wordsmyth

I think the answer really depends on which definition of omniscience you use.

If you use a more flexible definition of omniscience whereby all possible outcomes are known, then it is possible to have free will provided the omniscient being does not use its knowledge to influence the decisions of others.

If you use a rigid definition of omniscience whereby there are no possible outcomes, only definite outcomes, then free will is just an illusion.

Eric H

If there is a God, and if he was to give us free will it would have to be for a purpose,

Free will never seems quite right when we equate it to things like card games, choosing which clothes to wear, or choosing what to eat and any other task.

If we are given free will for the purpose of having relationships with other people, then we need to be free to choose for our selves, otherwise it is a pointless exercise.

Put six people in a room and they will start talking about any topic, people will be encouraging, rude insulting, flirt, helpful, the conversation could go in many directions. At the end two may pair up, someone may have fallen out with another, any number of possible out comes may occur.

Multiply six people times a billion to get the earths population, and if there is a puppet master pulling all our strings in day to day life, then it all seems like a pointless dull exercise for both God and humanity.

As for omniscience I go along with this from Just_An_Atheist


quote
Thus omniscience is limited to actual events and not future events that haven't become a reality"


And also this from wordsmyth

quote
If you use a more flexible definition of omniscience whereby all possible outcomes are known, then it is possible to have free will provided the omniscient being does not use its knowledge to influence the decisions of others.

Peace

Eric

Golgo_13

"Limited omniscience" is an oxymoron.

soulofdarwin

"Free will" is indeed illusory, and powerfully so. That doesn't legislate for the existence of gods or omnicience in the universe. We are a random walk through space and time. Randomness cannot exist in the presence of omnicience. See my thread Free Will? in this forum.

Xyzzy

Yes. If A. God created the universe, and B. he knows precisely what every consequence of his decisions in creating the universe will be then it logically follows that C. he has made all future decisions for all elements of the universe for them before hand simply by creating the universe in the initial state that he did.

This means that there is no possibility that any choice we make has not already been pre-determined by God during creation.

The only other alternative is to relax the definitions of all-powerful and all-knowing. This is what christian apologists deftly do when they argue the subject. A variety of rhetorical techniques are used to do just this without making it seem like they're doing it. But bait and switch can not rescue free-will.

Why?

I'm serious.. why do you think the AI does not experience free will even in purely deterministic simulation, and why do you think it feels nothing?

These are very complex subjects.. a mere assertion as to what you "think" without explaining precisely why is simply not good enough.

We know that the brain is a large scale connectionist network of neurons operating at about 50 - 120ms per signal.. a large collection of about 12 billion neurons, and 20 trillion synapses, but we find no evidence of any missing parts that need to be explained by some ineffable "soul". So what exactly is it that you think separates us from machines other than our present understanding of how to engineer them?

Why can people experience, but AI's can not? Is there something fundamentally different about them.. and if so, what is it.. and can you prove it?

Again.. merely stating what you believe does not constitute an argument or any sort of explanation. I really want to know why you think so.

Xyzzy

This definition is not omnicience because there can be only one outcome, and this definition states that God would not know which one that might be.

See what I mean. Whenever it comes down to the apologetics, the definitions change. The rhetoric is sometimes subtle, but you can always catch when the switch occurs.

BTW christians, this is called compartmentalized thinking. It's where you don't bother to connect the implications of one line of thought up with another. When you use compartmentalized thinking, the contradictions that occur when you put 2 + 2 together are eliminated by never talking about the first 2 and the second 2 at the same time.

wordsmyth

Remember, the word omniscience does not appear in the bible. That is simply a word that has been applied to Gods knowledge attribute. Perhaps then, the word omniscience has been misapplied and what we really need is a new word to describe Gods knowledge. There is a great deal of evidence in the bible which leads me to believe a rigid definition of Gods knowledge (e.g. omniscience) is not appropriate.

Also, the notion that there can only be one outcome isn't necessarily true.

[i]Example:[i] God knows that John will die in a car accident tomorrow. God can now make a choice to either act on this knowledge and prevent the car accident or to let the accident happen.

This is what I meant by the omniscient being using its knowledge to influence outcomes. Here's another one...

[i]Example:[i] God knows that John does not believe in him and will never believe in him without extraordinary evidence. God can now make a choice to either let John continue to not believe or to grant him the extraordinary evidence that will change his belief.

This last example demonstrates how an omniscient being can use its knowledge to influence others, but by doing so it limits the free will of those it influences.

Nowhere357

I agree with your conclusion.

Do you consider pain to be illusory? If so, then I don't object to the first sentence, but think it's a poor choice of word - pain is very real, and so is not "illusory".

If you consider pain to be not-illusory, then I object to the first sentence. There is nothing "illusory" about our ability to choose, to make decisions, to attempt to override our urges.

This is not in contradiction to the deterministic worldview - our ability to do this deterministically arises from the natural world.