Many people believe that God knows everything that will happen for all eternity. How then, can humans have free will?
Say a person has a belief that since the beginning of time, God has known exactly what will happen. God knew before Nathan Heflick was made that my parents were going to meet, fall in love and have sex at the precise moment it happened. Then, God knew this kid was going to be born, and eventually write this very blog, marry a wonderful woman, get his PhD etc.
Heck, from this view, God even knew I would eat chocolate ice cream yesterday and buy a pretty sweet totem pole-like thing from a renaissance fair. And then, he knew I would watch re-runs of The Legend of the Seeker (I am a closet diehard fan, don't hold that against me).
If this is true, then heck, I might as well finish typing right now. Or keep typing, because well, who cares at that point? Nothing I do is of my own free will anyway. I couldn't have not watched Legend of the Seeker and not bought that awesome totem pole thing if I wanted to.
I have heard people counter: "Well God knows what will happen, but it is our job to follow through on those plans."
Huh? If God created people, as anyone claiming this would claim, then he created whatever humans use to have free will (brain, mind, soul, legs or whatever). So God created that which we would use to counter God's plan. God knows the plan, as the belief goes, so he created us knowing the plan, and knowing if we would/could alter the plan. He/She created everything.
In other words, we don't have free will, IF God knows everything that will happen. You can't create something, knowing exactly what it will do, and then say it was free to do whatever it wanted (you created it and what it will do).
Of course, I am a human taking a guess at the existence of the cosmos and such, so I could be dead wrong. But it makes more sense than people thinking that God knows everything that will happen, and still endorsing free will.
My actual guess is that God knows everything that could happen, and humans have the free will to work within that framework of possibilities. So humans do have free will, albeit limited, and God has foreknowledge, albeit limited to what COULD happen.
Or, God knows everything that will happen and we magically still can change the course of existence. And, this just in, I can fly and eat a 50-pound cheeseburger, and go on tour as a dancer for Jay-Z.
