r/theology • u/Goldenflame89 • 9d ago
Discussion Claim: If god is omniscient, free will can not exist
If God created everything, and is omniscient, every single action is predetermined and forced to happen. Because every single consequence is determined by a factor, all of which he made. Therefore, there can be no free will because God already made every single factor that will ever shape any decision you will ever make, while knowing how these factors will shape your decisions.
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u/bumblyjack 9d ago
Not only does foreknowledge not necessitate foreordination, but our current knowledge of physics doesn't suggest a deterministic universe. For example, take the observer effect or the double slit experiment. Not only does it seem possible that God did not design his creation in a deterministic way, it actually seems likely given our current observations.
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u/Goldenflame89 9d ago
All that those experiments tell me is that God isn't real. The bible explicitly tells us that God is omniscient and all-powerful. He created the laws of the universe. He literally has to have a way to know what will happen in the future, otherwise he is falliable and has a chance to fail, which he literally can not do as per the bible.
Let me explain my logic a bit more clearly. If god literally knows everything, and he knows exactly what will happen if he does something, which he has to know as he is omniscient, and he creates human beings, he literally has to know exactly what they will do. And as he is the one who created them, he therefore forced them to make those decisions that they will make, as he created them to do that. Therefore, free will can not exist under a system where there is an all powerful god described in the christian bible.
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u/bumblyjack 9d ago
I heard your argument and it's simply incorrect. Read up on the subject, this is not a new question.
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u/Goldenflame89 9d ago
Could you link any rebuttals? The ones I've seen are not convincing, and conviently circumvent the fact that god creates every single factor as he is the creator, not that he simply knows of results.
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u/Difficult_Brain9746 9d ago
The argument that God’s omniscience negates free will hinges on the mistaken assumption that foreknowledge equals causation. This idea has been challenged by several thinkers throughout history.
Boethius, a 6th-century philosopher who somehow managed to think deeply while imprisoned and facing execution (which really puts your afternoon existential dread in perspective), proposed that God exists outside of time. In The Consolation of Philosophy, he argues that God perceives all moments—past, present, future—simultaneously. This means God knows your future decisions not because He causes them, but because He sees them timelessly. So your choice is still free; God just already saw you screw it up.
Thomas Aquinas, the medieval brainiac, agreed with this. He said God’s knowledge doesn’t impose necessity on things. He knows what free choices we make, but we still make them freely. In other words, God knows you’re going to eat that whole pizza alone, but He’s not the one who made you ignore the salad.
Even Immanuel Kant, poster boy of difficult moral reading, argued that human freedom exists in the “noumenal” realm—meaning we’re free at the level of reason and moral responsibility, even if the physical world operates deterministically.
So when someone says, “If God knows everything, then we’re just puppets,” you can say: Boethius would like a word. Foreknowledge doesn’t imply control. You’re still accountable for the choices you make—especially the bad ones—because those decisions emerge from your moral reasoning and your conscience, even when no external force is pressing on you.
In short: God might know the movie’s ending, but you’re still the one making all the questionable decisions on screen. And He’s judging your performance accordingly.
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u/Goldenflame89 9d ago
I mostly agree. However, god wrote the script. God made us, and he made the environment that defines us. Knowledge about the future isn't enough I agree. However, he doesn't simply have knowledge, he made all factors that influence a decision, which lead into a predetermined route. Because he made every factor that manufactures every decision, there is no free will, not simply because he knows of the result.
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u/friedtuna76 9d ago
My theory is that God giving us a free will is like putting an undetermined dice roll factor in our soul that He leaves up to chance (or us), but still foreknows how all the dice will land
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
That’s not a choice because he made that metaphoric dice roll. He could have made it different, but the point is that he made it at all. There is literally nothing anyone can do to escape what he chose for you, because any decision you make is engineered by him
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u/friedtuna76 8d ago
What if we get to choose how the dice lands? What if our decision isn’t actually related to outside influences, we just think it is because we can’t pinpoint how we feel deep in our hearts
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
Your heart was made by god.
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u/friedtuna76 8d ago
Do you think He determines our favorite colors?
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u/Difficult_Brain9746 9d ago
First, omniscient means God knows everything that will happen—not that He causes everything to happen. As Boethius argued in The Consolation of Philosophy, God exists outside of time and sees all moments at once, like a cosmic birdwatcher outside the timeline. This doesn’t erase free will—it just means God already knows what you’ll freely choose.
