# Does it violate free will if the person was never given the desire to do something in the first place? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 2, 2025, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339 "2025-12-02T22:09:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/61 "2025-12-21T11:59:46Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > When we try to imagine heaven most of us actually conceive of something far more limited and rigid than even our lives now. You’d get bored in a week. _When this kiss is over it will start again. It won’t be any different - it’ll be exactly the same._ ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/62 "2025-12-21T13:15:21Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > Randy Alcorn wrote a comprehensive book about the Christian Heaven titled Heaven that answers every major question people have about it with direct references to the source material I should be clear though that I don’t think the concept of heaven makes sense overall. I was just saying the “bored” thing doesn’t necessarily work, as long as heaven is some reality that allows for significantly more experiences, and indeed _challenges_ than this life. And I’d also say it’s pointless trying to defend the concept because the reality is that it was never very clearly defined, and views have differed across time and denominations of Christianity. At the end of the day, it’s just manipulation taken to the nth degree IMHO. The religion has a carrot and a stick, and the carrot is…the best possible thing, and the stick is, oh look; the worst possible thing. But hey, free will, no pressure. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2025, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/63 "2025-12-21T14:17:02Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > > [@Cmyers1980](#): > > > > Randy Alcorn wrote a comprehensive book about the Christian Heaven titled Heaven that answers every major question people have about it with direct references to the source material > > I should be clear though that I don’t think the concept of heaven makes sense overall. I was just saying the “bored” thing doesn’t necessarily work, as long as heaven is some reality that allows for significantly more experiences, and indeed _challenges_ than this life. > > And I’d also say it’s pointless trying to defend the concept because the reality is that it was never very clearly defined, and views have differed across time and denominations of Christianity. True. Alcorn is presenting ONE of the various major Christian views of the foretold “New Earth”. Explicitly taught in every version though is that there will be no reason to be unhappy or unsatisfied. Which assertion may not satisfy us here. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/64 "2025-12-22T12:04:04Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If there’s a distinction between the get-out-of-jail free will, and Plantinga’s argument, then our focus in this thread should be on the former, right? I think it should be on the strongest possible versions of the arguments in favor of the side defending Christian views, because everything else just hands them a free win. > [@Mijin](#): > > I was saying that the way creationists use free will as a get out of jail doesn’t work on scrutiny. You seem to be agreeing with this, but adding that _Plantinga’s_ free will defence isn’t defeated by the objection I raised. But that’s only because Plantinga doesn’t assert there’s necessarily free will, only that a proposition _like it_ could defeat the logical argument for god. > [@Irishman](#): > > In order for that argument to work, one would need to have that fifth premise be something coherent, something understandable. I think these both turn on a similar misunderstanding of Plantinga’s argument, so I’ll address them together. The thing is that you don’t need free will or something ‘like’ free will to exist to address the logical problem of evil—you merely need a counterfactual statement of the form that _if_ humans were to choose their own actions freely (and doing so represented some considerable moral value), _then_ you could have both a tri-omni god and a world with some amount of evil within it. This is enough to show that it’s not inconsistent to have a tri-omni god and evil in the world, _whether or not_ there is free will. It shows that the argument that presents tri-omnicity and evil as inherently contradictory is flawed, without thereby incurring any specific commitments as to how the world must be structured. As for the whole Adam and Eve thing, as such, my understanding is that it isn’t generally considered a moral failure that they succumbed to temptation, but rather, a falling short of expectations in that they didn’t obey god’s command. By analogy, you don’t need to expect a dog to understand good and evil to expect it to follow your command, and be disappointed when it fails to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/65 "2025-12-22T12:37:00Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I think it should be on the strongest possible versions of the arguments in favor of the side defending Christian views, because everything else just hands them a free win. But there’s the rub, because I don’t think that the _logical_ argument of evil is the best version of that argument. It’s an empirical observation IMHO. It’s like if the claim was that God cares most about healthy eating, and yet cakes kept raining down from heaven, and everyone was dying of obesity-related illnesses by 25. Put as a syllogism, one could still question the logic, and claim that there’s some good reason for Healthy God to keep giving us buttery cakes. And perhaps there is. