From: khushro@niagara.eecs.umich.edu (Khushro Shahookar)
Subject: Re: Predestination vs free will
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Originator: Mughal@Romeo.Caltech.Edu (Asim Mughal -Moderator)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 22:35:00 GMT


[Postmarked: Sun, 16 Aug 92 14:30:27 EDT]


From:       "David Budd" <ZLSIIDA@fs1.mcc.ac.uk>  wrote ---
>------     You went on to an exposition of
>the nafs, rooh, etc, which I felt was a bit off the point.  ....
>Again: if it is known what action you will take, even if it feels to
>you that you chose your action, YOU DID NOT, otherwise how could the
>action you would take have been known beforehand?   ......
>                        With Islam

This is an easy mistake to make. I am attempting to give a final
authoritative answer to this. Let's see if anyone finds a major logical
flaw in it.

Sometimes people say: 
When you have a choice and you end up choosing only one 
possible choice - the one that was already known to Allah before hand,
then that 
is really not a choice. How can you be free if you think there is a
choice but you must (unknowingly) choose the one and only possibility
that Allah already
knows that you will choose.

Some people quote the "Self-restriction" theory ie. God has the power
to see the future, but deliberately does not see it so that man may have free
will.

Consider a few examples: 
A computer program as follows:

input (choice);
if (choice = 'd')
  then
    print_detailed_output;
  else 
    print_brief_output;

Although we know what choice we are going to enter and which path the program
will choose as a result, the program does not know that, so the presence of
the "if" statement gives the computer program free will. Is that correct?
No, and I will explain why.

Every morning a tiger chooses to hunt for food. He chooses which animals he 
will pursue. Every night he chooses to sleep, and once or twice every year
he chooses to make babies. No one forces him to do it, he does all of it by 
himself, of his own free choice. Yet every tiger in the world chooses 
approximately these same choices. Why is this not free will?, and if we humans 
have to do what Allh alrady knows, why is that free will?

We will understand this if we ask ourselves what is it that we humans possess
that the tiger and the computer program do not have?
Emotions?
Wants, desires?

We "choose" to do something because we "want" to do it, not because we are
programmed with an "if" statement. Now you will note that the tiger does not
do all those things because he "wants" to do them, but he is programmed with
an instinct - a reflex action. So you see that free will has something to do 
with our emotions - we want to do something, that is why we do it, and
any creature  that has emotions will also have free will.

Next, let us see what Allah's fore-knowledge has got to do with it.
Another example. Let us suppose that the time machine has been invented, and 
someone travels to the future, and sees that I took drugs and died. The fact
still remains that when I will take drugs, it will be because I want to do 
so at that time. If the time traveler knows this in advance because he
actually visited the future and saw what I chose,  then does that take away my 
free will? I think not.

Similarly, if God knows the future, he obvoiusly knows what we will want 
to do, but that does not in any way force us to do what we don't want, against 
our free will.
--
Copyright KHUSHRO SHAHOOKAR,   $0.02
khushro@eecs.umich.edu   Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor