Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[Catholic_Lady]

Wtf how can you hold contradicting views simultaneously so easily CL

I'm done here then..

I really don't know what you are referring to, Pool.

[Neo-Scholastic]

He isn't "looking into the future." That would suggest that He's in the present, looking at the future, which is not the case. He is not in the past, present, or future. He exists outside of time altogether.

See above. "Outside of Time" would be the opposite of what you are saying. It means that all of time is Now to Him. So He is simultaneously aware of the past, present and future. It's like standing outside your house and seeing through different windows what is happening in both your son and your daughter's rooms at the same time.

[Catholic_Lady]

He isn't "looking into the future." That would suggest that He's in the present, looking at the future, which is not the case. He is not in the past, present, or future. He exists outside of time altogether.

See above. "Outside of Time" would be the opposite of what you are saying. It means that all of time is Now to Him. So He is simultaneously aware of the past, present and future. It's like standing outside your house and seeing through different windows what is happening in both your son and your daughter's rooms at the same time.

I gave the example of looking at a cube and seeing all 3 of its dimensions at one glance, like seeing past, present, and future at one glance.

[robvalue]

Yeah...

Contradictory views have to be held so that God can be all powerful and all knowing when it's convenient, and hold his hands up and say, "Your bad" when it's something he doesn't like. Even though he designed the person and all of their actions before they were even born, he's going to turn around and blame the puppet for any "bad stuff" he does.

[Tonus]

I would like to have some theists explain to me how fate and free will can coexist?

When I was a Christian, this is how I had it worked out:

The future is not set in stone, and therefore even God cannot predict it in the way people traditionally think. But God can predict events in the future because he can influence how things will unfold. In other words, he cannot predict which tie I'll wear to work tomorrow but he can say that there will be an earthquake in a specific location because he has the power to cause it to happen. So he can predict the future, yet he does not know the future.

You can easily interpret the Bible to support this idea-- God predicts events and inspires confidence in his promises by making those events happen. We do this all the time-- we make plans and promise to carry them out. If you tell your child that you will pick them up from school at the end of the school day and you show up, you predicted the future! The confidence that God inspires is absolute, because while events might prevent you from following your plans there is nothing that can thwart God (well, aside from chariots of iron, but whatever).

Presto-- we have free will, and God can predict the future. There may be some overlap there, in that God's actions might affect our choices. But it's far more compatible than the idea that we have freedom to make choices but our choices are locked in, allowing God to see what happens before it happens. Where this went off the rails for me was in the case of Judas, whose free will would have to have been tampered with in order to turn him into a traitor for no other reason than to fulfill a prophecy. Was Judas a good man who was warped by God into becoming evil? Was he an evil man who was selected to represent Jesus for a while and preach the good news of the kingdom of God? Was he created and guided for the specific purpose of betraying Jesus? Judas doesn't fit into any of the models for free will without making God seem wicked.

[Neo-Scholastic]

See above. "Outside of Time" would be the opposite of what you are saying. It means that all of time is Now to Him. So He is simultaneously aware of the past, present and future. It's like standing outside your house and seeing through different windows what is happening in both your son and your daughter's rooms at the same time.

I gave the example of looking at a cube and seeing all 3 of its dimensions at one glance, like seeing past, present, and future at one glance.

My bad. I misinterpreted what you said based only on one post.

[robvalue]

We're not even asking for evidence, people can literally make up anything they want about this character. Imagine we're rolling a character for D&D. They can't even make it so that the character makes sense and is internally consistent, when given absolute free reign.

It's like saying you have 20 points to spread between your 6 attributes, and someone keeps insisting they have 10 for each of the 6. That doesn't work, not even for an imaginary character. It doesn't fit its own model.

That's what we're stuck on here. My advice would be drop the precognition because it's a logical contradiction. Why is it so important to see the future? The fact that he keeps meddling in our affairs is evidence that he doesn't in fact know the future, and has to keep screwing with things to keep it on track.

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I don't know if people really don't get this, or just resist at all costs, saying anything at all, because the logical conclusion breaks their belief system.

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Let's try one more.

