Free will vs Omniscience

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What if Fred had told Bill that he would choose Red? Would that change anything? We know that Fred has to be 100% correct since it's one of the premises that we have agreed upon. (taking part in this thought exercise implies acceptance of the premises so no smart comments about not agreeing)

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The only way that Bill could choose Blue is if on or other of the premises are invalid but we already accepted them as true for this exercise.

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This is actually a very interesting case.Even if we assume determinism there seems to be nothing preventing Fred from telling Bill and Bill being so contrary as to choose Blue. So determinism is not sufficient.We could assume fatalism, so Bill is fated to choose Red, no matter what, but that really does destroy any form of free will.Let's think some more about how it might work if causality is a factor (which must be the case for any form of Free Will). Fred's vision cannot fix isolated parts of the future - all the relevant causal factors must be either fixed or restricted so as to guarantee the outcome foreseen. That includes anything Fred tells Bill that is relevant to Bill's choice. So, Fred is as trapped as Bill - If Bill is going to be contrary, Fred cannot tell Bill what his choice will be - it is implicit in the vision of the future that he will not.But that seems to undermine Fred's Free Will.But, there is one option left, although outside a strict reading of the parameters of the experiment, it's not so far out that it should be ignored. Fred's vision is conditional on his choice of what, if anything to tell Bill. Fred can know that whatever he tells Bill, Bill will choose the opposite.But this option still leads to a problem for the apologist. If Fred tells Bill, then he is dictating Bill's choice. And he is therefore responsible for that choice. But in the common view of God, Gods knowledge would be all encompassing, as would his influence. Everything choice would be like Bills choice, with God at the root of every causal sequence. Even chance events do not offer an escape since they must also be fixed in advance. Worse, by common belief God not only created everything else, but also intervenes in the universe, controlling it to a greater degree than if he merely created it.It is quite telling that Phat has to depict God as a mere passive observer, implicitly denying Gods role as creator as well as the Trinity (for Jesus acted in the universe) and many Biblical events. It is the only escape from the problem that does not deny Free Will.

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What if Bill knows what Tim will do only because Fred from the future showed Bill a film of Tim deciding and then carrying out his action. My contention is that under these circumstances, Fred's reporting does not affect Tim's free will.

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That is covered in the post. How do you deal with the case where your new character Tim is shown the film ? Is it possible for Tim to decide differently ? Or are there some restrictions that prevent such a scenario ?

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If you don't buy that idea, what about my other idea that the multi-universe reality where every decision is made and that such decisions cause branching of into new universes. In that case, free will might be unaffected by foreknowledge.

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See my previous post for an analysis of this possibility.

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The film is a recording of Tim exercising his free will. But why is there a requirement to show Tim the film

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There is no requirement to show Tim the film, but there is certainly a requirement to consider that case - or, if it is impossible, to explain why it would be impossible to do so.

So you're saying that perfect prognostication can work if the future isn't set in stone - as long as it isn't perfect. There's a bit of a problem with the logic of that argument.

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No, that's not what I'm saying.

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You certainly disagreed with the claim that perfect prognostication requires that the futures is set in stone, and you certainly appealed to imperfect prognostication to justify that disagreement.

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I think there's a problem with the phrase "set in stone". It's unclear and ambiguous. Can you please explain/define what you mean by the phrase? (E.g. If my own internal preferences and desires influence or determine my free decision, is my decision "set in stone"? Or does "set in stone" always imply an external forcing of my decisions?)

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I think that it simply means that the future is absolutely fixed, without any further implications, other than those inherent in that. And I would agree with that(I would classify conditional perfect prognostication, where the prognosticator may change the future through his own choices as imperfect - only slightly so in the case where a single individual has the capability. However, if more than one person possessed the capability it would clearly be imperfect since the prognosticators could interfere with each other's prognostications)

Determinism - in this context - would say that, our choices do not involve a random element. Our own nature certainly can be the dominating factor in the choices we make.Determinism is about cause and effect but there is no reason to think that the same external factors even if identical in every respect would always produce the same response in every human. Or even the same human, at different points in life.Determinism doesn't say that our choices are forced by external forces independent of our nature, it says that our nature forces us to respond to external forces in our own individual ways.

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Determinism doesn't say that our choices are forced by external forces independent of our nature, it says that our nature forces us to respond to external forces in our own individual ways.
Right, that's how I'm using the term.

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"Our nature forces us to respond to external forces in our own individual ways" = "the universe unfolding it's physical conditions"
They would just be "our" physical conditions, is all.

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As opposed to "free will" which is more something along the lines of "making the decision process individually based on our own thoughts/ideas/feelings/experiences of the situation."

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But there is no opposition, simply different descriptions of the same thing.

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The point, I think, is to differentiate between a person actually deciding to make a choice (free will) vs. never actually making an individual "choice," and we're just doing whatever it is we must do because of the actual conditions at that specific instance (determinism).

