Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The True Nature of GOD!

Nov. 30, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

33:59

The True Nature of GOD!

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	All right.
	Quick question from listener.
	I believe you said, forgive me if you haven't, that God can't change his mind, therefore he is not omnipotent.
	This doesn't make sense to my personal experience.
	Why would I even want to change my mind if I were omniscient?
	Why would anyone want to change their mind if omniscient?
	It's a great question, and I really do appreciate that.
	And so let us endeavor to answer it as best we can.
	And just as a note, this is slightly tired, Steph.
	I had an early morning errand to run, and I am cooking on slightly less sleep than normal, but I'm sure it will be either fantastic or will be an excellent ASMR for your nap time.
	But I promise, no shouting.
	So this is, of course, one of the foundational challenges of the concept of a God, of God, is that God is all-knowing and all-powerful.
	Now, to be all-knowing is, of course, to have full knowledge of the behavior of every aspect of matter and energy from here to the end of time and backwards to the beginning of time.
	And even if we say, well, there is no such thing as the beginning or end of time for God, that it's infinity, infinity past, infinity future, infinity everywhere, you know what the exact temperature and wind speed is going to be 10,000 years from now in every location in the universe, right?
	So even like the eye of Jupiter, right?
	The sort of red storm that's been going on for 300 years on Jupiter, you know the exact behavior of every atom in every breeze on every planet with atmosphere in every one of the hundreds of billions of planets that exist in every galaxy within the hundreds of billions of galaxies.
	You know the exact precise movement of every aspect of matter, void, and energy throughout the universe through all time, for all time.
	Now, it's really, I mean, we need to really sort of figure out what omniscience actually means.
	So there are these studies that people constantly quote to pretend that there's no such thing as free will, where they ask people to choose like a red or blue on a screen to touch them while they have electrical receptors on their head, and they can sort of dig out from the brain that the impulse to choose red or blue arises prior to the conscious decision to choose red or blue.
	In other words, they can predict people's decisions by looking at the electrical stimuli deep in their brain before the people say that they're consciously aware of making a choice.
	And they then say, oh, well, you've already chosen before you are consciously aware of having chosen.
	When did you choose such and such a time?
	But again, they can predict with some reliability, not perfect, some reliability, what people are going to decide before the people consciously decide.
	And I get that.
	I mean, if people are sort of randomly guessing in a multiple choice, like let's say you have a multiple choice exam in some subject you don't know much about, if anything, like some complicated physics thing or whatever, multiple choice, then you will be somewhat predictable in your choices, A, B, C, D, you'll be somewhat predictable in what you choose because you say, oh, I haven't chosen C for a while.
	I should probably choose C.
	Oh, I haven't chosen D for a while.
	Oh, it's probably, you know, whatever, right?
	So people take that approach when it comes to multiple choice exams.
	If they're kind of guessing, they try to do sort of random distribution.
	And in the game, like a dice game or a game where dice are important, like a tan, what happens is people, I play the game, and what happens is people say, well, the six hasn't rolled for a while, but it's okay because the six is going to roll more later.
	Like, because if you base your resource acquisition, right, the wood, brick, wheat, sheep, and stone, or you base your resource acquisition on how common the dice rolls are.
	And so you try to get the hexes, which are the most commonly rolled.
	But if, you know, just based upon the law of averages, you get a bunch of 11s, 10s, or 12s rolled before you get sixes and eights, which are the two most common, you expect there to be more later because the bell curve is going to have to even out at some point.
	So people do that.
	So do we have free will?
	I think that there's a general calculation of probability that we go through.
	But the real question with this is not: do people have an impulse to choose something that is random and unimportant before they're consciously aware of it?
	Yeah, I would say so because we have a calculation engine sort of deep in our brain that allows us to catch balls, right?
	We know, I mean, how could you catch the ball if you didn't have a calculation engine?
	I mean, basically, you're catching math, right?
	I mean, almost all sports is just pushing math back and forth, right?
	What is the correct arc to throw to sink a basketball?
	Well, that's math, right?
	What is the best way to hit that ball so that you get a home run?
	That is math.
	So it's all a matrix, you know, the sort of green pseudo-kenji that flows down, right?
	It's math.
	We're just pushing and pulling math.
	It's the same thing.
