Argument from free will - Wikipedia Argument from free will From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Contention that omniscience is incompatible with free will Part of a series on Atheism Concepts History Antitheism Nontheism Atheism and religion (Criticism of atheism / of religion) History of atheism State atheism Outline Types Implicit and explicit Negative and positive Christian India Hindu (Adevism) Buddhist Jewish Muslim Feminist New Atheism Arguments for atheism Against God's existence Atheist's Wager Evil God Challenge Fate of the unlearned Free will God of the gaps Hitchens's razor Incompatible properties Inconsistent revelation Nonbelief Omnipotence paradox Poor design Problem of evil Problem of Hell Russell's teapot Theological noncognitivism Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit People Mikhail Bakunin Jean Baudrillard Albert Camus Richard Dawkins Daniel Dennett Ludwig Feuerbach Sam Harris Christopher Hitchens Baron d'Holbach Bertrand Russell Related stances Agnosticism Weak Strong Agnostic theism Agnostic atheism Ignosticism Apatheism Irreligion Anti-clericalism Antireligion Freethought Parody religion Post-theism Secular humanism Naturalism Humanistic Metaphysical Methodological Religious Secularism Category Religion portal WikiProject v t e Part of a series on the Philosophy of religion Religious concepts Afterlife Apophatism Cataphatism Eschatology Enlightenment Intelligent design Miracle Mysticism Religious belief Reincarnation Religious faith Scripture (religious text) Soul Spirit Theological veto Challenges Ethical egoism Euthyphro dilemma Logical positivism Religious language Verificationism eschatological Problem of evil Theodicy Augustinian Irenaean Best of all possible worlds Inconsistent triad Natural evil God Conceptions Aristotelian Brahman Demiurge Divinely simple Form of the Good Holy Spirit Maltheist Pandeist Personal Process-theological Summum bonum Supreme Being Unmoved mover Existence Arguments for Beauty Christological Trilemma Resurrection Consciousness Cosmological kalām contingency metaphysical Degree Desire Experience Existential choice Fine-tuned universe Love Miracles Morality Mystical idealism Natural law Necessary existent Seddiqin Nyayakusumanjali Ontological Gödel Modal Anselm Mulla Sadra Spinoza Pascal's wager Reason Reformed Teleological Intelligent design Natural law Watchmaker Junkyard Trademark Transcendental Arguments against 747 gambit Wager Creator of God Evil God Free will Hell Inconsistency Nonbelief Noncognitivism Omnipotence paradox Poor design Russell's teapot By religion Abrahamic Bahá'í Christianity Islam Judaism Mormonism Buddhism Hinduism Jainism Sikhism Wicca Theories of religion Acosmism Agnosticism Animism Antireligion Atheism Creationism Dharmism Deism Divine command theory Dualism Esotericism Exclusivism Existentialism agnostic atheist Christian Feminist Fundamentalism Gnosticism Henotheism Humanism Christian religious secular Inclusivism Monism Monotheism Mysticism Naturalism humanistic metaphysical religious New Age Nondualism Nontheism Pandeism Panentheism Pantheism Perennialism Polytheism Process Spiritualism Shamanism Taoic Theism Transcendentalism Philosophers of religion Atheist / agnostic Epicurus Hume Nietzsche Harris Critchley Singer Quine Dennett Camus Sartre de Beauvoir Russell Mill Marx Lucretius Heraclitus Rand Foucault Searle Goldstein Schopenhauer Drange Draper Kenny Hecht Michael Martin Buddhist Nagarjuna Vasubandhu Buddhaghosa Dignāga Dharmakirti Jayatilleke Premasiri Ñāṇavīra Nakamura Nishitani Nishida Damien Keown David Loy Evan Thompson Smith Westerhoff Garfield Christian Adams Alston Aquinas Augustine Bell Brümmer Burns Caird Craig Dalferth Eliade Evans Gamwell Heidegger Hick Kierkegaard Kretzmann Leftow McCabe McIntyre Merricks Miceli Moser Newman Otto Paley Schaeffer de Silva Smith Stewart Swinburne Taliaferro Tamer Thiselton Ward White Wiebe Wollaston Yandell Islamic al-Amiri al-Attas Averroes Avicenna Badawi Brethren of Purity Damad al-Farabi al-Ghazali Ibn Arabi Ibn Bajjah Ibn Masarra Ibn Miskawayh M. Iqbal al-Kindi Nasr Ramadan al-Razi Sadra al-Shahrastani Shariati Suhrawardi Shaykh Tusi Waliullah Jewish Buber Heschel Maimonides Mendelssohn Schwarzschild Soloveitchik Spinoza Hindu Adi Shankara Ramanuja Madhvacharya Udayana Kumārila Bhaṭṭa Vācaspati Miśra Jayanta Bhatta Abhinavagupta Raghunatha Siromani Sri Aurobindo Ramana Maharshi J. Krishnamurti Radhakrishnan BK Matilal KC Bhattacharya Others Almaas Anderson Emmet Esaulov Ferré Forman Glogau Hartshorne Hatano Hatcher Klostermaier Kvanvig Martinich Meltzer Runzo Smart Vallicella Zank Zimmerman Related topics Criticism of religion Ethics in religion Exegesis Faith and rationality History of religions Religion and science Religious philosophy Theology Philosophy of religion article index v t e The argument from free will, also called the paradox of free will or theological fatalism, contends that omniscience and free will are incompatible and that any conception of God that incorporates both properties is therefore inconceivable. See the various controversies over claims of God's omniscience, in particular the critical notion of foreknowledge.[1][2] These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination. Contents 1 Omniscience and free will 2 Free will argument for the nonexistence of God 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links Omniscience and free will[edit] If God made the game, its rules, and the players, then how can any player be free? Some arguments against the existence of God focus on the supposed incoherence of humankind possessing free will and God's omniscience. These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination. Moses Maimonides formulated an argument regarding a person's free will, in traditional terms of good and evil actions, as follows: … "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that the man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand how he would act, otherwise, God's knowledge would be imperfect.