WL Craig on God's foreknowledge

[Malintent]

I am a little confused here. Above you say that theists,not atheists make the claim that the "universe pooped out of nothing".
And yet below

Science makes the observation that the universe may have come from nothing (much like how we observe certain types of 'symmetry breaking' particles coming from nothing), OR it may have always existed (in a continuous cycle of expansion to heat death, to expansion). OR, something else that science is open for discovery of...

You now say that atheists make that claim viz. we observe certain types of 'symmetry breaking' particles coming from nothing. Though you say science and I assume that you have science, naturalism, scientists, atheists as being almost synomyns for each other.

So who makes the claim theists or atheists?

Those are two different claims... The Theist claims God popped out of nothing and Science observes that the Universe could have popped out of nothing.
Unless you are equating god with the universe (not the God I think you want to talk about here), these are two different statements... So I am not sure what you are confused about.

Lastly you claim

OR, something else that science is open for discovery of...

How about a creator? Or is that deemed illegitimate?

How about it? a "creator" is not "illegitimate". for example, I am the creator if this message. I am here. I can speak for myself and supply evidence that a) I exist, b) I can create messages, and c) this is a message I created.

Please, by all means, present what you have relating to this god-thing that I presume you think is the "creator" of the "universe". Let's start with identifying why the question is valid (did the universe "become created"), then move on to the required attributes of such an entity, then look for the existence of those attributes in identified entities.
the body of Science is (always) all ears...

 

[Malintent]

your argument is only as good as the analogy of a book, which is written with fixed text, and our experiences with reading books gives us this impression that you are saying that if time is like a book then it must be fixed, therefore no free will.

This is really arguing the wrong thing... as you are arguing against the weakness of the analogy, not the argument.

Sure; but I never said I was doing anything else. If the analogy is inapt, then I don't even know what the argument is - all I have to go on is the analogy. If I grant the presumption that the analogy is apt, then my argument against the analogy also must be an argument against the argument. If I don't grant that presumption, then my argument against the argument is that it has yet to be coherently stated at all.

the simple point is that this version of the god character that exists such that all of time is visible to him at "the same time" (<- lack of a temporally detached preposition - a 'failure' of English), does not violate the idea of free will (if you believe in free will - I do not, but that is another argument).

You can change your mind all you want, or never make up your mind... at some point in the future, your mind will be in one place or another with respect to a decision.. and this god thing has visibility into that. So what is the problem? It sounds like those that argue this free will problem are saying that to be aware of a decision is to eliminate the ability to make the decision.

That's exactly what I am arguing. Once it is known - for certain and by ANY entity - what the result of a decision will be, there is no longer any possibility to decide otherwise, and so foreknowledge MUST imply that the decision was constrained to be what the foreknower knew it would be.

Let's say that you come into work today wearing a red tie. I see you in that red tie. I say to you, "nice tie". At that point, it seems you are saying that your choice to wear that tie retroactively became predetermined by me.

At that point, you know what tie I chose; and I cannot change that decision. You never see me in a red tie that I decided not to wear.

Let's say I am god, and I didn't say anything about it... but I KNEW that your tie would be red. and it was. How does that change anything at all?

If you KNEW my tie would be red, how could I have chosen anything else? If I can't choose anything else, then my freedom to choose is a fantasy - I can tell myself I had a choice, but YOU, as a God, know that I did not.

Let's take it further and say that 2 days ago, I said to you that I knew that you were going to wear a red tie the next day. How that changes your decision to wear a red tie is a personal one... maybe you are spiteful, maybe not... since I am not god, I don't know how you will react. If I was this god guy, with these magic attributes, then I would KNOW how that information I passed on to you would affect your choice. So until the claim is made that free will is only in jeopardy if god TELLS YOU what he knows, I still reject the idea that the knowing of something makes the something not freely chosen.

Nope. I don't need to know what you know to be constrained by it.

If I put my tie on in the dark, and have no idea what colour it is; and you see that it is red, but don't tell me, it is not possible for me to have chosen a different tie today.

As soon as anyone KNOWS what colour my tie (is/was/will be) today, that information cannot be changed; the decision is fixed and immutable. I have no choice to wear a blue tie tomorrow if God has foreseen that tomorrow's tie will be red, any more than I can choose to have work a blue tie yesterday if someone saw me in a red tie yesterday - I can't change the past, because the past can only be as we observed that it was; and nor could I change the future, if it has been observed to be a certain way.