	Should I invest in this, that, or the other?
	You're just pushing math.
	Should I start this product?
	You're just, you do your marketing and then you're pushing math and so on, right?
	I mean, I asked donors, do you want a physical copy of peaceful parenting?
	If everyone said no, or almost nobody said yes, I wouldn't do it.
	So I'm just pushing math.
	So when it comes to making non-moral decisions, then we have a math engine in our brains that calculates things and tries to even things out.
	I don't want to plant all of my crops in one little corner of the field.
	I want to spread them out, right?
	Spread out my risk.
	We have this when it comes to mating.
	Mating is math, right?
	Because when it comes to mating, what you want to do is you want to get the highest quality partner to mate with that you can, while understanding that if you go too high quality, the person will not mate with you, right?
	I remember talking about this math calculation when talking about being at school dances in grade six, which is the girls are all on one side of the gym, the darker gym, the boys are all on the other.
	And you sail your way over.
	You take that thousand-yard no-man's march, it feels like, over to the other side of the gym.
	And then what you do is you say, well, I want a girl to dance with me.
	I want her to be attractive enough that my friends aren't going to make fun of me, but not so attractive that she is waiting for a more attractive guy.
	I wasn't at peak attractiveness in grade six.
	I had a ball haircut and bad clothes.
	But so, yeah, so it's all math.
	So the fact that we have a sort of math calculation engine that tries to even things out, oh, I've chosen red for a while.
	I should probably choose blue.
	That sort of evening out engine that occurs deep in our unconscious.
	You know, like a woman looks at a guy, glances at a guy who's obviously approaching her to try and chat her up, and she has an instant calculation of whether she is going to be receptive to his advances or not.
	And it's kind of triage.
	Like there's some guys she knows she's not going to go out with.
	There's some guys she knows she wants to go out with, and there are other guys.
	It's a sort of narrow band in the middle, which is where Charm and Riz figure, which is where it's like, well, you know, maybe, but let's see what he has to say.
	The two extremes, so to speak, which is most, right?
	Most women know, yes, I want this guy to approach me.
	No, I don't want that guy to approach me.
	And this guy, eh, let's see what he has to say.
	I'm not hostile.
	I'm not receptive.
	I'm neutral.
	Let's see what his, because, you know, he's not that attractive that I definitely want to go out with him.
	But maybe he's got some hidden secret charms that will reveal themselves to me and all that, right?
	So maybe he's just bizarrely self-confident and is going to therefore get a lot of resources, even though he doesn't look that way.
	So with regards to this scientific experiment about, oh, there's no free will, it's like, no, you just, you abandon yourself to your mathematical calculation engine.
	And we know this as well because there have been studies.
	I mean, they talk about this in A Beautiful Mind, the movie, where people are given mathematical problems, they can't solve them.
	Those exact same mathematical problems are translated into who pays for what social resource allocation and people get the answers intuitively, instinctively.
	And of course, the essential or basic mathematical calculation brain, that is common to most creatures, certainly to mammals, right?
	Or birds as well.
	So if you have kids, particularly white kids, they love to feed animals.
	They love to have a good relationship with animals because animals have been essential to our survival for, you know, tens of thousands of years.
	And so you have kids and they want to feed the animals.
	They want to feed the birds.
	They want to take them home.
	They want to domesticate them, you know, all the usual agrarian stuff.
	And so you give a snack, some nuts or whatever, and your kid tries to feed a squirrel.
	And the squirrel, it's doing its mathematical calculation engine, right?
	And the mathematical calculation engine is, well, I want the food, but I don't want to get captured and killed.
	And birds do the same thing, of course, right?
	So yeah, we all have this.
	At least all of the quote higher animals have this mathematical calculation engine.
	Fish don't is a very funny meme of two guys.
	I think they're black guys.
	It's like the imitation of fish.
	Like one fish gets hooked and yanked out and the other one's like, yeah, I'll still have the hook, right?
	They don't have that sort of calculation engine, so to speak.
	And predators have it, which is, I want to get close enough to my prey that I can catch them easily, but not so close they smell me and run away.
	So they're aiming for that tipping point, right?
	So calculation engine is very common.
	Is the birds do it too?
	Like hawks and eagles, owls.
	Is the prey, is the mouse or the rabbit or whatever?
