How does God's omniscience negate an individual's agency / free will?

[smac97]

Several times over the years I have encountered folks who have asserted that the Church's doctrines about God's omniscience and our free will / agency are incompatible.  That is, the former negates the latter.

See, e.g., this formulation:

Quote

James Faulconer summed up the situation:

Modern scripture speaks unequivocally of the foreknowledge of God: "All things are present before mine eyes" (DC 38:2). It affirms that God has a fulness of truth, a "knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come" (DC 93:24, emphasis added).

In an attempt to reconcile divine foreknowledge and human freedom, major Jewish and Christian theologians and philosophers have offered three alternatives.

[1] In the first, both horns of the dilemma are affirmed: "Everything is foreseen, and freedom of choice is given." This is the position of Rabbi Akiba and Maimonides (Aboth 3, 19; Yad, Teshuvah 5:5), as well as of Augustine and Anselm (City of God 5.9–10; The Harmony of the Foreknowledge, the Predestination, and the Grace of God with Free Choice 1.3). Maimonides argues that though it is logically impossible for human foreknowledge of one's actions to be compatible with freedom, God's foreknowledge, which is of a different and mysterious kind, is compatible with freedom.

[2] In the second, God's foreknowledge is limited. Since people are free, God knows the possibilities and probabilities of human choice, but not the inevitabilities. God is omniscient in knowing all that can be known; but not in knowing beforehand exactly how people will use their freedom, since that cannot be known because future, contingent events do not exist. This is the view of the Talmudist Gersonides (Levi Ben Gershon, 1288-1344; Milhamot Adonai, III, 6) and, with some modifications, of Charles Hartshorne and process philosophers.

[3] In the third, humans are not genuinely free. Freedom is an illusion that arises from human ignorance of divine cause and necessity. All that individuals do is actually determined and predetermined. God both pre-knows and pre-causes all that occurs. This is the view of Spinoza and Calvin.

Historically, most Latter-day Saints have taken the first general position: everything is foreseen and freedom remains. Some have taken the second, that God's foreknowledge is not absolute. The third alternative, that human freedom is illusory, is incompatible with LDS belief in genuine agency and responsibility. Praise and blame, accountability and judgment, are meaningless unless humans are free. Any doctrine of foreknowledge that undercuts this principle violates the spirit and letter of LDS scripture.^[1]

The dilemma is also discussed, from a more scientific point of view, in the FAIRwiki article on "Free Will".

The first general position above makes sense, except that I don't understand the "horns of the dilemma" reference.  What is the "dilemma?"

From ChatGPT:

Quote

The dilemma you're referring to is often known as the "problem of divine foreknowledge" or the "compatibilism dilemma." It raises the question of how God's omniscience, which encompasses knowledge of all future events, can coexist with human free will. The argument goes as follows:

1. God is omniscient, meaning He knows all true propositions, including the future.
2. If God knows in advance what choices an individual will make, then those choices are already determined and inevitable.
3. If an individual's choices are predetermined, they cannot be truly free.
4. Therefore, if God is omniscient, human free will is incompatible with His knowledge.

This dilemma arises from the tension between God's knowledge of the future and the concept of free will, which suggests that individuals have the ability to make choices that are not predetermined or causally determined. The argument claims that if God knows what choices we will make in advance, then those choices must already be determined, thus undermining our freedom to choose otherwise.

I responded:

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How does God's foreknowledge make a choice "determined and inevitable?" If I know my son will burn his hand if he touches a hot stove, he still has the choice to touch the stove.

The response:

Quote

In the context of the problem of divine foreknowledge, the argument suggests that if God possesses knowledge of all future events, including our choices, then those choices must be determined and inevitable. This line of reasoning assumes that God's foreknowledge entails infallible knowledge of what will happen in the future.

The analogy you provided about your son and the hot stove is a common one used to illustrate the distinction between foreknowledge and causation. In that scenario, you possess knowledge of the potential outcome (your son burning his hand) based on your understanding of cause and effect. However, your knowledge alone does not determine or compel your son's choice. He still has the freedom to choose whether or not to touch the stove, even if you know what the likely consequence will be.

