Hi again. I'm not sure I should be posting here, the special affectations being displayed made me think at first that this was in the new (to me) "showcase" forum.
But, I am intimately familiar with the theological answer to this quandary and I would like to see the bright minds here arguing that rather than the oatmeal passing for divinity studies that I have read so far. So I'm going to try to explain it, that doesn't mean that I am asserting it myself or will make any effort to defend it.
The main problem with reconciling free will and omniscience is the time aspect. So let's just drop that dimension altogether for a moment and see if any of our logic holds up. Let's assume that we can create entities that have something like "free will" or indeterminacy here in normal space and then observe their activities. This is a terribly oversimplified version of what particle physicists seem to be doing every day.
But rather than starting a reaction that may or may not wipe out new mexico or kill some poor animal in a box, let's just make little robots with a bit of radium in them and a computer dealie that uses the random radio noise it produces to "decide" how they move about. They walk a bit, turn left or right, walk a bit more, turn again. We aren't going to interfere with them either, we are going to just sit back and watch. Because we have made the decision process indeterminate, we cannot predict from the first conditions where they will be at when the radium runs out. Good so far?
We can, however, observe their actions. We can eventually SEE what the outcome is. Our ability to know the final outcome, as it happens, does not in any way prevent them from making whichever turns they make and certainly does not mean we somehow are forcing them to end up where they are. Their "free will" or more properly indeterminacy is not interfered with by our observation, and it is NOT our fault if some of them end up on one side of the room rather than the other.
Too much science still? Ok fine. Let's say you have free will, and jump off a building. I see you do it, and I don't interfere. My interference would mess up your free will, my observation doesn't. Is this quite clear?
Now, let's postulate a being that can see not just the present, but the future, the entirety of the spacetime continuum at once, or something like that. This being values free will and doesn't interfere with people's decisions. The outcome of those decisions are "already" known, but there is no reason that that knowing would constitute interference just because it includes one more dimension than the previous examples. The reason we tend to think it somehow does make a difference is because we don't really value free will (in others) and we WOULD interfere.
Too much theology? Fine, let's throw Nostradamus in there. Not the real guy either, who is debunkable, just a theoretical someone who does know the future and is careful not to (or unable to) interfere in its process. This psychic or prophetic person, let's say they see visions that show what the outcome of everyone's perfectly free decisions will have turned out to be. They don't talk about them though, at least not clearly, it is only after the fact that we can see that they "knew" or "were right" about the future. These visions they see, don't prevent us from having free will. Anyone still here?
Now let's add omnipotence, this is the actual real kicker, not omniscience at all. When I'm watching you jump off a building, from down below, I can't really do crap about it. If I'm right behind you, I might be able to grab you and stop you, I might not. But if I'm your omnipotent creator and already know you are going to make the plunge, and could reach out and make you fly instead, or change the past or create you differently or make sure you take your meds or whatever intervention might be suitable, and I don't, then I either a) value free will more than your safety for some reason or else b) don't really exist.
Credit to C S Lewis for pushing "a" over "b".
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