An Omniscient God vs. Human Free Will

omniscient: Having total knowledge; knowing everything: an omniscient deity; the omniscient narrator.

Most people who claim a god exists also claim that he is omniscient. This, however, presents us with a dilemma. If a god is all-knowing, how can a human being have free will? Wouldn't God already know what you were going to choose? Some would say that God simply knows you well enough to know what you will choose. This seems incorrect for two reasons:

1. Knowing is not believing. I can believe that I know my child well enough to know what they will choose. But this is not knowing. It is not certain. Anyone who has children will tell you that they surprise you all the time. To know what someone would do is different from believing what they would do based on your experience of them.

2. By definition an omniscient god would know the past, present and future. He would know everything at every time. Let's say that God knew what you were going to choose for dinner tonight 1000 years ago. How could you have chosen it when you weren't even born yet?

3. Given the example above, if God knew that you were going to choose chicken for dinner tonight, could you choose steak instead? If you could, then you truly have free will. But God would not be omniscient. If you can't choose differently than what God knew, then God is omniscient, but you have no free will.

And what about answering prayers? You have to ask whether God is actually acting on his own volition, or doing what his knowledge of the future predestines him to do.

For these reasons I do not see how an omniscient god can co-exist with human free will. There is either one or the other.

4. Can God know what it feels like to make a mistake?

5. How can omniscient God and God's free will co-exist? Can God do differently than what he knows he will do?

 

 

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