Free will vs Omniscience

What is "free will" then? If I build a cuckoo clock and watch it sound the hour at 1:00 and make a video of that action, have I "recorded" the bird's exercise of its free will?

Why would you think it would?Recording something doesn't give it free will.
But, if you record something exercising it's free will - then it doesn't remove it's free will from the moment where the free-willed decision was made.A cuckoo clock is a device built that is unable to make it's own decisions - it does exactly what the creator made it do.
Recording a cuckoo clock does not give it free will.A human is a being that is (in this scenario) created by God with their own free will.
A human can decide, on their own, if they want pink lemonade or white lemonade.
Playing back the recording of a human deciding a flavour of lemonade does not remove the free will they exercised in the moment they made that decision.
Playing back the recording of a human deciding *anything* does not remove the free will they exercised in the moment they made that decision.

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But God did not make the choice of how the actual universe would go.

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Sure he did. He knew how it would go before creating it.

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Responsibility does not necessarily remove free will.

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I repeat that I’m talking about responsibility instead of free will. Can we please not go around in circles?

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Not at all.

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That’s obviously untrue. We can’t make decisions before we exist. Only things that exist can do anything,

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If we are making it up that God can create universes... than we can also make up that God's process for this creation involves identifying our real, actual free-willed choices before we physically exist.

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Which is not at all the issue.

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If it is possible (somehow, somewhere...) for God to identify our actual free-willed choices before we physically exist, and then create the physical universe based on those free-willed choices that we made.... then, our free will is preserved.

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But that isn’t anything I’ve argued against so what is the point of dragging it up?

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What if the thought experiment is the actual universe, just not in physical form?
That this universe is just the physical form of that actual universe?

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Then the actual universe would be created at the start of the thought experiment in contradiction to your scenario.

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How is that possible if the decision is inherently unpredictable?

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Because it comes from the free-willed choosers, not God. God simply requests the information, and gets it from us.
Perhaps you think there is some sort of "time-based issue" here - but what if God has a way around it that we cannot explain right not?

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The first sentence is a non-sequitur. The second is impossible. The time-based issue is introduced by you by insisting that the thought experiment precedes the creation of the universe.You really need to work on producing a coherent scenario rather than assuming that you can just introduce anything you feel like. Making up nonsense is just making up nonsense.

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What if God actually can get the information from the real, actual us... and then create the physical universe?

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Either we exist to get the information from - and the universe too - which contradicts your scenario, or we don’t exist and it’s impossible to get the information from us for that reason.

I certainly wouldn't agree with "Spirit Filled". There's a reason why we call alcohol "spirits" - when people are filled with spirits, they tend not to think clearly.

You wrote

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A cuckoo clock is a device built that is unable to make it's own decisions - it does exactly what the creator made it do.

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What would you say if I claimed that the cuckoo in the clock, despite being built by its creator who controlled the arrangement of every tiny piece in its construction, still has free will?Of course you would say that, because the creater of the cuckoo controlled every little piece of wood and metal, every wire and cogwheel in the mechanism, the cuckoo had no choice but to crow at the appointed time. The creator could paste a sticker on the bird reading "This bird chooses when to crow!" The creator could even build a recording into the mechanism that recited, "I have decided to crow because it is 1:00!" But you would not say the bird has free will, because the creator designed the mechanism. You would not say, "Even though we predicted the crowing of the bird, it still has free will to do so or not."It is the same with an all-knowing, all-powerful creator of an entire universe. You seem to think of the creator as a farmer raising chickens, with a rooster that may crow whenever it decides to. But that farmer isn't all-knowing or all-powerful.