	Are they out in the open enough that if I fall, if I plunge to get them, will I waste my energy after plunge, right?
	Because then you have to fight to get back up to a sort of scanning area.
	I mean, you won't bother.
	The peregrine falcon will not do its fastest creature in the world drop, like 240 miles an hour, whatever the heck they get to.
	It's crazy.
	It's like the space shuttle burning up on re-entry.
	But they won't drop from the heights for an animal that's right next to its burrow because the animal will probably see them coming and dive into the burrow and then they can't, they can't get them, right?
	So with regards to choosing randomly, sure, that it's not important.
	It's just an experiment.
	It doesn't really matter.
	So you turn things over to your mathematical calculation engine, which is there to help you survive and all of that, right?
	It's in a way, it's analogous for me to saying, well, I mean, people don't have free will because if you look at a baseball game, whenever a ball comes to an outfielder, he really tries to catch it.
	He doesn't have a choice.
	He doesn't have free will.
	Well, that's sort of an artificial situation where the person is only put out there in the outfield because he will work like hell to cat balls, right?
	So it's not a free will violation to say, well, you know, it's weird, man.
	In basketball, people don't have free will because they stay in a confined area.
	They don't even leave during the game.
	They don't even leave the stadium.
	People don't have free will because when they borrow money to buy a house from the bank, they pay that money back every month.
	I mean, of course, some people don't, but, you know, for the most part, people do.
	So that's not where free will operates.
	Free will operates in the realm of morality.
	I mean, if you're a business and you're trying to sell a widget and you sell the widget, sorry, you're trying to sell the widget.
	Let's say you're at a farmer's market and you've baked a bunch of banana bread loaves and you're trying to sell your banana bread loaves and people come into say your banana bread loaves or 10 bucks.
	It's like saying, well, people don't have free will because like literally every time someone comes in and offers 10 bucks for a banana loaf, the vendor sells them.
	Like they never say no.
	They never say, no, I'm not selling you this banana loaf for $10, even though there's a price that says I will sell this banana loaf for $10.
	And anytime that I have shopped and wanted to buy something on a price that the vendor has set, and assuming that the object or the widget is available, I have never once had a vendor say, I'm not selling that to you.
	I've never gone to a restaurant and had people say, I'm not seating you, assuming that there are seats available.
	There have, of course, like most of us, there have been occasions where seats appear to be available, but they say, no, those are reserved.
	But so it's like saying, well, I mean, people in business, they've got like no free will, man.
	They've got like no free will.
	Because those people in business, man, they just never say no to sales.
	They've got an object to sell and somebody wants to buy it at a price the vendor has set.
	They never say no.
	They have no free will, right?
	It doesn't make any sense.
	Free will operates in the level of ethics.
	So free will is the following.
	If a person has a dedication to honesty, are they more likely to tell the truth or less likely to tell the truth?
	I mean, not just a public, but a genuine, they want to be honest, right?
	They value honesty.
	Are they more, and in a non-coercive, non-manipulative situation, are they more likely to tell the truth?
	If someone has a commitment to honesty, even if it's uncomfortable for those around him, is he more likely to tell the truth?
	And if he understands that telling the truth will cause a lot of negative pressure against him, is he more or less likely to tell the truth?
	Or in other words, is he more or less likely to fold under social pressure if he has integrity?
	So that's where the free will is.
	So I've defined free will as our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
	That's our capacity.
	So if you don't have any ideal standards, right, if you are a relativist, an atheist, a subjectivist, you don't have functional free will because you have no ideal standards to compare your proposed actions to.
	I mean, you may have a general preference.
	Oh, you know, well, telling the truth is nice and it's good, but you have no, it's not an ideal standard.
	So compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
	That is free will.
	So somebody without morals, somebody without virtues and values, ideal standards, has no free will.
	Now, again, I'm not saying people have zero free will, but you have a free will to the degree and only to the degree that you have ideal standards.
	So if you have vague preferences, yeah, you know, generally it's better to tell the truth, then you have free will to that degree.
	Generally, vaguely, you kind of have free will.
	So when I am spreading ideal standards, I am forging free will in the hearts and minds of others.
	I mean, that's a bit of a dramatic way of putting it, but it's very real in a way, right?
