The question posed in the poll is invalid because it already supposes that there is a god; which there is no evidence of. Also, it depends what you mean by free. Free to live out their lives? Or free to not burn in hell for eternity for their actions? If you suppose that the threat of hell is real, then yes, you are not free if god is omnicient; because he created you and he knows what you're going to do (according to creationists who happen to believe god is omnicient) Free will implies that at least most of your decisions are your own to make. If you study neurology, you learn that both genetics and environment affect your decision making. So what may seem random to you, given someone with the same genetics and same environmental factors, the person would almost always choose the same thing. You may say, "yes but you don't have to". It's irrelevant. You will choose them anyway. But fear not, there is a small amount of randomness in the statistics. Although you will choose the same choice most of the time, it's not 100% Is that free will? Having a small sliver of a chance of doing something different? No. I think it's rather like the opposite of free will. People like to think they are just spirits inside their body, but they're not. They ARE their body. Everything you think, is done by your brain and nothing more. I've met people who have been brain damaged after first meeting them, and they are very different people. One family friend had a vessel burst in his head and his personality completely changed. No, I'm afraid your brain and environmental factors are running the show; you're just along for the ride.
@Murphy78 The question about God being omniscient is not the belief of creationists. An entity that is "a God" has to be omniscient otherwise it is not a God!
Not necessarily. Maybe a god is not omniscient because there is a hierarchy of different gods with different powers, due to this another questions arise such as why we assume there's only one god? See, one of the most ancient religion in the world i.e. Hinduism has multiple if not thousands of gods. Why we embrace a monotheistic view of the Universe? Ed. For the record, I consider myself as agnostic... I believe there could be and actually are some realms we the humans still have no access, for the time being or never, maybe. Following murphy's comment above, our brain is wired for "believing" not to "reasoning", so many members of our species are in true disadvantage to understand science and skepticism for example.
Are you serious, even Hinduism has one God, the thousands that you see are just facets of the one. It seems you believe in a hierarchy similar to the one on Mount Olympus in Greek Mythology.
IMAO, too arrogant this claim murphy (no offense intention, please). I think an entity/s with enough power are elusive, why? Because they want to. Any phenomenon science studies includes the whole Universe with a common denominator on them: matter without "intelligence". We are the only known species with a high level of intelligence and consciousness, then we are elusive in all of our daily affairs, then why a god or gods wouldn't be elusive as well? Conclusion: we really don't know for sure despite science can't prove it's existence it doesn't mean gods cannot exist. It's just they simply are elusive.
Didn't know about this, due I am not an expert or even read in-depth Hinduism. So I keep skeptic about you claim, besides why one unique god? When you look out there at the macro cosmos there are myriads of objects, and into the micro cosmos as well. I see another common denominator for anything including gods: prodigality. Then, why just ONE all mighty god?
LOL, I see your point of view, all these kind of debates lead to the same empty place or realm of agnosticism. Rather we the humans be dedicated to do good science to free humanity from a lot of miseries. xD
Do you understand the idea of a "God"? A God is supposed to be an entity this is all knowing and all powerful and most of all "God is", no past and future everything is present. A being with all those traits would have to omniscient! Now you can have 4 817 504 Gods all being omniscient ! However what purpose does it serve when they all know the same thing and are essentially one and the same?
No, and I never will. And because you said: "it's supposed to... " and "what purpose", then nobody can answer this just speculate, then we remain in a pool full of agnosticism.
Yes all is speculation and hence entertainment. But you can have different approaches. If god would be a person (separate object) with the attribute of omniscience and humans (also separate objects) are lacking of this attribute, then humans are not free as a simple conclusion of thoughts. But there is the term god and its meanings that complicates all. Consider another way of thinking, let us put god aside. What would be 'something' that is real for all, omniscient, true to all, the one and only that exists, does exist to all, is eternal and infinite? What would it be? Could you define it at all? And if yes what would others think about your idea of it? How can you notice of its existence? And if difference of ideas / form / appearance themselves are the reasons for misunderstandings how could be the 'something' even differentiated? Are there two truths? Are there 2 'something’s' that are real? 2 things that can be omniscient, eternal, infinite? So why people create different ideas of this something then at all and even fight about? Nothing else is to think about god.....the 'results' just do not fulfill those attributes to all and discussions never stop. Even more this is the reason for religious wars. God is no object of reason. One can point to god, though. But those sentences who try that are 'weird' to logical thinking. Like : "You have found god when you know that you have not to search for him...or you can search for anything except god." Or : "The kingdom of god / heaven is within you." These sentences are for those who 'know' god the simplest truth ever, to those who are artheist its pure BS. Either way, to fight in the name of one's god is just to fight for the idea that strawberry ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream, how stupid are those who fight in the name of 'their' god?
