People and Their Free Will
Some arguments against God focus on the supposed incoherence of humankind possessing free will. These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination.
Moses Maimonides formulated an argument regarding a person's free will, in traditional terms of good and evil actions, as follows:
… "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect.…"Various means of reconciling God's omniscience (possession of all possible knowledge) with human free will have been proposed:
Read more about this topic: Argument From Free Will
Famous quotes containing the words free will, people and/or free:
“Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,
Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argu’d then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had ...”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“I am a free man. I feel as light as a feather.”
—Javier Pérez De Cuéllar (b. 1920)