Fate or Freewill?

I have to say, I'm with Mr Jack on this one, although I've completely revised my thinking on this in the last few years.What got me thinking was whether there was any difference between "free-will" and what I suppose you would call the illusion of free will. Do we really need an external observer looking back at our actions at some point in the future to tell us whether we have free will or not?I'm not going to get into a full and complete definition of free will, as that's too difficult, but let's pretend that you have 2 identical universes (Universe A and Universe B), except for the fact that Universe A contains one omniscient being, who keeps herself hidden. If you were to meet your doppelganger in the other Universe, would there be any point in trying to determine which of you actually had free will, and which of you merely had the illusion of free will? Or do we keep the word "freewill" to mean some fancy hi-falutin' idealistic notion that can never be measured or even discussed meaningfully?Now, don't get me wrong, there is a problem with free will and omniscience if the omniscient being comes into contact with an individual (as in Newcomb's paradox), but I don't see any paradox as long as the ominscient being never meets an individual and tells them what they're about to do.Artistic originality, on the other hand, is a real problem in a Universe with an omniscient being... difficult to believe God wouldn't have sat down (with a toke?) to chill out listening to an Orbital album before setting about making the Universe and mankind and stuff...which kinda means that music (and by extension all other creative art) is discovered rather than created.PE

Is this a bit like asking "ah, but what really happens when you find the town where the barber shaves everyone who don't shave themselves? Who really does shave the barber?" I'm afraid I know next to nothing about Pentecostal or Charismatic Christians and their particular flavour of belief. If we had an omniscient being who interacted with humans and told them stuff like "I know that you're about to freely choose A out of choices A,B or C in the next ten seconds or so", then yes, I do think this pretty much dispels any notion of free-will in my limited understanding of the word.Like you say though, not many faiths have God acting like that, all the prophecies I know of tend to be along along the lines of "and ye this great happening shall come to pass and there will be much smiting..." which doesn't really affect free-will at all, as far as I can see, so I agree with you there.Having said all that, I don't have a very firm grasp of whatever free will is, which is why I'm loathe to attempt to define it. I mean, how far down the food chain does free-will stop (I assume plants don't have free will but, say, cattle do)? Do ants have free will? And what of the effects of advertising and propaganda on our free will? Does it affect free will at all? And what about the recent experiments which show a surge in brain activity before a conscious free-will decision is made - who or what is making the surge in brain activity happen?I don't know the answers to these questions but they lead me to think that free will is one of those concepts like "time", "life" or "consciousness", which seem trivial to use (in everyday terms) but are in fact, incredibly slippery to define. I do know that any definition of free will that makes sense to me, also allows for an omniscient being (as long as they never tell you what you're about to choose).PE