Here is a new chat room to discuss issues about free will, omnipotence and causal and theological determinism. I am currently trying to understand Plantinga's view on whether God's omnipotence allows him to know what a free human agent will do in the future. I think God should not be able to know that, but I suspect Plantinga may think otherwise even though he is an incompatibilist and supports human free will.

I have found one video referencing Plantinga but I did not understand how his position was different from God knowing what someone would co and therefore that person did not have a choice in making that decision. youtube.com/…

Wow, that video was a bit of a surprise, but pleasant viewing and probably helpful for what you're asking about. Good find!

If this video is accurately portraying Plantinga's view, then it seems, yes, he is saying that God knows in advance and human will is free. In fact, it sounds like that is Plantinga's point, that these two are compatible.

I'm not sure if how I'm conceiving of it is the same way Plantinga is, but in the end I am matching to his conclusion (even though I don't share his other beliefs; I'm just granting that if one believes in an omniscient god and libertarian free will, there is no reason inherent in both these concepts that make them mutually exclusive).

@Chelonian It seems Plantinga claims the incompatibility of free will and theological determinism can be resolved by saying God's omnipotence does not permit Him to cause a human choice to be made, since that would conflict with human free will, but his omniscience can still know it. This still leaves a paradox although it is only with the knowing in advance what a human will do.

Along a similar line, given the Conway and Kochen "Free Will Theorem" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem if we have free will then so does a quantum system. In some way it made a free choice that was manifested at the collapse of the wave function. Does God know in advance, given His omniscience as Plantinga seems to be presenting it, what that quantum system's collapsed state will be? I think the answer would be yes.

Given the paradox of omniscience and omnipotence, I wonder why does God need to know what either a human being chooses to do or what state a quantum system chooses to collapse to in advance? Just claim omniscience is "knowing everything there is to know" and note that the actual decisions of free agents are not something knowable in advance.

@FrankHubeny. I think my main point is that although it may seem like a paradox, it's not. In my view, if one accepts libertarian free will, and an omniscient being who knows the future, it is not paradoxical to accept these can co-exist. That's because just because a choice can be known in advance doesn't mean (in this model) that it's physically determined. In order for a choice to be a libertarian free willed choice, it has to be self-caused.

As long as its self-caused, it qualifies as an exercise of libertarian free will.

Notice that no one seems to have a problem with post-dicting free willed choices. I mean, I can report that Roosevelt chose to give a speech the day after Pearl Harbor, and just because I can state with certainty that he did do that and no other action doesn't mean it wasn't a libertarian free willed action. Somehow, though, people think that pre-dicting (predicting) a choice invalidates the free will part. I disagree.

@Chelonian I agree with you that, as Plantinga states it, the act is self-caused and so an example of libertarian free will. Knowledge is neither an agent nor an event cause, so I can also see that there is no paradox. Perhaps my concern is better described as I don't see why God needs to know this. There is also the problem of knowing from a timeless perspective. Does that mean there is a kind of block universe that God knows?

I don't know if asking why God "needs" to know this is the right question. Perhaps it is more consistent with typical conceptions of the Abrahamic god that he needs nothing, but he simply does know everything, just by his nature.

As far as the "time

as far as the "timeless" perspective goes, that is probably a bridge too far for me, conceptually. I have trouble enough with libertarian free will and omniscient beings--to say anyone or anything can somehow be "outside of time" doesn't make any linguistic sense to me. I am a little better with the block model of time, and could accept that a god could be in time like the rest of us, and just divinely omniscient of future events.