Interesting argument about free will and determinism... One of the more interesting ones I've seen, and the first time I've seen it connected to God's will. (Usually I come across it in arguments about time travel.)

I think it is a very valid argument against temporal changeability as most SF authors use it, because if anyone can send information back and forth through the timeline willy-nilly then, of course, causality gets completely screwed up.

However, if we're talking about an omniscient God, then there doesn't seem to be a conflict.

Why?

Because God not only knows what will happen, he knows how you will react to being told what will happen. That's part of knowing what actions you'll take in the future, after all. So, when he reveals an absolute knowledge of the future, he only does it in such a way that it will still come to pass.

I know, that sounds rather petty and scheming of God... ("Ha ha, little does Dave know about the traveling hypnotist show that will arrive in ten minutes/that he will meet his one true love who will demand showtunes in ten minutes/that he will start watching TV, forget all about this conversation and suddenly be inspired to sing showtunes in ten minutes.") It's not too hard to imagine how it could happen; there's plenty of examples in the ancient Greek beliefs about Fate, and in the stories of the Delphic Oracle (the Oracle knows Oedipus ain't gonna die, so she feels free to tell his Dad the whole tale). However, I don't believe the real God works that way; God doesn't just play games with people, or twist words to no purpose. I do believe that God knows, when he gives a prophecy, that certain people will never hear it, hear it but pay no mind to it, or, hearing it, will willfully comply with it. I also believe that God can give a prophecy in such a way to ensure that the people who are intended to believe and act will, and the people who are not intended to do so will not; that's why I think so many prophecies are in symbolic and figurative language. (Jesus himself said as much about his parables, that he spoke in figurative language so that the truth would be available to everybody, but only people who really desired to know the truth, his disciples, would find it, because only they would seek him out for the real meaning. Elsewhere Jesus also states that the "signs of the times" are the key to understanding the prophecies, that there are prophecies whose meanings are intentionally unclear until world events clarify the background meaning or symbolism of a prophecy.) There's no Biblical record of God revealing future events merely to satisfy our curiosity; God is not interested in giving us comprehensive knowledge of the future for its own sake. God gives prophecy in order to guide our actions, so that his will might be fulfilled.

That's why, in fact, many prophecies in the Bible are presented in an "if/then, else/then" fashion; if you return to God's will, disaster will be averted, if not, you must face the consequences. Of course, I believe God knows which choice the people will make before he presents the choice, but the choice must be presented, because it is in God's will in some situations to give people a fuller understanding of exactly what choice they will be making. God isn't giving us a clear vision of what choice we'll make, but only giving us clarification of what the choices consist of.

When a prophecy is presented in a clear, this-is-what's-gonna-happen-like-it-or-not way, the people who receive it are never in a position to change it. Of course, there probably are people in the world who would be capable of changing it, but God knows that those are the people who won't hear the prophecy, or, hearing it, won't believe or follow it. That sounds awfully close to predestination, yes, but remember that God didn't MAKE these people incapable of hearing or believing, only that he knows what they will do and acts accordingly. Your example assumes that everyone who hears a prophecy will take it seriously, or, taking it seriously, will have an urge to keep it from happening and the power to do so, which doesn't always happen. Jesus speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem; those who did understand were unable to stop it, and those who might have been able to stop it didn't understand. But it was God's will to make the prophecy available, so that people might have a better understanding of events and how God fits into them. God only tells us of events we won't be able to change because he knows that our circumstances will make it impossible for us to avoid them, so we must know about them beforehand that we might otherwise deal with them as best we can, that we might prepare ourselves emotionally, mentally and spiritually, and change what we can outside of the unchangeable prophesied events. We can't avert the Judgment Day when it comes, the circumstances make it impossible, but we can prepare ourselves and others for it.

As for the Universe being inherently uncertain... Quantum theory's statements about uncertainty are still only statements about what we observe, not objective reality. All science, in fact, by definition is statements about our observations, and we, using our reason, connect these observations to objective reality. In the case of quantum theory, all it says is that we can't OBSERVE where an electron "really" is at any one time, that our observations must always be incomplete. Note that I don't mean our instruments are insufficient in practice; yes, even in theory, it is impossible for us, as observers within a finite universe, to be able to observe these properties of an electron. Yes, we can even have apparently paradoxical events like things being in two places at once because of the limits of what we can observe.

My response is... so? That doesn't prove anything about what God can or can't know. It only means that within the physical universe, there are boundaries to what we, within the physical universe, can observe of the physical universe. When you try to plug God into the equation, you can't predict the result at all; God doesn't "fit", by definition, since God is what supersedes the physical universe and physical laws.

I like to think of God as the ultimate Author of the Universe, in the sense that by creating the world, he has absolute knowledge of all parts of it, even those parts that don't exist within the confines of the story. (Yes, human authors often don't fully understand their stories or the backgrounds behind them, because they are human, because their stories are inspired and influenced by sources outside themselves; God is, once more by definition, more than human, infinitely more, and there is nothing outside him.) If an author chooses to say, within her story, that a character "disappears without a trace", she may have a very good idea indeed where the character is, but it could very well be impossible to figure out where the character is just by reading the story. (I know I've written detailed histories for characters, about one-thirtieth of which ever end up in any actual story concept, about one thirtieth of which ever actually get written, and about zero of which I ever actually show to anyone.) As "readers" within God's story, we're given limited point of view and limited knowledge based on our present condition and our basic nature, and some things we will never be able to know or understand, because of what we are; that doesn't mean God can't or doesn't, because we're not God and God isn't us. God isn't just another observer of the experiment, he's what's making the experiment happen.

Well, thanks for tolerating another long-winded post. :) May it generate much discussion. Or not. Just my clumsily-expressed POV, do with it what you will.