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that, on the face of it, it’s a difficult thing to reconcile. Likewise with suffering and an omnimax god. Indeed in this case one difference is that several proposed arguments for solving the problem have been put forward, and they all have failed, certainly including free will IMO. This is additional reason to acknowledge this as a significant challenge for the claim of an omnimax god. (ETA: Also of course, cakes magically appearing would at least be evidence for a god, something we’re severely lacking for the gods of this world’s religions) > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > As for the whole Adam and Eve thing, as such, my understanding is that it isn’t generally considered a moral failure that they succumbed to temptation, but rather, a falling short of expectations in that they didn’t obey god’s command. By analogy, you don’t need to expect a dog to understand good and evil to expect it to follow your command, and be disappointed when it fails to do so. Yes I mentioned the fact that they did not know good and evil before they ate the fruit (so could not have known it was wrong to disobey god), but whether it was evil is actually irrelevant. Eating the fruit is the event that creationists blame for everything from childhood cancer to earthquakes. Whether you want to call it an immoral act, or just disobedience, makes no difference in this context. Either way, the desire to remove culpability from god for the reason of “free will” fails. Their intelligence and knowledge of the world (and consequences) were all god’s doing and he knew what would happen. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/66 "2025-12-22T14:23:12Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > But there’s the rub, because I don’t think that the _logical_ argument of evil is the best version of that argument. > […] > But that doesn’t take away from the fact that, on the face of it, it’s a difficult thing to reconcile. If the logical argument worked, it would show the existence of evil and that of a tri-omni god inconsistent, so by the existence of evil, the non-existence of (that sort of) god, which I think is the strongest possible conclusion one could hope for. On the other hand, that somebody has heard Trump talk and still votes for him is ‘difficult to reconcile’, but still, there it is. > [@Mijin](#): > > Either way, the desire to remove culpability from god for the reason of “free will” fails. Their intelligence and knowledge of the world (and consequences) were all god’s doing and he knew what would happen. But the thing is that even knowing what will happen, having all the power possible, and having the will to prevent something doesn’t mean being able to avert it. That’s exactly what follows from Plantinga’s argument. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/67 "2025-12-22T14:25:11Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > If in the context of the Bible God made humans from scratch with no evolutionary process then why not simply make it so they didn’t have the desires to disobey him or the potential to be evil enough to warrant extermination in the first place? If free will is the ability to act according to your desires without coercion (the definition I think most people subscribe to) then it can’t be a violation if you simply don’t have certain desires to begin with. I think it would be absurd to suggest that God (or any creator) would be morally obligated to give its creation certain desires that would end in it disobeying or making evil choices as long as said creator didn’t have nefarious intentions in mind. Every person that’s ever lived has desires that they can’t fulfill because of the nature of reality and biology but I don’t think very many people would call that a free will violation. I desire to have the powers of Superman and live forever. Other people have the desire to fly, talk to animals, time travel, bench press mountains, talk to dead relatives, etc. Is my free will (and everyone else’s) being violated because I wasn’t given the ability to fulfill said desires in this life by a theoretical deity? I’m not religious, but years ago, I read some kind of internet fiction that posed that question. The answer it gave was that God created all possible worlds (in a quantum multiverse sense) where at the end of the day net good outweighed net bad. So He created a world where humans never had the desire for the forbidden fruit (or really, an uncountable number of such worlds) but also uncountable numbers of worlds where the good just barely outweighs the bad, and we live in one of those. Mind you, I don’t think this was presented as a real answer; the story was really more about the ramifications of biblical literalism looked at rationally and scientifically, the way you might have detailed discussions about whether the D&D rules that allow you to hand an item to someone adjacent to you as a free action mean that a few million peasants standing in a line could accelerate anything beyond the speed of light (the so-called Commoner Railgun). But it’s an interesting idea, and honestly more compelling than many of the actual theological answers to the Problem of Evil (even though its deeply unsatisfying and completely unfalsifiable!). ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/68 "2025-12-22T20:16:07Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > But the thing is that even knowing what will happen, having all the power possible, and having the will to prevent something doesn’t mean being able to avert it. That’s exactly what follows from Plantinga’s argument. You are simply repeating your argument and I think we all got it the first time. What I am saying to you is that, if Plantinga has defeated one particular version of the problem of evil, so what? Almost everybody means that the observation of natural suffering is extremely difficult to reconcile with an omnimax God – indeed there is no known solution. The fact that _technically speaking_ it is not _impossible_ that an omnimax God might have made a world full of suffering (and remember: a lot of suffering is based on natural effects and appears indiscriminate, more reasons why the free will defence looks weak), isn’t very convincing to anyone. Technically speaking, I might have 3 hands and I just didn’t notice all these years. