Do you believe in God?
That is the question posed at the beginning of the chapter entitle "Your Free Will". He jumps straight to the point, and then follows it with this Socratic string of questions:
Do you believe God is omnipotent and that people have free will? (Yes)
If God is omnipotent, wouldn't he know the future? (Well duh)
If God already knows what the future holds, then all our choices are already made, aren't they? Free will must be an illusion? (Well God chooses to let us determine our choices, right?)
For whose benefit does God withhold his power to determine the future? (His. And ours, I guess)
Couldn't God give humans the illusion of free will? We'd be just as happy and God would retain his ability to see the future. (Why would God mislead us?)
So do we have free will? Or does God have a plan, and nothing we does matters in the slightest? Could we just be puppets on the stage, with a delusion that we can make our own decisions?
Now to really get that hamster wheel spinning: Does God have free will?
Obviously he does.
Right?
God is omnipotent, and that means you can do whatever you want. And being omnipotent means you can peer into your own future to view it in all it's perfect detail.
So if God sees his future, then aren't his choices predetermined? Or if he can't see the future, then he's not very omnipotent, is he?
Omnipotence is trickier than it seems.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.