The issue arises when we apply the concept of divine omniscience to human choices. If God possesses exhaustive foreknowledge, it is argued that He knows with certainty what choices individuals will make in the future. From this perspective, if God's knowledge is infallible and encompasses all future events, then it seems that those events, including our choices, must be determined and inevitable. In other words, if God knows today what you will have for breakfast tomorrow, then it would seem that your breakfast choice is already fixed and cannot be otherwise.

This line of reasoning raises questions about the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free will. It suggests that if God's knowledge is complete and infallible, then our choices must already be determined and not truly free.

Me:

Quote

But if my foreknowledge "knowledge alone does not determine or compel [my] son's choice," then how does God's foreknowledge compel or "cause" my choices?

ChatGPT:

Quote

You make a valid point. The issue at hand is the logical consequence that is often drawn from the concept of God's foreknowledge, rather than a direct causal relationship. The argument suggests that if God possesses complete and infallible foreknowledge of all future events, including our choices, then those choices must be determined and inevitable. However, it doesn't necessarily imply that God's foreknowledge directly causes or compels our choices.

The crux of the argument lies in the notion that if God possesses perfect knowledge of the future, then that knowledge must be infallible and unchangeable. From this perspective, if God knows with certainty that you will make a particular choice, it may be concluded that you cannot choose otherwise because that would contradict God's infallible knowledge.

However, it is important to note that this line of reasoning is based on a particular understanding of God's omniscience and the nature of time. There are alternative viewpoints and philosophical perspectives that propose different solutions to this issue. For instance, some argue that God's foreknowledge is not incompatible with free will because God's knowledge is not causally determining but rather a result of His timeless perspective.

In summary, the argument does not suggest that God's foreknowledge directly causes or compels our choices. Instead, it raises questions about the compatibility of God's omniscience and the concept of free will, suggesting that if God possesses infallible knowledge of our choices, those choices must be determined and inevitable. However, different perspectives exist, and the issue remains a subject of philosophical and theological debate.

Still not helpful.

I'm reminded of this clip from Minority Report:

John Anderton : Why'd you catch that?

Danny Witwer : Because it was going to fall.

John Anderton : You're certain?

Danny Witwer : Yeah.

John Anderton : But it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was *going* to happen.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Ryan Dahle]

I've always thought it was a BIG assumption to presume that God's knowledge of the future (assuming he has something like infallible foreknowledge) is necessarily derived from his ability to perfectly predict incomprehensibly complex and vast sequences of inevitable causal relationships. It isn't necessarily that I doubt that God has the computing power for that (he seems to be able to comprehend information that is unimaginable to humans). Rather, it is just that I don't know if human agency can actually be predicted in the same way that a scientific law can be predicted (i.e., physical matter will always behave in a certain way under similar circumstances, etc.).

For some time I've suspected that God doesn't just anticipate the future via prediction, but that in a way we can't comprehend he actually has seen or experienced it. In that case, what he sees may be largely a product of human agency (i.e., what he sees is caused by future human choices, rather than future human choices being caused by what he sees or knows about the future). 

It would be sort of like the ability to fast-forward a film. Having watched it once, knowing what will happen in the future obviously doesn't cause the film to play out in a certain way. Nor does it really take away the creative agency of the filmmakers who produced it. No one watches a film for the second time and assumes the film's depicted events are caused by his or her foreknowledge. Similarly, if my basic theory is correct, it would be wrong to assume that God's foreknowledge is determining human agency. 

The catch, of course, is that there is currently no scientific evidence (to my knowledge) supporting the possibility of a being actually seeing or experiencing (and not just predicting) the future. But there also isn't any scientific evidence supporting all sorts of miracles reported in the scriptural canon, such as the transmutation of water into wine. The fact is that time is now demonstrably much more strange than people likely presumed in pre-modern times. Is God actually seeing or in some way knowing the future really much more weird than the idea that time is relative depending on one's frame of reference (based on speed and gravity)? One can also cite the double slit experiment and other phenomena that baffle our intuitions about cause and effect. 

I'm obviously no physicist or philosopher. These are just my mostly uninformed speculations. But I have been surprised at how this possibility (or something like it) often isn't addressed in the literature I've read on this topic. 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Ryan Dahle

[webbles]

God's omniscience actually takes away His free will.  If He is perfectly omniscience (knows absolutely everything), then He knows everything that He will do.  That means all of His choices are already set in stone.  They can't deviate.  He can't wake up tomorrow and decide something different from what He already knew yesterday.  All His choices were made at the point He became perfectly omniscient.

