The existence of evil is considered by many to be…

The existence of evil is considered by many to be…

THIS POST IS ABOUT AN ARGUMENT AGAINST GOD AND FREE WILL AND A THEISTIC COUNTER-ARGUMENT
Someone posted the following hypothetical scenario [or article below] to show the following, that is to say, that God’s foreknowledge and human free will cannot co-exist together:
“To put this concretely, imagine God knows on Monday that John will choose to rob Mary of her purse the following Friday. If John can freely choose on Friday, it must be possible for him to choose to rob Mary or not to rob Mary on that day. If John chooses not to rob Mary, then God is mistaken in his foreknowledge, which is logically impossible given that ‘God’ is omniscient. Therefore, John cannot possess free will if God is omniscient.”
Here’s my response:
Firstly;
The inference of your hypothetical argument does not necessarily follow, because the hypothetical premises do not necessarily imply that John does not have free will if God is omniscient. For God may not be omniscient if John has free will. For every argument, the argument does not contain the non sequitur informal fallacy if (and only if) it does not contain an inference that does not necessarily follow from its premises. Hence your hypothetical argument necessarily contains the non sequitur informal fallacy. Every argument that contains any informal fallacy is not valid.
Therefore your hypothetical argument is informally not valid.
Secondly;
Here’s an informally valid modification of your hypothetical argument:
1.) If God knows the following beforehand, that is to say, that on Monday John will exercise his free will as follows, if he truly has free will, namely to freely choose to rob Mary’s purse on Friday, then it is possible for John to freely choose to rob Mary of her purse or not to rob her of her purse on Friday.
However 2.) if John freely chooses to not rob Mary of her purse on Friday, then God does not have foreknowledge, since what John chose to do on Friday was inconsistent with what God proposed by means of his foreknowledge.
Therefore 3.) if John has free will, then a God who possess foreknowledge does not exist or if God has foreknowledge, then free will does not exist.
The point should be as follows, namely that divine foreknowledge and free will are mutually exclusive. Or that if free will exists, then God does not exist, or that if God exists, then human agency does not exist/or that free will does not exist.
Thridly:
My my critique and rebutal is as follows;
The problem with the argument is as follows, that is to say, that the following information was omitted from premise 1 if premise 2 is true or if John chose to not rob Mary on Friday, namely that God foreknew the following on Monday as well:
That John would choose contrary to what he first foreknew on Monday.
In other words if God has foreknowledge, then, surely, God would have known the following fact beforehand as well and on Monday, namely that John would also freely choose to alter his choice or that he would choose to not Rob Mary on Friday.
If God would have known the aforementioned as well, and yet the argument against him contains an evidential premise that contains that which is against the co-existence of his foreknowledge except that which shows the following, namely that John cannot freely choose contrary to that which was already settled in his own mind on Monday and by means of his free volition, and that God foreknew this as well, even though it is evidently the case, and yet it was suppressed, then the argument against God or against free will contains the incomplete evidence informal fallacy.
Hence the argument against the co-existence of God or free will contains the incomplete evidence fallacy.
Every argument that contains any informal fallacy is not informally valid.
And subsequently the argument against the co-existence of God and free will is not informally valid.
For every argument, the argument can be perceived as an informally valid process of the ascertainment of the truth of a position if (and only if) it is informally valid.
Hence the argument against the co-existence of God and free will does not prove that the following proposition is true, that is to say, That the foreknowledge of God and human free will cannot co-exist together.
It is either that the foreknowledge of God and human free will can coexist together or cannot co-exist together. Hence the foreknowledge of God and human free will can coexist together.
If human free will and God’s foreknowledge can coexist together, then the following proposition, namely that the foreknowledge of God and human free will cannot co-exist together, does not correspond to reality.
Hence that proposition does not correspond to reality.
However the truth does on grounds of the correspondence theory of truth.
Hence this proposition, namely that the foreknowledge of God and human free will cannot co-exist together, is not true.
It is either that a proposition is true or false on grounds of the law of excluded middle.
Therefore this belief, namely that the foreknowledge of God and human free will cannot co-exist together, is false.
It is also important to note the following as well, namely that the argument is also unsound because premise 1 and premise 2 are misleading.
The reason for why the two premises are misleading is because, although premise 1, makes this clear, namely that God foreknew that John freely chose to do Y on Friday, it is unsound, because the following truth was suppressed via ignorance, namely that if John chose to not do Y on Friday, then God would have foreknown three things on Monday.
The three things he would have known on Monday is as follows, namely that:
1.) John would freely choose to rob Mary on Friday.
But 2.) this would not happen on Friday because
3.) he would freely change his mind or cancel what he initially chose to do.
Next:
Notice that premise 1 only contains event 1. Furthermore notice that events 2 and 3 have been suppressed.
Now, the reason for why 2, and 3 were superseded was because the author of the argument wanted to force the incompatibility to exist even though it does not really exist.
Does this imply that the author is a dishonest person.
No! Not necessarily. Plus I do not believe that all atheists are dishonest people.
On the contrary I believe that some of them possess certain misconceptions about God.
That’s all!
Finally,
If John continued to choose to rob and no to Ron Mary’s purse, if he chose and chose to cancel what he chose one million times or two trillion times, God would have known this beforehand.
However no human being an choose and then choose to cancel what was chose trillions of times. On the contrary John only has a limited amount of times to choose and the choose to cancel.
And subsequently, at some point, John’s choice must be resolute, firm, unmovable, definite, and fixed.
If the aforementioned, then this is really the case about why the foreknown future cannot be changed, that is to say, that John could not choose contrary to what he eventually chose to do to Mary or not to do to Mary on Monday on Friday, because God foreknew it. On the contrary he cannot choose to do otherwise on Friday because God whatever he eventually chose to do or not to do on Friday was already freely settled and fixein his mind on Monday.
That is why!
And if he changed or if he was going to change his mind on Friday, God would have also known this as well on Monday.
If so, then he would have declared two things on Monday, namely that John would feely choose to rob Mary on Friday, and then he would freely choose to not do so on Friday.
By the way the so called arguments from the problem of evil are invalid because they contain the incomplete evidence fallacy.
But I am not going to demonstrate why now, particularly because I do not want this post to be too lengthy.
For some of my readers have a short attention span.?

The existence of evil is considered by many to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of a perfect deity. The author evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic defence….

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