What if God foreknew human reactions?

But you still choose to go left. God's knowlegde of what choice you're going to make doesn't mean that you aren't choosing anymore. You could choose to go right but then god would have to have known.Do you think god can allow himself to not know the future?I mean, can he allow himself to not know which path you're gonna choose so that he's giving you free will?

If there was no fork in the road to begin with then I cannot make a choice, I'd just keep on keepin on.But if you do bring 2 pies and you do know which one i will choose, that does not stop me from making the choice. This sounds like you're putting limitations on god.If you're goin to assume that I assume that god is outside of time then I'm goin to assume that you arguing about an omnipotent god, with which the future could be a future to god.It's like that "is omnipotence logically impossible" thread, if you put a limit on god then he is, logically impossible, and if you don't then he isn't, IIRC. Well, ouside of my opinions on the subject, the alternative outcome is a possibility if god chooses to ignore his foreknowledge, or forsake it, or decide to not even have it in the first place. When I come to that fork in the road, I decide which way to go, even if god knows which decision i make, i still make the choice.

Not to me it isn't. I don't know what you mean by "the nature of the future". My point is that foreknowledge does not remove the action of choosing, because both paths are still there. I just disagree, in general. I just think that god can have it both ways, without limitations being put on it.

hmmmm, that's deep. I don't really like scripture that much because I can never really make any sense of it.It seems that that quote suggests that god might not know the future. But doesn't this limit his omniscience? So, you're supporting the idea that god can allow himself to be unknowing of the future?Whats you take on that passage? I just can't make sense of it. But I think the argument is that if god decides your future, or knows what you're gonna do, then you are unable to overcome this knowledge and are robbed of free will.What do you think?

yeah, but i think we agree tha god knowing our choice/decision does not remove our choice/decision from the action.My point was that, if god is capable of anything, he should also be able to allow himself to be surprised, so to speak, by what choice we make. Like, he intentionally forgets, if he previously knew, what choice we will make in a way to allow, or grant, us free will. This way his omniscience can coexist with free will, not that it cannot in another way. again my meager attempt to understand these 'crazy', IMO, stories is going to be weak, but here goes... So even thow god knows what we are going to do, we still must do them to learn, for ourselves, what we are going to do. so we cannot say that he choose the obidience, i.e. perdestination so, is this allowing the act to be free will, or does it still just support predestination?

I like to think that I can. This is how I view the future, as an open future.But allow me to get too unscientific on you and say that even when the future is open, god can know it and still allow it to be open.

Unless you're god, then anything is possible, even the impossible, and the self-contradictory.

an omnipotent God should be capable of creating ANYthingLimiting omnipotence to only the logically possible makes it no longer omnipotence. Omnipotence has to be limitless, by definition. So, omnipotence should be capable of the logically impossible as well.

Or everything could be said about god.

Is omnipotence limited to any laws? If it is then it isn't omnipotenece. It's something just really close. Right. Right again. Omnipotence is always going to loose you. No matter how far you push it back into you understanding, it can always go one step further.

and?, I mean, so what?This message has been edited by Catholic Scientist, 09-23-2005 12:21 AM

irrelevant to what? not the absolute truth.

ok, I agree we're not gonna establish that god exists, and whether or not he is omnipotent is irrelevant to the establishment. I meant that if god does exist then he is relevant, and not having evidence of god does not make god irrelevant, assuming he does exist. God would be an exception to this statement. When discussing the existance of god, the absolute truth is whether or not god does exist. We don't have any objective reason for believing in him, suggesting that he does not exist, but if he does exist then the absoulte truth would be that he does despite the suggestion that he doesn't.

If I thought there was, how would I go about showing you? No, we cannot.Keep in mind that I think that god left a trace.on the side: what about transitional species that we don't have fossils for? They left no trace but we contemplate their existence...or do we consider species A and species C as the 'trace' for species B.

So you're defining 'witout trace' as not involving the manipulation of one of the four fundamental forces. And I need to show how something could manifest itself to human experience without manipulating one of the fundamental forces. The manifestation would have be subjective.If it was a force that was not one of the fundamental, i mean one that we are not aware of objectively but only subjectively, you could not use the manipulation of the fundamental forces to explain it. Now, this subjective force would be useless to science, as we know it. But, if the subjective force did manifest itself in a human's experience, you would expect the lack of manipulation of one of the fundamental forces to negate the manifestation?