>>God knows what he's going to do and yet He does it.
>>Can He help it?
>
>Reggie,
>
>there's a school of thought that holds that even god has no
>free will. Here is something I plagiarized from
>
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/god_...free_will.html that
>explains this notion.
>
>1. AN OMNISCIENT (ALL-KNOWING) BEING DOES NOT HAVE FREE WILL
>
>If you are all-knowing, you know your future actions, what
>choices you will make, and you cannot change them otherwise
>your knowledge would be wrong, and you wouldn't be
>all-knowing. An omniscient being has no free will to choose
>actions; all its actions are predetermined.
>
>If you knew a decision you are going to make in the future...
>what would it mean? You would have no free will to change that
>choice. No option, no choices... based on the fact that you
>know its going to happen, it is predestined and no amount of
>strong will can change it. The further in the future the
>predicted choice is, the less free will you have to change it!
>Well imagine if for infinity you'd always known exactly what
>choices you were going to make, and that you could never be
>wrong. You would never have had any free will in any choice,
>ever!
>
>In effect God is an observer. An omniscient being has no free
>will - its entire future is set out and it has no choice but
>to follow its predestined path.
>
>
>2. A PERFECT GOD HAS NO FREE WILL
>
>Out of the possible options in a situation God always makes
>the best choice because it is perfectly benevolent. It cannot
>do something that is less moral or "good" than something else,
>because that would not be perfectly good, but merely
>second-best good. In every situation, God only has one choice:
>The most moral/good one. God does not have free will. It can
>make no choices, there are no possibilities for an
>omniscient-benevolent God to choose from. In order to give God
>its free will, we would have to take away its omniscience -
>its all-knowing nature - or take away its benevolence.
>
>When people say that God has free will, they must also mean
>that God is imperfect. If God is not perfect then it becomes
>possible for God to choose a less-than-perfect action. If God
>is not imperfect, then, it is impossible for god to perform
>imperfect actions. Therefore God has no free will.
>
>
>3. A MORAL GOD HAS NO FREE WILL
>
>God, as the ultimate creator, created goodness. God is also
>said to be a perfectly good benevolent God. This means that
>God fulfils every possibility of the goodness it has created.
>It is the be-all and end-all of goodness, perfectly good and
>unerringly good. If God was not 100 percent perfectly moral,
>God would not be perfect. This results in a complete lack of
>free will for God.
>
>God knows the nuances and complexities of every situation. God
>knows which actions are optimal, it knows which actions are
>perfectly good. Only God, I would guess, is capable of
>performing actions that are perfectly good. And it does so
>unerringly, constantly, because it itself is perfectly good
>and never errs. It is all-knowing and perfectly good. But, the
>problem is for free will, in any situation, of all the
>possible things God could do, God does the perfectly morally
>right one. It never chooses an inferior course of action
>because it is perfect. If it acted imperfectly, it would not
>be perfect.
>
>So, in any situation, a perfectly moral God has no choice: It
>must carry out what action is most good. God, in creating
>goodness, and being perfectly good, is completely limited to
>only a set, predetermined series of actions. In any situation,
>at any point in time or out of time, God has no free will: It
>must robotically and automatically carry out the precise
>action that is perfectly good.
A believer will hold that they can never understand God. All these statements are drawn out from a perspective that one can understand God. Thats why they are "believers" ATLian....and you are not.