Omniscience and Free Will

http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/on-omniscience-and-free-will.html



I have recently been looking at @rosarubicondior 's excellent blog site, and an article caught my attention.

Having read through this quite carefully and also the (very long) series of comments underneath, which actually comprise a lengthy debate, I felt compelled to write down a few of my own comments on this matter.

Rosa poses the question:

+


If God has always known what you will have for breakfast tomorrow, can you choose to have something else instead?
If yes, Then something can happen that God didn’t know about, so God is not omniscient or inerrant. God got it wrong, and god didn’t know your eventual choice.


If no, So you can't chose to do something other than what God has known you’ll do, and had known for ever that you’ll do, even from before he (so it is believe) created you.

In that case, God’s inerrant omniscience means you don't have free will and your actions have all been pre-determined for you by God’s prior knowledge of your actions. In effect, you are no different to an automaton.

And, as a mere automaton of course, you can’t be held responsible for you actions. Accountability lies with the person controlling you – which is er... God.

And that means all this stuff about human disobedience, sin and needing to beg God for forgiveness is wrong.

+

 
 

I was actually quite impressed by the Christian argument opposing Rosa's original conclusions. I agree that Rosa's interpretation of the was slightly simplified.

I also accept the Christian apologetics following conclusions:

"The simple answer to your dilemma is "Yes." But the consequence you draw -- that "God got it wrong" -- does not follow. It would follow if your question had been a slightly different one: "... will you choose to have something else instead?" The proper answer to that question would be "No.""

　

I agree that this is shown to be logically valid in the ensuing debate. The summary of why this is the case can be summarised as:



1* We make free choices

2* God has foreknowledge of our eventual actions which is NOT inferred from a prediction of behaviour
　

Still playing along with the Christian argument, there are a couple of important explanatory points:


A. "Free Will" is generally defined as the ability to make free choices, so this part of the argument holds up.

B. Foreknowledge is distinct from pre-determinism. i.e. God knows what we will do ourselves, rather than has pre-determined the actions himself.

C. The foreknowledge of our actions is direct knowledge and is not inference from a predictive model.

Dissecting the Christian Argument

Of course, if this were all true, the argument would be sound. However, looking at points 1,2, and A, B and C, it is easy to see where the problems lie.

　



Points 1 and A - Free Choice vs. Free Will

An interesting commentary can be found here: http://www.science20.com/gerhard_adam/free_will_vs_free_choice-110514



　

I agree with this conclusion, which is basically that having "free choice" is NOT sufficient to argue that we have "free will". Reasons for this include other instances of choice, such as those made by other animals, or as outputs from a computer, have no associated connotations of free-will.

Notice that it's easy to conflate free choice and free will. However they have a different sense about them linked to the sentience of the creature experiencing them, and their ability to post-rationalise their decision as their own choice. (Compare the parable of the fox and the grapes as an example of cognitive dissonance).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes



In reality, cognitive neuroscience has shown that the subconscious parts of our brains make the decision for us before we become consciously aware of it (see for example, Sam Harris' writings such as The Moral Landscape). This means that when we make "choices" we are merely parroting the results of electrochemical interactions in our brains. The results from these interactions are determined by a large variety of factors, psychological and physical, however our own conscious cognitive desire is not one of them.

To me, and I have no doubt many others, the notion that we do not truly possess free will, at least to some extent, is somewhat problematic. I like to posit my own free will in terms of uncertainty of results from a predictive model. Imagine a (super)computer that modelled your mind to the extent that it could produce highly accurate predictions of your own choices and so, your own behaviour. It shared models of the same physical and psychological factors that I myself possessed and used to make decisions. Say I was faced with a particular situation in which there were three possible outcomes. I would either do A, B or C. The computer predicted I would choose action A most of the time, occasionally action B but very rarely action C . I'd like to be able to think that by acting unpredictably, I could generate results that were different to the computer's predictions in a statistically significant way. For me this feels better. However this remains just a personal rationalisation.


The Bible is most probably wrong about humanity having free will, and certainly wrong about free choice. It's as simple as that.


Points 2, B and C - Foreknowledge
How can foreknowledge be obtained? What mechanism is used to obtain it, and can this be demonstrated? I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to this question from Christians.