[blackstrap]

What if we are not living in a " NOW " ?

[Benjamin McGuire]

I responded in the other thread, but, I would add something to what you don't have here Smac. When we deal with God's foreknowledge, we also have to deal with assumptions about what God wants to happen (or perhaps what God needs to happen). If we premise creation with the idea that God is interested in creating the most good, and we believe that God could alter creation in various ways, each having some level of comparable good, then we might consider that God's creation is the singular creation which creates the most good. At an individual level, we might ask - did God place someone in a circumstance where they fail the test of mortality where, under other circumstances, they might have succeeded?

Mormonism tends to buck the traditional responses to this question because we have a different model of what might be considered "the most good". And the Book of Mormon makes an interesting argument in this regard when it details the purposes of God in the creation - and the presence of good and evil. Here is a bit from 2:15 placed next to some of 2:22 (emphasis mine) -

Quote

 

15 - And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, ...  it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life

22 - And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.

 

God's purposes here are not about mortality - it is just the means to the end. And so Mormonism isn't stuck with the idea that God is bound by this idea of morality that is often used in these arguments. And I would argue that Mormonism does not teach an absolute agency - it teaches a limited agency. Only where that agency is exercised is moral accountability held.

As a side note, Minority Report is an interpretation of Bentham's utilitarianism. Among other things, Betham proposed building a prison with glass ceilings and a tall observation tower (the Panopticon). The threat of observation, he argued, was more effective than any reality - and the pain and suffering of a few is justified by the happiness of everyone else (in particular the three who are suffering). Minority Report illustrates an aspect of Bentham's utilitarianism: that it is less important that real justice is accomplished - society gets as much out of the false sense of security provided by apparent justice (even if it unjustly targets the wrong person). In some ways, Bentham is the father of the surveillance state, and the film Minority Report is a metaphor of that condition. In some ways, we are seeing this play out in real life. (This is just one example - other individuals employed as content censors for streaming and social media platforms experience the same thing).

[JLHPROF]

True omniscience is a false concept.

[Teancum]

26 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

True omniscience is a false concept.

Is it?  Who says?

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The fact is that time is now demonstrably much more strange than people likely presumed in pre-modern times. Is God actually seeing or in some way knowing the future really much more weird than the idea that time is relative depending on one's frame of reference (based on speed and gravity)? One can also cite the double slit experiment and other phenomena that baffle our intuitions about cause and effect. 

We assume the universe and all that is in it act in a mechanistic way.  Even the body is just a very complicated biological machine and the spirit is just finer material, so a machine as well, organized and programmed by God to which he adds our unique programming/intelligence. (If you disagree, then please explain what it is and how it acts.)

Not sure we can even conceive of existence at the very basic level in any other way.  Cause and effect.  There is nothing truly random if we know enough details  of everything leading up to it (at least in everyday thought).  If a ball is so perfectly balanced that it truly can’t be predicted which way it will fall, it won’t fall either way, but keep bouncing straight up and down.

So what if we are wrong (which given history seems like we should accept this as a given) and the universe only appears like a machine to those with very poor eyesight?

Edited July 12, 2023 by Calm

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

How does God's foreknowledge make a choice "determined and inevitable?" If I know my son will burn his hand if he touches a hot stove, he still has the choice to touch the stove.

The correct response to that is that in this metaphor you would know whether your son will or will not touch the stove and not just the consequences of doing so.

Also ChatGPT did parrot the beginning of a potential answer:

“For instance, some argue that God's foreknowledge is not incompatible with free will because God's knowledge is not causally determining but rather a result of His timeless perspective.” 

[bluebell]

27 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

The correct response to that is that in this metaphor you would know whether your son will or will not touch the stove and not just the consequences of doing so.

Also ChatGPT did parrot the beginning of a potential answer:

“For instance, some argue that God's foreknowledge is not incompatible with free will because God's knowledge is not causally determining but rather a result of His timeless perspective.” 

I agree with ChatGPT on this.

If time really is one eternal round for God, and if the past, present, and future are all continually before Him, then He knows the future because he's watching it happen as it happens.  Not because it is predetermined.