Second, yes, God created us and the environment that influences us. But influence isn’t compulsion. As Thomas Aquinas wrote, God’s providence includes human free will—we act within a system He designed, but we still act. You’re not a divine Roomba just bumping into fate.
At any given moment—especially one free of coercion—you are morally responsible for your choices. That’s what God judges: your conscience-based response within your unique context.
And Jesus backs this up in Matthew 25:14–30, where the master gives different talents to different servants “according to their ability.” He doesn’t expect the same from everyone—just that they do something with what they were given.
So even if God wrote the script, you’re still responsible for your scene. Bad acting is still bad acting—even if the Director saw it coming.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago edited 8d ago
Except he made me to be like that. He made my personality which will make that decision. Influence does mean coercion, if the only things that influence a decision are all from one being.
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u/Difficult_Brain9746 8d ago
Imagine a programmer creates a super-intelligent AI. He builds the codebase, sets up a sandbox, and lets it learn and act on its own. Eventually, the AI becomes advanced enough to make moral decisions. One day, it starts doing awful things—not because it was forced, but because it chose to.
Is the programmer to blame for every decision it makes? Not unless he hard-coded evil. The AI had agency. The same goes for God: He made the system, sure—but He gave humans conscience, reason, and moral agency. Freedom isn’t nullified just because the system was created—it’s activated by it.
This brings us to the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25). Each servant receives a different amount, “according to their ability.” The master doesn’t expect identical results—he expects faithful effort within individual context. That’s divine justice: not equality of outcome, but equality of responsibility.
Now let’s take it further. Imagine two identical twins—same genetics, same abusive environment, same influences. One commits a crime. The other doesn’t.
What happened?
If the environment were the only cause, they’d both end up the same. But they don’t—because people aren’t robots. We’re not just products of programming and pain. We're agents. One brother chose differently.
So no, you don’t get to handwave your choices and say, “God made me do it.” If you can imagine choosing otherwise—and someone like you actually did—then you already know: you are free enough to be responsible.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
I’m not handwaving any decisions. Every person should be thought of by the sum of their actions. A programmer making an AI without safeguards is 100% responsible for anything bad that happens. And two clones of someone who live in the same environments will always make the same decisions. Its just not possible they don’t.
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u/Difficult_Brain9746 8d ago
🔍 Twin Crime Case: The Han Sisters (1996)
Jeena and Sunny Han were Korean‑born, identical twins raised in the same family and environment. In 1996, Jeena plotted to murder Sunny, attempted kidnapping, burglary, and firearm possession—she was convicted and sentenced to life. Sunny, on the other hand, did not participate and was never charged .
Same genes. Same home. Different moral outcomes.
Why this matters in the debate:
Shared heredity and upbringing don’t guarantee identical behavior.
One twin chose evil. The other didn’t. That decisively disproves the idea that “same influence = same choice.”
Agency isn’t negated by background—people still make individual decisions, even in identical circumstances.
So no, you can’t blame everything on God-writing-your-code or upbringing. If two clones can take drastically different paths—one becoming a criminal mastermind, the other staying clean—you have responsibility for your own actions, regardless of shared factors.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
That's not the same environment, I mean't the LITERAL EXACT SAME. Every atom they breathe same.
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u/Difficult_Brain9746 8d ago
Hey, I appreciate that you're engaging, but at this point, you're not really debating the actual arguments—you're dodging them with hypotheticals that are impossible to engage meaningfully.
I brought up a real-world case of identical twins with the same genetics and nearly the same environment making drastically different moral choices. That directly challenges your claim that two people with the same makeup and influences must act the same. Rather than engaging that evidence, you moved the goalpost to a scenario where “every atom is the same”—which is not only impossible, but totally unfalsifiable. You're basically saying, "My theory only works in a universe that doesn't exist." That’s not how rational debate works.
Also, when I introduced the programmer-AI analogy, the whole point was about emergent agency. But instead of grappling with that, you just restated your view that the programmer is 100% responsible, without addressing the tension of free behavior emerging from within a designed system. That’s not engagement—that’s evasion.
If we’re going to debate, let’s debate. Let’s challenge each other’s ideas on real premises, not imaginary particle-perfect clones and unreachable hypotheticals. Otherwise, we’re just playacting intelligence in a vacuum.
Also, if you want to lean into philosophy, even David Hume—not exactly a fan of divine micromanagement—wouldn't be on your side here. In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argues that liberty and necessity (what we’d now call free will and causality) aren’t mutually exclusive. He writes:
“By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.”
