the Center for philosophy of religion presents human freedom and divine foreknowledge if God exists he is present at every time in history and he knows everything that can be known at each time many people think God's knowledge extends to what will happen in the future for example that God knew a thousand years ago that Karl would climb Mount Baker today knowledge requires belief and so God also believed a thousand years ago that Karl would climb Mount Baker today and surely Karl can't now do anything about what God believed way back before he was born Karl also can't do anything about the fact that God is never in fact can't be wrong in what he believes so given that God believed before karl was ever born that Karl would climb Mount Baker today and given that God can't be wrong it seems that Karl doesn't have the power to do anything other than climb Mount Baker today genuine freedom though would require that Carl possessed both the ability to climb and also the ability to refrain from climbing thus it would seem Carl is not free after all does God's foreknowledge really conflict with Carl's freedom and ours in this way some think the best way to handle this threat to freedom is to hold that future claims aren't true yet and so can't be known in advance or that God refrains from foreknowing to make room for freedom or even that God is outside of time all together Alvin Plantinga has argued there is a better solution of course Carl can't change the past and maybe that's why it seems like God's past beliefs are outside of his control but not so fast what would control over God's past beliefs really require perhaps just this that Carl has an ability to do something other than climb say to go swimming instead an ability he won't use and that God knew in advance he wouldn't use yes but if Carl has an ability he could have used it so what would have happened if he had used the ability and stopped climbing to go swimming instead well in that case God would always have had a different belief if Carl had refrained from climbing and gone swimming then a thousand years ago God would not have had the belief that Carl would climb today but would instead have had the belief that he would go swimming today and as plan tika has argued this removes the threat that God's foreknowledge seems to pose for our free will without denying that God always knows what we will do in advance to learn more about these ideas please visit plan to go videos calm