Ahmed Bahgat wrote
Does Allah know what humans will choose using their freewill?
Bummer! This is exactly where I am stuck at?. As I understand and with brother Ayman article "Free Choice" it is clear that you have a free-choice. I like to think of this free will/choice as a big complex almost infinite flowchart of WHOLE UNIVERSE. we can think in simple term like a programmer makes for his program. Now programmer knows exactly what the program will do at any moment with given set of inputs, so programmer knows exactly what the outcome of the program be--he knows the future. Also, one can also think of branches as brother Ayman article pointed out. I think this help explain that Allah knows the future, and we still have free-will or more correctly free-choice because we are bound by rules (laws) of Allah. For example, I have a choice to hit a hammer on my monitor and break it into pieces or not hit a hammer but I cannot say I WANT to hit a hammer on my monitor as hard as I WANT still not able to break it--thus I am limited by Allah laws ( if you hit a hammer hard enough on your monitor you will break it)
God knows if we choose a path this is will happen thus he knows the future plus we have a free-choice. so far so good (answer lot of questions) but what if we ask following ultimate question.
Does god know what I am going to choose or he only knows what will happen when I have made my choice?
Look forward to other views especially brother Ayman or Ahmed Bahgat.
best wishes
Kashif
Peace brother Kashif
Your question is very serious and also complex, we are allowed to asked though as we need to know Allah and what He can do as much as we can, this is the safest way to secure a safe eternal destination as far as I see it, we have to know Him and if we do then we will realize what we are dealing with exactly
My question that you quoted was sort of trying to extend this important subject and I do have my personal view regarding my question.
Firstly the verses posted by brother Arnaab are very compelling evidences that Allah knows EVERYTHING, brother Arnaab is 100% right that EVERYTHING means EVREYTHING including the past the present and the future, also you provided a very good example by the computer program that a programmer should know according to a flaw chart everything possible, but the program will 100% fail to predict which option the user will select if an input is required by a user if there is two options to select from, I?m a programmer actually and I assure you, there is no way that you can predict an input from a variety of different inputs, even the smartest chess program ever created by IBM can?t, it works by analysing all possible moves a chess piece can go to, and for each move more moves will be available considering the possibilities of the other players moves as well which will be multiplied by the possibilities of the computer moves to come up with a possibility that the game will go in this direction we are talking very high odds here mate.
With Allah bro it works differently, it is not a case of knowing possibilities, rather a case of knowing what exactly will happen, ie, Allah should know the next move a chess player will take, in fact He should also know who will win the chess game
And this is where you stuck I believe, I was also stuck at it bro years ago. If we talk submission to Allah which will lead to submission to all verses in His Quran then a true submitter should take the verses for granted that Allah knows everything including the future. Period
But no one is a submitter on the fly, it is a lengthy process that starts with belief first then the belief will increase with the sincere ones until the submission to Allah status is reached, I have been thorough it all bro, no bull, during the time of believing only and not submitting yet, I used to ask many questions about the Quran and Allah, in fact I spent about 5 years trying to find a mistake in the Quran, that was the best experience I had with the Quran, because it greatly enhanced my knowledge and to a point I felt no way this book have mistakes, I actually looked with passion for one, as well I looked at all the alleged ones by others including the alleged grammatical errors, and sure I could not find any mistake beyond reasonable doubt, ie. it must be 100% confirmed a mistake, 99% will not be sufficient because any doubt must be to the advantage of the accused and we have 1% doubt in this case, that is our own laws at court
The bottom line is, one of the questions I asked to myself was the one you quoted above, and to be honest bro it took me a few years to come up with a logic that made me feel very comfortable with the concept that a real God must know everything including the future
To explain this logically we need to think a bit of Relativity, I now it is very hard subject to understand, neither I claim to be knowledgably in it, rather I was so fascinated with it about 20 years ago, hence I read a lot about it and discussed it with many others, this has enabled me to understand many of its REAL and hard core facts
Imagine everything in the heaven and earth is enlarged 1000 times, including humans, animals measurements of anything etc, etc?
Do you think any of us will feel the difference?
Of course not, because if I?m 185 cm tall and weight 85 kg then after being enlarged 1000 times I will still be 185 cm tall and 85 kg in weight, because the cm unit was also enlarged 1000 times along with the kg unit, it is like multiplying every thing x 1000 then scaling it up
See, the real size of the heaven and earth is not really known to us
Let?s now scale everything down and imagine a small ball is representing the heaven and earth and some entity is holding it in His hands, this is actually very close to the Quran description about Allah that He is surrounding everything and everything is between His Hands ?Mohit?, the similitude above also confirms the common knowledge that Allah is bigger than anything that is why we say ?Allahu Akbar?
Let?s now change the shape of the ball to cylinder, one edge is representing the creation of the heaven and earth and every thing is moving to the other end as the universe expanded from a tiny amount of energy into all these things we see
Let?s recap, God is so big that He is sort of holding a the whole heaven and earth in his hands shaped in a sort of cylinder with one end representing the big bang and another end representing the judgment day
Logically speaking all objects are moving towards the Judgment day ?we know that the big bang caused the objects to move in one direction NOT 360 degrees like a conventional bomb?
The distance moved should represent the human time, for example, as far as I know the objects has moved about 13 billion light years from the big bang incident, for us there is no way to know the future because travelling to the future is just a fancy that impossible to happen and only happens in the movies, I agree we can know the past ?logically speaking? but in no way the humans can know the future ?logically speaking?
How Allah knows it then?
I truly believe ?this is my own opinion? that Allah is capable of forwarding the tape to the judgment day end while recording all what happens in a book then rewinding it back again to the point where the test should start, sounds funny to you, well, why not if Allah can do anything? And remember that the whole thing is between is His Hands as I explained earlier, let?s look at the following verse
22- No misfortune can happen on earth or in your souls but is recorded in a book before We bring it into existence That is truly easy for Allah
23- In order that ye may not despair over matters that pass you by, nor exult over favours bestowed upon you. For Allah loveth not any vainglorious boaster,
(22)
(23)
-> We can see clearly in verse 5722 that any misfortune will happen on earth or in ourselves is recorded in a book ?No misfortune can happen on earth or in your souls but is recorded in a book?, and Allah is telling us that He knows what will happen before it is brought into existence ?before We bring it into existence?, this is really very easy on Allah, like forwarding the tape as I explained in a metaphor earlier, ? That is truly easy for Allah?, I also believe that the verse also include the good things that will happen on earth and in ourselves, as we will see in the next verse, I believe this is mighty accuracy from Allah to omit it in here then talk about it on the next verse, because normally the misfortunes is what take our attention more and this is when we remember Allah, in the good times we hardly remember Him, the Quran told us this FACT about ourselves in anther verse
-> In verse 5723, we read why Allah will not tell us the future about earth and ourselves (including the favours and the misfortunes) ?In order that ye may not despair over matters that pass you by, nor exult over favours bestowed upon you. For Allah loveth not any vainglorious boaster?
Therefore I concluded that Allah has very sophisticated means of knowing the future of our time, this sophistication is transparent to us, ie, we will not feel it even if it was a matter of forwarding a tape just after the big bang then rewinding it back, because if it happens this way it can also happens on the fly, before the test started, after rewinding it, it will run at the speed of our time, bear in mind that our time is also a creature by our mighty God
Allah knows best
Peace bro
