible as well (such as God repenting, which would sound like "Of all possible futures, X had to choose this path... perhaps it was wrong when I didn't force Y to choose [whatever choice], which would render X as inexistent&quot. It works quite well with the idea of heaven and hell (after all, God only knows what will happen if you choose something, not what choice you will make). So up to know, this could be the most plausible omniscience.

The problem with it, however, is that God has to extend this omniscient character towards his own self as well. Because if he doesn't, and he decides to make a "deus ex machina" intervention somewhere, that will come from outside his omniscience sphere, and he couldn't know the outcomes. Extending omniscience towards himself automatically means that his powers become subject to his omniscience. This isn't a problem when we are talking about his omniscience relative to the free will of humans, since it is already limited by our human condition, but it is a problem when we are talking about it relative to God. God is supposed to be omnipotent, and omnipotence means complete free will. However, faced with a decision, GHod will know all possible outcomes, and, therefore, he will also know all options he's got, therefore limiting any "ex machina" thought that he might have. Which renders his omnipotence as not-so-omnipotent.

Hope it was worth a read.

Consider that not only humans are included in decision-making. Animals as well. Even particles, for all we know, aren't precise in location, mass, speed, etc. Consider that there's one such "decision" every Planck minimal timespan, try calculating for one day only and you've already got a number with so many digits, that it requires a 10-based exponential only to count them.

Anyway, I'd be willing to accept the possibility, considering we are dealing with an omnipotent God...IF he is omnipotent...

NO!

ah hah, i figured out how to do it myself.

will theists feel safer now?

Then I'm not choosing to be a theist? What is choice if not free will? 

Fair enough.

Let's face it. You don't REALLY believe in all that religious bull**** anyway. Your faith ends where tangible personal security begins. When you get sick, you don't go to church - you go to a secular scientist whose knowledge and experience has absolutely no dependency upon mythology.

So on one hand, you're right. You're not a theist. You're a phony, but don't be upset, you're not alone. With the exception of those guys who ran planes into the WTC, your "faith" is laughable. You believe what you believe, because it personally benefits you - it's totally a selfish act that you try to conceal under the guise of "worship."

Aside from that, whatever you think you're choosing to do has no bearing on my claim that neither you, nor I, have any true "free will." Free will is an abstract concept that is unquantifiable in any real sense. Any "reaction" that claims to be based upon free will, like any claim of the existence of god, can be easily attributed to other, more likely physical evidence.

[MOD EDIT - removed swearing per Kill 'Em With Kindness Forum rules] 

Lets say Sylvia Brown is a real Physhic. She has a vision of everything you will do in life. If you've never met her and she has never met you, and she has never mentioned this information to anyone, how does her knowing something interfer with you? As you debate the Pros and Cons of doing something, what imput does her knowledge have on you?

The other question is does all knowledge mean you know the future? If the future hasn't occured yet, then in the present time the future wouldn't be part of all knowledge. Only the past could be considered all knowledge since it is the only thing that occured. The future isn't knowledge since it hasn't happened. So as part of all knowledge you would know that the future has not occured yet. 

The fact that I don't know that my decisions are pre-determined does not change the fact that they are.   If a tree falls in the forest, doest it make a sound? Yes.

Well, Omniscience is the choice word but wasn't the specific word used in religious texts.  So I am using hte world based on it's accepted definition which does imply that the choice gods do have the ability to predict the future.

That doesn't even get into the thought that if god created the universe and time but then wasn't able to see the future because of the limitation of not knowing the future when he himself created time would imply that he limited his own power by encapsulating himself within a concept of time that he created from outside of it...an idea that i don't think standard concepts of an omniscient would allow for this kind of limitation.

Here's what I found on a diffrent thread while looking for this topic. What do you think?

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God's free-will and Human free-will to choose are both valid.

Also human free-will and God's omniscience can both co-exist logically, so you are 'wrong' to assume that they cannot.

