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The argument from free will (also called the paradox of free will, or theological fatalism) contends that omniscience and free will are incompatible, and that any conception of God that incorporates both properties is therefore inherently contradictory.[1][2][3] The argument may focus on the incoherence of people having free will, or else God himself having free will. These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination, and often seem to echo the standard argument against free will.
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Some arguments against God focus on the supposed incoherence of humankind possessing free will. These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination.
Moses Maimonides formulated an argument regarding a person's free will, in traditional terms of good and evil actions, as follows:[4]
… "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that [that] man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect.…"[5]
Various means of reconciling God's omniscience (possession of all possible knowledge) with human free will have been proposed:
A proposition first offered by Thomas Aquinas.[9] and later C. S. Lewis, it suggests that God's perception of time is different, and that this is relevant to our understanding of our own free will. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside of time and therefore does not "foresee" events, but rather simply observes them all at once. He explains:
| “ | But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them: because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.[10] | ” |
An obvious criticism of God being outside of time is that this does not seem to grant free will. Predestination, regardless of how God perceives time, still seems to mean a person's actions will be determined. A logical formulation of this criticism might go as follows:[2]
A simple version of an argument appealing specifically to God's free will:[2]
Dan Barker's version of the argument is formulated as follows:[11]
The principal criticisms of this argument center around points 1 and 2, though there is some concern regarding point 4. All point numbers refer to Barker's formulation.
Theists generally agree that God is a personal being and that God is omniscient[12] but there is some disagreement about whether "omniscient" means:
If omniscient is used in the first sense then the argument's applicability depends on what God chooses to know, and therefore it is not a complete argument against the existence of God. In both cases the argument depends on the assumption that it is logically possible for God to know every choice that he will make in advance of making that choice.
The compatibilist school of thought holds that free will is compatible with determinism and fatalism and therefore does not accept the assumptions of point 2. A related line of thought, which goes back at least to Boethius, holds that God observing someone making a choice does not constrain their choice, although this is in the context of human free will[14][15]
One criticism of the Argument from Free Will is that in point 4 of the proof it simply assumes that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible. It uses circular logic to "prove" this, by simply stating that "a being that knows its choices in advance has no potential to avoid its choices". Point 4 is therefore saying, in essence, "A being that knows its choices in advance has no free will, and therefore has no free will". By assuming what it is trying to prove, that point undermines the entire argument.
Specifically, point 4 commits the modal fallacy of assuming that because some choice is known to be true, it must be necessarily true (i.e. there is no way it could possibly be false).[16] Logically, the truth value of some proposition cannot be used to infer that the same proposition is necessarily true.
Using logical terminology and applying it to AFFW, there is a marked distinction between the statement "It is impossible (for God to know a future action to be true and for that action to not occur)" and the statement "If God knows that a future action is true, then it is impossible for that action to not occur." While the two statements may seem to say the same thing, they are not logically equivalent. The second sentence is false because it commits the modal fallacy of saying that a certain action is impossible, instead of saying that the two propositions (God knows a future action to be true, and that action does not occur) are jointly impossible. Simply asserting that God knows a future action does not make it impossible for that action not to occur. The confusion comes in mistaking a semantic relation between two events for a causal relation between two events.
With these assumptions more explicitly stated, the proof becomes:
This claims to prove that at time T, person X is unable to do any action other than A. However, you could also remove steps 4–6, and arrive at the same conclusion. This is called logical determinism, and it suffers from the same modal fallacy as AFFW. If a certain proposition is true, that does not imply that the proposition is logically necessary. Once you remove the invalid assertion, then the argument for logical determinism is shown to be false. Similarly, when that same invalid assertion is removed from AFFW ("by the definitions of 'knowledge' and 'choice', if one knows for certain what choice one will make in the future, one will not be able to make the opposite choice"), the proof is shown to be false.[17]
In response to the above criticisms:
Both of the interpretations of omnisicience referred to in the criticism include a qualification: what is chosen to be known, or what is logical. So the proposed definitions impose limitations on this God. So saying that Barker assumes "that it is logically possible for God to know every choice that he will make in advance of making that choice" is self-defeating as an objection. Firstly, it contradicts the traditional concept of the omnipotent, infallible God in Christianity that Barker is responding to; and secondly, it leads logically to the position that humans could potentially know more than this God.
It is not enough to simply take the position that free will is compatible with determinism. The argument against free will is not about "God observing someone making a choice", it is about perfect foreknowledge that something will necessarily happen, negating that there is choice. If the future is perfectly known, it is fixed, and there are no choices.[18]
The charge that the argument against free will assumes that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible (and therefore circular), is untenable. The incompatibility stems from the claim of omnisicence. It is a quite reasonable position to take that "a being that knows its choices in advance has no potential to avoid its choices." The challenge for the theist is to provide a reasonable account of how, if all is infallibly known in advance, that it is even possible that anything could be different.
The real problem is in the way that concepts of Gods are developed, and the extraordinary claims that are made, which are not based on empirical evidence.
The objection on the grounds of committing a modal fallacy is also untenable. In the case of omniscience, foreknowledge of what will happen tomorrow means that it is indeed logically necessary that it happens, with no possibility that it will not. Otherwise it is not omniscience. So the truth of "X will happen tomorrow" is equivalent to "it is necessarily the case that X will happen tomorrow".
In addition, the new proof provided is poorly constructed. Omniscience, or foreknowledge, is placed incorrectly in the sequence (starting at step 4), after the choice is made. Clearly foreknowledge, by definition, occurs before the choice is made. So if at a point in time before T there is infallible knowledge that X will choose to do action A at time T, then it is incorrect that at time T X can choose to do any action because X is committed to A and only A. The claim of free will collapses. The specification is very different with and without the inclusion of omniscience.
The objection that the "confusion comes in mistaking a semantic relation between two events for a causal relation between two events" can be criticised as at the very least presenting a false dilemma, or at worst begging the question. The false dilemma stems from the lack of specificity of how the infallible divine foreknowledge can occur. Begging the question stems from the assumption that the infallible, divine foreknowledge is not based on causality. Omniscience, knowing everything to come, that the future is settled and fixed, can only make sense if determinism is true.[19] If everything is causally determined, then it is feasible that perfect knowledge of the causal relationships will produce perfect knowledge of what is to come: omniscience.
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