All you people who think they have this thing you call freewill, can you tell me whether you feel capable of shooting a child in the head tomorrow?Forgetting whether our secular society and your god's justice systems would frown on it, could you do it?A robot could do it - the very thing that you claim we would be if we had no free will. A psychopath could do it - they actually do possess free will; they are not hampered by any sense of inborn and learnt empathy, so if they wanted to, they could.Personally my free will to do many of the things that are morally wrong - stealing, raping, pillaging etc - I am incapable of. I can't even covet an ox, that's how fettered I am. And I'm an atheist - the very devil!Free will is a religious fiction.And just as a fun aside, why would a being that knows everything - past, present and future - even bother to create anything?

During the Vietnam War (I am Canadian, so I couldn't be drafted but I was the right age) a bunch of us had a discussion about what we would do IF we were drafted. The general consensus was that we were pacifists and we would find some way to avoid serving. BUT, when my turn came, I said, "If the government told me to go halfway around the world and kill little brown people - and the alternative was going to jail or fleeing the country - I probably would go and kill little brown people.Maybe that makes me a psychopath. I prefer to think of myself as a psychopath with a very thin social fence holding me back.I could certainly covet an ox. I could steal an ox - but that thin social fence holds me back from that too. I have often said that crime is the purest form of free enterprise.

I think it's proven that almost anybody will do almost anything if the conditions are such.But that wasn't my test, you are liberated from social and eternal reprisals and coercion. Could you do it as a neutral act like putting the bin out? Then you are not free, my child :-)I once stole some pretty stamp collector stamps from a high street shop. I was 11, they were worth about 2. It scared me so much I couldn't do it again. Had nightmares about it for weeks. My free will to plunder is non-existent.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

You know, ringo, your brother jar from Deep South Texas always pins me to the wall with the charge that I embrace "bumper sticker theology" with scriptural soundbites taken "pieces parts out of context". This implies that you and he are more orthodox through simply reporting what the written Bible says and not adding my private interpretations to it. As a budding apologist myself, I challenge your charge. But thats another topic. My point here is that "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" could also be construed as a bumper sticker gleaned from the early young ringos formation of his world views in context of the times he grew up in.See...I'm not afraid to use "bumper stickers", scriptural quotes, or philosophically adding my own words when talking of the Bible and what I believe that it means. I respect your honesty in Message 982 and I think I understand your point about being held back by a thin social fence. Thats why I worry a bit about the shoplifters.(off topic I know but you know our other arguments) I'm quite honestly scared that in their increasing desperation they will sink the ship that is keeping me afloat. But thats another topic. (Tangle, I also appreciate your honesty. I love you guys. You sometimes make some very good posts. I particularly respect the honesty.Getting back on topic here....So when I read your "bumper sticker" the following thought process ensued:
" How do I answer ringo? That phrase sounds so 60's and so represeentative of the social change of those times! Let me look up the phrase and see what people think in other contexts." So I did. Let me present three of what I found on Quora:

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1) The proper line is Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose from the song Me And Bobby McGee sung by Janis Joplin and written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster.

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2)It means simply you have no other possessions but freedom, and you are essentially broke materialistically although not spiritually. However, in the context of the song it has a dual meaning. At the time it was written there were many free spirits who believed in either free love or not being tied down with the conventions of having only one meaningful lifetime relationship and only one partner. With the advent of the Pill, women and growing equality between the sexes, women had the freedom to pick and choose lovers rather than it typically being the man who did that in the paternalistic society the Sixties were waking up from. So what the song means in that context is something bittersweet: Bobbie may be the kind of free spirited woman who would hitchhike around the country with a guy, tramping about with without any possessions, or even really wanting any, but that freedom of spirit also means she has nothing to lose by changing lovers, or leaving her current situation searching for a new experience. The singer understands thatalthough he obviously is in love with her, he knows the freedom they share means she will likely be moving on. Also, although Janis Joplin covered the song very well, she did not write it. It was originally about a girl not a boy.
3)I’m sure there’s more than one viewpoint on this and by no means do I think mine’s the best, however; Me and Bobby McGee happens to be my all time favorite song, I thought I’d give it a shot.
I think it’s important to take the next line of the song into account when looking for the meaning. The next line is nothin’ don’t mean nothin’ honey if it ain’t free. I think Janis Joplin is referring to love and my take on it is that a person should give themself completely over to love, without trying to keep a tight hold on it. but The love is meaningless if the other person doesn’t have the ability to choose whether to love back. A love where one of the people feels trapped into it, isn’t love.