And let me demonstrate that 'logic' to you in a simple illurstrative form. Lets assume you wanted to watch a soccer game but you ended up having to TIVO it because you couldn't watch it live. Now you can choose to skip to the very end of the game to 'know' the game's result as to 'who won' instead of watching it all from the beginning; Thats 'your choice' And becasue it is all recored and is under 'your control', you can choose to start watching it from 'any where' in the recorded game.

Similarly God can 'choose' to 'know' or 'not now' That is His omnipotentecy and since he can do that at His will He is omniscient.

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Here is the rest of what the other thread said about this topic..

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        Yes you are right in saying the 'outcome' has already been decided for the game. And the same is true for the game of this life for us on this planet. That outcome is 'God is correct'

        He says He wins! (if you are looking from finite-human prespective, because GOD is outside the 'time' and controls it as He Himself created the time )

        He won! (if you are looking from the INFINITE-GOD prespective)

        against who?

        A: the satan.

        And all of the above is still logically correct!

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Although I myself find the TIVO analog -satisfactory- as I have no problem with an Omnipotent-all controlling but 'playing by rules' God, Here's another explanation for the same that I found online. Simply search for the text if you need to find the source.

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Does Omniscience Contradict Free Will?

Hello,
Christian doctrine holds that God is all knowing (1 John 3:20), and humans have free will (Deuteronomy 30:19 is my favorite example). however, at my favorite apologetics debate board, I have seen skeptics raise an objection to these points several times. the basic logic behind their arguments is this:

1. A being with free will, given two options A and B, can freely choose between A and B.
2. God is omniscient (all-knowing).
3. God knows I will choose A.
4. God cannot be wrong, since an omniscient being cannot have false knowledge.
5. From 3 and 4, I will choose A and cannot choose B.
6. From 1 and 5, omniscience and free will cannot co-exist.

I have read many counter-arguments from apologetics sites, but they were
either too technical (I couldn't understand them), or not satisfying. so, I
was wondering what would your input be on this issue?

Thank you,

Justin

Hi Justin,

Thanks for writing. This is a great question as it shows how even those who appeal to logic can have biases that blind them. Let's examine this argument and see if it follows logically.

Premises 1 and 2 in your outline above are the main premises to the argument and are not disputed. The Christian worldview argues that every human being is a free moral agent and is capable of making choices simply by exercising their will, not under compulsion or because of instinct. Also, it is a long held doctrine of Christianity that God is all-knowing. The Bible says that God knows "the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10)." For omniscience to be truly knowledgeable it must be correct knowledge, so premise number 4 is also granted.

However, point number 5 is where the logic falters. Those who argue in this manner make the mistake of thinking that because God possesses knowledge about a specific matter, then he has influenced it. That does not follow at all. Just because God can foresee which choice you will make, it does not mean you couldn't still freely choose the other option.

Let me give you an example. I have a five year old son. If I were to leave a chocolate chip cookie on the table about a hour before dinner time and my son was to walk by and see it, I know that he would pick up the cookie and eat it. I did not force him to make that decision. In fact, I don't even have to be in the room at all. I think I know my son well enough, though, to tell you that if I come back into the kitchen the cookie will be gone. His act was made completely free of my influence, but I knew what his actions would be.

In examining the argument, the assumption is made in premise 3 that because God knows I will choose A somehow denies me the choice of B. That is the premise that Christianity rejects. Omniscience and free will are not incompatible and it is a non-sequitor to claim otherwise.

Thank you Justin for this interesting question. I pray that you will continue to defend the gospel of our Lord and may He continue to bless you as you seek to grow in Him.

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Actually if you look at it closely, the TIVO anology fits the scenario of an omnipotent God who can choose(control) what/if to know and what/if not to know, at the same time not -influencing- what's happened with the game, what so ever. That is more like selective/control by choice(excluding human free-will domain), instead of controlling -everything- (which is in other words violates the human-free will domain.)

