[James]

I agree that a being that is mistaken in some possible world is not maximally great, even though he happens to be correct in the actual world. If a being is maximally great, there is no possible world in which he gets something wrong.

We can object to fatalism by pointing out that it is guilty of a modal scope error (Necessarily, if God knows X then X does not entail that God knows X in all possible worlds because the necessity operator applies to the whole conditional statement and not just the antecedent). There is a possible world in which Bob chooses Y instead of X and in that possible world, God foreknows Y instead).

This raises additional problems. God’s foreknowledge becomes timeless, without beginning yet contingent (it could have been different). If I could have done Y then God could have timelessly known that I could have done Y instead. Because I control my own actions and not God (that is the thing being denied) I am controlling what God timelessly knows via my actions.

[Sam (Agnostic)]

Daniel discussed Nathan Rockwood’s argument addressing the difficulties of divine foreknowledge as laid out below:

1. If God is omniscient, he cannot be wrong about what human agents will do in the future.

2. God is omniscient.

3. So, God cannot be wrong about what human agents will do in the future. (MP 2,1)

4. If God cannot be wrong about what human agents will do in the future, then human agents cannot do otherwise.

5. So, human agents cannot do otherwise. (MP 3,4)

6. If free will exists, then human agents can do otherwise.

7. Therefore, free will does not exist. (MT 5,6)

As Rochwood objects to premise 1 of this argument, I would like to object to premise 6 of this argument. I believe that if free will exists, human agents still cannot do otherwise. During class discussion, I learned about this interesting case of men making voluntary choices of choosing who to vote as president, but the fact is he can only choose A instead of B, if he chose B his mind will be manipulated somehow and go back to choosing A. However, this never came to that because he chose A by his own will. There seems to be only one possible outcome of this story, that the men will choose A to vote as president, yet he still possesses free will. Therefore, premise 6 is wrong because human agents cannot do otherwise even if they have freewill in these circumstances,

Generally speaking, if time is linear and we are living on the one and only timeline as we know it, then it totally makes sense for a scenario to be that free will exists while human agents cannot do otherwise. There is a difference between things God allows and what God personally enforces or does. Take evolution for example, it is a popular view that God allowed the natural law and evolution to happen while he did not enforce them because he wanted those animals to have free will. Same as humans, as time is linear and there is only one possible outcome of things and God knows it, he still gives us the illusion of choice, while we do have free will to make our choices, our choices is set and known by God already.