Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ssc-vax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david From: david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Omniscience vs. Free Will (again!) Message-ID: <844@ssc-vax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 21-Feb-84 12:46:03 EST Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.844 Posted: Tue Feb 21 12:46:03 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 22-Feb-84 02:34:14 EST Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle Lines: 60 The free will vs. omniscient debate is getting fun. Byron Howes recently posted an article and Darrell Plank sent a letter on the subject, and I thought the matter was of sufficient interest to be posted to the net. (Hope you don't mind, Darrell; nothing derogatory here.) I don't think that a definition of terms is necessary; free will implies ability to choose. Further, it implies that there is a selection of choices to make (you can't "choose" to eat only bananas on a deserted island if there is no other fruit to be had). This is an important point to make, as I shall try to demonstrate. Darrell made the analogy of a ball/trajectory: > If I calculate the exact trajectory of a ball that is thrown into the air, > you can claim that I only KNEW the flight of the ball but I didn't ALTER the > flight in any way. It still remains a fact that the ball didn't have free > will in its flight. Free will implies that along the way the ball could > "make its own decisions" and suddenly veer off to the right. Of course this > is not true. Balls do not have free will. Balls don't have will of any > kind, free or constrained. This is good fun. Doesn't this work whether God exists or not? If God does not exist, then we may say the ball is only obeying the law of gravity. But a person will obey that same law of gravity. This implies that man does not have free will, regardless of the existence of an external Diety. We have no choice but to obey certain kinds of laws, among them gravity, friction, inertia, etc. But certainly this does not imply lack of free will. These laws exist regardless of the existence of God. As I said earlier, free will implies the existence of choices; the ball has none. (The same argument could be used for Byron's piece of yarn analogy, I think) But there are other kinds of laws that may be called "spiritual" laws. They are, I hope, higher than the "natural" laws. These include what we may call common sense, jurisprudence, and the "moral" law. In these cases, we almost always have a choice (we may may exceptions for mentally disturbed types, but let's concentrate on the general case). You always have the choice to be mean or kind to the beggar on the corner. It may be painfully obvious to point out that the free will of man only comes into play in these cases, because only in these cases is there real choice. Real choice, then, arises from one of the spiritual laws (it is interesting to note that a bad choice in the spiritual realm often results in a bad consequence in the natural realm. As C.S. Lewis said, if you don't obey the law of jurisprudence when walking on a slippery sidewalk, you may suddenly find yourself obeying the law of gravity). But I think my original point still holds up. God, being omniscient, knows that we are going to disobey the law of jurisprudence tomorrow and fall on our butt. It does not follow that He makes it happen, because watching someone do something is not the same as making them do it. But I might point out that this view (that God can't be omniscient because we have free will) operates on the idea that God is not omnipotent. It puts a limit on God's ability. Finally, Byron will be correct in pointing out that this may be in violent contradiction to Calvinist teaching. But I am not here to defend the Calvinists. -- David Norris :-) -- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david