Omniscience

I'm sure we've covered this ground before, but I'm curious as to what you all think about an omniscient god and free will. If an Omniscient being truly knows all, including the past and the future, then it knows the choices we will make before we choose. How can my will be free and already known beforehand? How could a just god punish someone for failing a test that he had already known the results of?

The first thing that I would have to say is, there could be a creator God, that did not communicate with man, did not write rules and does not control everything. Most all of the books written could be nothing more than man's interpretation of what he thinks God had in his plan. Then most of what is written has been handed down by word of mouth before it was ever put into the written word, which of course tends to distort the original intent.

But, I think that a God that was the creator could still be a reality, without his having anything to do with what you or I do in our lives. Or it could be that this God is watching, observing and even intervening occasionally, without ever letting anyone know about it. To create does not require to control, does it?

I feel I have to accept both predetermination and freewill exist together.

But that does not answer the big question, of "Why?".

One could very easily see a Gnostic like God that is insane. Trying the same experiment, to get different results, but knowing the outcome will be the same.

I think it is more like, God knows the outcome, but the process is needed. We refine many things and we don't just jump straight to the product.

And that still does not answer "Why?".

John Agnew said:

I'm sure we've covered this ground before, but I'm curious as to what you all think about an omniscient god and free will. If an Omniscient being truly knows all, including the past and the future, then it knows the choices we will make before we choose. How can my will be free and already known beforehand? How could a just god punish someone for failing a test that he had already known the results of?

Hi John

It also seems a foggy notion in the realm of current scientific understanding.

In the 19th century newtonian clockwork universe, EVERYTHING is in principle completely predictable, given access to all data and adequate computational resources.

So if everything is in principle predictable, it doesn't matter whether or not we can calculate the future-- Regardless whether we can calculate the future, it is all cast in stone and we cannot change the future one iota, and any notion of free will is mere illusion. Every future choice we make is already fore-ordained by the universe's preceeding state and the laws of nature.

There is chaos theory, but as best I understand it, chaos theory doesn't open an avenue for free will. Chaos theory shows that some systems have so many interactive modes that we can't realistically predict the future state of a chaotic system. However, I think in principle if we knew everything about the system, then even the chaos could be accurately calculated. Please correct if that is my misunderstanding.

Quantum theory opens a possibility for randomness, for not being able in principle to precisely predict the future. As we learn more, we find more situations where quantum effects can influence the macro world.

But quantum observation seems to be dependent on our situation embedded in space-time. We can observe photons exhibiting quantum behavior in their speed of light time-delay. Random happenings in the time window between photon emission and detection. The probability wave.

However, from the perspective of the photon, there seems no indeterminancy in the probability wave? At the speed of light, the photon experiences no time-delay from emission to absorbtion, and so the flight of a photon for millions of years takes zero time as far as the photon is concerned. It jumps off a faraway star and instantly impacts our telescope mirror. It is 'instantly connected' between the star and the mirror.

If there is some kind of 'global speed of light' connection between everything, then from that frame of reference everything in the space-time exists "at once" in one big frozen multi-dimensional construction. So that might be another frame of reference which is omniscient and does not appear to have any room for free will?