Questions about G-d 3: Foreknowledge and Free Will

I made a short series of videos considering questions about G-d that I have noticed get asked from time to time. Below is a rewriting based on the script for the third video, followed by the video itself.

I aim to have some more tea today. I might get a new cup of tea in the next 20 minutes. Or I might wait longer than that. But G-d already knows which option I'm going to choose, and G-d is never wrong--so it seems like it's already decided, and I don't have any choice. Whichever one I choose, it was inevitable--right?

This is the ancient question of whether and how G-d’s knowledge of what we are going to do is compatible with human freedom.

Here’s the question, or the challenge --in some accounts the argument:

If G-d knows what we are going to decide, then, since there is a 0% chance G-d is wrong, there is a 0% chance we will decide any way other than the way G-d foresees. So . . . if G-d knows what we are going to decide, then we have no ability to do otherwise—no free will!

Is this argument any good? Do those of us who believe in G-d have any need to worry about free will?

The answer is: No.

It’s not a good argument.

Here’s the thing about knowledge: We never know what is false. We may sometimes speak about things we strongly believe or are very confident of and say we “know” them, like when Ronald Reagan said that liberals know so much that ain’t true. But this is speaking very loosely. If we believe something that is not true, we don’t know it; we only think we do. Knowledge is always and only of the truth.

And so there is a 0% chance that what G-d knows is not true because it’s knowledge, not because it’s G-d’s knowledge. When I know what my kids are going to do, there’s a 0% chance that they won’t do it. Not because they don’t freely decide what to do, but because that’s what knowledge means.

When I think I know what they’re going to do and then they don’t do it, that’s because I never did know it.

So the kids have all their freedom to decide what to do. And on those occasions when I know what they’re going to do, they still have the chance of acting differently. There’s no necessity in what they do. The only necessity is in the fact that knowledge is of the truth. There’s only a 0% chance that they’ll do differently than I know on the assumption that I really do know.

Just as an aside, this is why some people make a distinction between necessity of a thing and necessity of a statement—it’s necessary that the statement “Mark knows that the kids will eat the candy” describes knowledge of the fact that they will eat the candy. But that doesn't mean there's any necessity in their eating the candy. But . . . this clever distinction might be a bit confusing, and it’s OK to work without it.

“But wait!” says the critic. "Isn’t G-d all-powerful, and omniscient, knowing everything? So G-d’s knowledge is different! G-d’s knowledge is never wrong."

Well, that just means G-d is more knowledgeable than I am. It means G-d is never wrong. There’s a 0% chance that I’ll do something other than what G-d knows I’ll do, but that’s still just because that’s what knowledge is.

G-d is all-knowing, but that does not mean the normal order of things is reversed—fact and knowledge of fact. What G-d knows will happen will happen, because G-d only knows what's true--not because G-d's knowing makes it happen.

The fact is the reason for the knowledge of the fact.

Not vice versa. That’s how knowledge works. That’s how reality works.

Now there is a sense in which we can talk about knowledge causing a fact. Thomas Aquinas says, “For the knowledge of G-d is to all creatures what the knowledge of the artificer is to things made by his art.”

Aquinas is explaining how the knowledge of how to make a thing can be the cause of that thing. Like if I know how to make a YouTube video, my knowledge of how to do that is part of the causing of the video to be made.

But when we’re talking about a person’s choice, or for that matter about just about anything else, knowledge is not the cause of things.

G-d’s omniscience and omnipotence don’t reverse the formula: A fact is the reason for the knowledge of the fact—not vice versa!

So let’s clarify that we are talking about two things:

First, the truth of the statement “Mark chooses whether to get more tea in the next 20 minutes, or to wait longer than that."

Second, the truth of the statement “G-d knows that Mark chooses to get more tea in the next 20 minutes.”

The second statement is true because the first one is true—not the other way around!

Some of the great religious philosophers have used an extra explanation. G-d is outside of time, they say, and so G-d does not actually have any fore-knowledge—any before-knowledge. From G-d’s perspective, everything is in the present—we could almost say everything is in the past. G-d only knows what we do after we do it, or more precisely while He is watching us do it from his eternal perspective.

This may help, and it’s helped me, and I do think that G-d is outside of time. But it’s not necessary to think this, and in any case, it’s just an illustration of the main point.

That point is, once again: Knowledge that a thing is so happens because the thing is so, not the other way around.

The next videos looked at some great religious philosophers on the same question. I'll probably post something about that next week.