This will be the second in my series of attempting to defend the idea of a God by using logic and terminology understandable to writers and lay people, such as myself.
One of the more interesting logical questions that is raised when discussing the idea of God is the apparent contradiction between a God that is all-knowing and one that also grants free will. After all, the whole premise of most major religions is that a higher power will judge our actions on Earth based on our actions. So what is the point of being judged if the Almighty already knows what the end result will be? What is the point of belief then?
This was a question I struggled with for a great while. First of all, the problem itself is confusing. If God already knows what I will do, what is the point of being Christian? Why should I worship a God who had determined far in advance if I am to be redeemed? These questions are enough to give me a headache.
I will start with examining some flaws in this line of questioning.
First, the concept of time and God's relation to it is the central issue here. In my view, the contradictions created by this problem are attempts by my brain to comprehend the difference between a being who is separate from time, and my own person, which is not. Because I am not able to imagine a being who is separate from time itself, the question cannot be fully answered, as I am likewise incapable of imagining such a beings relation to time and therefore myself.
However, I have attempted to devise a metaphor, to demonstrate my solution to the issue as it makes the most sense to me.
I, as with most of my metaphors, see God first and foremost as an author, with creation as his story. It is with this initial metaphor that I continue. I see creation as a choose your own ending book. God, being the writer, knows every outcome, no matter what you pick. No matter what you do, God knows the outcome. He wrote every line after all. We cannot take a step or action that he has not already foreseen. But, there is one thing that makes a choose your own ending book different than a regular book. Free will. While we can never make an action that God does not already know, it is up to us as to which action we take. Free will and omniscience in perfect harmony. No apparent contradictions.
This is, of course, my opinion, which I have arrived via logic. I encourage debate. If you disagree, please feel free to respond and debate me. I ask that you be respectful and calm. Also, I do not belong to any religious group in particular, so I welcome different interpretations of this statement.
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This is a great topic for a series! I would have liked a bit more development into your arguments to warrant them, but I do think it's an important topic. On to suggestions:
I think the first paragraph should be put as an author's note so that it's not redundant for those who already read the title. Even having it italicized would help out.
In your first paragraph I'm lost. You move a bit too quickly between point to point. You say there's a contradiction between an all knowing God and Free will but you don't explain where the contradiction is or what it's supposed to be. Your second sentence starts with the phrase "after all" so I thought you would go on to explain the first sentence, but instead you're on to a whole new topic. To be clear you jump from the issues of a God being all knowing, free will, judgement, and then end the paragraph with belief or faith. You don't really do enough to relate and connect all these ideas or where the connections are. Because you said in the first paragraph that you're gearing these arguments for lay people, I think you need to slow down the argument a bit more.
Another piece of criticism I have is that you talk about "all major religions" in the second paragraph but then limit the argument to just Christianity in the 3rd paragraph. I would try to focus the argument one way or another. I like that you do connect the question to your personal contemplation of it though - this helps the reader understand exactly why these "contradictions" or rather I would say "tensions" might be significant for a reader and for the author.
In the next chunk of the essay you move on to talking about time and I'm completely lost on how this applies to your preceding paragraphs. There was no development with why time is an issue that needs to be addressed in the first place. In this paragraph you start to finally move towards some of the logical reasoning promised in the title, but I think it's a bit too shallow at this point and I'd love to see it developed more.
In the second to last paragraph I understand your argument to be "I understand it this way" or "it makes sense to me" which isn't logical reasoning, the metaphor doesn't work fully enough to actually prove the point that you're trying to make through logic.
For the record, I actually believe in an omniscient and all powerful God, but I believe in limited Free Will within a soft deterministic framework. I've taken a philosophy course that focused on free will and find the subject to be really interesting.
You have a good start, use good language and grammar, but in my opinion your arguments need to connect more to each other and be a bit more developed. I would also recommend reading "Elbow Room" by Daniel C. Dennett and "Free Will" from Hackett Readings edited by Derek Pereboom if you're interested in reading some interesting scholarly philosophical arguments for and against Free Will.
Best of luck in future writing!
~alliyah
Hi there, nit-picks first:
You don't need the word "logical" here. You've established this is about logic.
I'm not sure you've actually done this. Well, actually, I'm confident you have arrived here logically in your head, but I guess you haven't shown me your working. You've come up with the only way to make your beliefs fit together, but why should I believe that it is correct, rather than one of your beliefs being wrong?
What you have here is a theory. That's probably half of what this essay should be. The rest of the essay you should spend analysing why your metaphor is likely to be accurate.
When you do this, keep asking yourself why - constantly. I can't do an example because I don't have a conception of God, but just make sure that everything you say has a reason that follows it, all the way back until you get to something so obvious or true that disputing it would be like saying that 2+2 = 5, or that happiness is bad.
Good luck,
Biscuits
Hi!
Thanks for the review!
A quick question. I am assuming, based on the tone of your review, that you do not agree. Can you tell me why? What specific part of the metaphor did you draw issue with? I am hoping to refine the metaphor but I need countervailing opinions.
Thank you,
Jimmy
I'm actually not sure. If I were to try and disagree, I'd have to say "this can't work because of X thing that is not true about God" and I can't do that, given that I don't believe in Him. I also struggle with free will even in a secular way though. I believe that the chemicals in my brain cause me to behave the way that I do and as far as I can tell that's determinism. I really don't like that though, because it makes it hard to not be a communist because it makes it hard to justify the idea of earning anything, if you were always going to do something and had no say over what it was.
I think the latter of these two things makes no sense, but it's the logical conclusion of my train of thought, so I sympathise in trying to square up something tricky.
Ah! Ok, that makes a lot more sense.
I will admit, I was a hardcore atheist for a long time. Questions like these are really hard to debate from a purely atheistic position because they are predicated on the existence of God. For me, this was more addressing some of the debates that were being had in the religious community regarding the nature of God.
Free will is actually one of the things that drove me from being an atheist. After all, without free will, science and logic become pointless and void. Thank you for clarifying!
Jimmy
Np