[extropy-chat] The omniscience of God and the free will of Man

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

There is an interesting discussion on Kuro5hin on how to achieve peaceful
coexistence between two opposite concepts in religious thinking: the
omniscience of God and the free will of Man. Is it possible to have a
universe sporting free-will and a God? The theological discussion is mixed
with ideas taken from interpretations of the foundations of quantum physics:
"Suppose that God plays the role of the scientist and we play the role of
Schrodinger's cat. Once God opens the box and peers into our future, He
fixes the reality. Therefore, He chooses to view time and events linearly
along with us, to grant us free-will", and the concept of God existing
outside of time is mentioned by several posters.
I wish to contribute to the discussion without mentioning God, as "Is it
possible to have a deterministic universe sporting free-will?" (by
deterministic universe I mean one where the future is uniquely determined by
the past). Our universe is deterministic only if we accept some form of the
Everett interpretation of quantum physics. Otherwise, there is some kind of
magic effect that kills off all possible outcomes of the current state of
the universe, except one selected randomly, as soon as an act of observation
by a conscious observer takes place. So if we choose another interpretation
of the foundations of physics, we can hold the concept of free will in the
universe.
If we choose the Everett interpretation, the state of the universe (reality)
evolves without random effects, but our consciousness only perceives a
specific projection of the state of the universe (our reality), which by
itself does not contain any information or laws that could permit predicting
deterministically its evolution in time. In this case, there is a Platonic
metareality that we do not perceive, but we can hold the concept of free
will within the universe that we perceive.
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