	By spreading ideal standards, by spreading UPB, I am creating free will in others.
	Now, of course, I'm not doing it, right?
	I put the arguments out.
	And if people choose to accept and start acting according to ideal standards, then they have generated and created free will in their hearts, minds, and bodies to the degree that they're willing to accept and act upon ideal standards.
	UPB is free will.
	By having an abstract ideal standard, then UPB creates the capacity for free will and for absolute free will.
	So for example, if somebody says that hitting children is the good, right?
	That children need correction, that children need consequences, that the world is tough and you don't want your children learning horrible, brutal lessons when you can give them a swat on the butt and have them learn those lessons in the security of the home with someone who loves them rather than out there in the brutal world where the consequences could be dangerous or fatal.
	So, you know, you have your justifications, your standards, that if you love your children, according to the Bible, if you love your children, you will punish them so that they turn to virtue rather than go to hell, right?
	In the same way that you will grab a child who's about to run into traffic, you spank a child who is dabbling in sin to make sure that they avoid sin, get to heaven, all that kind of stuff, right?
	So if you have those justifications, you will hit your children.
	You have no choice not to hit your children should the circumstances arise and you be genuinely dedicated to those values, right?
	The hitting is the values.
	In the same way, if you have a dedication to the non-aggression principle and peaceful parenting, you have the choice to not hit your children, right?
	If you think hitting your children is the good and the necessary and the moral and the virtuous, and if you don't hit your children, they will turn into criminals and sinners and they will go to hell and they will go to jail.
	Nobody will like them.
	They will be socialists, communists.
	They will work to the degradation and destruction of all that is free and noble and virtuous in Western society, then you don't have the choice to not hit your children, right?
	You just don't have that choice.
	It's not a thing that exists.
	Don't have that choice.
	If you are dedicated to peaceful parenting, the non-aggression principle, and reasoning with your children, well, then you have the choice to not hit your children.
	Now, if you're transitioning from one to the other, like I've never been close to hitting my child, like never, like never in a zillion years, never been close.
	I mean, obviously, we annoy each other, which is obviously my fault as the parrot, right?
	But we annoy each other on occasion, but we've never said a harsh word to each other, we've never raised our voices at each other, and so on.
	So I have the choice because I have the ideal standard called don't hit your children.
	So I have the choice to not hit my child, and of course, I don't hit my child.
	Now, again, having the ideal standard, there's still a free will element.
	Having the ideal standard doesn't mean that you won't hit your child.
	You could have the ideal standard of don't hit your child, but you might have a lot of unresolved trauma from being beaten yourself.
	And you might slip up and in a moment of extreme anger hit your child.
	But at least then you will feel bad about it and you will apologize or whatever it is, right?
	So you have the standard.
	So without an ideal standard, you have no free will because you have nothing to compare proposed actions to.
	You're like a goldfish with food, right?
	As I mentioned the other day, like every kid who gets goldfish is told don't overfeed them, or they'll eat until they die or whatever, right?
	They'll just keep eating, right?
	And you see these fat dogs or fat cats, what do they call them?
	Chonk, chunky.
	You thick boy, you fat.
	So you have these cats and these dogs that are overweight.
	And we don't say, gee, gee, those cats and dogs really lack self-discipline and they're not really thinking about their overconsumption of resources and the strain they're putting on the vet care system or anything like that, right?
	They are not doing any of that.
	Well, we don't look at that.
	We say those are irresponsible, onerous, right?
	Feeding them too much.
	Because of course, dogs and cats are not exactly in their natural state, right?
	I mean, they're usually locked up inside, or a lot of times, and they get food without effort, and a lot of them get, the males get castrated, and so on, right?
	So we don't look at dogs and cats and say, well, there's an ideal standard called good health, and they're deviating from it by choice.
	I mean, if you've ever been around dogs, I don't know much about cats, but I've been around a lot of dogs.
	And if you have ever been around dogs, you know that they just will eat all the time.
	And at least the dogs that I've known, they just eat all the time.
	They're constantly putting their nose on your legs under the dinner table, and you're constantly being told, don't feed the dog at the table, but you constantly want to, right?
	So they just keep eating, right?
	Most animals will eat to excess because that's how they survive, right?
	So dogs will eat to excess because they don't know when their next meal is coming.
