RE: A Critique of Molyneux’s *Against the Gods?*
I’m sure you would’ve been able to read it. It’s free as a PDF and isn’t long for a book. I read it in an hour or less. I link to it at the top of my review.
I’m not sure your response to argument 3 tackles exactly the problem he’s proposing. He’s saying that God’s omniscience limits God’s own actions. The real problem, I think, with his argument, is that the effects of that which God plans to do are already in his knowledge.
Free will and omniscience is a different problem. You are right to say that foreknowledge doesn’t mean predestination.
There is one form of predestination that’s compatible with free will, and I think it’s very probably true. It’s called Molinism. You might want to look into it.
The impression I got from the book was that Molyneux thinks all gods are basically the same. I guess he’s more familiar with the Judeo-Christian concept of God, so he characterized all gods in that way.
I don’t watch his YouTube stuff much, but I think that (at least recently) Molyneux regards Christianity as mostly good, and Islam as bad. This is part of his defence of Western Civilization.
Well, I might actually read it if it's free and not that long!
I think my solution has room to accommodate his objections. If God knows every possible action we could all possibly choose to take, He can know what He plans to do in each of those situations as well.
I may not be being strictly logical here, but I do try to fit what the Bible teaches about God into my thinking. It seems pretty clearly taught in the Bible that there are times when God changes His mind, and God can change His mind because of human prayer, then it must be assumed that He knew what He would do if one thing happened, and He knew what He would do if the other happened, yet He didn't actually know which one of the two courses of action He would take until the man, as a free will being, made his choice and acted.
I hope that's not too convoluted to follow.
I have heard of Molinism, through William Lane Craig, and it is interesting, but for me ultimately unconvincing.
As I understand it, and as explained by WLC above, God knows what every free will being will do in any given circumstance. This doesn't really make sense to me because in the Bible, God is constantly warning people, specifically the Israelites, that if they don't repent of some thing, then some judgment will fall upon them. If God knew in advance that the Israelites were not going to heed His warnings and would then face judgment (think Babylonian exile), then His warnings seem ineffectual, calling into question His omnipotence, or intentionally ineffectual, calling into question His goodness and honesty.
I think it more likely that if humanity had any free will at all, then there is in some sense things that God cannot know. He cannot know them because they are logically impossible. Omnipotence means God can do all things logically possible, so too does omniscience mean that God knows all things logically possible to know. God can no more make a stone so heavy that He can't lift it then He can know what a free will being will do in any circumstance for sure. He can know every possible choice, and every possible outcome, but it seems logically inconsistent to say He can know what a free will being will do before he does it.
After saying all that, I think I did misunderstand Stefan's argument the first time. After re-reading a few times, I think my answer is a lot shorter. Gad can still know what will happen in the future for certainty because He knows what He will do. If He knows the future and He knows what He will do, so that any change He makes He intended to make, and He knew He would make them.
Thanks for the enjoyable conversation.
I see no reason to think that knowing a free person’s future actions is logically impossible. God knows such things from the fact that he knows the future, not because he’s making any prediction based on clues.
God can warn people of possible consequences, despite knowing what will happen, because, despite his foreknowledge, such people are free to choose.
Well, it really is a problem that only relates to God as the Creator, and it is tied to the idea of free will. It seems to me that since God is the Creator, if He creates a person the way they are knowing what they will eventually do, then He per-determines their actions, and as such they do not have free will at all. Since He creates everyone and everything, you can't really blame nature either. God would have made Adam knowing he would eat the apple He told him not to eat. That makes God the originator of sin, and it destroys the idea of free will.
I guess I just can't accept that second bit. It seems to me that since God is all powerful, and all knowing, then if He really cared He would make Himself more convincing. He knocked Paul off his horse, blinded him, and spoke to him from heaven. He did what he had to do to convince Paul, and since He's God, He knew what it was going to take. If He had done a less convincing call, like appeared to Paul as a beggar on the side of the road or something, would Paul have listened? I guess God would know...
Even we fallible humans understand this. We exert more effort to convince a family member not to drive while obviously intoxicated than we exert to convince them not to lie. Both are wrong, but only one of them is usually an immediate physical danger, and you're just not going to let the one happen if you can physically stop it, while the other you will continue to try to convince them of but with less urgency. God is more powerful and more wise than us, so His warnings are much better. However, if God knows how a person will react to His warnings for sure, He surely must know how much more convincing He needs to be to get the job done. If He is all powerful He should be able to do it. If He can and chooses not to then it calls His goodness into question, doesn't it? I don't see how this avoids the idea that God is responsible for their bad choices, since He made then, knew how they would behave, and gave what He knew to be an inadequate warning to stop them.