do we really have free choice?

Question

I was told Hashem created us with free will; so we can make a choice to do good or evil, right? Well, Hashem knows what we are going to do in 10 minutes. So do we really have free will? Hashem can see the future!

Answer 1

I would like to offer a different approach. I don't believe God's knowing what we will do in the future contradicts free will. The first step is to define free-will. I would like to offer a suggestion that free-will is when one is the cause of their own good or evil. The main emphasis is that mankind is the cause. Now, let me offer the following example to resolve the issue. Let us say that Person A, Mark, is watching a fire start at the bottom of a house. If you ask "Mark", do you know that the house will burn down? He would respond of course. Now, just because "Mark" has knowledge that the House will burn down, does that make him the cause of the house burning down? Of course not. Knowledge does not equal causation. Similarly, as we established before, Free-will is where Man is the cause of his own good or evil. Just because God knows what man will do, does not make him the cause. Man is the cause. So, really the question just drops away. I hope this helps.

Answer 2

because hashem exists above time, its not the future to him. he can know it and it wont effect our free will.

Answer 3

If you want a philosophically rigorous analysis of this issue, I recommend the following article: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

Answer 4

I see that the issue of the Rambam was raised above, but I can not fit the comment above, so here it is. The question the Rambam is asking (in Teshuvah 5:5), I believe, is how to reconcile Hashems knowledge with the premise that Hashem knows what man will do. What the Rambam is trying to clarify is how Hashem knows what man will do. If the way Hashem knows is the same way a watchmaker knows how a clock works, which is that he knows all the causes that went into making the watch, therefore he can predict the results by tracing the chain of causality. Similarly one might suggest that the way Hashem knows what we will do is because he created the world and knows all the causes that went into the creation. So, if he knows all the causes he can trace the chain of causation from the beginning of time and know exactly what will happen in the future. However, if this is the way Hashem knows, then this would preclude Free Choice. Because, Free choice is where man is the cause of his own actions, their is no other cause. Meaning that man is operating outside the chain of causality and is the prime mover of the decision. Therefore if the way Hashem knew what man will do, is via this chain of causality, Hashem would not be able to know what man will do if Man has free choice. So the Rambam is setting up a contradiction between the way Hashem knows things and the premise that man has free will. I believe the Rambam answers the problem by saying that the way Hashem knows things is not through knowing the chain of causality (as a human creator of something might know) but rather the way Hashem knows things is through a different way that does not contradict free will. This third way of knowing is something we can not fully grasp. Hence, the contradiction is removed.

Answer 5

It is interesting to note that the question may have a formulation in the Tanach itself. In the book of Iyov, Iyov asks God:

Hast Thou eyes of flesh? or seest Thou as man seeth? (Iyov 10:4)

The Malbim (19th century) explains this verse as saying, since God is omniscient and already knows the future, man can't be held responsible for his sins.

(The Malbim himself doesn't seem to find this question particularly troubling since he manages to resolve it with only a few words: "והאל יתברך הוא למעלה מן הזמן," God is above time.)

Answer 6

Yes, we do. IMHO, this is the only Divine attribute we have been granted in absolute terms. As long as we are aware of the consequences through the law of cause and effect, we can do almost anything we feel like to. (Gen. 4:7) And HaShem respects our freewill, although He advises us what to choose that it be well with us. (Deut. 30:15,16)

Answer 7

Yes,The Rambam says it is Beyond the Scope of human understanding.

Answer 8

The fact is that even through psychology we can predict human behavior. If someone gets abused when he is little, we know pretty much the feeling that he will have to live through for the rest of his life! Now, why do we even try then, since it has already been decided? If I tell a child not to eat too much candy because she will get sick, she won't really believe me until she eats too much candy and gets sick on her own! So G-d can keep telling us, when we get to the end of death, not to do this and that; but somehow I feel as if we are going to try it. Just look at Adam and Eve!

According to this, life is just a trial. We have the ability to use any trick that's up our sleeves — which I think we have outdid ourselves in already; I think G-d is even shocked at how low we went! But it is nevertheless evident that these tricks don't work. Now we know that we have no business to be on the moon (because we have found nothing that important except for a rock); now we know that a nuclear bomb is never a good idea, not even a gun! Now we know, the land belongs to G-d, thus to all! We think that heaven is a place we go when we die, but this is wrong: No one individual gets to go to heaven; its either we all go or none of us will.

And those who died, even if they are in the clouds, cannot possibly be happy watching us suffer, so they are looking at us, in what is supposed to be heaven, and it seems a lot more like hell because they can look but they cannot do anything. They know the truth but cannot say it; we are torturing them! They are waiting on us so we all can go to heaven together here on this earth!