Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[Ignorant]

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The question of whether you have choice or not is what is up for debate here. If you simply state that you still have choice, even when he knows your future, then you are begging the question. I'm asking a theist who believes in this to explain how there is any possible choice that can be made.

He knows you will do it, as claimed by many theists. (You appear to have claimed this before.)

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Whether or not you have any geniune choice to make is what is up for grabs. [1]

I'm asking if you can instead choose to walk through the blue door. Can you do this? If not, and you must "choose" to go through the red door, then what choice is it? You have only one option, which you must choose. How is that a choice? [2]

Uhm.... I don't understand. He knows you won't walk through the red door, but you will walk through it without having chosen it? I have no idea what this means. [3]

The whole question here is whether there are any meaningful choices to made, given that God has precogntion. [4] As you're the theist, you can define precognition any way you want. If you can demonstrate that God knows what I will do yet I still have a meaningful choice, then you'll have defeated my objections. [5] If you're happy for simply following one course of action even though there are no other possible ones to be called a "choice", then we're only arguing semantics. [6] I don't see the difference between this and a robot or even a rock "choosing" to do things. [7] We have (at least the illusion of) consciousness and the sense of control; it doesn't mean we are really making any meaingful choices at all.

If you want to assume from the start that I do have meaningful choices to make, then I'd like to know how God can know, in advance, what I will choose. I don't mean how is he powerful enough, but I mean how can the knowledge be available. [8]

I'm only trying to mimic theistic ideas of precognition. To me, the idea is ludicrous. [9]

1) Exactly. I am asking, in your scenario, "Does god know that you will make "a genuine choice" to walk through the red door?" OR "Does god know that you will walk through the red door without having made a genuine choice?"

2) It is a choice in the same sense in which we understand the human action of choosing. If god knows that you will engage in the human action of choosing the red door, then you will engage in the human action of choosing the red door. His pre-knowledge doesn't somehow destroy the action.

In other words, you don't seem to be taking into account the various things in play. It seems obvious that if the precognition includes the real choice of the red door, then the reality also includes the real choice of the red door. When you ask, "How is that a choice?" I think you really mean, "How is that a free choice?" That is the real question, but we can't answer it until we clean up the language about the choice. Precognition does not preclude choice, provided the precognition includes the choice.

If god infallibly knows that you will really choose the red door, then you will certainly and really choose the red door. That doesn't seem controversial to me. The difficulty isn't in the reality of the choice... but in the nature of the choice (i.e. free or not).

3) I am sorry if that was ambiguous. I meant that if god infallibly knows that you will walk through the red door even without having chosen to walk through the red door (e.g. like an automaton), then you will certainly walk through the red door without having chosen to walk through it (like an automaton).

4) Which is to ask, are there free choices being made? So I must then ask, what would consist in a meaningful or free choice?

5) Why don't we just start with the reality that "you" are engaging in a real human act of choice, even while god knows that you will engage in just that act of choice? Can we at least agree that, if god infallibly knows that you will choose the red door, then you will definitely and certainly choose the red door?

6) Which introduces another term that is often used in these discussions which we need to be perfectly clear about what we mean: "possible". As a human being, I am always "able" to choose to walk through blue doors, as in that is not something human beings can't do. It is perfectly within my power as a human being to choose to walk through any blue door, even this blue door in your scenario. Regardless of which door I ultimately choose, this "ability" to choose to walk through blue doors remains in my power AS a possibility, until I choose to act in such a way to bring it into actuality.

It that sense: "Having actually chosen the red door, could I possibly have chosen the blue door?" The answer is yes. The power to choose to walk through blue doors remains within your person. After walking through the red door. You could go back, and choose to walk through the blue door later.

In this sense: "Supposing the existence of infallible knowledge that you will choose the red door, could you possibly have chosen the blue door, at the moment about which knowledge is had?" The answer is no. Why? Because you can't bring two potential choices into actuality in the same way at the same time. That is a logical contradiction. 

7) Yes! Even animals choose things in this simple way. But we'd have to agree about the reality of a choice being made before we can talk about the reality of some other quality (e.g. freedom) of the choice.

8) No need, I think the direction we are heading will take care of that.

9) I understand that impression for sure.