The question of omniscience and predetermination is not a simple one, and philosophers still argue the case.
Check out
Foreknowledge and Free Will
Thanks for the link, I'll be honest when it goes into the mathematical symbols it loses me.
"The argument (Logical Determinism) that a proposition's being true prior to the occurrence of the event it describes logically precludes free will ultimately rests on a modal fallacy. And the ancillary argument that a proposition's being true prior to the occurrence of the event it describes
causes the future event to occur turns on a confusion (i) of the truth-making (semantic) relation between an event and its description with (ii) the causal relation between two events."
I don't understand what the "modal fallacy" is here.
Really though the whole thing falls apart from very early on in the paper.
"Second is that the challenge to the existence of free will is posed not just by God's foreknowledge but by any foreknowledge whatsoever. The religious version of the puzzle arises because God is said to have
omniscience, that is, knowledge of everything. But the problem would arise if
anyone at all (that is, anyone whatsoever) were to have knowledge of our future actions. This generalized version of the problem has come to be known as the problem of
Epistemic Determinism ("epistemic" because it involves
knowledge; see
Epistemology). For example, if my wife were to know today that I would choose tea (rather than coffee) for my breakfast tomorrow, then one could argue (paralleling Maimonides's argument) that it would be impossible for me not to choose tea tomorrow at breakfast."
It is conflating infallible knowledge of the future(actual knowledge) with fallible knowledge(predictions). You cannot compare a being knowing my future actions with certainty to a being who is using prediction. In reality his wife cannot know for certain that he will drink tea, he might have a glass of water instead, he might not get to have a drink at all, even if she was right about it, it is at best an educated guess.
"Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) has set out the problem in the traditional manner:
…"Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that [that] man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect.…" (1966, pp. 99-100)"
I think the solution to this is that while God knows every detail of the past(existed), and every detail of the present(existing), He cannot know the future(going to exist) because it is not there to know, it does not exist. This does not affect the perfection of His knowledge in the same way that an inability to "make a rock so heavy He could not lift it" does not affect His omnipotence.
