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That you donât see any value in the Stanford material, especially in the omniscience/free will issue, is mind-boggling. That material shows us what it takes to deal productively with this complex issue. Without such attention to words and their precise meaning as used in philosophy, we are not going to get anywhere.
For example, much time and many words were spent here on the use of the word will. The word introduces a contingent proposition. That is a given in philosophy. A contingent proposition, unlike a necessarily true proposition, can be false. You do not seem to accept that. Without that as a given, there is nowhere to go in dealing with your understanding of the pertinent issues in this argument. One cannot simply say, âthat is not what it means to me.â This discussion depends on precision and one will not find it by saying that is not what it means to me. What it means in a philosophical discussion like this one is what it means in philosophy.
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The role that the word will and others like it play is in the syllogisms used to test the argument, and the syllogisms are for humans to evaluate. Remember the syllogisms are there to establish to us whether omniscience is incompatible with free will. In the earlier forms of the syllogisms, necessary terms were erroneously used in the conclusion, words such as must and they suggested that we are not free to choose independently of Godâs foreknowledge. But these forms of the syllogisms were eventually discovered to be invalid because the premises or the conclusions were found to be false. The terms of necessity were eventually replaced more accurately by terms of contingency, and with that, the syllogisms indicated that free will and omniscience are not incompatible.
But to God, yes, the word will as a verb seems a necessity, as used in the Bible in describing His actions. But you are asking how God views the actions that we will take, and that would seem, as you say, to be He knows when will means actually do and when it means actually not do. But that would still make will a contingency because thatâs what a contingency means.
Just to be clear - by âomniscienceâ in that statement, you are referring to knowing all that can be known, and that includes knowing the future?
Yes
Ok, good
It occurs to me that, if the future is such a thing that it can be âknownâ or âseenâ or âobservedâ, that NONE of our actions are free.
For me to go further I will repeat my thought-experiment from earlier - that God is not an important factor in the argument, nor is omniscience.
The simple fact that the future âexistsâ means that every single reality is determined. And has been from any purported âbeginningâ point. The fact that âXâ happens in the future, completely free from any omniscience or foreknowledge, determines the past. X controls.
Iâm trying to keep this free from troubling terminology.
What is the flaw in my reasoning?
Iâm glad to see your mind boggled, but I did not say the material had no value. It was rich in value and interest. I simply mentioned that I could not see that it âaddedâ anything new to what you had already offered, and to which I had responded.
If we must first agree it is a given that what Paidionâs words intended to affirm about divine omniscience is that Godâs omniscient knowledge can be false, then of course his belief goes where you think it should. But that tactic only forces Paidion to mean something he doesnât mean or believe.
When he perceives that saying âGod knows future Xâ (with a God who âknowsâ all things) would suggest that X is true, insisting that his words prove precisely that X can be false, just means you are forcing assumptions on him that he doesnât recognize.
I personally have no vested interest, assurance, or comprehension about claims of omniscience. Unlike Paidion, Iâm not at all sure that God could not know all things (or that we have powers of âcontrary choiceâ). But he has every right to argue that a God who really knew all things wouldnât then be knowing something âfalse,â and to have his view critiqued in terms of the meaning he is assuming his words have set forth.
P.S. Semantics aside, it sounds like qaz and Dave get Paidionâs âlogic.â
Wait a minute! I didnât say Godâs omniscient knowledge can be false. I said the proper use of the word will in the premises and conclusion of the syllogisms tells US that omniscience is not necessarily incompatible with free will.
I never did anything of the sort. Again, the importance I placed on the word will centered on what it meant to us in the premises and conclusions to show that omniscience and free will are not incompatible.
Whatâs contingent is itâs your friendâs choice to get to the gate and then drive home. when he could not do either or both of those things. That is, contingent things can be true or false, unlike necessarily true things, which are always true. Things that are human choices are textbook contingent. That God knows whether your friend will do them or not doesnât change the fact they are still contingent to us. The existence of God who is omniscient is not going to change our definition of will from a contingency to a necessity.
qaz, I took liberties to add words to yours that clarify how I similarly hear Lanciaâs argument. Iâm unclear whether he answers yes or no, but a yes would seem to me to require confusing semantics.
O.K. Iâm lost (and perceived you did argue Paidionâs words must mean precisely that X could be false). Are you now agreeing that if God knows future X, it canât be false?
Forgive jumping ahead, but if you agree X can only be true, then Iâd repeat my whole original contention that omniscience would mean that at this point that X is bound to happen, no two ways about it.
