Lots of theological debates center around the religious idea of free will. Some varieties of theists, i.e. Calvinists, don't believe in free will at all. Some atheists (like my friend Denis Loubet) don't believe in free will either, believing that the notion is incompatible with a completely materialistic universe.
Those are all interesting topics, but one issue I find equally interesting is whether "God," as Christians define him, can have free will. I think I'm borrowing this line of reasoning from an old Raymond Smullyan book, although I can't remember exactly where.
God is supposed to be omniscient. He knows everything about the past, present, and future. In fact, his knowledge is so complete that he must know every action that he himself will take in the future.
Now, suppose you yourself were granted the power of omniscience -- not omnipotence or any of the other useful attributes, but you know everything. Suppose it comes time to make a fairly mundane decision, like what you will eat for breakfast. You can have scrambled eggs or oatmeal. So you wonder, what am I in the mood for? Scrambled eggs, or oatmeal? But this is an easy decision: you are omniscient! Simply use your unlimited knowledge to peer a few minutes into the future, and see what it is that you will have for breakfast. And when you look at your future self, you know, as a matter of absolute certainty, whether you will be eating eggs or oatmeal.
But wait a minute. What if you are in a perverse frame of mind and wish to exercise your free will? So you say to yourself "Okay, here's what I'll do. I'll check the future, but I won't do what it says. If I see myself eating oatmeal, then I'll pick scrambled eggs. If I see myself eating eggs, it'll be oatmeal."
Now what does that mean for your powers? If your vision is guaranteed to be accurate, then you don't have the free will to change your decision. But if you can change your decision, then your vision was wrong, and you are no longer omniscient.
This is one reason why I conclude that no being can be both omniscient and free.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Paradox of omniscience and free will
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9 comments:
That's a really great argument...I wonder how Christians would tackle that one lol.
And this goes directly to the problem of evil. Given that Christian assign evil to man's free will, a corollary to your conclusion is that any extant omnimax god must approve of evil.
Richard Dawkins brings this up in The God Delusion, and it is a good point. I would go further and point out that an omniscient God precludes human free will (and animal free will, for that matter) because the same logic applies.
To take it a step further still, if you merely postulate an omnipotent God, the same problem arises, for omnipotence includes the power to be omniscient (about the past, present, and future), by definition. Thus those theists who attempt to get around the problem by claiming God is only omniscient about the present have created a problem for God's omnipotence.
I've argued this with the bible beaters more than once and I can't get a straight answer out of any of them. I akin our lives to a movie. We don't know the ending but God must know, as he's the director. Get's em every time.
But this is an easy decision: you are omniscient! Simply use your unlimited knowledge to peer a few minutes into the future
Just wanted to comment that this situation limits this theoretical god to a very human concept of space-time. If there is an omnipotent god, I would imagine that it would not have the same perception of space-time that we do. Perhaps this god lives inside of the past, present, and future all at once - or entirely outside of time altogether (whatever that would mean).
I'm inclined towards atheism... but if there were a god, I cannot imagine that humans would have the slightest hope of comprehending anything about it.
While this whole "God isn't limited to space-time" argument is used often, I'm fairly convinced that no one who uses it has any idea what they're talking about. What does it mean not to be limited by space-time? Does it mean that God doesn't do anything sequentially, even from his own perspective? Then evidently he doesn't make any decisions, since anything he might do has already been done. So I'd say this doesn't make a bit of difference to the point that God doesn't have free will.
I mean, even a time traveler, who arguably does not perceive time the way we do, nevertheless does things in some kind of order from his own point of view. Despite the fact that his sequence of events wouldn't match up with my, he nevertheless has a sequence.
I'm inclined towards atheism... but if there were a god, I cannot imagine that humans would have the slightest hope of comprehending anything about it.
Including, presumably:
- the fact that it exists
- the fact that it writes books
- the fact that it interferes with our lives in any way at all
Are you sure you meant to say we don't have the slightest hope of comprehending ***anything*** about it?
The Irony of 'a god we can't understand'
--- it makes perfect sense to me that if there REALLY is a god then our ability to understand what he/she/it is and what it wants, etc would be seriously flawed, at best...
the Irony is that the same believers who use this point to argue FOR the existence of a deity tend to be the SAME people who then insist that THEY know EXACTLY what GOD WANTS
on a somehow-in-my-brain tangential note-- came across this article today:http://www.jasongriffey.net/wp/2007/09/18/technophobia-or-payola
about how the Associate Librarian for Copyright Services for the Library of Congress (one of the people responsible for creating/enforcing digital copyright laws)-- doesn't even own a computer!
--- it makes perfect sense to me that if there REALLY is a god then our ability to understand what he/she/it is and what it wants, etc would be seriously flawed, at best...
Maybe so, but only a truly incompetent God would be completely incapable of communicating with human beings. A smart god would have a very easy way of making us understand what it wants us to do: say so.
This god is supposed to be omnipotent. He should be a better author than William Shakespeare. He should be a better polemicist than Clarence Darrow. He should be wittier than Jon Stewart. For cryin' out loud, supposedly HE CREATED US, he knows what makes each of us tick better than anyone can, and yet he can't even explain simple intentions in a way that people can understand?
And as you indicated, theists believe exactly the opposite. They don't believe God is unable to communicate. They believe he reveals precise instructions through a perfectly preserved 2000 year old book. It's only the rest of us who are too dumb to understand him.
I agree with your assessment of the paradox of free will and would like to offer a possible explanation of how a Christian would handle it (though admittedly not all do accept this idea).
God in the Bible is considered both omnipotent and omniscient. He is consider omnipotent even though He has done things like promise to never destroy the world by flood ever again. These type of self limitations happen again and again in covenants He sets up. Yes Christians still see Him as all powerful because He could do these simple things, He has just chosen not to. So how does this apply to free will?
I contend, as a solution to the free will paradox, that as part of the gift of free will, He chooses NOT to know every thing we do. He could know the choices we make if He wanted to, so He is still omniscient, but as a type of covenant He self limits Himself (just as He did with the promise to never destroy the world by flood) so we are truly free to choose without the causative effect His infallibility.
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