You're in a room with two exits, a blue door and a red door. I know which one you will leave by. I write it down. I write the correct, final result of which door you leave by on a piece of paper and put it in an envolope. You put the enveloped in your pocket.

Can you choose to go through the door I didn't write down? Even though you can't see it, the fact that it's there and correct means you simply can't. If you did, you'd open the envolope and see the incorrect prediction, contradicting the fact that I knew which door you'd go through.

So obviously that is all wrong. If you had a free choice, the contents of the envolope would have to change.

If this what God's "foresight" is like, a constantly changing envelope that doesn't converge until the event actually happens, then all he's doing is watching to see what happens.

[SteveII]

@OP

Understanding the doctrine of Molinism (named after 16th Century Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina) is one way to answer your question:

from Wikipedia article on Molinism:

God's types of knowledge

Kenneth Keathley, author of Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach, states that Molinists argue that God perfectly accomplishes His will in the lives of genuinely free creatures through the use of His omniscience.[1] After Luis de Molina, Molinists present God’s knowledge in a sequence of three logical moments. The first is God's knowledge of necessary truths or natural knowledge. These truths are independent of God's will and are non-contingent. This knowledge includes the full range of logical possibilities. Examples include statements like, "All bachelors are unmarried" or "X cannot be A and non-A at the same time, in the same way, at the same place" or "It is possible that X obtain". The second is called “middle knowledge” and it contains the range of possible things that would happen given certain circumstances. The third kind of knowledge is God's free knowledge. This type of knowledge consists of contingent truths that are dependent upon God's will; or truths that God brings about, that He does not have to bring about. Examples might include statements like "God created the earth" or something particular about this world which God has actualized. This is called God’s “free knowledge” and it contains the future or what will happen. In between God’s natural and free knowledge is His middle knowledge (or scientia media) by which God knows what His free creatures would do under any circumstance. These are truths that do not have to be true, but are true without God being the primary cause of them. "If you entered the ice cream shop, you would choose chocolate" is an example of a statement God knows via middle knowledge. This is very difficult for some to grasp.

further down the page...

Molinists believe that God has knowledge not only of necessary truths and contingent truths, but also of counterfactuals. (God's knowledge of counterfactuals is often referred to as his middle knowledge, although technically that term is more broad than simply the knowledge of counterfactuals.) A counterfactual is a statement of the form "if it were the case that P, it would be the case that Q". An example would be, "If Bob were in Tahiti he would freely choose to go swimming instead of sunbathing." The Molinist claims that even if Bob is never in Tahiti, God can still know whether Bob would go swimming or sunbathing. The Molinist believes that God, using his middle knowledge and foreknowledge, surveyed all possible worlds and then actualized a particular one. God's middle knowledge of counterfactuals would play an integral part in this "choosing" of a particular world.
Molinists say the logical ordering of events for creation would be as follows:

1. God's natural knowledge of necessary truths.
2. God's middle knowledge, (including counterfactuals).
---Creation of the World---
3. God's free knowledge (the actual ontology of the world).

Hence, God's middle knowledge plays an important role in the actualization of the world. In fact, it seems as if God's middle knowledge of counterfactuals plays a more immediate role in perception than God's foreknowledge. William Lane Craig points out that “without middle knowledge, God would find himself, so to speak, with knowledge of the future but without any logical prior planning of the future.”[4] The placing of God's middle knowledge between God's knowledge of necessary truths and God's creative decree is crucial. For if God's middle knowledge was after His decree of creation, then God would be actively causing what various creatures would do in various circumstances and thereby destroying libertarian freedom. But by placing middle knowledge (and thereby counterfactuals) before the creation decree God allows for freedom in the libertarian sense. The placing of middle knowledge logically after necessary truths, but before the creation decree also gives God the possibility to survey possible worlds and decide which world to actualize.[5]

[purplepurpose]

I think its pointless to apply logic to magical things. Especially if said magic is invisible. I guess, even God, wouldn't approve of this philosophical "porn", if he exists.

[robvalue]

Well, quite. Is God governed by logic?

If not, any discussion about anything involving him is absolutely pointless.