If time is a single line, stretching into the past and the future, then the present is the only point where it can be 'steered', and even that is only possible if the future has not yet been observed by any entity. If, rather than a single line, time is a set of lines that bifurcates at each decision point (the Many Worlds hypothesis), then God cannot have foreknowledge - if He knows which timeline will be the 'real' timeline, then we are back with the 'single line' idea; and if He doesn't know which timeline will be the 'real' one, then he loses foreknowledge - he can see what is possible, but not what will be, and is in no better position to know which tie I will wear tomorrow than anyone who looks at my tie collection and says 'it will be one of these, but I don't know which'.

Knowledge can exist; or choice can exist - but not both at the same time. If anyone or anything knows what happened, then there is no choice. And note the past tense - once something KNOWS what happened, that happening is in the past, for that entity.

What I am focusing on here is when you say:

If you KNEW my tie would be red, how could I have chosen anything else? If I can't choose anything else, then my freedom to choose is a fantasy - I can tell myself I had a choice, but YOU, as a God, know that I did not.

I am saying that IF you chose something else, then I would have known that the tie was THAT color.

It is very difficult to speak in non-temporal terms, so language is a handicap... but if you get to "retroactively change your mind" ,then you too are "separate from time".. and now on top of all the linguistic difficulties, we have a new problem.. "two time travelers meet in a bar.. knock, knock".

It is very simple (sort of)... you get to make up your mind however free will allows. AFTER THAT (ther eis an "after" for you - you are not this god character) that decision is "fixed in time".. it happened. You can't say, "what if I..."... cause you didn't. Now.. here we are in the future... and I say, "you wore a red tie". You can't say, "what if I didn't" cause, you did". Your decision has been made finalized by your actions. we are "past" this. This god character is simply "Seeing" that this is the case "before" you are seeing it, because magic (existing outside of time).

 

[Malintent]

If your problem with this (there are so many logical problems, because time travel is very problematic, logically) is if god TELLS YOU what he (fore)knows, then bla bla bla... well, ya. Sure. Of course there is a paradoxal problem with a "fixed in time decision maker" being told what the future WAS going to be BEFORE you receive new information.

 

[Learner]

Most scientists hold to methodological naturalism. That is, in science there are no other forces outside of naturalistic forces to consider when judging a scientific claim. This is because nothing else has ever produced any sort of useful scientific knowledge. Not religion, theology, occultism or mysticism.

Well yes this is true to some point. The belief of there being God is not a scientific claim on ther other hand in all fairness the proposition of a creator apposing the big bang and evolution by 'theory' has to be proved. It is currently a beyond thing.

In other words, results matter and as far as the natural world is concerned, only naturalism in for of science has ever produced useful results. The burden is on non-methodological naturalists to demonstrate that any other way of developing useful knowledge works. Metaphysical naturalism, the idea that there is something non-naturalistic that underlies material existence is not provable, which is what one would expect if that is a false hope and is simply wrong. The success of methodological naturalism would seem to point to the fact that there is nothing outside of naturalism. The usual argle-bargle that some theologians et al tend to say, "ground of being", vibrations, etc, doesn't help prove anything no matter how portentious it may sound to some.

When 'naturalism' being based on natural law, dimissing anything outside these laws deems the proposition non provable I say with you 'is so very true.' It is also flawed or a mistake because unfortunately,Natural Law can not be disected or studied. If one can not explain why Natural behaves this way then it should not be the method of measure.
There have been experiments I believe that have demonstrated indications of outside the realm so tospeak and tests are currently being devised.Not much different from devising new methods for detecting dark matter. Only time can tell.

This is argument from ignorance, we don't know the nature of ultimate reality, therefore it is possibe, God, fairies, or something else. Woo woo of the gaps. It can be fun to speculate, but its not something you can take to the bank. Even if somebody could point to some mysterious phenomenon, that seemed to be outside our materialistic world, it doesn't mean it is, until it is understood and no longer mysterious. The non-localism of the Universe as demonstrate by experiments with Bell's theorum are odd, but we can't call the underlying phenomena as being somehow, supernaturalistic.

Sort of what I said above.

 

[Learner]

I hope you're not arguing that this "open-minded / imaginative approach hasn't been tried for centuries, because that's pretty much all that was tried until 500 or 600 years ago. So what would you list as the five major bits of useful knowledge that has come from the Centuries of Woo?

