Free Will Research Paper

Within our society, it is usually assumed that we have free will. If you were to ask a random person on the street, they would most likely respond to the question, "Do you have free will or is there Fate" with the affirmation that they make their own decisions, because God gives us free will. Yet in the assumption of the fact that God gave us free will, there is a logical disconnect that most people ignore. How can God exist in a world where we can change the outcome of a situation in a way that is unpredictable to God? It is my stipulation that the Judeo-Christian view of an omnipotent God and free will cannot exist together. Additionally, the believe in an omnipotent God necessarily affirms the concepts of fate, while the believe in free
One of the most well known stories, Peter's denial of Jesus (John 18, 12-27) supports this perfectly. Jesus tells Peter, "The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice" (John 13, 38) which constitutes a definite prophecy. The motives of Jesus' telling Peter this can be debated all day. Was Jesus' prophecy an act to elect faith in Peter even after Jesus' condemnation? Was his vocalization of the future an attempt to create a Cassandra paradox and avoid Peter's denial of Him? What Jesus' intentions in this were I do not mean to debate in this paper. What is critical in Jesus' actions are three fold, the first of which is the lack of the Cassandra paradox even with the knowledge of the future that Peter had. The Cassandra paradox is the idea that by knowing the future one will change it. For example, if I make the true prophecy that you will be killed when you go home after work, you will be killed. The paradox works under the assumption that would will believe me, and says that in believing me, you will do something like visit your friends on your way home from work to say goodbye, or have one last beer the bar down the street. And in doing this you will have missed walking in on the burglars that were going to shoot you in surprise when you walked in the house. Your knowing the future caused you to change the future and made a prophecy false. Knowledge of the future event should have changed Peter's actions and made the prophecy false. The second important fact to point out is that Peter did not remember Jesus' words until after the denial (which might be why the Cassandra paradox did not occur). This is important because were the story that Peter denied Jesus because Jesus told him he would, it takes Peter's free will away firstly, and secondly it refutes the idea that Jesus was actually making a prophecy. The idea of Jesus' ability to see the future and see what Peter was going to do is critical to the