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RE: A Critique of Molyneux’s *Against the Gods?*
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.