Why would omniscience and free will be mutually exclusive?

(Edited to fix incorrect statement about what you just claimed)
Yes, the implication worlds "the other way around". That's what I wanted to point out to you, and that's precisely the trouble for your position. The impossibility of free-will does not flow from the thesis of God's omniscience on your view. It flows directly from this "other quality" you have assigned to God: that he couldn't have created the universe in any other way that the way he actually created it.

 

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No. The idea that God couldn't have created the universe any other way flows from an examination of the qualities that are already assigned to God. See below:

Can you invalidate either of the above two points?

 

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I'll ask this way:
Do you think that God eventually prevails?

 

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I'm not sure why the combined knowledge of all people would not be like omniscience. Can you explain?
Do you think that the necessary condition for omniscience is that it is one person who has all the knowledge (as opposed to the knowledge being dispersed among numerous persons)?

For all practical intents and purposes, does it matter if numerous people are telling us things that we do not know; or whether we are always told those things by one and the same person?

 

I think there is a categorical problem with your understanding of free will and what would make it genuine.

Namely, for you for free will to be genuine, it would have to exist on the underlying level. But for you, this underlying level is impersonal. While free will is something that can pertain only to persons.

The concept of free will simply does not apply at the underlying level, or at the impersonal level.
If we believe that the underlying level is the one where genuineness is to be found, we cannot talk about free will at all at that level, it simply does not apply. It would be something like trying to establish the shape and look of the body merely by looking at individual cells; or like trying to make statements about the whole house while looking only at a few grains of dirt from a brick; or like trying to measure the temperature of distance.

What to call 'a bet that turned out to be correct'?
How can we distinguish a bet from knowledge, especially in practical examples?

Or if God is the one to cause P.

Note that in some theologies, in order for P to come about, God has to approve of it and effectively it is God who makes it happen (even though we have the illusion that we are the ones to make it happen).
A person desires P. But P actually happens only by God's will.

Closed by what?

 

I tend to agree.

Responsibility is something that meaningfully applies only between two rational agents. One is always responsible to someone.

However, the two agents need to be in a hierarchical relationship; one can only be responsible to someone who is (in some way that is relevant to the object of responsibility) in a higher hierarchical position than oneself.
For example, a teacher cannot be responsible to the student for what he teaches the student; in such a case, the teacher can be responsible only to the board of teachers for his subject.

This leads me to wonder whether we can reasonably expect that, for example, religious proselytizers would/should take responsibility for what they preach to us.

 

the ability to choose has nothing to do with the amount of data required to make a choice..
we can have all the data needed to make a choice or (reality) we can have limited data to make a choice..
(or are you implying that if we have all the data necessary to make the best choice means we have no choice?)

----

this is dependent on your use of the term 'prevail'

pre·vail/priˈvāl/Verb
1. Prove more powerful than opposing forces; be victorious: "it is hard for logic to prevail over emotion"..

cut and paste from dictionary..(funny how it says emotion trumps logic..)

but this definition does not mean we do not have free will..
it only intones a losing side,which i assume you are associating with humans..(IE God wins,we lose..)

can you ask a different way?

 

Agreed. I proposed a similar scenario.

Intuitively, I agree.

Could you elaborate?

 

Hence my stance in this, and other threads in which you have participated, that free-will is merely a conscious perception - i.e. can only pertain to the conscious (and I would even hazard is part and parcel of consciousness... i.e. can't have one without the other - but that's another issue).
So why exactly is this a categorical problem?

I agree it can not be applied at the underlying level - hence my stance that at the conscious level it is illusory... i.e. we perceive something that doesn't actually occur at the underlying level in any manner.
Many people consider the conscious perception to be "free-will" rather than what I would term "the illusion of free-will" - and I have never had issue with that, although our understanding of what it entails might be different.

But we CAN establish shape by looking at enough cells, and we CAN answer statements of the whole house by looking at enough grains of dirt.

Nope, nothing like this.

A good call, but not knowledge.

I'm sure people do know they're going to win the lottery, right up to the point they don't.
Practically speaking I think it's just a matter of confidence.
How many things have you been sure you "knew", only to find out you were wrong.

Sure, but it doesn't matter who causes it. This is with regard foreknowledge, nothing else.

The underlying activity.