[T-Shirt]

I believe that God has a perfect foreknowledge of our choices, but only at a point tin time. For example, based on one's circumstances, thoughts and influences, God will know one's choices at that moment. However, as one exercises agency, what God sees will change. He also will intervene as He sees one's path heading in a bad direction. He does this often by sending people to help influence choices and circumstances or even sending angels. I believe that God will often have a plan B in place in order to cover all the bases. For example, Nephi's two accounts on the plates. I don't believe it was inevitable that Martin Harris would lose the 116 page manuscript. I believe His plan for Adam and Eve had a plan B so that it would work regardless of whether or not they partook of the fruit. In fact, I believe that God meant it when He said He forbids them from eating the fruit. He would have preferred that they not have eaten it. I believe that God had a backup to Joseph Smith as well, just in case. God can see our future with perfect clarity, but as we make choices and with His help, that future can change often.

That is why the future is continually before Him. If He knew perfectly the outcome of everyone's lives in the very beginning, He would not need to have the future continually before Him, He would just know. Because it is continually before Him, the future that He sees will change from time to time based on our choices and the intervention and influence that He sends or that the adversary sends. Our future is wide open and our agency will determine our fate.

Edited July 13, 2023 by T-Shirt

[SeekingUnderstanding]

39 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I agree with ChatGPT on this.

If time really is one eternal round for God, and if the past, present, and future are all continually before Him, then He knows the future because he's watching it happen as it happens.  Not because it is predetermined.

How does this work exactly? Let’s say upon graduation from BYU, my wife and I are presented with two job opportunities in different parts of the country and pray for guidance. God observing the block universe knows what will happen, but how does this qualify Him to offer any sort of advice? Does He actually know what would have happened if we made the other choice? Is He making a guess? How does He know which choice is best?

Edited July 13, 2023 by SeekingUnderstanding

[bluebell]

29 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

How does this work exactly? Let’s say upon graduation from BYU, my wife and I are presented with two job opportunities in different parts of the country and pray for guidance. God observing the block universe knows what will happen, but how does this qualify Him to offer any sort of advice? Does He actually know what would have happened if we made the other choice? Is He making a guess? How does He know which choice is best?

I see what you are saying, and all of this is really beyond my paygrade, but I would venture that His immense knowledge and understanding of everything, including the past, present, and future (plus of you and your wife personally) would have an impact on His abilities to deduce outcomes. So it's not just His omniscience that provides Him with knowledge of the future.  There's a lot more too it.

So it's not like one of us watching the future take place and then trying to use that knowledge for good. He's a different level of "capable" than we can relate to.  We are so incredibly limited compared to the knowledge that we purport to Him, that one has to take that extensive, practically unimaginable in scope and depth, purported knowledge into account in these kinds of discussions.  And for me that means that most of this is unanswerable because it's beyond our comprehension.

 

 

 

 

[bluebell]

3 hours ago, T-Shirt said:

I believe that God has a perfect foreknowledge of our choices, but only at a point tin time. For example, based on one's circumstances, thoughts and influences, God will know one's choices at that moment. However, as one exercises agency, what God sees will change. He also will intervene as He sees one's path heading in a bad direction. He does this often by sending people to help influence choices and circumstances or even sending angels. I believe that God will often have a plan B in place in order to cover all the bases. For example, Nephi's two accounts on the plates. I don't believe it was inevitable that Martin Harris would lose the 116 page manuscript. I believe His plan for Adam and Eve had a plan B so that it would work regardless of whether or not they partook of the fruit. In fact, I believe that God meant it when He said He forbids them from eating the fruit. He would have preferred that they not have eaten it. I believe that God had a backup to Joseph Smith as well, just in case. God can see our future with perfect clarity, but as we make choices and with His help, that future can change often.

That is why the future is continually before Him. If He knew perfectly the outcome of everyone's lives in the very beginning, He would not need to have the future continually before Him, He would just know. Because it is continually before Him, the future that He sees will change from time to time based on our choices and the intervention and influence that He sends or that the adversary sends. Our future is wide open and our agency will determine our fate.

Or it could just mean that the future is continually before Him because the future continues eternally and has no end.   

