Omniscience voids Omnipotence in Free Will

[PowerSwede]

Yep, I know. I had some at this Ye Olde Worlde festival we had here a while back. I think I'll still with mulled wine or ale lol.

Wow, i posted that one in the wrong thread. lol...

Not that you didn't catch it. mulled whine? Was ist das?

[pinkfairy]

Wow, i posted that one in the wrong thread. lol...

Not that you didn't catch it. mulled whine? Was ist das?

I'll answer in the other thread lol.

[PowerSwede]

Looks to the east, looks to the west, looks for a woman with more than one.....

I mean, i'm looking for other thread....

[Random907]

good discussion

[ugotme]

Omniscience voids Omnipotence in Free Will

1) If God is omniscient then he knows what will happen given any set of circumstances.

2) If God is omnipotent he has the power to give mankind free will, where free will is a set of circumstances where the individual has power over the outcome.

3) If God is omniscient then what appears to be free will or choice to us does not appear to be choice to God, it appears to be a set of circumstances that will have a result which, as per point one, God already knows the outcome of.

4) God’s omnipotence awards the power to create a situation of free will where only the individual can determine the outcome, but God’s omniscience awards knowledge of the outcome, making there only one possible outcome.

Conclusion: Either God does not have the power to create free will or God does not have the knowledge to predict free will. In both cases he is not absolute and therefore not God.

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man's knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

-Omar Khayyam

If God is omniscient then the universe is deterministic, fatalistic, and there is no free will. If free will can’t exist then God is not omnipotent and can’t be God. For God to be omnipotent free will needs to exist which renders God not omniscient.

If I haven’t made a mistake here then the very concept of free will renders God non-existent… I can see the loop-hole but I’ll see if anyone else can get it first, then we can discuss the ramifications of said loop-hole.

You should look at Leibniz's critique of the very foundations of this problem in his Discourse on Metaphysics. The problem isn't as easy as you'd like to convey. This is one of the shortfalls of logic: you can make something internally consistent and it'll then be taken as representative of reality by 99% of the people who read it. Nomatter that your system isn't inclusive of other considerations.

The distinction to be made is between contingent and necessary truths.

"We have said that the notion of an individual substance includes once and for all everything that can ever happen to it and that, by considering this notion, one can see there everything that can truly be said of it, just as we can see in the nature of a circle all the properties that can be deduced from it."

Thus, the notion of an individual substance (i.e., a "thing," etc. -- you yourself are a substance) contains everything essentially relevant to that substance -- everything which comprises it, impacts it, etc. Every decision made by a willing substance is included here. It seems necessary that only the infinite God can "see" the notion of the individual substance.

"But it seems that this would eliminate the difference between contingent and necessary truths, that there would be no place for human freedom, and that an absolute fatalism would rule all our actions as well as all the other events of the world."

This is your problem in a nutshell: how can we have freedom of will if God already knows what is contained in our notion before creating us, or somewhere along those lines. Wouldn't we be determined in a sense? and thus without culpability for our choices?

"To this I reply that we must distinguish between what is certain and what is necessary. Everyone grants that future contingents are certain, since God foresees them, but we do not concede that they are necessary on that account."

Because God sees something before it happens, i.e. a choice of our will, it doesn't follow that it necessarily happened. This distinction is vital, keep reading...

"But (someone will say) if a conclusion can be deduced infallibly from a definition or notion, it is necessary. And it is true that we are maintaining that everything that must happen to a person is already contained virtually in his nature or notion; thus the difficulty still remains.

"To address it firmly, I assert that connection or following is of two kinds. The one whose contrary implies a contradiction is absolutely necessary; this deduction occurs in the eternal truths, for example, the truths of geometry. The other is necessary only ex hypothesi ("from hypothesis") and, so to speak, accidentally, but it is contingent in itself, since its contrary does not imply a contradiction."

Let's not get into a finagle over this idea of eternal and contingent truths, it is a given for Leibniz that such a distinction exists firmly -- one which is certainly developed. But what he's saying, plainly speaking, is that there are particulars of a notion (i.e., movements of the will in a willing subject which are contingent; or eternal or essential particulars, such as natures, essences, etc.) which must be so and those which are only so from hypothesis.

Those that must be so could not be envisioned otherwise -- their contrary would imply a contradiction which could not be upheld: i.e. the eternal truths. Those which are so only from hypothesis (i.e. the notion of the individual substance) are those whose contrary is tenable, and doesn't imply a contradiction. Therefore, in a nutshell, although God sees every movement of our will before we make it, it could be envisioned otherwise, because its contrary doesn't imply a contradiction, and therefore is a movement which isn't lawfully determined.

This is just a simplication of Leibniz's response to your proposition, but I just thought it would serve to show you that these games of deductive logic can always be taken to a broader compass and a fuller depth, which makes the original system really untenable as such.