The Free Will Paradox - Part II: The Apple

Note: Before reading this, please read The Free Will Paradox - Part I: The Paradox

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-The Apple-

    Did God truly give man free will? Why would he want man to have free will? We can assume that it is the purpose He created us. Of all creatures He has or could create, He chose to create one with free will. One reason is so we may choose between good and bad. But if God is the Creator of all things He is the creator of bad as well as good. Who is to say what is good or what is bad? It is man. Man reasons that this is good or bad as a collective group deciding laws or as an individual with morals. Did God put us here to determine what is good or evil to us? We can safely assume He did not. Instead the ability to have free will is the only trait that would matter to a being where there is such a word as ‘faith’. God would only need to bestow something as radical as free will on a creature that He would want to have the ultimate choice. That is, the choice of God. If man is freely allowed to choose God or reject God, what will he do? 

    God, of course, could easily force all mankind to choose him. He could rain miracles on each man, flood the earth with angels or whatever it would take to convince each man that He is real. The reason He does not do these things must be because He wants us to have the choice; the choice of God. While it is important to think of this in the most open sense possible and not follow the words of man on the ultimate being of God, we can find an interesting scenario in the Abrahamic religions that show the fall of man due to his own choice. Exploring this can certainly help us to find out more about the choices of man, or lack there of. Be this story true, apocryphal, or simply a metaphor, it does not matter. What matters is the basic fact that man willingly (or not?) disobeyed God.

    God placed Adam and Eve in paradise. There was no want, no need, no sin, no evil. The one rule God gave was not to eat from the tree of knowledge. This, however, is exactly what happened. When Eve came to the tree she found the serpent who offered her the fruit asking, ‘why should you not eat it’? The serpent is often assumed to be Satan, but there is no general consensus to place this as fact. Instead it makes much more sense to see the serpent, if we must look at it in a metaphorical sense, as being man’s free will. Adam and Eve look at the tree of knowledge and their free will asks them, “Why can’t we eat this fruit? Why shouldn’t I have knowledge of good or evil, surely it will not kill me. I choose to eat this fruit. I choose to disobey God". As the story goes, man discovers what he assumes to be good and evil or right from wrong and is expelled from paradise and God’s grace for disobeying Him.

    Was this truly their decision? If Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit they would have remained in paradise with God. Now, because of their choice, mankind is not with God or in paradise and we are able to decide for ourselves whether we accept God or not. It is interesting that once man has eaten the fruit he discovers something that was not there before: Evil. It is not something new that comes to them, but has been there all along even though they were ignorant of it.

    There are only two possible scenarios for man to have eaten the fruit. Either man, of his own free will (unbeknownst to God), chose to eat the fruit, or, as God knew, man had no other option but to eat the fruit. In order for man to have free will he would have to fall from grace. He would have to be separated from God in order to truly be able to choose God. We are presented two conundrums here, assuming God wants man to freely choose him and divine grace. Firstly, if God knew man would eat the fruit then, as previously argued, this would negate his free will. If, however, God did not know if man would choose to eat the fruit then there is a possibility that man would never have chosen the fruit, therefore never been separated from God and paradise, therefore never need to have free will to choose God.

If it is true that Adam and Eve had to eat the apple to have free will, then the paradox would be thus: There would be no option except for man to choose to eat the fruit. This would have to happen to facilitate God’s greater “plan” of free will. If this had to happen, if there was no other way, then this was never really a choice.

The Free Will Paradox - Part I: The Paradox

    

By reading this we will assume there is a God (or a life-force/spirit/etc...) that exists. Otherwise the argument is pointless. We will also not use quotes from any religious texts, since there are many that contradict one another and are too ambiguous.

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-The Paradox-

    When the question is asked whether or not man has free will or if God has a plan, an ambiguous answer is often given, “you have free will, but God knows what decision you will make”. If this is the case, if God knows the out come, then there is no other possible choice for you to make. If God knows what you will choose to do and what will happen, then each person has a destiny and therefore lacks true free will.

    To explain this further, let us say God knows that you will make the choice to eat pizza for lunch today. If God knows the choice we will make and what will happen, then it has to happen. There is no way for you to eat anything else for lunch today, if God truly knows that you will eat pizza. If something is going to happen and there is no other option except for you to do it, then you truly have no choice. It certainly appears that you have a decision, you can choose anything you wish for lunch, but God already knows you will choose pizza. While this choice seems to us as though we made it, on the level of comprehension of God (which we surely do not comprehend) the choice was already known and only appeared to be real for us.

    One scenario we will use is that in five years God knows you will make the choice to kill a man. If this is a true statement then there is no need to use the phrase “make the choice to”…

If I may digress, in this observation we are using the term of God as it can only be understood; without religious texts or traditions which there are so many that the contradictions alone would render this discussion impotent. Instead we look at God with human reason, which is truly all we have in our repertoire to think of such things. He is a being that is truly beyond complete human comprehension, Creator of all and not created, the beginning and end of all things and neither has a beginning nor an ending, that He is great and all things are below him, and that He is right in whatever His actions (as opposed to what we may feel is right or wrong). Regardless of what man made texts say about God these things must be true for Him to exist as the one true God for it is greater to exist than not exist. 

    If God knows that we will decide to kill a man in five years, there is nothing we can do to change that, regardless of the fact that we have absolutely no idea we will do this and would do anything to the contrary if we had the foreknowledge. If a decision is known beforehand by God that we will do something, five years beforehand, and it is known by God, omnipotent and omniscient, then it has to happen. If this has to happen, as God knows it will, then there is no way for you to do other wise. If God knows you will kill a man, or choose to kill a man, in five years, then you will kill a man in five years. Otherwise, how could there be a God that is omniscient, yet not know your choice before it is made? This is your decision, but the outcome of which is already known. This is not a choice, but the illusion of a choice. How can you truly make a choice if the outcome is already known beforehand by a higher being?

    It is argued that God simply knows the decision that we will make. That it is our free will to choose one thing over another and God knows this. But if God knows this then there is no way to do otherwise, even if it appears that we freely chose to do it. This is nothing but the illusion of choice. The illusion of free will. Certainly on our level of comprehension it absolutely seems as though we made that choice freely, but a choice where the outcome is already known is not a choice at all. If God truly bestowed free will on man there is no way He could know our decisions or their outcomes. There is no way He could know the future. This would create a Paradox; how is God all mighty, all powerful, all knowing, if he does not know the simple future of man?

Thus the Paradox is, if there is a God He can do anything He wills, except give Free Will to man, because in order to do this he would not be able to know the choices we make, therefore, not be omniscient and therefore not be God.

Continued with: The Free Will Paradox - Part II: The Apple