Why do you say that he could not do either of these things?
What would it mean for either or both things to be âfalse.â Can you illustrate such outcomes?
I say that because a choice is a contingency.
He could get to the gate and go to a bar instead of driving home. He could go sit in the menâs room and not do either the gate or the drive home. Choices are innumerable and they are all contingent.
If X (as in the conclusion of the syllogism) is contingent, i.e., X will happen. then it is not the case that omniscience is incompatible with free will. That answers the main question. If the conclusion had been of the form of a necessary proposition like âX must happenâ or âX necessarily will happen,â then omniscience would have been found to be incompatible with free will. But that was not the case. Such a conclusion could not have been correctly deduced from the premises. Only the conclusion âX will happenâ could have been correctly deduced from the premises.
So long as the subject freely chose X and thatâs why X happened, omniscidence is not incompatible with free will. Thus, the main question was answered and Godâs omniscience was correct.
Regarding your point that âX is bound to happen, no two ways about it,â no, X is not bound to happen, no two ways about it. That would make X necessary. X is contingent, contingent on the choice of the human subject. That choice is what provides God with His foreknowledge.
I say that because a choice is a contingency.
Bob: So âContingentâ means you can not do or choose any thing??
He could get to the gate and go to a bar insteadâŚ
Bob: Well, thatâd make the assertion that He flies out âfalseâ all right.
But Iâd think it also would show Godâs knowledge of him flying out was not omniscient.
I canât keep track of this mess. Sorry. But I donât see why you think Godâs knowledge would be wrong if he chose to do something other than fly out. If he had done those other contingencies, then God would have foreknown that instead of the flying-out contingency.
You keep trying to show omniscience and âfree willâ are compatible!! I stressed to you that I offer no disproof of that, and detailed why. Whether itâs logical that a deity could know future undetermined choices will be forever debated. I only argued that it canât be settled by appeals to linguistics.
(A part of that conundrum is defining the mysterious concepts of will and freedom.)
But on what I did contend, I donât follow your answer. You respond that if X was âfreely chosen,â then itâs not incompatible with free will. Isnât that just a tautology? If Y is Y then nothing can disprove that itâs Y, including omniscience. But as I said, what omniscience can or canât do is a separate difficult question.
You say this answers the main question. What main question?
You say it shows 'omniscience is correct." How does it prove that?
You conclude that âX is not bound to happen.â I fear we are facing semantics again. Using âflying outâ as our example, I would say that if God omnisciently knows X, but X proves to be âfalse,â or Y happens instead, then God did not truly âknowâ X. Godâs foreknowledge of a flying out would prove to be wrong.
If God truly knew all things and X is one thing he already knows, then X will not prove false,
and X IS going to happen. In that sense, itâs bound to. No alternative remains.
If I said that X being freely chosen is not incompatible with free will, then I misspoke. What I intended was that X being freely chosen is not incompatible with omniscience.
The main question is what all of this discussion has centered on: Is free will compatible with omniscience? The corrected versions of the syllogism supported that main question. We freely choose in the presence of Godâs omniscience.
No, the choice we make is what provides God with foreknowledge, so in that way it could not be wrong. (It has been proposed that though our free choices are temporally after Godâs foreknowledge of them, as they must be if God indeed has foreknowledge of them, our free choices are causally prior to His foreknowledge.) But that choice is not bound to happen. It is a contingency. It is one of many possible contingencies. But the choice that actually occurs is the one that provides information for Godâs foreknowledge. So, God had knowledge that the flying out would not occur because it did not occur, even though it could have occurred.
No, if God knows the contingencies resulting from our choices, then he knows they will happen because we have chosen them. They are not bound to happen. They are contingent, not necessary.
Oh, boy. I like to use logic, to solve the worldâs problems. It has helped all the politicians, to create a better world for us! 
And produces an endless stream, of logical syllogism statements here - on this very thread. 
Too bad, we canât all be like Mr. Data and Spock - from the Star Trek series.
Many among humanity, are like this guy - seeking more brains.
And I âfoolishlyâ sought wisdom, to both compliment and supersede logicâŚ
Among the
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Christian faith
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Medicine and holy people, of the Native American Red Road ( 1, 2).
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Eastern Sages (1, 2) of the Yoga (1, 2, 3 ) and Zen (1, 2) traditions
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Practitioners of the spiritual Light ( 1, 2, 3, 4) traditions
I was probably wasting my time. And should have taken more philosophy, mathematics, computer science, psychology and English literature courses, to add to my academic stack instead.
But I still have an âofficialâ nerd hat.