	Like lions will eat till they're bloated because they don't exactly know when their next prey is going to cross their path.
	Or I guess the paths are going to intersect, if that makes sense.
	They're not like trap spiders.
	So the question is not, do we have sort of mathematical calculation engines that give us impulse to even things out or to catch balls or something like that?
	We do.
	Those are not violations of free will.
	It's the comparison of proposed actions to ideal standards.
	So the ideal standard when you're an outfielder in a baseball game is to catch the ball and throw, hopefully you can get two outs.
	You can catch the ball and then you can throw to the guy running to third or throw to the third baseman to tag the guy running to third.
	Sorry, I played some baseball.
	So, yeah, that's what you're up to.
	That's what you want to do.
	So, an outfielder, if there's a flyball, right, it's coming his way, the outfielder is comparing proposed actions to run and catch the ball to ideal standards.
	You want to catch the ball.
	That's what you're paid for.
	That's what you have been doing since you were three years old or whatever.
	And that's how you keep your job.
	And that's how you keep the happiness and respect of your teammates and the approval of the crowd and so on, right?
	So you'll run and catch the ball.
	That's the ideal standard.
	Comparing proposed actions to ideal standards.
	You're there because you will do just about anything.
	And you've seen people plunge over the bleachers, right, to catch the ball.
	So with regards to God, God has no ideal standard with which to compare proposed actions to.
	This is one of the challenges of the conception of God.
	Now, God, of course, has proposed actions.
	Let's say, tell the truth.
	Now, of course, God has already spoken the truth, past, present, and future.
	God exists outside of time.
	God knows the future because God can't be limited in his knowledge of the future.
	God can't say, well, I don't know if Noah's going to build the ark or not, because God is all-knowing.
	Therefore, God knows for sure that Noah is going to build the Ark.
	So God has already spoken the truth, past, present, and future.
	There's no more free will in God's actions than there is in a movie that has already been filmed.
	You've got a movie from Casablanca, right?
	Casablanca has an ending.
	No matter how many times you play the movie Casablanca, the ending will always be the same.
	I mean, your feelings may change and whatever, but the dialogue and the pixels and the film will always be the same.
	The characters in the movie Casablanca have no free will.
	You don't watch the movie again, hoping they'll make a different decision, because they won't.
	Because their decisions have already been made.
	It's already been filmed.
	The actors are all dead.
	And the movie is not being reshot.
	And if it was, it would be a different, you could have a different ending, but it wouldn't be the same movie.
	So no free will.
	And of course, you know, I've been to those movies where, you know, a character's making a bad decision and there's some low-rent people in the back row yelling at them, don't go.
	You know, and the character says, you go for help.
	I'll follow the bloody footprints.
	Okay, you're going to die, right?
	So God has already acted with perfect virtue, past, present, and future.
	So God has no ideal standards with which to compare proposed actions to, because for God, there are no proposed actions.
	He has already acted past, present, and future for eternity.
	The decisions have already been made, and God has always done the perfectly right and moral thing.
	Right?
	There are no possible actions for God.
	There are no choices that God will make.
	So, for instance, when you pray and you say, my dog is sick, dear God above, please make my dog better.
	Well, God already knows whether your dog is going to get better or not.
	God already knows whether he's going to answer your prayer because God has already done everything past, present, and future.
	Because if God is contemporaneous, in other words, God is moving with us through time, then God does not know the future, which means God is not all-knowing, which is why prayer is funny, because God already knows that you're going to pray and already knows what he's going to do and already knows whether your dog is going to get better or worse.
	You don't know as an individual, but God already knows because he knows the actions and motions of every cell, atom, whiff of matter and energy throughout the entire universe for all time, because that's what omniscience is.
	So God does not have free will in the way that we would understand it.
	So if somebody makes a really bad decision, right, let's say that you're married and your wife cheats on you, you can say, I wish you had chosen differently, but you can't say, I now demand that you go back in time and choose differently.
	She had free will to cheat on you because you had an ideal standard called fidelity, but your wife has no capacity to cheat on you, sorry, to undo cheating on you.
	She cannot go back in time and undo the cheating.
	So I've never kind of imagined an argument where somebody says, oh, you cheated on me a year ago.
	I need you to go back and undo that.
	I need you to create a different timeline where I'm not cheated on.