Yes this approach has,but not with the influence of modern science. They would have probably thought of the idea and write the story Star Wars and the Force. The five bits of useful knowledge would be; 5 'not what to do's' just like they did back then. As we know, science is improving by learning from the past mistakes.

Perhaps this is really for another thread thinking about it now..

I'll leave it to the main topic of the original poster.

 

[bilby]

If your problem with this (there are so many logical problems, because time travel is very problematic, logically) is if god TELLS YOU what he (fore)knows, then bla bla bla... well, ya. Sure. Of course there is a paradoxal problem with a "fixed in time decision maker" being told what the future WAS going to be BEFORE you receive new information.

All observations are in the present of the observer (this is the definition of 'present' - the time at which observations are being made - and relativity implies that it is different for each observer, depending on their positions and velocities). If God observes whether Schroedinger's cat will live or die, then either He collapses the wave function by so doing - rendering the cat either alive or dead; or he observes (by magic) without collapsing the wave function, and sees only the two possibilities, without finding out which is going to become real when Schroedinger himself takes a look in the box.

Once God observes, the ability to change the result either evaporates or persists; and ONLY in the former case can God know the actual outcome of the experiment.

Knowing is irrelevant; if Schroedinger's lab assistant takes a look in the box half an hour before Schroedinger himself, then the cat's state of health when Schroedinger takes a look can ONLY be the same as what his assistant saw, regardless of whether the lab assistant told his boss, or kept his observations secret. The result becomes certain on the first observation, regardless of what the observer reveals to anyone else, and regardless of whether the observer is a man or a God.

No two observers share the same present; an observer at Alpha Centauri sees our sun explode four years after it happens, but the fact that the sun did explode is unavoidable at that point; if our Centauran observer notices a change in the sun a year earlier, that indicates that humanity can either act to prevent the explosion, or not, then whether or not we took that action is in his future; but it is already in our past, and so cannot be changed.

An event that is in the past for ANY single observer is immutable, regardless of its being in the future of all other observers; if God is a super observer with the ability to observe all events at any point in time, then when he does so, he fixes ALL events in his past - and eliminates any alternative possible events than those he observed. Only if the first observer has yet to observe the event, can the event's outcome be indeterminate.

A God who knows the future is indestinguishable from an observer who is watching history unfold from the end of time - everything has happened in the past from His perspective; so nothing can be changed.

Of course, it is also possible for time to have this immutable character even if no such God-like observer exists.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

An old puzzle. If the past is immutable, then the past is necessary in that it cannot be other than it is. If God is truly omniscient with regard to the future, then the future is necessary in the same sense as the past is immutable. If 80 years ago, God knew that today Fred will mow his lawn, then it seems that since God is never wrong, Fred will in fact mow his lawn. Since that fact was known in the immutable, necessary past, that fact is necessary and even God cannot change that fact. Thus the future has the same necessity as the past, and the Universe is determinate.

The usual suspects have been debating this issue for some years now. Such necessary determimnism seems to eliminate our free will. And demands an answer to how this determinancy works.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/

 

[Tigers!]

Those are two different claims... The Theist claims God popped out of nothing and Science observes that the Universe could have popped out of nothing.
Unless you are equating god with the universe (not the God I think you want to talk about here), these are two different statements... So I am not sure what you are confused about.

I've never met a theist who claims God popped out of nothing. God is believed to have always existed.

 

[Atheos]

Those are two different claims... The Theist claims God popped out of nothing and Science observes that the Universe could have popped out of nothing.
Unless you are equating god with the universe (not the God I think you want to talk about here), these are two different statements... So I am not sure what you are confused about.

I've never met a theist who claims God popped out of nothing. God is believed to have always existed.

And I know you've heard it thousands of times before, but that solves nothing. It is possible that the universe has always existed in some state and we can at present only infer its existence back to the singularity. There are many well-thought-out theories as to how the universe came to be in the condition it is in today. We currently lack the means to verify which (if any) happen to be correct, but that may not always be the case.

Science has solved untold thousands of mysteries that were once only able to be explained by the activity of a god. Not once has the actual answer turned out to be "God did it." That's a pretty big 0-fer. Just saying. It's as consistent as dropping a lead weight. To me God-of-the-gaps theology is the belief that "Next time it's going to plummet skyward."

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

God's eternal existence is very problematic to me. God has always existed. And has the property of omniscience. And omnipotence. Intelligence. Ability to create anything by sheer will. How would something with all these attributes arise, or just exist.

All of this is empty assumption. God is magic. Fairy Grandmothers can turn pumpkins into fancy carriages. Don't ask how. Magic. Fairies. magic. At bottom, its not so much God or Gods, its magic. But we never see magic in the real world. Just physics. So the challenge to theists is, prove magic exists. And that God is magic.

As to the challenge to disprove magic God's existence, I can show how all these magical claims soon create contradictions and self destruct as hypothesis on logical grounds. Strong atheism. So the idea that God exists and is magic seems to me to be a non-starter of a hypothesis.

The theists cannot prove God exists. Much less demonstrate God has any of the attributes or abilities they claim God has.

And in the end, they are reduced to making arguments that try to shift burden of proof to the atheologists, arguments to save appearances, arguments that try to move the goalposts.

It is easy to more or less mumble "magic" when asked how this God thing all works. So lets return the favor. The universe is essentially the equivalent of magic. Prove it ain't so. God's attributes create impossible contradictions.
So we can abandon that hypothesis.

God as a hypothesis depends on woo of the gaps.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

First there was the Woo, and the Woo was all there was. Then the Woo said, let there be something. And so God appeared and the Woo thought it was good.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

First there was the Woo, and the Woo was all there was. Then the Woo said, let there be something. And so God appeared and the Woo thought it was good.

A woo by any other name...

And btw the universe didn't come from nothing. 'Nothing' is semantics, language, not something real with objective existence. It's kinda like saying the universe came from the number zero, or any number for that matter.

/snark

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yes, false vacuum is not nothing. And many modern astrophysicists like Alan Guth and Andrei Linde tell us that physics seems to indicate an infinite Universe, infinite in time and extent. No God needed.

 

[Underseer]

The universe was farted out of the butt of a giant space goat.

You can't prove me wrong, therefore my claim is true. The universe itself is proof of the giant space goat; you can't get something from nothing, therefore space goat! Also, the space goat is changeless, therefore there are no contradictions implied by the existence of the space goat.

Lastly, an infinite line of chairs is impossible, therefore relativity is false, therefore space goat.

 

[James Brown]

Everybody knows that God created the universe. What's unfortunate is that he died in the Big Bang.

Oh well. I guess we'll just have to go about our lives living as if God doesn't exist, because he's certainly not going to be of any help to us.

 

[Tigers!]

God's eternal existence is very problematic to me. God has always existed. And has the property of omniscience. And omnipotence. Intelligence. Ability to create anything by sheer will. How would something with all these attributes arise, or just exist.

All of this is empty assumption. God is magic. Fairy Grandmothers can turn pumpkins into fancy carriages. Don't ask how. Magic. Fairies. magic. At bottom, its not so much God or Gods, its magic. But we never see magic in the real world. Just physics. So the challenge to theists is, prove magic exists. And that God is magic.

As to the challenge to disprove magic God's existence, I can show how all these magical claims soon create contradictions and self destruct as hypothesis on logical grounds. Strong atheism. So the idea that God exists and is magic seems to me to be a non-starter of a hypothesis.

The theists cannot prove God exists. Much less demonstrate God has any of the attributes or abilities they claim God has.

And in the end, they are reduced to making arguments that try to shift burden of proof to the atheologists, arguments to save appearances, arguments that try to move the goalposts.

It is easy to more or less mumble "magic" when asked how this God thing all works. So lets return the favor. The universe is essentially the equivalent of magic. Prove it ain't so. God's attributes create impossible contradictions.
So we can abandon that hypothesis.

God as a hypothesis depends on woo of the gaps.

And so the endless cycle continues.

 

[Malintent]

If your problem with this (there are so many logical problems, because time travel is very problematic, logically) is if god TELLS YOU what he (fore)knows, then bla bla bla... well, ya. Sure. Of course there is a paradoxal problem with a "fixed in time decision maker" being told what the future WAS going to be BEFORE you receive new information.

All observations are in the present of the observer (this is the definition of 'present' - the time at which observations are being made - and relativity implies that it is different for each observer, depending on their positions and velocities). If God observes whether Schroedinger's cat will live or die, then either He collapses the wave function by so doing - rendering the cat either alive or dead; or he observes (by magic) without collapsing the wave function, and sees only the two possibilities, without finding out which is going to become real when Schroedinger himself takes a look in the box.