Christians may think that rationalising foreknowledge as the answer to the free will/omniscience problem answers all our questions, but actually it just poses other questions which I think show that God can't exist, or if he did, he is not very moral, and hence the Bible is again wrong.

Let's take the points with simplest first: Foreknowledge is distinct from pre-determinism. So God didn't make our choices for us, but knows what they will be. Since God is the creator of the universe in the Xtian narrative, this to me seems analogous to God simply picking from an infinite list of possible realities which he knows in intimate detail (foreknowledge) rather than making the choices himself and forming the reality and outcomes himself (pre-determinism).

However, if he is able to pick one of these realities to have foreknowledge of, why didn't he pick one with less suffering and death? Granted there may have been worse possibilities in the theological pseudo-reality we have constructed to demonstrate this argument, however, it seems obvious to me that there would also be many better possibilities than this one which he has chosen. Having foreknowledge of terrible tragedies, death, disaster and genocide should have made him want to avoid them, by choosing a better reality, if he was actually some paragon of morality.

No doubt theologians would try to rationalise away this genuine issue with the God hypothesis by saying that I'm in some way anthropomorphising God into a form that can be understood by humans, and this is not a valid analogy. They would then probably return to their churches, and with no irony state that we can speak to God everyday though prayer, and that he would inherently understand what we mean and that we can equally well interpret God's instructions to us as demonstrated by the Bible, and translate them into our anthropic forms and worldly environment. But given the lack of possible ways provided to me, in which foreknowledge could be obtained, I'm making my best guesses. Why isn't God providing the answer to his followers? I'm sorry, but either there is some issue with the man-God interface or there isn't. You can't have it both ways. That's special pleading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading




+

Next, we'll tackle how foreknowledge could be direct knowledge and not obtained from inference from a predictive model. I can only think of two ways:



*The inerrant super SuperComputer option
This uses the same analogy of predictive model, however, in this example, the computer "knows all" and has a 100% accuracy score. Thus it is always correct and no "inference" needs to be made from its predictions. OK.


* The time-travelling super "Doctor Who" option
If we're not able to predict the outcomes of all events and choices using a model, another option would be to enter a "sandpit" of the upcoming posited Universe and explore it in its entirety, measuring all outcomes everywhere throughout all time in order to gain the foreknowledge. OK.

However, these options are both complete fantasy and in no way could they ever possibly be true. There exists uncertainty in everything - the supercomputer would be a logical impossibility. there would always be a slight margin for error, unless of course the computer itself contained the actual universe it was modelling, in which case we have the same problem again. The other option relies on time-travel being possible and the assumption that knowledge of the future means that choices made in the present cannot affect this truth (the "free choice" is actually an illusion); there are also other potential show-stoppers like the observer-interaction effect (either God is in the Universe, or he isn't) and he must be sure that his presence or lack of it does not effect the eventual choices - of people by believing in him or not and of matter/antimatter interactions. However, as we know, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle rules this out. By measuring the Universe in order to obtain foreknowledge, God has actually altered the reality in that universe, and so the foreknowledge is now wrong, and he must re-start his assessment. It sounds like a difficult task, doesn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_uncertainty_principle



I now refer you again to my paragraph above "No doubt theologians would try to rationalise away this genuine issue with the God hypothesis"...

Of course, there are no real-life examples of the type of foreknowledge claimed by the Christian apologists for God, in rationalising the free-will/omniscience problem. Indeed, this is something that only a "God" can do and so is in itself again special pleading.

The whole notion of foreknowledge is inherently ridiculous. Quantum mechanics tells us that virtual particles pop in and out of existence everywhere. If God actually went about measuring these before they existed, as in my "Doctor Who" idea above; these same virtual particles that can explain the origin of the universe without the need for him; I think he'd "vanish in a puff of logic" as Douglas Adams so eloquently put it. There is uncertainty in everything.

Hence my previous statement about the foreknowledge argument providing better evidence for the non-existence of God than it does for his existence!

This is actually quite revealing of how arrogant and un-wise Christian thinking can be - to actually think it is preferable to have foreknowledge - to learn something by rote, rather than learn to formulate and use a model for predicting what we see in the world. The former can certainly lead to dogma, whilst the latter always leads to greater understanding, even if the model is initially wrong. As rational humans, we use an iterative, scientific process to constantly improve our models, and gain better insight into the way the universe works.