Why would omniscience and free will be mutually exclusive?

Imagine that there is nothing. No universe, no god, absolute nothingness. It's impossible to properly imagine this I know (since there's nothing to actually imagine) but try to start from there anyway. Next, add God to the void. As soon as you add God, you get everything that goes with him, including omniscience. As soon as there is omniscience there is the knowledge of exactly how the universe is going to be created. The only way you can get a different universe then is to start with a different God. But God can't be the variable in this equation since he's supposed to be immutable, and since God is primary, he couldn't have been anything other that what he is.

 

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Then how would you apply your understanding of possible-world model-theory to the analysis of conditionals?

The subject of this discussion is whether God's omniscient and infallible foreknowledge of P implies the necessity of P.

We aren't really concerned with whether or not P remains necessary even in the absence of a God and regardless of what God knows or how God knows it.

So what we seem to be talking about in this thread is relative necessity, restricted to those possible worlds in which our hypothetical antecedent conditions hold.

In this case those are theology's infallibility and omniscience postulates, along with God knowing P. Not Q or R.

 

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I think you haven't managed to deal with a certain difficulty, which is the tendency to assign human characteristics to the supposed omniscient being.

Infallible foreknowledge doesn't add up. God knows that they know everything "at once", infallibly.
This could imply that God must have "known" something before any event(s) occurred in the universe, but that's only because we fail to look past our anthropocentric beliefs--it's a false contingency. So we attribute our fallibility to this omniscient being, when logically an omniscient being has infallible knowledge.

 

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You don't need a different God to have a different universe. Just because the universe is specified doesn't mean omniscience is. Omniscience contains all contingencies. Omniscience, omnipotence make God immutable because all contingencies are available.

 

Why would someone else's knowledge (of the future, past or present) be a constraint on one's actions?

Suppose your spouse is cheating on you, but you don't know it and you are as loving to your spouse as usual. Your friend knows that your spouse is cheating on you, but doesn't tell you so.
Does your friend's knowledge of your spouse's infidelity affect how you treat your spouse?
It doesn't (at least as long as he doesn't tell you).

Nor is in such a case your free will merely illusory either.

Omniscience is certainly not the same as omni-interference. Although it seems many people conceptualize it that way.

 

This is the reasoning of theists. (Sic!)

Only a theist would conclude that God's foreknowledge necessitates a particular course of events.

 

As a matter of fact, we do encounter forms of omniscience in daily life. It happens all the time that other people know things that we don't know, things we find important and about which we believe that if we would know them, we would act differently than we did.

 

How does this relate to encountering omniscience?

 

Actually while the proposition is true it's not inherently necessary. Even if X happens and there's no possiblity that Y might happen instead of X there's still possibilty of an infinity of Y that could have happened instead.

 

Why conceive of free will as something like 'acting in such a manner that nobody can reliably know or predict'?
What is driving such an understanding of free will and omniscience?

 

Like I said: "... we do encounter forms of omniscience in daily life. It happens all the time that other people know things that we don't know... "

 

You realize that omniscience means infinite knowledge or knowledge of all contingencies and not something that was not known by one?

 

For all practical intents and purposes, the combined knowledge of all people is like omniscience.

 

Yes, if you assume that God necessarily exists and that by his very nature he is bound to create the universe (and just one universe) in only one possible way then it follows that everything that happens or exists in the universe necessarily happens in that way or exists by necessity. This is a bit like the Leibnizian doctrine of the best possible world. But then you simply short-circuit the premise that he has infallible foreknowledge. Your conclusion that free-will is impossible flows from those new assumptions together with the principle of alternate possibility, regardless of God's alleged powers of knowledge. This proof would be fully independent of the purported proof from omniscience that is the topic of this thread.

 

What a strange thing to say. It has been a burden laid at the foot of many theists, especially Catholic theologians, to conciliate the doctrine of God's omniscience with the doctrine that God has created man free.

 

Point of fact..

I consider myself a theist, I do not believe Gods foreknowledge dictates a predetermined course of events,I believe he gave us the ability to choose,and any argument that doesn't line up with that, is from man..

 

You are arguing that if we assume not only that God has infallible knowledge that I will do A but also that I will do A then it is (conditionally to this) impossible that I will not do A. But, of course, if we assume that I will do A then, necessarily, I will do A in all possible worlds where this antecedent condition holds, whatever God knowns or ignores. You've just build your conclusion into the premise of the argument.

Regarding your third paragraph above: there is no trouble for the thesis of the contingency of P in assuming God existing and knowing infallibly what I will do in all possible worlds. In those possible worlds in which I do P, he had foreknowledge that I would do P, and in in those possible worlds in which I do something else, he had foreknowledge of that instead. So, I don't see how that poses any trouble for the analysis of the relevant conditionals.

 

Western atheism is shaped by Christianity. In that sense, the reasoning of Western atheists is in many ways the same as that of Christians.

 

So far as I can see, it has not been part of the arguments for the compatibility or incompatibility of God's omniscience and Human free-will that God himself has any understanding or knowledge of the modal status or events (i.e. their being merely possible or necessary). It has only been assumed that he knows them to be (or become) actual whenever they are (or will be) actual. You can picture him within or outside of time, omnipresent or sitting on a golden throne resting on a cloud over Ankara; I don't see that it makes any difference to the arguments.

 

I take it then that when you said "Only a theist would conclude that God's foreknowledge necessitates a particular course of events." you really meant to say "Only a theist or Western atheist would conclude..."

Edited to add: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman