6 questions about an "omni" God

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Some definitions of free will include:

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The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company
A will free from improper coercion or restraint
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc

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I can't say I properly understand what free will is, although I almost certainly used to think that I did. The trouble with these defintions is that they both include the words "free" and "will" in them and those are the words that I have the problem with. My current thinking is that free will:- can only be a sujective property experienced by the individual concerned
- should not be defined in relation to some future time (I would once have described free will as "the ability to have chosen differently". I reject this now, as this would never be able to tell you whether you had free will NOW, but only tell you whether you had had free will after the event. Maybe.)That said, with this proto-definition in mind, I can't see a problem with omniscience and free will co-existing. The problem only occurs when you try to make free will an absolute external referent, which I don't particularly hold with.Like I say though, its a developing view rather than one thats fully formed.PE

I'm not sure of the implications here, but wouldn't the simplest Christian apologetic simply state that there are a near infinity of possible future paths from any given decision point. God or the Invisible Pink Unicorn or whatever supernatural entity is classed as omniscient may know all potential paths, but that fact doesn't constrain a particular ndividual from taking any given one of them. I.e., free will, at least as far as I understand the concept. Or doesn't this work out logically?

I think thats what I was getting at. Unless 'free will' is something you can look at from some higher dimensional place and then say "ah! he had free will there" or "she didn't have any free will there", then the words "free will" become some abstract idealised philosophical notion that isn't very well explained rather than the common usage "free will" which we all know and love (but still can't explain).I'm very big on words having a practical meaning.PE

Quetzal writes:

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God or the Invisible Pink Unicorn or whatever supernatural entity is classed as omniscient may know all potential paths, but that fact doesn't constrain a particular ndividual from taking any given one of them.

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But that isn't omniscience.If I ask you to "Pick a card. Any card," I know all possible outcomes. What I don't know is which one you'll pick and thus, I am not omniscient.Unless we're going to say that omniscience is more akin to Epimetheus rather than Prometheus, there is still the problem of if you know what I am going to do and cannot be wrong, is there any possible way for me to do something else?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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Close. The problem isn't really the 'knowing the future.' It is the 'omniscient.' A creature could exist who has always been able to predict the future and has always been 100% accurate, and this since the beginning of the universe. This would not be a problem. The problem occurs when a claim is made that the creature CANNOT be wrong.

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Yes, I'd agree.I'd define free will as 'the ability to perform an action or not perform an action'.The simple argument is:God knows John will do A,
and if God is infallible, then John will do A,
It was within John's ability not to do A, (freewill definition)
John had the ability to perform and action which would of brought about a false belief in God, hence the being is not GodSo was it within John's ability to perform an action which would of brought about a false belief by God?There does seem to be a fatal flaw in a deduction in this argument. Anybody see it?JustinC[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 08-06-2003]

Yeah, I think this was the bit I was struggling with when I asked if the idea was logically sound. a) Does omniscience imply that the entity knows absolutely what decision an individual makes at a given decision point? If so, does that logically constrain the individual (i.e., no "free will")? b) Is it more like quantum uncertainty: all possible outcomes are known, but which particular outcome occurs is unconstrained (i.e., "free will" exists)? In this case, it might be possible to claim that your entity-of-choice established the ground rules in this fashion to permit free choice. It would mean that the entity purposefully set constraints on its OWN capabilities to grant free will to its creation (which gets into the whole omnipotent question.)Tis a puzzler. I suppose these are the kind of profound angel-on-a-pinhead questions that have preoccupied the religious forever. Kinda wish they'd stick to those.