Jesus' Mission....

[GrandizerII]

Well, sure they could have, in some possible world, and in the multiple worlds they made every choice.  I just actualized the choice they made in this one, which just so happened to be what I knew they would choose beforehand, since I'm the guy doing the actualizing.

Sure, but up until the point of your actualizing, the size of the set of possible choices your kids could choose from happens to be only 1 in the example you gave. It would be inconceivable for them to be able to eat something on the plate that isn't on the plate or to eat something on another plate nearby that just doesn't exist.

I think a better analogy would be that there are at least two plates from which your kids could choose to eat from, and you happen to be omniscient (or at least close enough to it).

Assuming that free will is possible, foreknowledge is not.  You can't know the outcome of a future choice, if a person can choose b when you foresaw them choosing a.  They have to choose a, or what you possessed was not knowledge.

I agree with the last two sentences. And as for the first sentence, I really think we're looking at the concept of possibility differently, and therefore free will differently.

I don't know about magic, but sure...if there ever was an option, and you could rewind the clock, it's conceivable that you could take the road to the left instead of the road to the right.  The possibility of choice is a basic requirement.  That possibility is not real if the future can be known, and if the future can be known, no amount of winding clocks backwards or forwards will yield any other outcome.

The future being known in the actual world requires that the outcome of your road decision remains the same no matter you rewind the timeline in the actual world, true. To be consistent with the argument I'm making, I have to be careful not to speak of "rewind" in that sense. Rather, the possibility of a different outcome is "real" because it "occurs" in another [non-actual] world at the corresponding time point.

Anyway, I'm done personally with this discussion, but I'll keep my mind open about this in case I really am thinking about this the wrong way. Ultimately, now that I think about it, I submit that this isn't the type of argument a theist would want to argue anyway.