God's Omniscience and Human Free Will - Contradiction Essay

God's Omniscience and Human Free Will - Contradiction - Essay Example Most of the solutions or arguments are aimed at working around the problem rather than resolving it. I believe that there is no way to solve this conflict without denying either God’s omniscience or the existence of free will. In this essay I argue and attempt to prove that God’s omniscience and human free will are not compatible with each other. Omniscience in the simplest form is defined as the knowledge of everything, infinite or complete knowledge. That is, an omniscient God knows and has knowledge of everything, including what is going to happen in the future1. Human free will on the other hand is defined as the ability, power or force of a person to choose what or what not to do. In a more religious sense it is the ability or power to choose or turn away from good or evil2. Hence, definition of omniscient God implies an all knowing God meaning that God knows what is going to happen in the future. If God already knows what we are going to do in the future, it means that our actions are already predetermined and we have no control over the actions that we are going to take in the future. ... God is omniscient or humans have free will, both cannot be possible. Now let’s consider some of the solutions offered to solve the above conflict and see if it actually attempts to prove the compatibility of the two ideas or not. One of the major arguments made by those supporting omniscient God and human free will is that God’s foreknowledge in no way restricts human free will. That is, foreknowledge does not imply causality. Following analogy is used to support the claim: Sun rises tomorrow and knowing this does not cause the sun to rise. Knowing ahead of time does not restrict or cause an event to occur. Similarly, God’s foreknowledge of what we are going to do does not affect our free will to choose what we are going to do. It just means that God happens to know ahead of time what we are going to choose freely. God does not affect our freedom to choose but he simply knows ahead of time that what we are going to choose3. For this argument to work the concept o f time as we know it must be discarded. God is not restricted by the concept of time as we do. To God past, present and future exists at once, i.e, God exists outside of time. The above argument does not make logical sense and can be termed invalid. Let’s assume that humans have free will and are free to choose what they want to do. If an option A is chosen then by the earlier argument God would have known that option A would be chosen ahead of time. If instead of option A, due to free will, option B is chosen then the argument would be that this is what would have been known4. So either way the conclusion that can be drawn is that the future is determined. Irrespective of causing the event to occur or not, the future remains determined in the analogy used. Knowing that the sun