this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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Free will is so obviously an illusion to me (since no-one in recorded history has ever been able to magic their way around causality) that I sometimes forget that most people, especially religious people, think they have free will. I should have stated that.
If free will is real for people tho, then God isn't all-knowing or all-powerful, which means it's not God - unless you use a definition of God that extremely few people in the West or Middle-East hold.
Free will isn't about magic or causality. Framing it like that just shows you misunderstand the concept of free will.
We're bound by circumstances and possibility, yes. That doesn't contradict free will, because free will is about self-determination: being able to choose a course of action from among the possibilities, rather than being compelled one way or the other by some extrinsic force such as fate.
For example, say you go to a restaurant. They give you the menu. You get to choose anything on the menu, and maybe even make a special request, and no one is compelling you to choose one thing or another.
They might say "No, we can't do that" when you ask if they can substitute hush puppies for a side. That's not a contravention of your free will, they might just not have hush puppies.
Just because the menu doesn't include everything in the universe doesn't mean you don't have free will when choosing an option.
Also, free will doesn't contradict god being omniscient or omnipotent. I don't know why you keep implying that it does, but you haven't presented any rationale for why we should suppose that.
This doesn't mean I believe in a god, by the way. I'm just telling you that your logic about free will and omnipotence doesn't add up.
You are the one misunderstanding. When you are sitting there with the menu in front of you, what is doing the “choosing” in the end? What is causing you to rule out this dish or that?
Got food poisoning from eating salmon that one time? Better not order that then, you’d get nauseous just looking at it.
Grew up eating tamales? Of course you love them, but mostly the ones that taste similar to the ones your parents made.
Your parents fed you a ton of sugar as a kid? Well now you’re gonna want something sweet for dessert.
You had a bad day, you’re gonna want some comfort food.
You have a lifetime of experience behind you dictating your preferences, beliefs, values, epigenetic state, hormone balance, and current state of mind.
Note about god, they are supposedly the ones who set this whole sequence of events into motion. God would know that, given an initial state that they set up, the series of events of the universe would eventually lead to you picking tamales on the menu. Or pasta. Or honey glazed chicken. But that is more of a question of determinism, whether starting over at the same initial state would lead to the same current state of the universe. But given god is supposedly omniscient, they should know all the branching possibilities from the initial state in addition to which one the universe will tumble down.
In other words, if god is real, and they are omniscient and omnipotent, then literally everything that happens is their fault.