# God and Knowledge
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 15, 2002, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849 "2002-12-15T04:45:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/21 "2002-12-17T14:48:07Z")
NoClueboy wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> Free will is relative to the human sphere. I can say I choose to fly to the moon on my own thoughts, but it isn’t bloody likely to happen.
Free will is a topic of ethics. It has to do with freedom of _moral_ choices.
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### Author:  [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/22 "2002-12-17T15:01:34Z")
I’ve been thinking of this along the lines of god being everywhere and everywhen. What you do now impacts what happens next. You have insufficient knowledge of the future to see how you free choice of action ripples outward. God on the other hand already has awareness of the future and knows what you chose. However because god is everywhen he also knows what you chose when you made the choice.
I’m going to sit down now, my head hurts.
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### Author:  [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/23 "2002-12-17T15:13:51Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by sleestak \*
> \*\*First, God seems to be presented as ‘All knowing and All seeing’. In other words God knows everything. At the same time ‘Free Will’ is brought up to explain the actions of us humans. My question is this, since God is ‘All knowing and All seeing’ doesn’t that kill the idea of ‘Free Will’? If God knew the outcome of everyones choices when he created the Universe isn’t God responsible for what happens? God didn’t have to start the Universe but he chose too. If God is ‘All knowing and All seeing’ then when he set the initial properties of the Universe he knew all the outcomes in advance. If God knew the outcome in advance then ‘Free Will’ is a myth. At the same time God would condemn certain people to hell since he knew they would sin.
> \*\*
Ah, yes. Omniscience vs. Free Will. That paradox has been around for quite a while already. There are some classic answers given.
One classic answer is that God does not exist linearlly as we do. As the Creator of time, He is outside of it. Thus, His watching an action can be akin to our watching an action from the future. For example, you have the ability to go back in time and observe (but not interact) with events. So you go to Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. on the night of April 14, 1865. You see Booth approach the presidential box. You know (because it’s historical fact) that Booth is going to shoot the president. Does that mean he didn’t have free will to do so? No. So, just as you (effectively outside of time) can still view Booth, and know what he’s going to do, and yet he still has free will, so too God can observe you “out of time,” know what you’re going to do and yet you still have free will.
I will acknowledge that the answer I gave below is not completely free of refutation. In the end, however, we are simply left with the paradox. In the end, I have to fall back on (I know you don’t want to hear it) the classic verse _lo machshevosai machshevosaichem, v’lo darkeichem d’rachai_ (Isaiah 55:8) “My [God’s] thoughts are not like their [Man’s] thoughts and My ways are not like their ways.”
Zev Steinhardt
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/24 "2002-12-17T15:48:01Z")
I don’t think any paradox exists.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/25 "2002-12-17T16:03:54Z")
It is only a paradox if you have these assumptions:
Base: God is Omniscient; he knows everything that is, was, can be, and will be.
Axiom 1) God created the Universe
Axiom 2) God created Free Will
Axiom 3) God’s creation of the universe occured in such a way as to force human beings down a certain path.
In other words: there is no paradox in the questi0n at hand, but a paradoxical pair of unstated axioms used to define God and His choices. One need not accept Axiom (3).
Assuming that God exists (which I do), I accept Axioms 1 and 2, but not 3. It would be the height of arrogance to assume that God could create life, the universe, and eveything and say that he gave us free will (well, if you believe as I do that God is percet goodness itself), but was unable to adequately provide for Free Will. That is where John Calvin got tripped up: he started with his assumptions, but rather than proceeding to their logical ends, he tried to define God. He tried to shoehorn God into his own preconceived conception.
Now, to bring the old “Is God really Good?” question into this debate, which has danced around it.
The problem here is not that people assume that God is infintely Good or not, but rather that they have preconceived notion of good: physical pleasure and absence of physical pain. However, as good is to most humans a nebulous concept. To God, it may well be otherwise. Moreover, merely being infintely good may not precuse Him having other goals than the immediate happiness of all life.
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### Author:  [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/26 "2002-12-17T16:20:17Z")
Oh, I thought the paradox ran along these lines:
1)God knows free will will lead to sin.
2)God gives man free will.
3)God punishes man for his sin.
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/27 "2002-12-17T17:42:31Z")
I do not accept your axioms (1) or (3).
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### Author:  [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/28 "2002-12-17T18:03:46Z")
Actually wouldn’t the axioms be:
1. God know everything
2. God gives man free will to create his future
Therefore God already knows every action (1) thereby making (2) irrelevant.
The problem is in thinking that the future prior to an action is the same as the future after the action. Why shouldn’t it be different?
and dynamic? Makes it more interetsing for god at least. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/29 "2002-12-17T18:16:44Z")
(2) is a red herring. God gives man freedom to make moral decisions. Morality is unbounded by temporality.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/30 "2002-12-17T19:08:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I do not accept your axioms (1) or (3).
Mine or Latro’s?
In any event, the real question is whether or not God is capable of allowing and has allowed CHaos into His creation: in the form of Mankind’s Free Will.
I believe he has.
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### Author:  [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/31 "2002-12-17T19:28:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Libertarian \*
> \*\*(2) is a red herring. God gives man freedom to make moral decisions. Morality is unbounded by temporality. \*\*
So you’re saying that free will only exists for a subset of human actions and that it is constrained to be those actions that are arrived at through a moral choice?
The whole “I’ll take the long way home tonight” choice is NOT due to free will but a long complicated cause/effect chain that started long before I was born?
Why would free will be limited to only moral actions?
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2002, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/32 "2002-12-17T20:04:53Z")
> [@](#):
>
> So you’re saying that free will only exists for a subset of human actions and that it is constrained to be those actions that are arrived at through a moral choice?
>
> The whole “I’ll take the long way home tonight” choice is NOT due to free will but a long complicated cause/effect chain that started long before I was born?
>
> Why would free will be limited to only moral actions?
Grey, please reread that post and its context. It says nowhere that Free Will applies only to moral decisions. Those are the only ones that count, however. Ulimately, God probably doesn’t care if you have Rice or Bread with your meal.
Libertarian was saying that Axiom (2) is partly irrelvant as worded. The Future and the Past are all the same thing to God.
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### Author:  [@replica02](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/replica02)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2002, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-knowledge/142849/33 "2002-12-18T08:33:47Z")
There is a difference between knowing and controlling. God may know what we are going to do, but He does not make us do it. Just as a parent may “know” when a child is going to fall, s/he does not stop the child from falling. Why? So the child will learn… S/he may warn the child, as God warns us in the Bible, but whether we heed the warning is up to us.
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