Can someone answer this question about God?

Question

Ok, I am confused here. God is omniscient and omnipotent, right? That means that He knows everything (past, present, future about everyone and everything that exists). Now, aren't we as a people supposed to have the ability to do what we want and think what we want? That means that we make our own decisions. But, this contradicts God being omniscient. If we make our own decisions, how can he know what we are going to do? Someone explain this please.

Answer 1

This is not a new question. It is referred to as "Theological Fatalism." I quote from the article below:



Theological fatalism is an attempt to demonstrate a logical contradiction between an omniscient God and free will, where free will is defined as the ability to choose between alternatives. In this it is similar in purpose to the conundrum "Can an omnipotent God make a rock so heavy that even he is not able to lift it?"



Theological fatalism’s premises are stated as follows: God is omniscient. Since God is omniscient, God has infallible foreknowledge. If God has infallible foreknowledge that tomorrow you will engage in an event (mow the lawn), then you must invariably engage in that event (mowing the lawn).



Therefore, free-will is not possible since you have no alternative except to engage in the event (mow the lawn). In the event that you do not fulfill event, then God is not omniscient. Alternatively, if you engage in event, then you don't have free will on account of the inability to choose another alternative.



However, if it is to be understood that God created all that is created, the principle asserts that this poses a problem for any passive knowledge on God's part. An understanding of omniscience must be joined with an understanding of God's omnipresence in time. If God knows all events—past, future, and present—then He would know all events and decisions an individual would make, though from the individual’s perspective those events and decisions have not yet occurred. This can be viewed, at least implicitly, as a nullification of any concept of free will for any individual, though no mechanism for God's apparent foreknowledge restraining the freedom to act is posited by the principle of theological fatalism. Since, according the Christian theology, God is atemporal (existing outside of time), God knows from creation the entire course of one's life, all the actions in which he will partake, and even whether or not that individual will accept His divine authority.



...Hope this helps... some!





Forgive others as I have forgiven you.

Answer 2

No, you are wrong. Firstly, the future is not pre-ordained. It isn't set in stone. So it is constantly changing depending on peoples volitions. Secondly, omniscient means that His Will is present in all things, not that he knows everyones thoughts and knows the definite future of the world. He wouldn't concern himself with the trivial matters of humans.



We all have free-will, but based on a persons present volition God can determine a plausible future from it. So, if a person begins to strive for money and power, then his future can be calculated based on that decision. But if a person DECIDES to change his mind later on, then his future is changed, thus a new one can be calculated from this new volition.



Savvy?

Answer 3

Spiritually, every being, even the harmful bacteria till humans are parts of God, just like the candle being lit from a larger fire source, every individual has got its own properties. So if god is being very existing in you he knows your decisions, your present past and similarly to whomsoever... So the concept is simple. And regarding the future, whatever you think through god in you, it depends..It is a bit complex to understand, but if you can think over it, It is the truth.

Answer 4

That's simple.

humans invented computers and they programed it (to make it decide for itself in many situations), they press a button of it and wait to see the results that they expect from it. but sometimes it goes wrong or "hangs" as in terms. giving the ability of decision to something does not mean that god was wrong doing. but if there is a god, personally i won't pick on him for this.

Answer 5

Regarding the "knowing every possible outcome" solution, that would be one way kinda sorta. It's like shuffling a deck of cards and guessing which is on top. You know every card possibility, but you really cannot know what card is on top.



Omniscience and free will directly contradict each other. One requires that the universe is fatalistic, the other requires that it is anything but.

Answer 6

personally, i think there are several options for US to freely choose,

i personally believe there are 4 paths of paralell dimensions that we can follow. if not 9 of them altogether.

sometimes its seems like my spirit has indeed jumped one path to another. the more i make Good decisions, the more i see a difference.

however, in comparison, i think when i have made terrible decisions there seems to a path which is more dark than the others.



so, truly we have free agency to choose. but when God gives us a commandment it is for our Good that we arrive at the best destination. not at a fate that many call hell or outer darkness.

Answer 7

God is not confined to time. He exist outside of time. This enables him to know past present and future.

Answer 8

i've been living in this state of yours for many years now. however, as time flies, i've started to gain a bit of the understanding towards the concept.



as we know, god is the creator of everything that we could or could never imagine. His creations include time and space. to be exact, time and space are bound to His will. when He created us, He made us to bound to time, that's why we're aging.



god, the creator lives outside time and that makes Him powerful enough to see time as a perfect timeline. unlike us, we're the dots on the timeline and we hardly see the time flows.



for example, fishes live underwater where they see things either on their sides, in front or their backs. unlike us who live outside the underwater world, we can rather see those fishes swim around as a flat screen.



same goes for us. god may see our life in a big flat timeline, rather we live on the timeline as the dots.



p/s: i hope you could understand my explanation.