Once God observes, the ability to change the result either evaporates or persists; and ONLY in the former case can God know the actual outcome of the experiment.

Knowing is irrelevant; if Schroedinger's lab assistant takes a look in the box half an hour before Schroedinger himself, then the cat's state of health when Schroedinger takes a look can ONLY be the same as what his assistant saw, regardless of whether the lab assistant told his boss, or kept his observations secret. The result becomes certain on the first observation, regardless of what the observer reveals to anyone else, and regardless of whether the observer is a man or a God.

No two observers share the same present; an observer at Alpha Centauri sees our sun explode four years after it happens, but the fact that the sun did explode is unavoidable at that point; if our Centauran observer notices a change in the sun a year earlier, that indicates that humanity can either act to prevent the explosion, or not, then whether or not we took that action is in his future; but it is already in our past, and so cannot be changed.

An event that is in the past for ANY single observer is immutable, regardless of its being in the future of all other observers; if God is a super observer with the ability to observe all events at any point in time, then when he does so, he fixes ALL events in his past - and eliminates any alternative possible events than those he observed. Only if the first observer has yet to observe the event, can the event's outcome be indeterminate.

A God who knows the future is indestinguishable from an observer who is watching history unfold from the end of time - everything has happened in the past from His perspective; so nothing can be changed.

Of course, it is also possible for time to have this immutable character even if no such God-like observer exists.

It sounds like you are conflating "free will" with "quantum uncertainty". Personally, I do not believe in quantum uncertainty, any more than I believe that anything can be "random"... and I also believe that "free will" is an illusion. The cat is not both alive and dead.. our measuring processes are simply flawed and contribute to the measurement.

This is the most important part of what you were saying, I think:

An event that is in the past for ANY single observer is immutable, regardless of its being in the future of all other observers; if God is a super observer with the ability to observe all events at any point in time, then when he does so, he fixes ALL events in his past - and eliminates any alternative possible events than those he observed. Only if the first observer has yet to observe the event, can the event's outcome be indeterminate.

It fixes all events in HIS past. yes, exactly... just like our own past is fixed. The thing is, "HIS" past is our future... one that will eventually be decided by us... or in other words, has already been decided by us in the future. All I hear as a complaint about this is "what if I change my mind?" well then at that point the information will have changed... so what? When you say, "WHEN god observes..." you are falling into a linguistic trap. God does not observe in a "when".. so it is not linear like the mortal making the decisions.

disclaimer: god does not exist, omniscience does not exist, and this is kind of why it is not likely that it could... but it is fun to talk about.

 

[Methinx]

It fixes all events in HIS past. yes, exactly... just like our own past is fixed. The thing is, "HIS" past is our future... one that will eventually be decided by us... or in other words, has already been decided by us in the future. All I hear as a complaint about this is "what if I change my mind?" well then at that point the information will have changed... so what? When you say, "WHEN god observes..." you are falling into a linguistic trap. God does not observe in a "when".. so it is not linear like the mortal making the decisions.

disclaimer: god does not exist, omniscience does not exist, and this is kind of why it is not likely that it could... but it is fun to talk about.

So, this famously Omniscient Creator throws the dice knowing which way they will fall...but the dice have a choice?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

It fixes all events in HIS past. yes, exactly... just like our own past is fixed. The thing is, "HIS" past is our future... one that will eventually be decided by us... or in other words, has already been decided by us in the future. All I hear as a complaint about this is "what if I change my mind?" well then at that point the information will have changed... so what? When you say, "WHEN god observes..." you are falling into a linguistic trap. God does not observe in a "when".. so it is not linear like the mortal making the decisions.

disclaimer: god does not exist, omniscience does not exist, and this is kind of why it is not likely that it could... but it is fun to talk about.

So, this famously Omniscient Creator throws the dice knowing which way they will fall...but the dice have a choice?

It's called compatibilism. Supposedly, we have free will, but God knows what you will freely chose to do. You could fill a small library with the journal articles and books written about compatibilism vs incompaibilism.

 

[bilby]

All observations are in the present of the observer (this is the definition of 'present' - the time at which observations are being made - and relativity implies that it is different for each observer, depending on their positions and velocities). If God observes whether Schroedinger's cat will live or die, then either He collapses the wave function by so doing - rendering the cat either alive or dead; or he observes (by magic) without collapsing the wave function, and sees only the two possibilities, without finding out which is going to become real when Schroedinger himself takes a look in the box.