 

I'll rephrase:
Do you think that eventually, God's will always gets done?

 

of course..if one person doesn't choose to follow him and help him accomplish his goal, he will just tap another one to help him..(this does not speak to the human attribute of 'stubborn' as assigned to God)

this does not negate free will..

 

Because you are trying to apply a concept at a level where it categorically cannot apply.

But to do so would require the knowledge of the whole body. Ie. merely looking at the cells will not tell us the shape of the body, unless we go about inspecting the individual cells in a particular order. But this order can only be known if we already know what the shape of the body is. Without that, we just get a linear row of data.

How can we epistemologically distinguish between (fore)knowledge and a bet that came true?

The idea is that if God is the one who is immediately in charge of results coming about, and we can only have a sense of free will and efficacy once we see the results of our (" ") actions, that would suggest there is a cooperation between us and God in bringing about our desired results.
Such cooperation rules out mechanistic determinism.

Or by identity.

 

There is the fact that people like to enjoy things, over and over again. Even though they know what something may feel like, they do it for the sheer pleasurable experience of it.
We do not enjoy unknown things as much as we enjoy known things.

If an omniscient entity functions by the pleasure principle, then foreknowledge is not an obstacle to making choices. Such an entity may know what doing this, or that, my feel like, but they still choose it in order to experience it. Because foreknowledge of X is not the same as experience of X.

 

I've been asking these questions to give an example of how you, as a theist, might believe that God's omniscience and our free will are mutually exclusive, but still believe that God's omnipotence and our free will are not.

Note that omnipotence includes omniscience; so if you believe that God's omnipotence and our free will are not mutually exclusive, you also have to believe that God's omniscience and our free will are not mutually exclusive.

 

Edit: Let's just say I'm not sure you understand the position being taken...

I hold free-will to be a perception of our conciousness... an illusion... that with sufficient understanding could be explained fully by the underlying nature.
Others hold that free-will is a non-material "thing" that actually influences the underlying nature, while not being part of that underlying nature.
Others hold different views.

To me, "genuine free-will" must be something that influences the underlying nature, while not being bound by that underlying nature: and the influences should be observable within the underlying nature as being a distortion of otherwise normal expectations.

There is no categorical error here.

It would not require such knowledge at all - nor would it require inspection in any particular order: I could plot some points on a graph, in any order, and you would very quickly be able to identify the shape being drawn, just from the dots and a reference point.

By examining honestly the conditions at the time the bet/(fore)knowledge took place.

No it doesn't - it merely includes God within that mechanism. However, the issue would be to show that this "God" is a needed/necessary part of the mechanism. If not then Occam's razor should be applied.

 

neither applies to what i believe..
neither omnipotence nor omniscient excludes free will..
he can know all things and our will is still intact,
he can be able to affect anything and our will still be intact..
he knows who he can influence and who he cannot,
he knows how to influence particular ppl to choose to follow him.
this does not negate free will.(this does not speak to any 'feelings' that we have no free will)

why do i 'have to' believe that?

 

Perhaps that's true, but choosing does require that you do have some data, and that you do have the ability to choose.

That's right. You need a certain amount of data in order to exercise your ability to choose. I can't see that choosing based on zero knowledge can possibly make any sense.

Perhaps you could enlighten me on that?

 

um..you are using the term 'knowledge' in the sense of empirical data,

if I spent alot of time with you, how much more would you 'know' me? (or I, you?)(could you ever really?)(how much more so, is God?)

 

There's a kind of knowledge that isn't empirical? I wonder what it looks like?

I'd 'know' what you look like, and I'd 'know' more about your particular character, your personality, what you like to wear, etc.

I don't know that I can say I would have any non-empirical knowledge of any of that, but I could form opinions, I could imagine things about you that aren't necessarily true, or which are not based on any observation.

Say I imagine you have green and orange hair, and like to watch Japanese cartoons. Is that empirical, or is it non-empirical?

 

In answer to your question, which I have made bold:

If by "freedom" you mean "free to chose", for example to buy or not a beer, then you have none. - Your own argument is that when all things are known and considered (as God is postulated to be able to do) your "choice" is infallibly predictable - determined by these things, not by you. You are a perfect captive of current environment and your history with no choice at all - just a biological machine with nothing not deterministic.