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Question 3: Prescience
Discuss (9)Since G-d knows the future, what choice do we have in it?
The Short Answer:
This argument is the easiest to deal with: Knowing what someone is going to do is not synonymous with making that person do it. This is simple to understand.
A Little Longer:
In the Mishnah (Ethics of the Fathers 3:15), Rabbi Akiva says it straight out: "Everything is foreseen, and free choice is granted." The classic commentaries don't have a problem with that. Allow me to paraphrase their very simple explanation:
If I see a child in front of an ice cream and tell you he's going to eat it, does that mean I made him eat it? Let's say a psychologist predicts that a certain criminal, if released, will murder again. And it happens. Do we lock up the psychologist or the criminal? Of course not. The psychologist's knowledge had no involvement in the criminal's act of murder.
Similarly, if someone came back from the future in a time machine and told you what was going to happen to the world, does that mean he is responsible for all that happens from that point on? G-d knows what you are going to do because He is beyond time. For Him, it all happened already. So, how does that imply that He denies us free choice to make those decisions?
In other words, knowledge of the future is a result of the events of the future, not their cause. In G-d's super-temporal realm, the result can exist before the cause. But it's still a result and not a cause.
Now, if you will say that all that is true with us human beings, but with G-d, isn't it His knowledge that creates all things? -- then I suggest you read on as we discuss the relationship of G-d's knowledge to this world in the following sections.
On to the next question:
The Paradox of Free Choice - Six Questions
1) Determinism: Isnt everything predetermined by the mechanics of the universe?
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 doesnt like? Whos 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?
By Tzvi Freeman
Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, a senior editor at Chabad.org, also heads our Ask The Rabbi team. He is the author of Bringing Heaven Down to Earth. To subscribe to regular updates of Rabbi Freeman's writing, visit Freeman Files subscription.
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brooklyn, ny
A time machine would be a better analogy in this regard. G-d knows the future because He is beyond time--having created time. If you knew the future because you had been there and back, that still does not mean you are the cause of the future.
Nevertheless, as the article continues, this solution is not sufficient, since G-d's knowledge of all things is the existential core of all things.
What if a child chooses not to eat an ice cream? Is your explanation wrong?
If a child always eats ice cream, then there is no free choice. If, sometimes, a child chooses not to eat it, then how can G-d know everything in advance?
nj
If one reads these articles, I would have to assume the reader is at least entertaining the notion of a First Cause, a G-d, or he or she will not even be *interested* in the concept of Free Will, which seems to me exclusively a *theistic* theory.
The existence or inexistence of G-d is another question altogether, and to me, would preceed the questions rpoposed in these Free Will articles.
G-d's Knowledge transcends all finite and infinite sets -- He created them, He Knows them. Our free choice, in the image of His Freewill, also transcends -- at least -- the finite. These do not contradict each other because they cannot contradict each other, because the Law of the Excluded Middle is meaningless as regard infinity -- logical fact, period.
We may model the process by two concentric circles, the inner one being half the circumference of the outer one. They are in one-to-one point correspondence (just draw rays from center to visualize, each intersects one and only one point per circle). Yet, we may cut the inner circle, and overlay it over half the outer circle. The uncovered half of the outer circle would entirely cover the inner circle. Hence the inner circle allows for both complete knowledge, and complete free choice. Certainly G-d can do so for us
Los Angeles, CA
These are different questions. I am attempting in this article to deal with one question at a time. But this problem is endemic to the field: As soon as we begin to answer one question, the student jumps to a different question before we can conclude our answer. The result is that no answers are ever heard and only a bigger muddle of questions result.
My suggestion: Understand the scope of each question--what it is about and what it is not about. Take things step by step. Perhaps not all questions will be answered, but at least we will arrive at some clarity on something.
For me, it's totally a wrong answer even not an answer, sorry. If He knows ,why does he get angry,he created my intelligence my character,and my feelings. If my feelings bring me to the wrong way this must not be my fault cause these are the feelings that He gave me
Futhermore I want to judge your interpretations. You are the loser from very beginning of the interpratation cause you are not objective. You are not making interpratations but you are trying to find a way to explain the questions that are against His excence, so you are directed to prove his excence,the result is there waiting for his interpratation.You are interpratating the thing that you know the answer, this is not interpratation.
Sorry if I am hard, and not clear.
ankara, turkey