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/69 "2025-12-22T21:07:04Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I think these both turn on a similar misunderstanding of Plantinga’s argument, so I’ll address them together. The thing is that you don’t need free will or something ‘like’ free will to exist to address the logical problem of evil—you merely need a counterfactual statement of the form that _if_ humans were to choose their own actions freely (and doing so represented some considerable moral value), _then_ you could have both a tri-omni god and a world with some amount of evil within it. This is enough to show that it’s not inconsistent to have a tri-omni god and evil in the world, _whether or not_ there is free will. It shows that the argument that presents tri-omnicity and evil as inherently contradictory is flawed, without thereby incurring any specific commitments as to how the world must be structured. That argument makes no sense to me; it’s assuming its own conclusion and doesn’t hold together logically. It is extremely vague about what claim it’s making about a “counterfactual statement of the form that _if_ humans were to choose their own actions freely”, and ignoring that _any_ such claim directly contradicts the concept of an omnipotent & omniscient creator. If there’s an an omnipotent & omniscient creator, then _every last action and decision_ in the universe was known and planned by them before the universe existed. By definition. There’s no room for free choice in such a universe, “free will” or not; everything that happens is just a pre-written narrative unfolding as designed. And if evil exists, it’s because that creator planned for it to exist. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/70 "2025-12-22T21:33:16Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > If there’s an an omnipotent & omniscient creator, then _every last action and decision_ in the universe was known and planned by them before the universe existed. Even in a multiverse? We can have _every_ possible kind of freewill in a multiverse, and an omniscient god would already know about everything that could possibly happen. Omniscience is easy; many possible world-models can allow for an omniscient god. It is the omnibenevolent god that is self-evidently impossible, since suffering exists. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/71 "2025-12-22T22:33:02Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Even in a multiverse? We can have _every_ possible kind of freewill in a multiverse, and an omniscient god would already know about everything that could possibly happen. In a multiverse, _everything_ that ever happened in _every_ universe would have been pre-planned by the creator. Scale doesn’t matter when you attribute infinite qualities to the creator; a pebble or a trillion universes are just as simple and predictable to such a being. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/72 "2025-12-23T00:54:54Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The thing is that you don’t need free will or something ‘like’ free will to exist to address the logical problem of evil—you merely need a counterfactual statement of the form that _if_ humans were to choose their own actions freely (and doing so represented some considerable moral value), _then_ you could have both a tri-omni god and a world with some amount of evil within it. And I’m saying that the _if_ you propose creates its own contradictions for the tri-omni god. An all-knowing god knows everything that will ever happen as if it has already happened. What does it mean to “freely choose” if god already foresees it? How can there be a great “master plan” that god created and every event that ever happens to us is just a part of that plan and people be freely choosing? If everything that happens _to_ us is god’s plan, and some of the things that happen to us are the result of the actions of others, and our actions happen to others, then how can any of it be a “free choice”? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/73 "2025-12-23T01:11:40Z")
It should also be noted that in a setting with an omniscient being, _by definition_ no form of “free will” can be unpredictable or they couldn’t be omniscient in the first place. So there’s no point in trying to come up with a version that can’t be predicted. It’s not news that you can easily get past the “Problem of Evil” by rejecting the premises, and that’s what trying to find an exception to omniscience is. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/74 "2025-12-23T08:55:21Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > If there’s an an omnipotent & omniscient creator, then _every last action and decision_ in the universe was known and planned by them before the universe existed. > [@Irishman](#): > > And I’m saying that the _if_ you propose creates its own contradictions for the tri-omni god. An all-knowing god knows everything that will ever happen as if it has already happened. What does it mean to “freely choose” if god already foresees it? There is of course a [large body of debate](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/) around this question, and I can’t pretend to be familiar enough with it to give any sort of authoritative answer. But nevertheless, I don’t think it’s quite that much of a knockdown in the end, because it’s not necessarily true that God (the Christian one, at least) knows ‘every last action and decision’ _before_ the universe existed, or that they know everything that _will ever_ happen. These formulations presume a tensed context, but God is often considered to be ‘outside of time’, and it’s not clear whether their ‘atemporal’ knowledge is in any conflict with free will. (It was probably Boethius who first came up with that view.) By analogy, if I knew yesterday that you would order pizza today, that’s a difficulty for the idea that you placed that order freely; but if I know today that you ordered pizza yesterday, there’s no problem with you doing so freely. So the temporal vantage point matters: from the end of the universe, all actions ever taken are perfectly definite, and it wouldn’t conflict with their being taken freely at all if a being situated there were to know each to the minutest detail. It’s only knowledge situated to the past of a given action that is a problem for that action’s freedom, but God’s knowledge isn’t situated in time at all. So in that sense, it’s not the case that they know what ‘will happen beforehand’. