It seems, then, that my foreknowledge need not be inconsistent with my free will. And hence, if I tell someone else how I will act, his foreknowledge would not be inconsistent with my free will. So that in some cases, and under given conditions, it does not seem impossible for a man to foreknow how another man will act, yet without interfering with his freedom. In short, free will does not seem to be necessarily inconsistent with the foreknowledge even of man, though it is always practically so, owing to man's imperfect knowledge of the surrounding circumstances. But the Creator knows, or may know, these circumstances fully, therefore it must be still less inconsistent with His foreknowledge.
Of course it may be said that if the Creator foreknows how I will act to-morrow, I am certain to act in that way; and this is doubtless true. But it does not follow that I need act in that way; for certainty is not the same as necessity. This is obvious enough in regard to a past event. I certainly did it, but I need not have done it; and it may be equally true in regard to a future event. I will certainly do it, but I need not do it. Therefore the Creator may know that I will do it, though it will still be free on my part.
And this is strongly confirmed when we reflect that the difficulty of knowing how a free being will act, however great in itself, seems as nothing compared with the difficulty of creating a free being. Apart from experience, we should probably have thought this to be impossible. Yet man has been created somehow. Is it then unlikely that the Being who was able to overcome the greater difficulty, and create a free man, should also be able to overcome the lesser difficulty, and foreknow how he would act?
Moreover, if free will and foreknowledge are always and necessarily inconsistent, then the Creator cannot have any foreknowledge of His Own acts, or else they are not free on His part; neither of which seems at all probable. We are not, of course, arguing from this that He actually does foreknow how He will act Himself, or how a free man will act, but only that it is not in the nature of things impossible that He should do so; in other words, that free will and foreknowledge are not necessarily inconsistent.
And this is precisely what we had to show. The marks of design in nature afford what seems to be overwhelming evidence in favour of the foreknowledge of the Creator. The objection we are considering is that, in spite of all this evidence, we must still deny it, because some of the organisms in nature, such as man, possess a free will; and therefore any foreknowledge is in the nature of things impossible. And the instant it is shown that such foreknowledge is not impossible, the objection falls to the ground.
We may now sum up the argument in this chapter. We first explained that by Design was meant any voluntary action combined with foreknowledge of the results of that action. We next considered the evidence for design in nature, taking, as a single example, the human eye. And this evidence appeared complete and overwhelming; more especially as we were not appealing to it to show the existence of a Creator, which is already admitted, but merely His foreknowledge. And we have since considered the two apparent objections to this argument arising from Evolution and Free Will. But when carefully examined, the former only strengthens the argument, while the latter does not weaken it. We therefore conclude, on reviewing the whole subject, that the Creator designed the universe.
CHAPTER III.
THAT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IS EXTREMELY PROBABLE.
(A.) Meaning of the Term God.