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But in the deterministic view you do actually decide to make a choice. It's the indeterministic views that call that into question.

You're failing to understand Cat Sci's position. Cat Sci has a view of free will that is incompatible with foreknowledge. If you want to argue against his position you need to argue for an alternative conception of free will.

Your thought experiment requires information to travel backwards in time - which raises the question of whether it is possible at all. Also, it can only escape the risk of paradox by moving to a fatalist view which would completely destroy free will.And it still doesn't change the fact that foreknowledge requires the future to be fixed.

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What if God has foreknowledge and creates someone who will break their leg? Or fall off a ciff? or commit treason? Is God responsible for any of those results? I would say no.

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Why would you say no ? We can and do hold people responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. Do you insist that God must be held to a lesser standard ? Why ? Surely God can live up to any standard that we would expect from a mere human.

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So...if God creates everyone and effectively tells us that we become the decisions we make, what if we freely chose to ignore Jesus Christ? What if we freely chose to be selfish, greedy, or manipulative? Is God responsible to keep us from damning ourselves? Is foreknowledge itself the sticking point in these discussions

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Foreknowledge - or at least a very good idea of what will happen - is an important part of it. But so is the act of creation - and not just of us, but of everything else.Given the usual abilities attributed to God, we might rephrase your words this way: You call all these things "free choices" but none of them are conscious choices for us. But they are God's conscious choices made before we could do anything, and which we have no power to avoid. How then can we be responsible for them, if God is not ?

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Because we have a choice to submit to God or satan.

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Which, in this scenario - like all our other choices - has been dictated by God.That is no reason at all not to hold God responsible.

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One thing that I have noticed in reading scripture is that God tells the doers of evil to depart that he never knew them. which could mean that God has no foreknowledge of evil...He merely allowed it as a possibility.

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Of course in the text that is rejection, not a lack of foreknowledge (not only because that is what the context indicates, but also because the same lack of foreknowledge would apply to those who were not guilty - unless God did not allow them that possibility)

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First of all, humans have no power or authority to hold God to any standard...

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In the only sense that matters to this discussion we surely do. Enforcement is not an issue, only evaluation.

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despite the claims by jar that one of the Gods of scripture is corrected by humans and learns on the job. That is the silliest notion of a Creator of all seen and unseen that I have ever heard.

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You can't blame jar for the Bible. He didn't write a word of it.

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The problem is that many people envision God as a creation of the human mind anyway...which makes this whole conversation superfluous.

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It doesn't seem to be so, unless you are one of those people...

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You miss the whole point of course, as unbelievers must. The point is that whatever we do by our own natural inclination is the same thing as God's doing it in us.

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Do you have any support for that idea from the actual text of Exodus ? And isn’t it also your belief that we have a natural inclination to sin? Do you really want to say that God makes us sin ?

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I know it's hard to wrap your mind around but that's why you and other unbelievers have such a terrible time understanding Calvinism.

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It’s not us that has the problem.

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Now you are going to think of all the pedantic nitpicky ways this seems wrong to you and just get me tearing my hair out.

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It’s not our fault that your beliefs are incoherent. If you will build a worldview out of dogma and lame excuses that problem is inevitable.

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We understand that God's causing Pharoah to commit the sin of hardening his heart against the Israelites was not His committing the sin Himself.

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Strictly speaking Exodus says that God hardened Pharoah’s heart (eg Exodus 7:13). So if hardening Pharoah’s heart was a sin (your idea, not mine), God committed it.

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He's the source of power for everything we do but He doesn't share in our motivations.

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Giving us the power to do something is not the same as manipulating us into doing it. And since when were motivations sufficient to justify a sinful act ?More importantly this does not address the real points at all.Let us start with the basic problem.Exodus has God say that he will directly intervene to change the Pharaoh’s state of mind (eg Exodus 7:3) and has God doing so (eg Exodus 7:13). You assert that this is identical to the Pharaoh hardening his own heart.However, even under Calvinistic views the presence or absence of direct intervention would seem to be a difference, and even if you were to hold that it was not there is no reason to deny the presence of direct intervention (which mKes the whole point moot).I submit then that the lack of understanding is clearly yours.

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It also says Pharoah hardened his own heart.

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By memory it never says both for the same event. If you disagree, please cite the relevant verse(s). There is no problem with the idea that sometimes God did it and sometimes the Pharaoh did it himself.

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Reading it intelligently leads to the understanding that both are true and equivalent in meaning.

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You have a very strange idea of intelligence.

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God manipulates nothing.

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Which - according to you - is the same as saying that God manipulates all our choices.

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Doesn't need to be the same event

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It certainly does need to be if your argument has any hope of success. If you don’t even understand that different events can play out differently you have a serious mental problem.Try this, if you flip a coin once and it comes up heads, flip it again and it comes up tails does that prove that heads and tails are the same ?