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It’s kind of like that old saying If you love something, set it free, if it doesn’t return.. In the song, Janis loves Bobby McGee, but knows that unless he’s free to choose to love her back, the love wouldn’t mean anything.

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So, Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose is, in my opinion, that you should love with abandonment while letting the person you love be free to love you in return.

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Now you can see how I think. But you are the original author using the phrase in this context. So in answering Tangle, what specifically did you mean?

This soundbite is what got me thinking about those shoplifters again. I have many stories. But they are for another topic.

Well, it is in the context of the times I grew up in - Janis Joplin died when I was 18.But it's not a bumper sticker; it's an icon. It was in response to what Tangle said: "Personally my free will to do many of the things that are morally wrong - stealing, raping, pillaging etc - I am incapable of." Message 981He maintains that we are not free to do certain things, whether because of conscience or fear of social sanctions, etc.. In any case, "free will" is out the window. We are not free to choose anything we CAN (physically) do. It was just a phrase about freedom that popped into my head. It seems to fit. "Free will" ain't worth nothing.

The irony is that right-wingers like you are "tough on crime" and at the same time you worship "free enterprise" - of which criminals are true practitioners.

Not only are we not free to do things that we could physically do, our ability to do them varies between individuals and by circumstance.Today I can't steal from shops, but I also don't need to. If I was starving I probably could. Individuals brought up in a different way to me *are* able to steal from shops. Their barriers are lower than mine.Religious fundamentalists are able to murder indiscriminately those of a different belief - and even their own - based solely on that belief.A priest can rape a child - I can't; physically can't, even regardless of any desire to.A psychopath can do almost anything that we'd call evil and is only contained from doing so by intelligence and knowledge of social retribution.Apart from being a religious fantasy, our freedom to act and/or decide is not the absolute that religious people argue. Our actions are bounded by our personalities, background, beliefs, brain structure environment and circumstances.Most of those attributes are randomly distributed.

You're making one really big mistake, and riding it out to make all the other mistakes you're confusing: That's like saying you made the choice to have a blue room if I picked the colour and you simply painted the room.You did not make the choice of having a blue room.
You made the choice of bringing the blue-room-that-I-chose into physical reality.Without me - there would be no paint as you wouldn't know which colour to choose.
You need us both. Therefore, we're both involved. You can't say the choice is yours if you require my input in order to know which way to choose.So - if we make the choices of our free will, and therefore God does not choose how the actual universe will go...
And God merely creates the physical universe according to how our free wills decided how the actual universe will go...How are you then saying God made the choice of how the actual universe would go?
It doesn't make any sense.You're playing semantics with the words.
You're taking "God made the universe - therefore, God decides all things in the universe" and applying it to my statements of "God made the universe, however, within that universe God did not decide all things, we decided our own free-willed choices."You're then saying that my statement is exactly the same as yours.When, in fact, my statement directly contradicts what you're trying to force upon it.Just because "God made the universe - therefore, God decides all things in the universe" is an easy and (perhaps) popular way to think of God creating universes does not mean that all universes must be created in this fashion.
Especially if we're making up that God creates universes in the first place, and how that works at all.
Just as Wile E Coyote can end a scene by falling off a 1000 ft cliff, he can also end a scene by having a stick of dynamite blow up in his face.I'm simply describing another method for "God creating a universe" but you're claiming that the way "PaulK thinks universes are created" must apply.Why would it? Especially if I'm specifically defining it otherwise?You're still insisting that Wile E Coyote cannot survive having a stick of dynamite blow up in his face.Clearly - you're wrong, and it's just your insistence of "what you know of reality" that is blocking your ability to imagine a God with powers such as the ones I'm describing.