Once God observes, the ability to change the result either evaporates or persists; and ONLY in the former case can God know the actual outcome of the experiment.

Knowing is irrelevant; if Schroedinger's lab assistant takes a look in the box half an hour before Schroedinger himself, then the cat's state of health when Schroedinger takes a look can ONLY be the same as what his assistant saw, regardless of whether the lab assistant told his boss, or kept his observations secret. The result becomes certain on the first observation, regardless of what the observer reveals to anyone else, and regardless of whether the observer is a man or a God.

No two observers share the same present; an observer at Alpha Centauri sees our sun explode four years after it happens, but the fact that the sun did explode is unavoidable at that point; if our Centauran observer notices a change in the sun a year earlier, that indicates that humanity can either act to prevent the explosion, or not, then whether or not we took that action is in his future; but it is already in our past, and so cannot be changed.

An event that is in the past for ANY single observer is immutable, regardless of its being in the future of all other observers; if God is a super observer with the ability to observe all events at any point in time, then when he does so, he fixes ALL events in his past - and eliminates any alternative possible events than those he observed. Only if the first observer has yet to observe the event, can the event's outcome be indeterminate.

A God who knows the future is indestinguishable from an observer who is watching history unfold from the end of time - everything has happened in the past from His perspective; so nothing can be changed.

Of course, it is also possible for time to have this immutable character even if no such God-like observer exists.

It sounds like you are conflating "free will" with "quantum uncertainty".

No, I am simply discussing the implications of knowledge for uncertainty. The past is defined by 'what is knowable'; the idea of free will in the past seems to me to be incoherent - if you see me wearing a blue tie, I can't go back to this morning and choose a different one.

Equally if God knows I will wear a red tie on December 4th next year, I can no longer change that fact. And if I could change it, He wouldn't know.

Schroedinger's cat is just a convenient simple thought experiment about how observation fixes the past. It's familiarity saves me from having to explain the details; the quantum effects themselves are not real important in this context.

Personally, I do not believe in quantum uncertainty

It is a set of observations; it is something that exists, and does not require belief. You may choose to believe or disbelieve any of the interpretations of it that have yet to be experimentally ruled out; but saying 'I don't believe in quantum uncertainty' is like saying 'I don't believe in gravity'.

any more than I believe that anything can be "random"... and I also believe that "free will" is an illusion. The cat is not both alive and dead.. our measuring processes are simply flawed and contribute to the measurement.

I agree that "free will" is likely an illusion. But the whole point of quantum uncertainty is that our measuring processes MUST be flawed - precise measurements of certain pairs of facts are not just difficult, they are impossible.

This is the most important part of what you were saying, I think:

An event that is in the past for ANY single observer is immutable, regardless of its being in the future of all other observers; if God is a super observer with the ability to observe all events at any point in time, then when he does so, he fixes ALL events in his past - and eliminates any alternative possible events than those he observed. Only if the first observer has yet to observe the event, can the event's outcome be indeterminate.

It fixes all events in HIS past. yes, exactly... just like our own past is fixed. The thing is, "HIS" past is our future... one that will eventually be decided by us... or in other words, has already been decided by us in the future. All I hear as a complaint about this is "what if I change my mind?" well then at that point the information will have changed... so what?

Quite. If you are going to change your mind, then that change is already part of the totality of space time, so it has, from A God's perspective already occurred.

When you say, "WHEN god observes..." you are falling into a linguistic trap. God does not observe in a "when".. so it is not linear like the mortal making the decisions.

Yes - a more precise phrase might be 'given that God observed' - all events have been seen by God before any of them happen. That's what foreknowledge means.

disclaimer: god does not exist, omniscience does not exist, and this is kind of why it is not likely that it could... but it is fun to talk about.

Of course; this is purely hypothetical. IF an omnicognisant entity or entities exist, THEN choices (freely willed or otherwise) are logically impossible.

Of course, no such entities exist; but that doesn't render free will a certainty, or even very likely. Certainly human brains operate on the scale of chemical reactions, where quantum effects are not significant.

My understanding is that descision making in the brain is chaotic - like the weather, it is completely determined, but nevertheless impossible to predict.

Of course that doesn't stop the philosophers from wasting oceans of ink on the subject.