The Problem Of God's Omniscience Of Free Will
Traditionally, God has been conceived as possessing the property of omniscience, or perfect and infinite knowledge. His omniscience covers all events – past, present, and future. However, this presents a potential problem for the argument that humans have free will. If God has knowledge of all future actions performed by agents, then in what sense do agents have genuine choice? If God already knows the outcome of every agent's choice, then it seems that no agents are truly free to make choices other than those that they actually do. Alternatively, if agents are genuinely free then it seems that God cannot have prior knowledge of how they will act. This could threaten the status of God's omniscience. The knowledge of what free agents would do
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It cannot be that Saul besieging the city or the men of Keilah surrendering David would be logically or causally necessitated by David staying in the city, because then these acts could no longer count as free. Adams next considers the idea that God knew the truth of the two propositions because he knew the characters and intentions of the implicated actors. However, an attempt to ground the truth of the propositions in intentions ultimately fails because the actions would still be free. An agent is not necessitated to act on the basis of their intentions. Intentions are alterable and can be fleeting, agents can perform actions counter to their intentions, and not all intentions are acted upon. Grounding the truth of the propositions in intentions would only support claims about what the involved agents would likely do. Of course, this is not sufficient to qualify as middle knowledge, as God's knowledge is supposed to be definite. Since it is unclear what it would mean for God to know the “truth” of propositions (1) and (2), Adams reaches a sceptical conclusion about the possibility of God possessing middle knowledge …show more content…
Adams concedes that, due to Saul's character, it is possible that a world in which David remains in Keilah and Saul besieges the city is more similar to the actual world than one in which than one in which David stays and Saul fails to besiege the city. However, this does not justify the assertion that the former world is more similar to the actual world than the latter, because, as Adams points out, there is no reason why individuals in counterfactual circumstances cannot act out of character. Therefore, the similarity of an agent's character across possible worlds does not guarantee that the agent's actions will be aligned with their character in each of the worlds
It cannot be that Saul besieging the city or the men of Keilah surrendering David would be logically or causally necessitated by David staying in the city, because then these acts could no longer count as free. Adams next considers the idea that God knew the truth of the two propositions because he knew the characters and intentions of the implicated actors. However, an attempt to ground the truth of the propositions in intentions ultimately fails because the actions would still be free. An agent is not necessitated to act on the basis of their intentions. Intentions are alterable and can be fleeting, agents can perform actions counter to their intentions, and not all intentions are acted upon. Grounding the truth of the propositions in intentions would only support claims about what the involved agents would likely do. Of course, this is not sufficient to qualify as middle knowledge, as God's knowledge is supposed to be definite. Since it is unclear what it would mean for God to know the “truth” of propositions (1) and (2), Adams reaches a sceptical conclusion about the possibility of God possessing middle knowledge …show more content…
Adams concedes that, due to Saul's character, it is possible that a world in which David remains in Keilah and Saul besieges the city is more similar to the actual world than one in which than one in which David stays and Saul fails to besiege the city. However, this does not justify the assertion that the former world is more similar to the actual world than the latter, because, as Adams points out, there is no reason why individuals in counterfactual circumstances cannot act out of character. Therefore, the similarity of an agent's character across possible worlds does not guarantee that the agent's actions will be aligned with their character in each of the worlds