Blind post. I apologize if someone brought this up already.
If alternative possibilities (it is within a person's power to actually do either option A or B at time T2, not just hypothetical) are a necessary condition to having free will (a pretty basic and common assumption), then God's foreknowledge creates problems.
1. God knows all things and he is never wrong, per omniscience.
2. At T1, at the beginning of the universe, God knows that Chany will be given the choice between moving for a job or staying with his family. God knows that Chany will move for the job.
3. At T2, 2020, Chany is faced with the choice between moving for a job or staying with his family. Chany chooses to move for the job.
In this scenario, it would appear that I do not have free will. Why? Because one of the requirements for free will is that I have alternative possibilities. I have to have the power to access (or will to access, to be more specific) either the world in which I move for the job or the world in which I stay with my family. However, at T1, well before I made my decision at T2, God knows that what I will do at T2. Because God's knowledge is necessarily true and accurate, whatever propositional knowledge he has must be true, including about future events. We assume that knowledge of future events does not carry metaphysical weight because of our own human experiences. But these feelings do not apply to a being who, by definition, cannot be wrong; reality must conform to God's knowledge because God's knowledge must be true. When God knows the proposition, "At T2, Chany will decide to move for a job," the proposition is necessarily true; I must decide to move for a job at T2. But if I must decide to move for a job at T2, then I could not have done otherwise. I cannot access the world where I decide to stay with my family at T2 because, if I did, that would contradict God's knowledge, which is impossible. Because I cannot access multiple worlds, I do not have alternative possibilities. Because I do not have alternative possibilities, I do not have free will. Therefore, divine foreknowledge by an omniscient God is incompatible with free will.
Thank you for your well thought out position. I have seen this position argued a number of times before in various ways and they all seem to fall victim to the same subtle logical fallacy and ambiguities of language. Basically you are arguing that foreknowledge and free will result in a logical contradiction. I disagree with that, so let's look at your argument. I prefer to use symbolic logic since it is more precise. Most people are not familiar with the symbols, so I'll explain as I go.
Let
P stand for some proposition describing a state of affairs, in this case "In the year 2020, Chaney moves for a job." Its negation is
~P (not P); "In the year 2020, Chaney does not move for a job".
"
God knows P" is a different but related proposition. I'll express this with
G(P).
In philosophy, there are certain conditions that need to be met in order to say "
X knows P". The most fundamental of these conditions is that
P is true. (Others include beliefs regarding
P and evidence of
P.)
P = "On Mar 2, 2016, Barak Obama is president of the United States." - True
X knows P = "AgentSmith knows that on Mar 2, 2016, Barak Obama is president of the United States." - True, but what makes this proposition true?
P = "On Mar 2, 1916, Barak Obama is president of the United States." - False
X knows P = "AgentSmith knows that on Mar 2, 1916, Barak Obama is president of the United States." - False, but what makes this proposition false?
The truth value of the proposition
X knows P directly depends on the truth value of
P. One cannot know
P is true if
P is actually false.
Truth is a necessary condition for knowledge. In the case of omniscience, it is also a sufficient condition, since an omniscient being would not have either false beliefs or a lack of beliefs with regard to propositions. It is the state of affairs that the proposition describes that makes the knowledge true, not the other way around. It is your action of moving for a job (or not) that makes God's knowledge about it true.
So now let's define a few things and construct your argument more formally.
1. P = (◊P & ◊~P) defines P as a contingent proposition. It says that P is true in some possible worlds and false in other possible worlds. This allows for free will, per your definition.
2. ∀P [G(P) ↔ P] which means for all values of P, God knows P is true if, and only if, P is true. This expresses the notion that God knows all things and will never have any incorrect knowledge. (It also covers if P is false, God will know P is false.)
3. ~◊[G(P) & ~P] says it is not possible for P to be false while God knows it's true.
4. G(P) → □P says that if God knows P is true (or false) then P is necessarily true (or false)
5. G(P) ; God knows P is true
6. ∴ □P ; therefore P is necessarily true
7. ∴ ~◊~P ; therefore it is not possible for P to be false, i.e. no free will (contradicts 1).
Would you say I've expressed your argument accurately and fairly?
Also, on a less robust and more intuitive level, it is hard to how one can defend against this objection to divine foreknowledge of free will without opening the floodgates to determinism. If God can somehow predict my actions so far in advanced with 100 percent certainty, it is hard to see how determinism is not true. It also hints at a B-Theory of Time view of the world, and, if anyone here is aware of William Lane Craig's work in even passing interest, they know the B-Theory of Time creates problems for the modern Kalaam Cosmological Argument.
Yes, I would say that foreknowledge of any kind favors B-theory over A-theory.