	I mean, if you were insane or heavily sarcastic, but nobody sane who's honest has that as a rational demand.
	So the action has already occurred, and therefore your cheating wife has no capacity to go back and undo the action.
	The action has already occurred.
	She has no capacity to go back and undo the action.
	She cannot travel through time.
	So for God, all of his actions have already occurred.
	And everything that God does has already occurred.
	Past, present, and future is all known.
	Now, of course, the fundamental implication of this is you also have no free will.
	Because if God knows what you're going to do tomorrow, next five minutes, 10 years from now, and God knows everything that you're going to do over the course of your life, which is omniscience, do you have free will?
	If you know ahead of time what someone is going to do, in other words, if the closing lines of some movie you've memorized, right?
	Problems of two people like us don't amount to a hill of beans.
	He's looking at you, kid, right?
	If you already know what Humphrey Bogart is going to say in Casablanca, does Humphrey Bogart, in the movie Casablanca, have the free will to change his lines?
	He does not, because you already know what he's going to say.
	If you've watched the movie 20 times, you know, round up the usual suspects, right?
	You already know what the people are going to say.
	You know, there's a funny bit in Friends where Ross is playing bagpipes and Phoebe is singing along.
	And the funny part is watching Jennifer Anniston try not to crack up because I think that was ad-libbed.
	So you can watch that 10,000 times and Phoebe will never make a different choice.
	So does the character Phoebe have the character, have the choice to change what she does in that scene?
	Nope.
	It's already been filmed.
	It's already been recorded.
	It's already happened.
	And you cannot go back in time and tell the actress to make a different choice.
	No, don't sing along.
	Right?
	Lisa Kudrow, geez, I can remember her name for a second.
	Lisa Kudrow.
	She's an older one.
	So God, all of his actions have already occurred.
	They are as fixed as a movie.
	And therefore, God has no free will because his actions have already occurred and they're all perfect.
	Now you can say, well, God could have chosen to do something different, but God chose virtue.
	But God is all perfect, all good.
	Therefore, God can only be all perfect and all good if he could never or would never choose to do evil.
	But all of those choices have already been made, right?
	And because all of those choices have already been made, God has no capacity to change them, right?
	Any more than Lisa Kudrow has the choice to go back a couple of decades and not sing along to Ross's bagpipes on the sitcom Friends, right?
	That's not possible.
	Lisa Kudreaux has no historical free will because no human being has historical free will.
	If somebody makes a bad decision, they can choose to learn from that decision and hopefully not repeat it, but they cannot go back in time and undo that bad decision.
	So omniscience and omnipotence are contradictory.
	For God, omniscience means God knows what God will do through all of time because God's actions being outside of time have already, always and forever, in an absolute fashion, God's choices, so to speak, have already been made because God knows the future.
	So God knows the future.
	Absolutely.
	God knows whether Noah is going to build the ark or not.
	We can't say God doesn't know because then God is not omniscient and God is coming with us through time.
	God's crossing his fingers and hoping that Noah makes the right decision.
	But of course, if God doesn't know what Noah is going to do, then God should not be interfering.
	Right, but God interferes all the time, answers prayers and creates miracles and talks to people and so on.
	So God knows what Noah is going to do.
	God knows that Noah is going to build the ark.
	All right?
	So God knows that.
	And what that means is that Noah has no functional free will.
	And God cannot choose for things to be different because the moment God chooses things to be different, then God has invalidated his prior knowledge.
	So let's say he knows that Noah is not going to build the ark, but that's too upsetting for God.
	God says, oh man, Noah's not building the ark.
	You know what I'm going to do?
	I'm going to build the ark for him so it's easier because I want all of my creatures, my lovely creatures, to be saved, right?
	Everything but the unicorn.
	So that's what God decides.
	So then God thought that Noah was going to build the ark or didn't know and then is putting a sum on the scale by building the ark for Noah and so on.
	But then it means that God's prior knowledge of whether he was or wasn't is invalid because he's now changing it.
	Oh, I thought you were going to show up, but you didn't, so I took a bus, right?
	So this is why we say that being all-powerful and all-knowing is a contradiction.
	And it's one of the challenges of conceiving of and thinking about God.
	FreedomAnd.com slash an 8 to help out the show.

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