Free-Will Is Not Possible If There Is an Omnipotent God (a.k.a. How can we have free will if God know everything ahead of time?)

I had been having this kind of thoughts inside my head for the pass decades, like squash balls bouncing around inside my head. And since I recently have time to start recording my thoughts (for this ‘exile’ period that I am in now), I think it is a good idea to put these flying squash balls in writing and let them rest one by one, once and for all.

The topic sentence above supposed to be a simple logically valid proposition. Although so many theologians and thinkers had written on the subject, which makes me think that this issue had been resolved about a hundred years ago, I still find people in general nowadays (even after the year 2000 C.E.) do not know (or at times do not care) exactly what they believe in (of course in particular for those monotheist of Judeo-Christian origins). I try to work out a more layman approach to the issue with clear explanation as follows (and at the end I will propose the solution to this question, which I hope can be easily understood). (note 1)

Definition A: Free-Will – the free choice of a person, of which he could choose from choices A, B, C and so on, that the resulting final choice and consequence in the future is unknown to the present for ANY being (and that is why people should be held responsible for their action, based on Christian belief).

Definition B: Omnipotent God – The single all powerful god who is all powerful, and ALL KNOWING, who created the entire universe of which we are part of it.

If the above definitions are accepted, than it logical follows that there will only be 2 scenarios:-

1) That there will be free-will, but God cannot be omnipotent, as by definition, the future events resulting from free-will’s choices are unknown (even to God). In this case God has to be ignorant to future events, and hence by definition he is not omnipotent.

2) That God is omnipotent, and therefore he knows everything, including the future events resulted by any so-believed free-will’s choices. Therefore there will not be free-will. In this case, the free-will as sensed by human beings are said to be an ‘illusion’ for us to believe in, and help us to exist.

Of course, I have heard of other seems-to-be logical arguments, mostly from Christians, to explain that the concept of Free-Will and an Omnipotent God are compatible. The argument is like this:-

3) Because God love us so much, he is willing to allow us to have free will, while although God has the power to know everything, he is willing to sacrifice and selectively not to know our future choices, etc.

Well by this not-quite-logical statement, you probably can find out the fallacy in it, that at the end, no matter what God’s motive is, he is still in an ignorant situation about the future. So instead of calling him an All-knowing God, we have to call him an All-knowing-but-selectively-ignorant God, of which, is not omnipotent by definition.

So what should we resolve it? As particularly for Christians who believe in both Free-Will and an Omnipotent God, the solution in fact is quite simple (but unfortunately a lot of Christians do not care to understand). It goes like this:-

4) God created the universe, and with it God created everything, including space, time, the system of logic, and mathematic rules, and all laws of nature. Therefore by definition, God is over and above all natural law and logical rules. Although the concept of Free Will and an Omnipotent God appears to be logically contradicting to each other, this contradiction only appears at our human level, within this particular universe that we are in. Over and above, there will be higher level of reality that only God can conceive of. At that level (which is outside our universe and logic system), these two concepts, Free-will and Omnipotent God, will be consistent to each other. To the simple imagination, we just need to think that reality is much much more complicated than we think, and the complexity requires some sort of above, or super-logic system to work. I believe that can be conceived as in order to create the logic system of our universe, a more complicated system is required by a creator if there is one (or I would call it the creator’s tool). (note 2)

In fact, this sort of higher level compatibility between Free Will and Determinism, I believe, is similar to a particular branch of Islamic explanation, although different in words concepts. After all there is nothing new to it.

I hope now we start to see that, anything concerning metaphysical concepts (including that of God) is unknowable, because at the end we are sitting inside this universe talking about something that is outside this universe (by definition). And that is why this kind of question, in practice, is considered to be resolved 100 years ago, as we should be now busy in studying other questions that we can obtain answers on (like cognitive science, etc). I believe religious people should start to know by now that they should stop arguing things using logic, but in fact what they need is faith. Because in the realm of metaphysics, only faith works for humans, nothing else. (note 3)

For me, being an Agnostic, of course, I neither believes in free-will nor an omnipotent god (while on the other hand I do believe in faith, which is a major mechanism for human survival). Hence, I would like to quote below one of my favorite quotation by Walter Agard (a Greek historian). This quote is explaining on the Greek’s belief in determinism, and I got it from one of his books somewhere:-

‘Even if everything is determined, we have no way of knowing what the total pattern is, so we must act on our own best judgment; free will is, therefore, a necessary illusion. Apparently wise men attain some insight into this pattern (or are given it by the gods), but all of us have the freedom to disregard such insight, follow our own desires, and suffer the consequences.’

Note:

1) My argument had been narrowed down from full range determinism to the type of determinism that has an omnipotent god as a creator, for a full determinism–free will compatibility would complicate the issue at hand, and I wish not to touch for the sake of simplicity of the issue.

2) One interesting subject is that based on the current study of quantum mechanic, there has been suggested that there are a lot more universes other than ours. Of course such multiverse scenario is in the realm of theoretical speculation, which will not affect the issue at hand (i.e. even if there are multiple universes, Christian can still believe that God created all of those universes, etc…)

3) There are other arguments involving the motive of Free-will as definition. In my opinion, I am using a consequence approach, and therefore consider the motive-approach argument as more or less word plays.

Utilitarianism – Most Likely, You Believe in It

In a city like Hong Kong, with so many people believe in the democratic system, I am always very amused by the fact that a lot of people do not exactly know what they are believing in (although they claim that they do know what they believe in, that what makes it interesting).

Take Utilitarianism, for example. It is a simple ethical belief, which says that, an action is right as long as it tends to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. In many respects, a democratic society is working based on that principle (and that is why we want everybody to vote right?) However, not a lot of people realise (or care much), that under such system, the minority group will only have as much right as the majority group is willing to give. For my friends in Hong Kong, I would say a majority of them are utilitarians (without consciously knowing it).

One famous criticism of Utilitarianism is the scenario of the train-and-tracks. It has many versions that most people had probably read about before, but my favourite version is as follows:-

There are two railroad tracks of which one of them is closed down for maintenance while the other is operational and trains will be running on that track. At the moment, there are 10 kids playing at the operational track and 1 kid playing at the inoperative track. A train comes suddenly with insufficient time for the children to run off to safety. You are at the junction where you have the control lever to decide that: i) if you do nothing, the train will run into the operational track where the 10 kids are playing and kill them all, or ii) if you pull the lever and divert the train to the maintenance track, only 1 kid will be killed and all the other be saved.

You might think that this scenario is so hypothetical that has nothing to do with real life, but I say that otherwise. Many real life situation are just like that:- you are dealing with a majority group and a minority group, and what is the right action for the entire society, usually is the course that benefit the most (although it may be the fact that, the single kid on the inoperative track knows that the track is inoperative, and therefore he is safe to play on that side. So he is doing a smart and right thing, while being killed off). Unfortunately, our society, most often than not, believe that the minority group are either wrong, or can be ignored (eg. Look at the Tibetian activist in hk), or on the other hand, for the poor people, the society will want to care for them to the extent that it is willing to (not that the poor people can fight for their right at all).. That is the essence of democracy, whether you like it or not.

My recommendation? Study more on what the minority is thinking about and what kind of situation they are under, before we make any judgement.

(Note: there are some other more interesting criticism on Utilitarianism, such as the ‘utility monster’. Look up the web if interested)