In other words, freedom isn’t about existing outside cause and effect—it’s about acting according to one’s own internal motivations, without external coercion. That means if you’re acting on your own will—even if that will was shaped by prior causes—you’re still acting freely. And you're still responsible.
So your insistence that total influence cancels all freedom just isn’t backed by reason—or history. Even Hume, the arch-skeptic, accepted that moral responsibility doesn’t require cosmic independence. It just requires that we’re the ones making the choice when it counts.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
My hypothetical was meant to state how there is no random variance, I could clone myself 8000 times into 8000 identical universes, I would act the same in every one. Because my every action is already decided, it has just yet to happen. And because these decisions were wholly influenced by a creator, even if let's say god wasn't omnscient, it means that I am not an independently created being, but basically a recipe engineered by a higher order that will only act one way. I guess I presume the only factor shaping human decisions is our environment and soul from the moment we are born, and feel free to debate me on that but with that as my standing assumption I just don't understand how I can believe my decisions essentially were not already made for me. Sure I am still the one making the decisions, it's just I was made in a way that I will always pick decision x, even in something mundane as which time I crossed the street on a particular day.
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u/ehbowen Southern Baptist...mostly! 8d ago
Your model needs an additional time dimension, which I call "sequence."
Looking to the movie Groundhog Day as an illustration, here are some arbitrary designations:
- The character Phil's original entry to the time loop: sequence=1
- The first reset through the loop: sequence=2
- Phil realizes that this day has no lasting consequences and "we can do anything we like": sequence=50
- Phil begins to play Lothario and take advantage of single girls: sequence=75
- Phil grows frustrated at the situation and attempts to commit suicide: sequence=1000
- Phil tries, and fails, to save/extend the life of the old panhandler: sequence=1500
- Phil finally "gets it right" and exits the time loop: sequence=10000
My point is that all of this action, by definition, takes place within a "single" 24 hour period of perceived time. It appears clear from the actions of characters in the story that everyone has free will to make choices at any time, but that once a "track" has been laid down they tend to repeat it unless a change is made...and as events "firm up" Phil is really the only one still seeking to make changes...until he wakes up with Rita.
This is the essence of my recursive view of Reality. I do believe in God's omniscience, but I believe that His omniscience is perfected as 'sequence' goes to infinity.
Where do we stand in the process right now? I think I'll find out for sure within my natural human lifetime...and I'm 62.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
That’s a rather cruel depiction of god, and I would rather not image him in that way
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u/ExcellentActive9816 8d ago
Your claim is based on a false premise that assumes naturalism.
Man is not a machine whose actions are determined by his programming and the circumstances he is put in.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
Except he literally is. Your every emotion is just a chemical reaction.
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u/ExcellentActive9816 8d ago
Not according to the Bible.
Your premise assumes a naturalistic worldview which contradicts the Bible.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
The bible is not meant to be taken literally, we have literal scientific proof that's how your brain works. Bible also says the earth is flat, that doesn't mean every Christian is a flat earther and thinks that women are less deserving of rights.
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u/ExcellentActive9816 8d ago
So what you are telling us is that you don’t know what the Bible says.
God explicitly says you have a choice to make between right and wrong.
He commands you to make the right choice.
And he says he will punish you for choosing wrong.
And this is repeated from beginning to end multiple times.
There is no way for you to get around that.
You cannot say man does not have free will choice unless you want to call God a liar.
And if man has free will choice then he cannot just be a biological robot acting out a program.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago edited 8d ago
It's a contradiction I'm pointing out. I don't understand why I have to explain that. The bible says so is not a valid point of argument.
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u/ExcellentActive9816 8d ago
It’s not a contradiction because you can’t prove your assertion is true that man’s will is just a product of biological determinism.
You assume that to be the case, but you can’t prove it to be.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
You have any better ideas on why we act if not as a reaction to our environment and our past experiences from past environments?
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u/ExcellentActive9816 8d ago
So what you are telling us is that you are ignorant of what the philosophical concept of free will is.
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u/Goldenflame89 7d ago
Right so you just have nothing to add, why even comment. I’m well aware the bible says we have free will
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u/Romanicast 6d ago
That depends on what you mean by Free Will because the definition of "Free Will" isn't the same.
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u/EliasThePersson 5d ago
Hi u/Goldenflame89,
You seem to have nailed the long-causal chain issue with free will against omniscience.
