Does God's foreknowledge take away from free will? (page 27)

"JWN believers" should read "Most JWN beleivers." I don't believe Jehovah can know everything about the future. I believe, or am led to believe, based on what I understand from both the Bible and quantum physics, that what we call "free will" represents a random element in our lives that makes predicting every detail of them impossible - and that God intended it that way. Nor is He afraid of the consequenses. After all, He is almighty. The universe will end up exactly the way He wants it.

There is a lot more to my beliefs than that. But that, in a few words sums up my view of this particular aspect of the discussion.

So, EP's point about does/can God know what he might eat for lunch tomorrow has some validity. Since God "knows all things" as they exist now (including whats in EP's lunch box), and he also knows completely the past (including EP's habits), He could make a very intelligent guess or surmising of what EP will eat for lunch, and probably would be right most of the time - if he had an interest in doing that.

Jehovah also knows perfectly the state of EP's neurons and synapses, so if EP decided to break with his usual habits God would probably see that coming even before EP made the final decision. So it probably would be correct to say that, at some point before EP ate lunch, God would already know what it would be. But the difficulty of predicting that would increase (probably at a known-to-Him mathematical rate) as the time between prediction and lunch increased.

On the other hand, if Jehovah wanted EP to eat a particular lunch at a particular specified time, He could easily intervene and make him do it and leave him imagining that it was EP's choice. I can hear "foul" being cried. But keep in mind that the idea of total "free will" is not mentioned in the Bible. As Nebuchadnezzar found out, "[God] is doing according to his own will among the army of the heavens and the inhabitants of the earth. And there exists no one that can check his hand or that can say to him, ‘What have you been doing?. . . (Dan 4:35)

I will mention that I think the WT idea of 'selective foreknowledge' is ludicrous -and paradoxical. As you would have know beforehand what you want to select to know (or not to know). But I don't think that aspect has been brought up in this discussion.

Anyways, Take Care

PSacramento

So, can God, guess/predict, before I am born, what I will eat for lunch on 11/30/2012 (tomorrow)? Is there any possibility he could be wrong or I could choose differently? If, it's practically omniscience, why not just call it that? What's the difference?

Semantics perhaps, I don't know.

God can never be wrong about what we will do if God knows every possibility.

It's like, we go up to a stop light and it is red so we wait for it to turn green or we jay walk, God knows every possible outcome of either choice so whatever choice we CHOOSE, He knows what will happen after.

We are still free to choose, even if the outcome is foreseen, regardless of the choice.

PSacramento

If God can know/guess/predict/etc. the future and there IS free-will, is there ANY chance, any percentage or any possibility that a person making a choice could choose differently that God thinks or has seen it will turn out?

IF God knows every possible result of any choice then the person is still free to choose ( since there is no direct effect on their abiliyt to choose or the choice they have) then God would still know how it would turn out.

Can God be surprised by our choice though, that is the question perhaps.

I don't know, the bible seems to imply that, at times, God is "surprised" but that is a human trait being put on God to explain something, so it's hard to say that YES, God can be surprised. The honest answer is probably "we don't know".

Does God's foreknowledge take away from free will?

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