Answer 9

✞✞✞ To foreknow and to predestine are not the same thing. One is an act of foreknowledge, or knowing something before it occurs; the other is to decree something. We only have knowledge of the past, but God foresees the future even as he sees the past; foresees it, not because he has decreed it, but because there are no limitations on his knowledge......................

Answer 10

Who told you god was omniscient and omnipotent?

Answer 11

This is why I don't believe in god, it seems so silly when you think about it, everyone has been brainwashed by a prophet to believe whatever they, hitler did the same thing, only they used religion to try and scare people into doing the right thing, people in thousands of years are gong to wonder how the **** the whole world was duped!

Answer 12

How does God knowing what choices you will make prevent you from making those choices?

Answer 13

You can still do whatever you want to do, as long as God control this Blue Green Earth, it's Possible. Remember something, without GOD, you're NOTHING! Less than NOTHING!

Answer 14

Not if God knows every possible outcome to every possible choice we could potential make.

Answer 15

Religions contradict themselves all the time, further proof that none are correct.

Answer 16

So much for the Christian understanding of Free Will.

Answer 17

On The Damascus Road Answers

God



Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent









What hath God, in His infinite wisdom, written across the pages of time and space within the soul of men? We can only assume that what we read is with out a doubt the direct word of God as He has given it to specific men to place on parchment. So, after diligent, meticulous and scrupulous translation, we can read it and believe His word. Even beyond this concept of read and believe, we find an even more inscrutable truth which is, gaining an insight into the God that cares enough to place Himself into a number of `pigeon holes' just for our benefit.

God is limitless, yet because of our inadequacies, our incapacity, and our finiteness, He has limited Himself insofar as toward our understanding. We cannot conceive even the slightest of absolutes (if there exists a slight absolute), so how could He expect us to come close to Him, when He is the epitome of all the virtues. Our knowledge of Him is mere wisps of haze, which keeps us from approaching Him with any semblance of true comprehension.

Yet, He cares for us, He longs for us, He seeks us to help us find a truth that will lead us to some form of understanding whereby we will derive a yearning to know more. He will then throw open wide many doors into a deeper growth in Him.

Understand this, I have not said that God is limited by His act of limiting Himself for our understanding; what I want to state very clearly is that His limitation is only man directed. He is and will always be, by virtue of His absolute virtue�limitless, absolutely. If He were otherwise, He could not be God; as God must always be omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (always present everywhere), not one attribute without the other and no two without the third. In His omnipotence He has absolute power, constrained only by His absolute wisdom, holiness, and perfect nature.

Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence are attributes which solely belong to God. God must be, to be God, each of these and all of these at the same time. All powerful with all knowledge and everywhere at the same time can only belong to God. Absolute Power is ascribed in Scripture in Genesis 17:1 "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, 'I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect'." Additionally, in Deuteronomy 3:24 Moses prays, "O Lord God, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?" Finally, (though not the only references available) the only usage of the word in Scripture is found in Revelation 19:6 "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."

None of the attributes has God taken to Himself, all of His perfection is what God is. If but one attribute were found missing from God, God (as we perceive him to be) would not be. God is the total of perfection. If any part were missing, perfection would be deficient and consequently void. God cannot take to Himself what He already is.

For mere human beings, the comprehension of absolute truth, absolute wisdom, absolute mercy, absolute justice, absolute wrath, absolute love and all other possible virtues, (in their absolute) is not within our grasp. Also to try to coalesce all the absolutes into a modifiable working temperance of any one absolute, so destroys our inward tunneling of thought that it alerts us to the Omniscience of our all-knowing God. Take the concept of absolute truth and absolute mercy and, try as hard as you might, you will never be able to find a way to temper absolute wrath, without reducing either of the absolutes to less than their total sum. Yet, God, as you are fully aware, is more than capable to accomplish our impossibles.

Nowhere is man less understanding when we hear "Omnipresent" We are, at best, a three dimensional being. With limited understanding of any other kind of dimension. To man time must exist, or the very framework of our existence would be in jeopardy. Of course, time is only for the convenience of man and therefore a gift from God. Genesis 1:14 "And God said, `Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days,and years'." Time has no consequence to God. Consider 2 Peter 3:8 "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Time is nonexistent to God. The facet of Omnipresence, though incomprehensible to man, is not even considered by our Lord.

Answer 18

Sshh! You'll make the universe explode.

Answer 19

you know what you have to do all it is to decide that's all.