Free Will and Biblical Prophecy: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

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No. What Carl can do is not restricted because of anything Odin says or does. Odin does not restrict Carl's choices in any way.

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Then it must be the case that Carl can choose to do otherwise.

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What I'm saying is that Carl just happens to freely decide to choose whatever choice also happens to fulfill the prophecy.

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In other words Carl's "free" choice is restricted so that he CANNOT go against the prophecy, even though the situation is not the one in which Odin saw him making the choice.So which is it ? Is Carl's choice restricted or not ?

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Carl's "free" choice is not restricted by the prophecy, it is restricted because he has to choose one. Which he does, and Odin can see which one.

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According to you Carl MUST decide to take choice #4 even if the conditions under which he WOULD have made that choice have changed. That IS a restriction on free will - in fact it's fatalism.

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If we look at it from Odin's sense... Carl is restricted. Carl is going to choose what Odin sees Carl is going to choose (given Odin can see the actual future). There are no alternatives. There is no free will in General. However, since Carl is still making the choice all by himself with no interference, I say that free will still exists In Principle.

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If there were no interference Cal should be able to decide differently because the conditions have changed. According to you SOMETHING is at work to prevent that.

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I say Carl has an entirely new free choice to make. However, it's certainly possible for Carl to continue to choose choice #4. And, if he does, then the added information becomes irrelevent.

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My question is and always has been whether he could choose differently given the extra information. And my point is that you should think about the consequences of your answer.
Accepting that Carl COULD choose differently means that either Odin was wrong all long or the future can change.

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Odin tells Carl the information.
Carl has an entirely new free choice to make.
It's quite possible for Carl to freely choose to stick to the prophecy of his own free decision in which no one interferes.
It's quite possible that Carl freely chooses any of the other options.
Odin can see the future.
Odin knows what choice Carl makes.
If Odin sees that Carl freely chooses to stick to the prophecy anyway... how is Carl's free decision removed?
If Odin sees that Carl freely chooses to stick to the prophecy anyway... how is Odin wrong all along?
If Odin sees that Carl freely chooses to stick to the prophecy anyway... how can the future change? If it does change... then Odin can't really see the future and we're not discussing the same scenario

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Are you ONLY considering the scenario where Carl chooses to follow the prophecy ?If so. why aren't you looking at the other possibilities ?

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Yes. Well, as in it's the only scenario I'm discussing. Carl certainly could choose the other ones (it's his free choice, afterall) but this is the only one I'm looking at.

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So if Carl exercised that free choice to reject the prophecy, then either Odin would have been wrong or the future changes ?

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I'm assuming that the other possibilities are rather boring to look at because we would both agree that free will exists and there would not be much to discuss.

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The point of the scenario was to think about how prophecy would work - as I told you when I introduced it. The scenarios where Carl chooses differently are the INTERESTING scenarios.

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If Odin turns out to be wrong... then Odin can't really "see the future", and it's not the scenario I'm attempting to discuss at all. Since I am quite explicitly talking about a scenario where Odin can see the actual future.

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OK.

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If the future changes... then Odin can "see the future" and therefore see the changes... again, Odin knows exactly what Carl ends up choosing via Carl's own power.

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Odin can see that future - but it has changed from his original vision. And not until he had already intervened (because it was not the future until then !).Now the theological point of assuming free will is to have a way to blame anything "bad" entirely on human action, without God being responsible. Now we've established that Odin can change the future by intervening in what happens.Now I don't know about Odin, but the Christian God ought to be able to work out the consequences of His interventions in advance. In that case whenever He intervenes and changes the future, doesn't He bear some of the responsibility for the changes ?