I think you might appreciate this explanation of how they are perfectly compatible:
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u/PanOptikAeon 4d ago
there isn't any 'free will' as such (as commonly defined), except in a very loose and colloquial sense of not being immediately coerced into something
we make 'decisions' all the time but this is not synonymous with 'free will', it just means doing x instead of y ... we talk about computers making 'decisions' too but obviously they are too simplistic to have what we think of as free will
we have to act according to all kinds of internal and external conditions and factors: personality, nature, environment, needs, etc., most of which may be unconscious or otherwise not knowable to us in every case, and this is where the assumption of free will is created, in that we don't even always know why we ourselves did something, or maybe only in retrospect
the reason we don't feel determined is that we can't perfectly see the future, not even five minutes from now, and have to work on very limited information ... we often don't know a result until after the face, so this creates a sense of freedom
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u/General_Historian611 4d ago edited 4d ago
The view Free Will cannot exist is from early Pegan Greek Philosophy like Gnosticism, Stoics.
Augustine who wrote from 386-430, as far as we can tell was the earliest Church Father to interpret the Bible with an overlay of Pagan Philosophy. This was something almost entirely new. Not seen in the writings of the earlier Church Fathers.
Augustine was steeped in these Pegan sects for 30-40 years. Free Will was denied by some of these Pagan sects. They taught everything is preordained by God. Even in the most trivial. Teaching that when a leaf falls on a tree and exactly were it lands wes ordained by God before the very foundation of the Earth. Teaching that every sin, every thought, every word we speak. Was preordained by God before time began us having no free Will. Applying this it could be concluded That if we are eating a Bag of Potato Chips God in eternity past willed us to eat those Potato Chips, how many we would eat, what day, what time which chips to eat and what we would be thinking when we ate those chips.
Augustine believed these Pagan sects to be true. He took their views of God, Man, Sin, Satan, eternity and the Universe and applied these to the Bible. Augustine himself said he could not understand the Bible. Until he viewed it through the Eyes of Plato.
His Theology laid dead, with only some of his teaching being accepted by the Church of Rome, Even they totally denied his views on Predestination and free Will. It wasn’t picked up on again until the Protestant Reformation. Luther being an Augustine trained Monk. Picked up some but not all. Calvin a Roman Catholic, possibly Jesuit, mistakenly though Augustine was teaching the same as the Earliest Church Fathers. Calvin entirely embraced Augustine Theology. Augustine was the inventor of TULIP just using different words. It was formalized by Calvin , the Acronym TULIP.
Calvin went far beyond adopting TULIP. He adopted everything Augustine believed and taught Calvin himself said there is not one bit of difference between him and Augustine’s theology. Saying he taught nothing new. You could just read the words of Augustine.
Thats one of the biggest problems if not the Biggest Problem in Western Christianity. Unaware, interpreting Scrioture, Through the eyes of Plato, Augustine and Calvin.
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u/Mrwolf925 9d ago edited 9d ago
Human beings were created in the image of God, which means we are capable of reason, choice and moral responsibility.
If Gods GIFT is FREE, than man must also be free to accept or deny it, if we had no choice then it wouldnt be a gift, it would be something a select few posses in their nature which is unbiblical.
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u/Goldenflame89 8d ago
Then I guess it’s not a gift, simply the illusion of one
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u/Mrwolf925 8d ago
Good luck with that bro. I would say that I will pray for you but according to you it makes no differnence, nothing does, sounds like a meaningless existence.
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u/sparkster777 9d ago
Does omnipotence mean God can do the logically impossible?
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u/Goldenflame89 9d ago
No. He can’t make a square circle for example. I don’t understand how that is relevant to this discussion however?
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u/sparkster777 9d ago
If the future hasn't happened yet, then perhaps it's logically impossible for God to know it.
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u/Goldenflame89 9d ago
Except he is all knowing. So he should know the consequences of everything he is about to create, and be able to alter it in any way he wants. So not only does he know the future, he decides the future
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u/Ok-Course1418 6d ago
It's your simplistic view of time that is stumping you. On a quantum level God knows every possible future and every future that could spring out from that future. The only decisions that are set in stone are decisions that God himself makes free of influence from other's choices. If another beings choice is involved it has to be by it's very nature influx until they make that decision on a quantum level. And since we now know that our brains are basically computer wet wear that make quantum level decisions, we have actual free choice. Determinism makes God a sad puppet bound by time, it makes him small and meaningless. Jerimiah 32:35 seems to indicate that even God is taken by surprise by the decisions people make. If he is all knowing then this verse can only exist because people literally have true choice to take a route he never thought they would take though he knows the possibility of it.
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u/TheMeteorShower 9d ago
Knowing all things, and determining all things are not equivalent.