Problem of free will visualized

This is a really tired old argument that theists keep bringing up and no matter how many different ways I try to explain it, they still don’t seem to get it. I thought literally drawing a little picture might help, so here’s my super advanced MS Paint art.

The problem goes like this: Some theists like to claim that their god is all knowing AND that they have complete free will when it comes to making choices in their lives. This logically cannot be true, and he’s why:

Here is a track. Starting from left to right there are two choices at every intersection with four final outcomes. (Life in infinitely more complex than this, but this track is sufficient to illustrate my point.)

Now going down this track you have three decisions to make. Left or right. At the end of your journey your path looks like the red line.

God, being all knowing, would know that was the path you were going to take. If he had a chart up in heaven keeping track, it would match the path you would eventually end up taking. (He knows everything, including the future, he knows if you’re going to go left or right and where)

Now say you want to be tricky, you’re feeling random, sporadic. You come to the 2nd of 3 intersections and while your decide to go left, you suddenly switch to go right (the green line) at the very last second! You had complete free will to make that split second change, right? Wrong.

Remember, God knows EVERYTHING. He knew you were going to try and be tricky, changing at the very last moment. Because of this, God’s chart would not look like the earlier version. Instead it would look like the one below.

You see, if God is all knowing, then you can NEVER have a situation where the chart of the actions you take doesn’t match the one he knew you’d take.

If God is all knowing, than your future is already planned out for you; you do not have free will. You can never NOT do what the all knowing God knows you are going to do.

The ability to choose is an illusion. By the simple act of his knowing, your actions are predetermined. This includes whether or not you are going to sin and go to hell. In short, God has planned for billions of people to sin and go to hell before they were ever born.

What is “Choice” when it comes to faith?

It seems to me that a lot of religious people are confused as to what exactly is a choice and what it means to be able to choose freely.

A choice in it’s most basic form is when you are presented with two or more options on how to proceed and you must pic one.

There is a major difference, however, between a free choice and an unfree choice.

A free choice is a choice where no matter what the possibly outcomes, no option has drastically more consequences than another. A free choice does not just mean that you have the ability to make a choice, but that you are not overly pressured to choose one decision over another.

An unfree choice is just that: a choice that involved significant biases. A prime example of this is “God gave us “choice”. We can choose to love him and go to heaven, or we can choose not to, and spend the rest of eternity in unimaginable torment.” Yes you have the ability to “choose” one option or the other, but merely having the physical capacity to “choose” does not mean it is a “free choice”.

Heaven makes you a robot

The other day I was listening to the Godless Business podcast and they made a very interesting point:

Christians say god did not want robots, so he gave us free will. Yet despite this, we must put his will before ours. (Or at least what other humans say is his will)

They cited the story of god asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, something that’s horrible, but was the will of god, as a test (despite his all-knowingness).

Also, take the lord’s prayer:

Our father

which art in heaven,

hallowed by thy name;

thy kingdom come;

thy will be done,

in earth as it is in heaven

So we have free will, and the wonderful freedom to use that free will to follow what god tells us he wants….. or burn in hell forever, but that aside, what about heaven?

Well, heaven is a place where you get to sing god’s praises for eternity, like his own little cheer-leading squad. Take an excerpt from the song “I can only imagine” by Mercy Me:

I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever
Forever worship You
I can only imagine

So in heaven you become a robot for god, where you constantly worship him. What’s the point of having free will? What’s the point of any of this if you’re just going to end up as a mindless automaton in heaven?

Why is it so hard for theists to see free will doesn’t exist?

This is just beyond me, I don’t see how people can argue that an all knowing god also allows free will. This argument is so old it’s ridiculous, and still people keep bringing up this paradoxical idea that free will can somehow coexist with an all knowing god.

Look, if god knows the future, which according to the bible and general views of his being omniscient he does, then he already knows exactly what is going to happen, to everybody. He knows exactly what decisions you are going to make, and exactly what the outcome will be. Because of this, you can’t decide anything other than what he knows you are going to do. It might look like you can decide, that you have free will, but that is just an illusion. Here is a graphical representation of this if it helps:

You stand in the present. You have two immediate choices open to you. God, being all knowing, knows which one you will pick. He then knows what you will pick at time 1,2, and finally 3. It might look like you have 26 possible choices, but god knows you will pick left, center, right.

You, knowing this might think “Ok, I’m going to act as if I’m going to pick left, center, right, but at the last moment I’m going to suddenly change my mind and pick another combination. But god is all knowing. He would know that you plan on suddenly changing your mind and plan on not picking left, center, right. In that case the diagram above would not exist in the first place, instead it would show your new choice:

And still god knows what the final outcome will be. No matter how much it seems like you have many options from which you can freely choose, it’s already known what you will do, and you can’t not do it, ergo, free will does not exist.

One could say that what he knows is going to happen isn’t exactly what he wants to have happen, but he is the creator of everything, so he has the power to change the future if he wanted to. Some might argue that since he doesn’t change the future (or does he? There is no possible way you could tell) that this is him leaving us to our free will, but again, this explanation doesn’t escape the above argument.

It is just sooooo much simpler to accept that god does not exist and thus you do have free will. You are responsible for your actions, and you control your reactions to the various situations that might arise. It’s much more empowering than being trapped in an inescapable system where somebody already knows everything you’re going to do.