Excellent question. Many will tell you that there has to be a balance between good and evil, while God gave you the freewill, he wants you to be on his side without forcing you to do so.
Which brings up another one of my problems omnipresence vs freewill. You can't have both.
And we've already had a debate thread with that subject(omniscience vs freewill). I'm pretty much with James on this subject.
Here is how I view that issue:
We don't have omnipresence, but God does. Just because he knows past, present, and future doesn't mean that we do not have freewill.
Very simply speaking of course,
I may know that my child is going to pick a candy bar instead of an apple if presented with the choice. But just because I know what the child is going to do does not mean that I have interfered with their free will to make the choice.
I believe that God has made His will known to us. And it is in that understanding that I believe it is for us to choose whether we are going to move up along side God's will and attempt to let Him work through and in us or if we are going to continue to try and accomplish everything in our own selfish will.
(This is strictly what I believe for myself and my life. Excuse me if my answer is too spiritually worded, it is just a part of who I am. I hope you kwim)
That's not the way this is being looked at. Ok, most people that believe in God and his powers and this and that, say that he is ALWAYS right, he is 100% perfect, always correct, never wrong, omniscient(he knows everything we will ever do). Therefore, we can't have freewill, because he's already predicted that we will do whatever it is we're going to do. And if he's never wrong, then whatever he knows we're going to do, is what we're going to do. No matter what we try to do to throw that action off course, he still knows we're going to do that, and since he's always right, it'll happen.
Just by replying to this thread, we could be following God's plan. If God does know everything we're going to do, he already knows who's going to take his side, who's going to take Satan's side, so why have religion at all? Why not just cut out the middle and put us in Heaven or Hell from the get-go?
If God really is omniscient, as everyone says, then freewill doesn't exist. We just THINK it does, and in reality, it doesn't. We're basically all just robots, so to speak. Programmed to do this particular action at this particular point in time. As James said, you can't be omniscient and have freewill at the same time. They contradict each other.
And on AEF's side, he has a point. Our bodies do numerous actions that are beyond our control, which already puts a halt on the freewill theory. If freewill did exist, I could just choose not to sleep when I'm tired, and I wouldn't fall asleep. But when you get too tired, your body sometimes forces you to go to sleep, which is against your freewill.
