wfz said:
Is it a strawman argument when atheists claim that God cannot exist because the idea of Him being omnipotent and humans having free will is a contradiction? |
I'm late...I just saw this post. I think you mean omniscient rather than omnipotent. Right? Assuming that, as the argument is stated, I would say it is a strawman (granted, its a bit murky because it depends on the atheist justification for the statement). The problem is that there are a lot of counterarguments someone would have to address in order to substantiate the claim. In other words, theists don't just assume that these two traits (omniscience and free-will) are compatible. They have arguments for why the traits are compatible, and you would need to attack these. As an example:
1. God's timeliness and knowledge-the main problem is that God's knowledge is fundamentally different from human knowledge, particularly because he isn't confined to a specific time and place....meaning all actions are present to him at one time. Consequently, God does not necessarily have foreknowledge of actions. He has just already observed all actions.
2. Whether knowledge actually determines actions-the main question being whether God's knowledge of someone doing something truly forces them to do something. It could just be that God knows what someone is going to do, with no influence being exerted by God. The main point being to differentiate between knowledge and influence.
Those are just a few examples....there are probably many more answers to the question if you're interested. The problem, in terms of the statement being a strawman, is that theists actually make a more complex argument than just assuming the traits are compatible, so an atheist will need to actually counter these arguments for why free-will and omniscience are compatible.
