Free will and the necessary evil

[Angrboda]

The Christian logic is usually along the lines of "God wants you to make a free choice". This runs into trouble under Calvinism, because of predestination, though.

Ah yes the "god can count the numbers of hairs on your head and knows EVERYTHING" part. Hmmm.. ok ok good point. 

Agrboda this is kind of what I'm looking for. Idiosyncrasies within the belief in free will and an omnipotent god.

There are two general areas of concern.  First, whether man is free.  And second, whether God is free.  While it is a common argument that man's free will is inconsistent with God's omniscience, this is not necessarily the case.  It depends upon how one conceives of free will.  According to some definitions, even predeterminism is compatible with free will.

2.2. Two types of incompatibilism

Plantinga's defense presupposes incompatibilism. Incompatibilists, however, disagree over what we might call the Principle of Alternate Possibilities:

PAP. S is free with respect to A only if S has it within his power to do otherwise.

Of course, compatibilists like to understand the power to do otherwise in such a way that one has it even though there is no possible world in which one does other than what one did, given the distant past and the laws of nature. Incompatibilists, however, tend to deny this. As one prominent incompatibilist likes to put the point: if someone is free with respect to an action when deciding whether to do it, they are "in a situation strongly analogous to that of someone who is hesitating between forks in a road."

To say that one has free will is to say that when one decides among forks in the road of time (or, more prosaically, when one decides what to do), one is at least sometimes able to take more than one of the forks.... One has free will if sometimes more than one of the forks in the road of time are "open" to one. One lacks free will if on every occasion on which one must make a decision only one of the forks before one - of course it will be the fork one in fact takes - is open to one.

On this picture of freedom, the power to do otherwise requires that there be "forks" in the road of time, not merely that there seem to be such "forks".

Some incompatibilists reject PAP and the picture of a forking road that comes with it. They replace it with something like the Principle of Ultimate Causes:

PUC. S is free with respect to A only if the ultimate cause of A is S's own will and cognitive faculties.

Incompatibilists who replace PAP with PUC say that it is possible for one to act freely even if there are no alternatives "open" to one. But, they say, it does not follow that it is possible for one to act freely if one's action is determined by the distant past and the laws of nature since, in that case, the ultimate cause of one's action is not one's own will and cognitive faculties. Thus, they say, their view remains resolutely incompatibilist.

Howard-Snyder, D., & O’Leary-Hawthorne, J. (1998). Transworld Sanctity and Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 44(1), 1–21.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Ah yes the "god can count the numbers of hairs on your head and knows EVERYTHING" part. Hmmm.. ok ok good point. 

Agrboda this is kind of what I'm looking for. Idiosyncrasies within the belief in free will and an omnipotent god.

There are two general areas of concern.  First, whether man is free.  And second, whether God is free.  While it is a common argument that man's free will is inconsistent with God's omniscience, this is not necessarily the case.  It depends upon how one conceives of free will.  According to some definitions, even predeterminism is compatible with free will.

2.2. Two types of incompatibilism

Plantinga's defense presupposes incompatibilism. Incompatibilists, however, disagree over what we might call the Principle of Alternate Possibilities:

PAP. S is free with respect to A only if S has it within his power to do otherwise.

Of course, compatibilists like to understand the power to do otherwise in such a way that one has it even though there is no possible world in which one does other than what one did, given the distant past and the laws of nature. Incompatibilists, however, tend to deny this. As one prominent incompatibilist likes to put the point: if someone is free with respect to an action when deciding whether to do it, they are "in a situation strongly analogous to that of someone who is hesitating between forks in a road."


On this picture of freedom, the power to do otherwise requires that there be "forks" in the road of time, not merely that there seem to be such "forks".

Some incompatibilists reject PAP and the picture of a forking road that comes with it. They replace it with something like the Principle of Ultimate Causes:

PUC. S is free with respect to A only if the ultimate cause of A is S's own will and cognitive faculties.

Incompatibilists who replace PAP with PUC say that it is possible for one to act freely even if there are no alternatives "open" to one. But, they say, it does not follow that it is possible for one to act freely if one's action is determined by the distant past and the laws of nature since, in that case, the ultimate cause of one's action is not one's own will and cognitive faculties. Thus, they say, their view remains resolutely incompatibilist.

Howard-Snyder, D., & O’Leary-Hawthorne, J. (1998). Transworld Sanctity and Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 44(1), 1–21.

In terms of omniscience alone, I agree that free will is not impossible. But - in Christianity, at least - God is not just omniscient, but also omnipotent and omnicreative. These three qualities operating together would seem to preclude free will.

Not only does God know all of our choices, God also created those choices and the prior events that led to those choices, as well as the outcomes of all those choices.

The obvious extension of this is that God pre-damns many of the very people it creates, since people are constrained to make choices and take actions that will land them in eternal suffering.

Boru

[Jehanne]

Why are we discussing what a nonexistent being "thinks" or "knows"?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Why are we discussing what a nonexistent being "thinks" or "knows"?

Because we were asked about free will considered in the context of such a Being. This is a little known rhetorical technique called ‘responding to the OP’.

Boru

[LinuxGal]

Just wondering if there was anyone who wanted to explain free will in reference to the existence of god and why suffering is a thing that exists for all eternity according to Christianity but god did it so its ok? I keep running into self proclaimed Christains who claim god "isnt like that" and they don't believe in Hell.
Isn't that like having your cake and eating it too? There's an entire book dedicated to it in the New Testament after all..

May not be a new topic for you but I want to refresh my memory on the subject with anyone (within reason) whose interested.

The Christian logic is usually along the lines of "God wants you to make a free choice". This runs into trouble under Calvinism, because of predestination, though.

It runs into trouble for the simple reason that if God "wants" something" then he lacks something, and therefore cannot be infinite.

[Jehanne]

Why are we discussing what a nonexistent being "thinks" or "knows"?

Because we were asked about free will considered in the context of such a Being. This is a little known rhetorical technique called ‘responding to the OP’.

Boru

Perhaps, but, it's still a non sequitur; you haven't even defined the terms that you are using.

Dawn

[LadyForCamus]

Because we were asked about free will considered in the context of such a Being. This is a little known rhetorical technique called ‘responding to the OP’.

Boru

Perhaps, but, it's still a non sequitur; you haven't even defined the terms that you are using.

Dawn

It doesn’t matter. Not being able to define god is only a problem for Christians.

[Foxaèr]

The fun part of subjective interpretation is multiple schisms. And even though one denomination may gossip about another local denomination on Sunday morning in church, I witnessed this myself when I was younger, they still figure a fellow believer who may not be in the right church is better than a non-believer.

[Jehanne]

Perhaps, but, it's still a non sequitur; you haven't even defined the terms that you are using.

Dawn

It doesn’t matter. Not being able to define god is only a problem for Christians.

I agree! My point is that in terms of the last 2,000 years of "Christian" theology the views being expressed in the OP and the subsequent replies have been too narrow. An excellent book is, "Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture", which shows the diversity of Christian thought & belief. In the area of free will there have been huge differences from Augustine to Aquinas to Scotus to Ockham to Luther & Calvin (and, between them).

[Ranjr]

One can't know God's grace without a full taste of evil.  If a clear path is all we know, we have nothing to learn.  The apple was a blessing, not a curse.

People are nonetheless imperfect, and will fail at making sense of their perfect creator.