Free will

[Shadow_Man]

If god knew it would come up six prior to the roll, as it must if god is truly an all knowing god of past, present and future, then any randomness is simply an illusion. It only feels random to you. If it did not come up six then the omniscient god does not exist. You can have one or the other, you can't have both.

All you have done is re-state the assertion that foreknowledge precludes free will. Now you need to justify or demonstrate it. Otherwise, I certainly can have both.

Regards,
Shadow_Man

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Rhythm,

Foreknowledge precludes freewill in that nothing else -can- happen, but that which said foreknowledge describes, or else it isn't foreknowledge at all.

No. Nothing else -will- happen. There is a difference.

No choice can be made, no diverging paths of decision. One stream, one outcome, one conclusion, no deviation.

No. The choice -will- be made, all diverging paths and streams -will- be freely rejected, and the foreknown conclusion -will- turn out to be the one that is freely selected.

You don't -know- that you will go to work tomorrow.  You have a reasonable expectation.

Accepted. My foreknowledge is imperfect.

However, you may die in your sleep,

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you may wake up and say "fuck work".  

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If you -knew- you would go to work tomorrow, that would mean that nothing could happen to you tonight to prevent it,

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and you -could not- decide otherwise in the morning.

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If you had foreknowledge of this,

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you would be incapable of choosing otherwise and

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nothing on this earth would be capable of stopping you from getting to work.

(Hiding mine, to isolate one concept.)
No. On the one hand, with complete foreknowledge I could see every detail of the night, and see that even though a thousand things -could- stop me, nothing -would- stop me.

On the other hand, the action of the universe is irrelevant. My free will is my ability to make up my own mind and make my own choices within my ability to enact them. It is understood that there are many choices that are not available to me, or that have been, or will be, made for me. I was born a specific gender, in a specific family, in a specific city, state, and country. I have specific physical characteristics determined by genetics. I could be hit by a bus and be maimed or killed at any time. Our concept of free will does not depend on the absence of such influences.

However,

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you may die in your sleep,

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you may wake up and say "fuck work".  If you -knew- you would go to work tomorrow, that would mean that

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nothing could happen to you tonight to prevent it, and

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you -could not- decide otherwise in the morning.

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If you had foreknowledge of this,

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you would be incapable of choosing otherwise

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and nothing on this earth would be capable of stopping you from getting to work.

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(Hiding mine, to isolate a second concept.)
No. I certainly -could- change my mind. But when events unfold I will be found to have done exactly what was foreknown entirely of my own free will. I -could- do something else, but I -will- do what was foreknown. Foreknowledge does not render me incapable of choosing, it sees what my choice will be. All other choices are still possible, but will be freely rejected in the moment.

Looking at it using my previous analogy, I roll the dice. The nature of the roll is that it is random. It comes up 6. Having come up 6 does not change the random nature of the roll. Having come up 6 does not suddenly make that the only outcome that "could" have happened. It makes it the only outcome that "did" happen. We always knew there would only be one outcome, which would be based on the random nature of the roll.

So now I know the outcome of the roll. My new-found knowledge places no constraint on what the outcome "had" to have been. My knowing the outcome has no effect whatsoever on the random nature of the roll. My position in the time line when I gain this knowledge has no effect on the nature of the roll. If I rolled the dice while blindfolded and then never looked at the outcome, that lack of knowledge would not have left the roll random, whereas looking at it somehow constrained it to that outcome and no other.

Knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of the outcome of the roll, either before or after the roll in the time line, has no effect whatsoever on the random nature of the roll. God's ability to see the outcome ahead of time does not change the random nature of the roll. In fact, God is the one who set up the universe so that the roll would be random in nature.

The same is true for the nature of our free will. God's actions created it. God's knowledge does not change its nature.

Regards,
Shadow_Man