'God is omniscient so therefore we cannot have free will(TM) Discuss.

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‘God is omniscient so therefore we cannot have free will’ Discuss.

The God of classical theism has many attributes including that of being omnipotent. By this we understand God to be all powerful and have no limits. This is that God is all powerful and have no limits. God is also regarded to be eternal in other words not affected by time and transcendent meaning God is above and beyond earthly existence. Further attributes of the God of classical theism are he is flawless as he is perfect and possesses the highest good and finite attributes and omniscience which means God has the ability to know everything. God being omniscient presents a dilemma that I will expand upon in this essay. The problem is that if God knows all things throughout time (as he must, if he is omniscient), then he knows every action I perform, every decision I make throughout my life, before make them. If God knows what I am going to do, then how can I do anything other than that? This raises the questions of whether we then are morally to blame for doing wrong actions or whether we were simply determined to do this action, if so there can be no sense of punishment or blame. This then implies that people such as Hitler cannot blamed for their actions because they were simply pre determined.

If it is God’s plan that humans can choose to do bad this does not seem consistent with the view that God is omni-benevolent. Would a benevolent ‘beneficent’ God want us to suffer. A possible solution is that free will arises as part of a greater plan. God knows how we will use our free will and this is how he determines who is saved in salvation. Morality also requires free will and our ability to choose right and wrong.

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Free will and determinism can be viewed in different ways. A hard determinist view is that we do not have free will. Every choice that is made can be explained by its prior causes. Hard determinism is incompatible with free will and moral responsibility. John Hospers, a hard determinist, believed there is always something which compels us externally and internally to perform an action that we would believe to be the result of our own free will. Modern versions of hard determinism point to our behaviour and genetics, as it has been observed that in certain situations we may ...

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