Tom Capuder
Graeme Arthur@tomcapuder Your analogy misrepresents the biblical view. Humans aren’t “products” but free beings, capable of love and growth. God doesn’t abandon us to "fix ourselves"; Christianity centers on grace and redemption, not punishment. Jealousy in the Bible reflects protective love, not pettiness.
Then how can we be "free beings"? Can you do anything *other* than what God has forever foreseen you doing?
@tomcapuder Interesting question! Foreknowledge doesn't necessarily negate free will. A common analogy is watching a recording: knowing the outcome doesn't mean the people in it were coerced. Omniscience means God knows every choice you will freely make, not that you're forced into it. Thoughts?
If God has forever known that tomorrow at noon you'll do X, then when the time comes, you can *only* do X. You can't not do it, and you can't do Y instead. You can only do what God has foreseen.
If you make what you feel is a free choice, and God has always known what you'd choose, then the "freedom" is just an illusion, as you made the only decision you could have made. If you could make another choice instead, then the god isn't omniscient.
@tomcapuder knowing an outcome doesn’t necessarily mean causing it. For example, I might know my kid will choose to wear their favorite shoes tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean they lack the freedom to choose differently. God’s omniscience surely works similarly except he knows perfectly —it’s knowledge of free choices, not their cause. Does being fully known scare you?
𝗖 𝗔 𝗧You keep talking about "God’s omniscience" and "God knows every choice you will freely make," but how do you even know that God even exists? Even if your argument about God knowing what choices you make not taking away your free will is true, it doesn't really mean anything if you can't prove the existence of the God you're talking about.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@Radical_EgoCom @graemearthur As far as we know "free will" isn't a thing as there is no physical mechanism that can deliver it.
The usual way out of this seems to be to say "in practice it's too complicated to calculate what someone will decide to do, so we might as well live our lives as if free will is actually a thing".