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, T-Shirt said:

I believe that God has a perfect foreknowledge of our choices, but only at a point tin time. For example, based on one's circumstances, thoughts and influences, God will know one's choices at that moment. However, as one exercises agency, what God sees will change. He also will intervene as He sees one's path heading in a bad direction. He does this often by sending people to help influence choices and circumstances or even sending angels. I believe that God will often have a plan B in place in order to cover all the bases. For example, Nephi's two accounts on the plates. I don't believe it was inevitable that Martin Harris would lose the 116 page manuscript. I believe His plan for Adam and Eve had a plan B so that it would work regardless of whether or not they partook of the fruit. In fact, I believe that God meant it when He said He forbids them from eating the fruit. He would have preferred that they not have eaten it. I believe that God had a backup to Joseph Smith as well, just in case. God can see our future with perfect clarity, but as we make choices and with His help, that future can change often.

That is why the future is continually before Him. If He knew perfectly the outcome of everyone's lives in the very beginning, He would not need to have the future continually before Him, He would just know. Because it is continually before Him, the future that He sees will change from time to time based on our choices and the intervention and influence that He sends or that the adversary sends. Our future is wide open and our agency will determine our fate.

Suppose thought that the backup for Joseph Smith failed and then the backup to the backup failed. How many backups does God need?

I suspect God knows the future perfectly but not “now” in any sense we would understand.

[Dario_M]

7 hours ago, T-Shirt said:

I believe that God has a perfect foreknowledge of our choices.

I believe that God has the perfect plan for us anyway. But.. we don't know what that plan exactly hold in for us yet so we might as well use our agengy and our freedom for the time being. It seems that in our church we just wanna know so badly what Gods plan is (or some of us seem to think exactly what Gods plan is and what he want from us). But i don't believe in that. Allthough we have the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrines, other kind of phrases and revelations. It still doesn't give us an answer on every question we have about live (and after). I think that it's good that we have free will, and that we can use it. See it as a gift of God. I injoy my free will. Nobody can take that away from me (except God himself) My free will makes my life more comfortable. Will would i make a prisoner of myself? Would that make life any more pleasant? And we humans don't have that much time anyway. Life goes by faster then we sometimes realize. 

Edited July 13, 2023 by Dario_M

[Navidad]

There are sometimes in life, that we as humans must needs sit back in our chairs and just say "Wow!" We can think and think until our thinker hurts so badly we must say "Wow" again, get up and go about those things which we can comprehend in all the very best that our capacity as humans allow us to comprehend. Some things are simply not figure-out-able given our brilliant yet limited ROM and RAM capacity as humans.

God is one of those. That is why someone like the Apostle Paul had to finish Ephesians 3:19, start Ephesians 3:20 and put down his quill in despair. He wanted to write a verse about God. He, a capable philologist could not come up with the right word in Classical or Koine Greek. So, he decided to make up a new word - combine three existing Greek words to describe his inability to comprehend or describe who God is and what He will do for us. It was a kind of su·per·ca·li·fra·gil·is·tic·ex·pi·a·li·do·cious kind of a word. He invented the word ὑπερεκπερισσοῦ (huperekperissou- quite a long word, even for Greek. He would use it a total of three times in his writings to describe something indescribable. As far as I know, his is the only use of the word at that time in the history of the Greek language. It is what is called in Greek a hapaxlogomene. The word carries with it the idea of something that is over-from-beyond our comprehension. In English it is variously translated as Immeasurably more, exceedingly above, abundantly above, abundantly beyond, super-abundantly more, exceedingly abundantly above, infinitely more, more than we can think of, more than we can imagine, and on and on. Get the picture?

This may be an unfair observation, but perhaps because my LDS friends view God as a glorified human, they (you) believe they (you) should be able to figure Him out using your not-quite-yet-glorified (exalted) reasoning ability and say "Eureka, now I understand God!" I would encourage you to simply take your fingers off the keyboard, sit back and say with the Apostle Paul,  "huperekperissou!" or if you prefer with  Mary Poppins, sing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!" - a word that has been described as "sticks to you like gum to the bottom of your shoe."

"Perhaps, just perhaps it is better to trust than to understand." That is my Navidadism for the day!

