[matthewwiese]

When discussing this exact topic with classmates this semester (philsophy undergrad in a medieval philosophy class that is doing a lot with the interplay with theology) I've used the following metaphor to explain how I've come to understand the idea of the supposed symbiosis between God's omniscience and our free will:

Think of God as an observer at the top of the Grand Canyon, looking down into the winding path of the river below. Humans are afloat on the river down in the canyon, unable to see what lies ahead. They can choose how to react to obstacles, for example, yet do no see them coming. God, however, sees our entire path on this metaphorical river laid out for us since birth; each of our individual choices are "perceived"[0] by him simultaneously.

[0]: Note, however, that many theologians would protest anthropomorphizing God in this way. Maimonides, as an example, says that we can speak of God as exhibiting mercy but not being merciful. He simply acts in a way that is analogous to human mercy.

[stupidcar]

I don't understand this metaphor. It sounds like if the river represents the events that will happen to us throughout our lives, then our free will is how we navigate through it. So does God know that ahead of time? Can He see me approaching a rock and know I will go around it on the left or right? Does He know I'll get smashed on it? If he doesn't, then that means there is a limit to His omniscience. If He does, then my "free" choices are predestined.

Furthermore, in this metaphor God doesn't just see the river, He created the river, and all the people on it. He laid out its twists and obstacles, with a perfect understanding of how it would affect the humans afloat on it. Moreover, at the moment of creation, He had an unbounded freedom to create the river in any other way He saw fit. If I get smashed on a rock half way down, it's because He chose to create the river in such a way that I would get smashed on it. If He didn't know this, or didn't have a choice, then He is either not all knowing, or not all powerful.

This, for me is the fundamental problem with any theist philosophy that holds that God is both omniscient and the prime mover of creation, but still suggests concepts like free will and morality have any meaning. Not only are "our" decisions predestined, they're a direct result of another being's free will, and the concept of us then being judged on them by that same being is farcical. It's like a puppeteer putting one their puppets on trial.

[ZeroFries]

You can judge your programs as good or bad despite being the programmer. God doesn't judge morality how we judge. I think God's judgement might be more akin to how a programmer might judge which program to enter in a competition, after generating billions of programs through some generative process.

We have free will to the extent that we can seperate internal and external forces, and to the degree that internal forces play the causal role in any given event. Of course, in reality, this is just an abstraction, and there's no true seperation between internal and external just as there's no real seperation between bodies of water, but the categories are useful, so we use them.