…"[3] A logical formulation of this argument might go as follows:[1] God knows choice "C" that a human would claim to "make freely". It is now necessary that C. If it is now necessary that C, then C cannot be otherwise (this is the definition of “necessary”). That is, there are no actual "possibilities" due to predestination. If you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely (Principle of Alternate Possibilities) Therefore, when you do an act, you will not do it freely. Norman Swartz, however, contends that the above arguments commit the modal fallacy. In particular, he asserts that these arguments assume that if C is true, it becomes necessary for C to be true, which is incorrect as C is contingent (see modal logic). Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of his actions.[2] Other means of reconciling God's omniscience with human free will have been proposed. Some have attempted to redefine or reconceptualize free will: God can know in advance what I will do, because free will is to be understood only as freedom from coercion, and anything further is an illusion. This is the move made by compatibilistic philosophies. The sovereignty (autonomy) of God, existing within a free agent, provides strong inner compulsions toward a course of action (calling), and the power of choice (election). The actions of a human are thus determined by a human acting on relatively strong or weak urges (both from God and the environment around them) and their own relative power to choose.[4] A proposition first offered by Boethius[5] and later by Thomas Aquinas[note 1] and C. S. Lewis, suggests that God's perception of time is different, and that this is relevant to our understanding of our own free will. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside time and therefore does not "foresee" events, but rather simply observes them all at once. He explains: But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today". All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.[6] A common objection is to argue that Molinism, or the belief that God can know counterfactually the actions of his creations, is true. This has been used as an argument by Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, amongst others. Free will argument for the nonexistence of God[edit] Dan Barker suggests that this can lead to a "Free will Argument for the Nonexistence of God"[7] on the grounds that God's omniscience is incompatible with God having free will and that if God does not have free will God is not a personal being. Theists generally agree that God is a personal being and that God is omniscient,[note 2] but there is some disagreement about whether "omniscient" means: "knows everything that God chooses to know and that is logically possible to know"; Or instead the slightly stronger: "knows everything that is logically possible to know"[note 3] These two terms are known as inherent and total omniscience, respectively. See also[edit] Book of Life List of paradoxes – Wikipedia list article Molinism Notes[edit] ^ See also Divine Providence versus the concept of Fate ^ see e.g. Richard Swinburne Does God Exist? of The Catechism of the Catholic Church ^ see e.g. John Polkinghorne References[edit] ^ a b Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Foreknowledge and Free Will ^ a b Swartz, Norman. "Foreknowledge and Free Will". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 26 August 2017. ^ The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics (Semonah Perakhim), edited, annotated, and translated with an Introduction by Joseph I. Gorfinkle, pp. 99–100. (New York: AMS Press), 1966. ^ The Philosopher's Handbook, Stanley Rosen, ed., Random House Reference, New York, 2000. ^ Consolatio Philosophiae, Boethius, book 5:4 ^ C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity Touchstone:New York, 1980 p.149 ^ The Free will Argument for the Nonexistence of God by Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation [1] Archived 2018-10-13 at the Wayback Machine Further reading[edit] Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica I, Q. XIV, esp. Art. 13: "Whether the Knowledge of God is of Future Contingent Things?". Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Many editions. Hasker, William. God, Time, and Foreknowledge". Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Molina, Luis de. On Divine Foreknowledge, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Plantinga, Alvin. "On Ockham's Way Out". Faith and Philosophy 3 (3): 235–269. Ockham, William. Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, trans. M.M. Adams and N. Kretzmann. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983. Zagzebski, Linda. "The Dilemma of Freedom an Foreknowledge". New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Luther, Martin: De servo arbitrio, in English: On the Bondage of the Will. In Latin and German 1525, in modern English: J.I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, trans. Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1957. External links[edit] Foreknowledge and Free Will article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Omniscience and Divine Foreknowledge article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Paradox of Free will – An online discussion Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica I, Q. 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