> Now you know what your brother is going to do in an hour. But does this knowledge change whether or not your brother had the free will to choose to comb his hair in the first place?

I agree with Sam here -- foreknowledge of events does not imply control over those events. The question is, if it is possible to know future events, does free will exist at all? We talk about time travel hypothetically, but to my knowledge nobody has ever done it. What theoretical physics has to say about time travel I don't really know, but if you could move forward and backward in time I think it would have some major ramifications for what we think of as free will.

> The point of all this is that if someone's actions are known, it doesn't mean they weren't truly one's own decision.

True. The question, again, is what does it really mean to decide something?

> But, being omnipotent, he created free will agents in that world that, even though he may know the result of our choices, nevertheless provided us with the *ability* to make whatever decisions that are within our physical power to carry out. Yes, he is responsible for much of the things and events that we consider when we make decisions (but not all; if it can be established that we have free will, it is trivial to establish that other people are responsible for many of the things and events we consider as well).

I think Sam has figured out exactly what I'm going for. If it can be established that we have free will, the problem of evil is resolved.

To me, the question is: do we have free will, and if so, what is the nature of that free will? If free will is the ability to make decisions, how does it differ from a computer that can evaluate problems? Is there a supernatural aspect to free will?

> Anyway, I assume the next natural question is still "Why?"

Yeah, probably, but I'm really not too concerned with that at the moment. In my initial analogy I assumed nothing about god's motivations for creating the universe. If anyone feels assigning a particular motivation to god is important for establishing the nature of free will, I'll be happy to grant it for the sake of discussion.

Stephen