God Has No Free Will (Four Arguments)

There are four philosophically strong arguments that God cannot have free will.

1. If God is perfect, then, it always follows the best course of action and therefore never has a choice.
2. A benevolent God always chooses the path that causes most good, so, never has a choice.
3. An all-knowing god knows with certainty all of its future actions. As its knowledge cannot be wrong, then, it must follow this instantaneously predetermined path, and has never had a moment of existence in which this wasn't the case.
4. A perfect being that created time never changes (any new state implies that the previous state was less good); a being that never changes isn't making choices. This makes sense for a being that is outside of space-time.

Without free will, God cannot be moral, and must be neutral (amoral).

One final irony is that if God created free will, then, it had no choice in doing so. If free will wasn't created by God, then, God is not the Creator. If it was, then, #Creator:at the moment when it created free will, the concept did not exist, and therefore, God itself did not have free will in doing so.

See: www.humanreligions.info/god_has_no_free_will.html.

A few little updates to religion pages

• Monotheism and Free Will: God, Determinism and Fate - added a note on the contradiction between Omnipotence and Free Will (section #2), added a few more verses from Qur'an to the list of determinist verses, and re-ordered the page a little bit.

• Added section Atheism and Secularism #2. Lower-case or Upper-case Atheism? and commentary on the confused opinions of sociologist William Sims Bainbridge.

• The God of the Christian Bible is Evil: Evidence from Scripture and Nature - Added section "4. Sowing Seeds of Confusion - Not the Antics of a Good God" about Biblical statements on dreams, prophecies and the like and how they should be trusted, against the real-life situation that many conflicting religions and beliefs result from such visions. Also, the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 has God create all the conflicting languages of mankind, because otherwise "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them".

And finally,

• Biblical Christianity Denies Free Will: I've added Matthew 5:45 to the section on predeterminism; although it isn't about salvation, it is at least about justice. The verses say that the sun and the rain afflict both the good and the evil amongst us. Also added a quote to section "4.5. The Church of England" from John William Draper (1881).

And in other news, I'm loving the summer heat even though it makes it harder to do my marathon training - mostly means I'm having to go running a bit later in the day than normal.

Christianity: Times in the Bible When God Doesn't Know All, and Tests People to Find Things Out

I've added a new section to http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/omniscience.html#Christianity:

The Bible says God is perfect in knowledge, knows all thoughts, all secrets, sees all and no-one can hide from God. See: 1 Samuel 2:3, Job 28:24; 37:16; 42:2, Psalm 44:21; 139:4,7-8; 147:5, Proverbs 15:3, Jeremiah 16:17, 23:24, Acts 1:24, Hebrews 4:13, Matthew 10:30 and 1 John 3:19-20. Yet there are plenty of times when God doesn't know things, such as where people are. Check these verses:

• Genesis 3:8-13 - Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, amongst the trees of the garden, and God had to go find them, and then asks them questions. Either Adam and Eve are so dumb that they can't grasp that God is all-knowing, or, God is genuinely asking because it doesn't know the answers.
• Genesis 18:20-21 - "²⁰Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous ²¹that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”"
• Genesis 32:22-30 - In this obscure story, Jacob wrestles with God in bodily form and sees God face-to-face. God asks Jacob what Jacob's name is; yet an all-knowing god would surely know!
• Numbers 22:9 - Balaam and some Moabite officials spend a night waiting for God, who duly pops down for a visit, "And God came unto Balaam, and said, What men are these with thee?" An all-knowing God would have known.
• Job 1:7, 2:2 - "And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it."
• Hosea 8:4 - Some princes of Israel were set up without God's knowledge.

Sometimes, it is said in the Bible that God tests people. In Deuteronomy 8:1-2 God reveals that the 40-years in the wilderness was a test done by God to find out what was in people's hearts - whether they would still obey orders. In Deuteronomy 13:1-5 God sends some false prophets and wonder-workers as tests to see if people will follow other gods, and in 2 Chronicles 32:31 God is doing similar fact-finding tests. Yet an all-knowing God, creator of all time, knows exactly who will pass any tests, and knows exactly what is in everyone's heart. So either God is lying about his reasons, or, god is not actually all-knowing. See: "God Never Needs to Test Us" by Vexen Crabtree (2005).