i cant believe i'm writing on a religious subject however it crossed my mind so i'm sharing it for the benefit of others. the question of whether humans have free will is a very old one for the Christian community. Theologians might say humans have free will because God wanted it that way - you know you can choose good or evil & God will treat you accordingly.
but smart people have a problem with that. Assuming God is all-knowing & all powerful , then you dont have free-will afterall. you see Newton and Galileo, hundreds of years ago, discovered that all matter is composed of atoms & the universe runs on very predictable rules. soon it dawned on Newton that if God created the universe & He gave the initial atoms there position & momentum, then he could predict their future movements until the end of time. Hence when God set the initial conditions of the universe(perhaps at the big bang), then He was dictating every action that was to take place until the end of time. So we dont have a choice? this was a problem for Newton & Galileo cuz they lived in medieval Europe & if they did not believe in God then they would be roasted along with their chestnuts in an open fire!
Fortunately for us, modern science has provided us with a way out of that dilemma. When quantum mechanics came along in the 1920 & 1930s it was discovered that the real world at the smallest of distances is probablistic. One cant know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. when you measure your take your pick. before you measure, its not a particle at all but a probablistic wave. So there you have it: God couldnt know the outcome of his initial actions, only the probability of each of an enormous number of possible outcomes.
Can God still be all knowing? Sure, if He exists in every place & time then He already knows the future, He's been there or is there in addition to being here, take your pick.
all-knowing, all powerful,yes but Einstein was wrong, God does roll dice.
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To quote something frequently said in Unity: "There is only one presence and one power in the Universe: God the good, omnipotent." God doesn't roll dice. We make the choices that make the probability. God is constant.
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