Question 2: Robotism

G-d knew exactly what I was going to do when He made me this way. I’m just a programmed machine. How can I be blamed for being what I am?

The Short Answer:

Human beings are not procedurally programmed machines. G-d is not the Grand Programmer -- He's a lot better than that. Just as G-d has free choice, so too, He has the ability to create systems that have their own free choice. The details of what you are going to do with what was given to you is decided by you in your own consciousness.

A Little Longer Answer:

Of course, if we believed the 19th century determinists, we wouldn't be able to say this. However, now that we find there are systems that allow a degree of unpredictability, it makes sense that the human mind could also be one of those systems. In fact, Nobel prize winning scientist, Sir John Eccles, together with the German physicist, Friedrich Beck, have proposed that the brain functions at the quantum level. Furthermore, along with many prominent researchers of the brain, they assert that the brain is only a device manipulated by a non-material consciousness -- the mind. The mind, Eccles and Beck write, exerts its influence over the brain by deciding which neurons will fire and which will not.

I can't avoid noting that Nachmanides ("Ramban", Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, 1194-1270), in his commentary on Genesis, goes beyond this thesis, known as dualism. Expounding on the verse, "...and the human became a living soul," he explains that a union is achieved between the spiritual and the physical in the human body. The physical body, especially the brain, behaves in non-physical ways.

We human beings are very proud of the robots we create, and plan to create even neater ones in the future. But just because we do not know how to invest our own creations with free will, we cannot infer that the Creator of all things is similarly limited.

On to the next question: 

Since G-d knows the future, what choice do we have in it?

The Paradox of Free Choice - Six Questions

1) Determinism: Isn't everything predetermined by the mechanics of the universe?

2) Robotism: G-d knew exactly what I was going to do when He made me this way. Im just a programmed machine. How can I be blamed for being what I am?

3) Prescience: Since G-d knows the future, what choice do we have in it?

4) Omnipotence: G-d wants something to happen and it happens. So how could I possibly choose to do something He doesn't like? Who's more powerful, after all?

5) Oneness: Since there is nothing else but His Oneness, what room is left for us to make any difference?

6) Primal Cause: If G-d is the Primal Cause, doesnt the buck stop there?