If you notice this doesn't hurt God's omnipotence but shows that He plays by a set of rules that He created for Himself  and the set of rules that He created for Humans(which he expects us to keep and calls it 'sin' when we violate them)

And  after all without rules that are followed there will be chaos! be it at the infinite (God) level or the finite(human) level.

I'm glad you find it satisfactry, but the TIVO example actually fits very well to my point.  Pre-destination / pre-recording.  While you are watching the recorded product it will never change.  No one in it has any control to ever change anything because it is not real.  It is the illusion of reality.  The choices they make are an illusion because you can rewind it, and they will do the exact same thing.  The idea of omniscience in the tivo example really just points to the ultimate problem I have.

Is it truely free will if you can not change it? I don't think it is.  It is just an illusion.

I applaud your ability to accept that you are just a recording, that is an alarming and disturbing thought to me. 

We are a living instant-reply.  That's what I see in the TIVO example.  We are are conciously living out something that has already played out and are totally unable to influence it.

I understand what you're trying to say, but I don't think that changes the idea that you are a puppet being controlled by decisions you haven't made yet but are destined to make.

To define something as unexplainable is a copout.  There is nothing that I don't understand that I don't think will eventually have an answer.  To invoke "You can't understand" is just a way of avoiding things that you don't like.  I look at it as just filling the gaps of ignorance with 'something' because of a fear of accepting ignorance and facing the unknown.

I agree.

I choose to, but if you subscribe to an omniscient god, but I was destined to do it according to god's knowledge of what I was going to do.  So in reality I would have never made any other decision other than to post this subject.  There is an illusion that I made the decision, but in reality it wasn't really a matter of A or B, it was a matter of A with 0 chance I would have selected B.  I just wasn't aware that I was ultimatly going to choose A.

I never suggested your god was 'just'.  I merely suggest that pre-destination is the product of Omniscience.  And I also never suggested God would influence the choice.  I have been very reptitious in stating that it does not matter who makes the decision.

I also am not suggesting that free will is authentic.  I am actually suggesting that if you believe in an Omniscient god that it is not authentic.

If you want to remove Omniscience from your god to make him just, then go for it.  If that's the case then you are acknowledging the argument and suggesting that your god is not as prescribed by Christianity or most other major religions. 

Though this stand becomes illogical when you figure that there are near 3000 gods out there and many other than have equal amounts of documetnation and just as much or more supporters in the world.  And all of those gods will damn you for believing in your god.  This is getting way off topic of Omniscience as I'm trying to point out that any of them that are Omniscient are equally abusive to human intellect. 

Sooo...you're saying that what we do doesn't matter and free will doesn't really matter because at the end of the day we are all pre-selected anyways? And I suppose, if that's your belief, then you consider yourself one of the pre-selected of course. Because no one wants to believe that they are not special in the eyes of their own god.

It wasn't an assumption, it was what I understood based on your posts.  Correct me if my understanding was incorrect.

You can't say? I don't believe that.  If you honestly did not believe that you were one of the chosen ones then you would not hold your faith.  I appreciate your effort to not project the "I am going to heaven and you're not" attitude, but it's inherant in faith especially one where you suggest that people are pre-destined to go to heaven or not.

As for your last paragraph...I don't know what that has to do with anything.  What determines what you do has nothing to do with the concept of freewill vs an illusion of freewill.

Argh.  I don't know why I keep having to say this.  The freedom that god gives you is besides the point.  Even if you have total freedom to choose...omniscience counteracts the idea of total freewill because even if it is ultimatly your choice, your choice is not alterable from the future that has been seen for you.

As for Adam and Eve, they are well outside the confines of the subject.  I can quite confidently say that they never existed but that does not matter.  Their faith and their actions do not in anyway have anything to do with the concept of freewill vs the illusion of freewill since god knew every thing they would ever do before they did it.