Edited July 13, 2023 by Navidad

[Amulek]

11 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

How does this work exactly? Let’s say upon graduation from BYU, my wife and I are presented with two job opportunities in different parts of the country and pray for guidance. God observing the block universe knows what will happen, but how does this qualify Him to offer any sort of advice? Does He actually know what would have happened if we made the other choice? Is He making a guess? How does He know which choice is best?

In my view, the efficaciousness of petitonary prayer is one of the evidences for God not being omnipotent in the classical sense.

Say, for example, your daughter is praying to know whether or not she should marry the man who just proposed to her. If God infallibly knows the future then he knows with certainty she will marry the man - a man He also knows will go on to torment and physically abuse her until the day she dies. And because God knows this absolutely, there is nothing that even God can say or do in response to your daughter's prayer which would cause her to act differently.

Only I don't believe that is true. I believe God can genuinely intervene in our lives and change our lives for the good. Were that not the case, I think God's commandment for us to pray would be mostly pointless.

 

[JLHPROF]

14 hours ago, Teancum said:

Is it?  Who says?

Common sense.  In order to know absolutely everything all knowledge would have to be finite and static at all times and in all places.

Information is constantly being created and altered.

Limited omniscience (an oxymoron?) is a possibility.

D&C 93:30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. 31 Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.

[Amulek]

16 hours ago, smac97 said:

What is the "dilemma?"

If there is a being who knows the entire future infallibly, then no human act is free.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

 

[Amulek]

2 hours ago, Navidad said:

This may be an unfair observation, but perhaps because my LDS friends view God as a glorified human, they (you) believe they (you) should be able to figure Him out using your not-quite-yet-glorified (exalted) reasoning ability and say "Eureka, now I understand God!"

Latter-day Saints didn't invent the concept of theological fatalism. In using our "not-quite-yet-glorified...reasoning" to try and understand God, we doing the exact same thing that philosophers and theologians have been doing for centuries.

I don't believe it will be possible to fully know or understand God in our present state, but that doesn't mean we should give up on striving to understand or know him better that we do today.

 

[Calm]

24 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Only I don't believe that is true. I believe God can genuinely intervene in our lives and change our lives for the good. Were that not the case, I think God's commandment for us to pray would be mostly pointless.

So what of the cases of future harm where it appears he didn’t intervene even with prayers asking him to as commanded?

Edited July 13, 2023 by Calm

[Nofear]

15 minutes ago, Amulek said:

If there is a being who knows the entire future infallibly, then no human act is free.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

 

We could also toss in another Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Time (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/)

In a block model of the universe, all spatial and temporal dimensions exist already and our travel through time is a mental phenomenon. While I don't believe in that model, it does have potential compatibility with the concept of the foreknowledge of God. Since everything has already happened, God just happens to be aware of "decisions" that were made (note that our grammar with future tense biases our perception and the grammar need not reflect reality). Currently, the block model is the model that is most easily compatible with modern physics. Nonetheless, a lot of physicists (myself included) push back on it because, I believe, it doesn't "feel right". Something inside our intuition recoils at it. Such an emotional reaction is scarcely rational method for rejecting a theory of reality. Ah well.

I'm also an incompatibilist when it comes to free will. I don't believe determinism is compatible with true moral agency. There are LDS philosophers who do though (e.g. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V32N04_51.pdf, https://medium.com/interfaith-now/the-deed-is-everything-notes-on-agency-free-will-and-determinism-5aa58f8e3543). Since I also believe in free will I'm a libertarian as well (here in the philosophical sense, not the political party).

Anyway, this is a thorny issue that has been wrestled with by theologians and philosophers quite literally for thousands of years and for some is essentially their entire professional specialty. And yet, there remains no consensus. Nobody has put forth such a powerful argument that all are persuaded. If ever there was a philosophical rabbit hole that one could go down, this is definitely one of the biggest.

[Chum]

15 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

God's purposes here are not about mortality - it is just the means to the end. And so Mormonism isn't stuck with the idea that God is bound by this idea of morality that is often used in these arguments.

I really like this observation, that moralism is a tool to be wielded with wisdom. It helps me remember that we were always the goal.

[Chum]

I think our Faith plants an assumption. It's that God eventually shares enough of his plan (for each of us) to earn our trust in that plan.

For all other Saints, I will accept that is true. For me personally, I am long past needing that info and no longer expect I'll get it in this life. It could still arrive one day I just don't know what I'd do with it.