Whenever, I see some new posts are posted here I'm thrilled to speak something. Seriously. There is no free will, get over it. We have awareness of being (which some/many other/s have suggested plausible mechanisms for), and many seem to conflate this with free choice. The alleged ethical issue this ‘creates’ is irrelevant, i.e. “we cannot chose right from wrong”. We will do whatever we will do regardless. This ‘doing’ is a/the result of natural law, (a level of existence that we do not directly perceive) acting on larger macroscopic agents that act upon each other (neural constructs), which is the level of our perception. We are the woods, blind to the trees. There is either deterministic natural law (and it applies to everything), or there isn’t. And no, quantum mechanics is not a refuge for wishful thinking. We are passengers, but we still don’t know what will happen next............ You don’t make a choice, you are a choice being made.
Agree with you. Most religions are of the view that God/s is/are Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscient. If God is Omnipresent, then there is no place for evil to exist outside God. If you recognise the separate existence for evil, then you have to forgo God's Omnipresence. If evil is another power that is outside, or challenging God's power, then God is not Omnipotent. If He is not Omnipresent and Omnipotent, than He can't be Omniscient. God loses his essential qualifications to be God .
Exactly and this destroys all religion. There is no valid argument to justify evil as separate from God. If evil exists then God is evil. The whole problem is the concept of good and evil, they don't exist, it's a human flaw.
No Replying to the original question: Preset Parameters: God exists (out of scope of this debate) Human is created by God (out of scope of this debate) Tested: God has given Man free will Debate: If the Preset Parameters are valid is the will given by God to Man truly free or not? Discussion: God knowing what Man's actions will be a priori has nothing to do with Man actually doing them. If for instance time travel was possible and we could go ahead of time and watch ourselves (or another) acting and then returned back our knowledge of this person's actions prior to that person's acting would not affect his/her decision making. (What makes the will given to Man by God anything but Free is not God's Omniscience but the repercussions imposed because of the options. When one gives another a dilemma to choose and there are repercussions set in place by the creator of the dilemma then that is not Free Will at all. It is as simple as a Government telling its citizens you have the right to vote for anyone you want but if you vote for the opposition we will exterminate you. That is not free will.) Conclusion: Based only on the data presented in the question itself: If God is Omniscient then Human is not free I have to disagree. Human's freedom is independent of God's Omniscience. My one and half cents... (rough times)...
If the omniscient being in this question was simply an observer, then I would agree. Simply knowing what will happen does not preclude free will from making the "pre-known" choices. However, in most cases, the omniscient being in question is also the creator of the universe that he is omniscient about. This creator would therefore have known all possibilities and selected which set of choices would be made by everything in the creation. You chose to have an opinion to this topic this evening because the creator decided you would choose to have an opinion on this topic, this particular evening at the moment of creation. Further, your decision to have an opinion was based on many factors that make you who you are: your background, qualification, thought process, etc. which could have been different , had the creator wanted them to be so, thus influencing a different decision. Bottom line is that an omniscient creator makes free will meaningless. (Assume an omniscient entity exists. Are there any choices I can make where the omniscient entity does not know what the outcome will be? No, because entity is omniscient. Are there any decisions I can make which will surprise the entity? No, because entity is omniscient. You're dodging the point by banging on that your God would know differently if I chose differently. That is a total irrelevance. The point is not who caused what, it's that there are no valid options available to me when making the decision. If I can only chose what entity knows I will choose, I have no freedom.)