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/75 "2025-12-23T09:26:02Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > it’s not necessarily true that God (the Christian one, at least) knows ‘every last action and decision’ _before_ the universe existed, or that they know everything that _will ever_ happen. That’s part of the definition of omniscient, I’m afraid. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/76 "2025-12-23T09:52:03Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > In a multiverse, _everything_ that ever happened in _every_ universe would have been pre-planned by the creator. Well, exactly. If the creator allowed for the possibility of every possible action, then each individual entity within that multiverse would have complete freedom of action, and therefore ‘free will’ in certain circumstances. Note that a multiverse with every possible event would also encompass an infinite number of universes where every action made by the independent entities within it would be controlled directly by the creator; a controlled universe where no choices would be possible (which sounds a bit like the primitive concept of heaven to me, where everyone has no choice but to adore god ceaselessly). So some parts of a multiverse might be capable of supporting free will, while other parts would be strictly determined. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/77 "2025-12-23T09:58:50Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > By analogy, if I knew yesterday that you would order pizza today, that’s a difficulty for the idea that you placed that order freely; but if I know today that you ordered pizza yesterday, there’s no problem with you doing so freely. Dammit HMHW, I was so close to agreeing with your post 🙂 I disagree with this bit though (which also entails I disagree with Der\_Trihs and Irishman on this point). I don’t think there’s automatically a problem with freedom whether you are seeing the videotape of events after they’ve happened or before. Knowing what you will do in advance is not necessarily incompatible with free will; certainly that’s the position that compatibilists take. I think the reason it looks incompatible is that people assume further propositions, like that I could _use_ that information, or possibly even tell you what you will choose, and you will be powerless to change your mind. But that’s a different thing. In itself knowledge doesn’t entail anything. Imagine a tachyonic being moving from the end of time back to the big bang…does its very existence take away all our free choices? If someone murders this being in 2027 does that mean that my 2026 is now more free than it otherwise would have been? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/78 "2025-12-23T13:18:08Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > > > it’s not necessarily true that God (the Christian one, at least) knows ‘every last action and decision’ _before_ the universe existed, or that they know everything that _will ever_ happen. > > That’s part of the definition of omniscient, I’m afraid. The point, as elaborated in the rest of the post, is that God’s knowledge of the facts isn’t tensed, being an atemporal being; hence, they don’t know what _will happen_, or indeed anything, _before_ it does, since concepts of ‘before’ and such don’t make sense in the absence of time. > [@Mijin](#): > > Knowing what you will do in advance is not necessarily incompatible with free will; certainly that’s the position that compatibilists take. Sure, but I’d doubt that this kind of free will holds appeal to those who think this is a problem in the first place. Also, plausibly, one might hold that it needs the ‘could-have-done-otherwise’-sort of free will to get the argument to work; and that’s indeed threatened by foreknowledge, which the appeal to God’s atemporal nature is intended to address. So I’ve got no qualms with holding a compatibilist account sufficient here, but my point is that even if one doesn’t, God’s omniscience doesn’t necessarily threaten the possibility of freedom. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/79 "2025-12-23T13:27:48Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The point, as elaborated in the rest of the post, is that God’s knowledge of the facts isn’t tensed, being an atemporal being; hence, they don’t know what _will happen_, or indeed anything, _before_ it does, since concepts of ‘before’ and such don’t make sense in the absence of time. I agree with this. Time is just a dimension (although we experience it linearly and progressively), and given the right perspective it could (in theory) be viewed as a whole from outside. Knowledge of events before they happen does not necessarily remove free will, so long as multiple choices can be made (which to me implies some species of multiverse). ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/80 "2025-12-23T13:37:44Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > the ‘could-have-done-otherwise’-sort of free will That is exactly the sort of ‘free will’ I am talking about. If there is any sort of ‘could-have-done-otherwise’ property to the universe at all, an omniscient god would know all the options, anticipate all the possible future histories, and know the consequences of every choice - this would allow a particular type of free will where choice is not only possible, but necessary. An omniscient god would hold atemporal memories of all these future timelines inside their infinitely large head. The consequent of this is that there would be no detectable difference between being an atemporal memory inside an infinite god’s head, and being a real human being made of baryonic matter. I’m sure there are numerous religious belief systems which have reached similar conclusions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339.md?page=5)