FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1113268041[/unixtime]]RC, if you put a dirty fork on the kitchen table, and then I come in and see a dirty fork on the table, can I not remove that dirty fork and put it in the dishwasher?
Who has the final say, the reporter or the editor?
You're again too worried about actual effect. Free will isn't about how much power you have. It's simply about making a decision. Choosing to hate Hitler is free will. You don't need to have the power to kill Hitler or bring down the whole Nazi regime to have free will. So long as you can choose to hate him, it doesn't matter.
If you can formulate an independent choice within your own mind, then you have free will.
Ultimately, when I decide to make an omelette, there is only one decision being made. Who is making that decision?
If there's an oob around, it sure as hell isn't me. The oob arbitrarily decides to allow me to decide to make an omelette. Or it arbitrarily decides to change my decision from not making an omelette into making an omelette. Either way, the final say is the oob. And therefore, that's the being which is making the decision.
So what? if the oob doesn't step in, then you still have free will. Simply because it can step in doesn't mean anything. Sure, the police could step into your life and imprison you at any time, but that isn't to say you possess freedom right now, even though at some arbitrary point later someone else can make a decision to take away your freedom.
You're entire argument is based on the fact that some point later someone can take away your free will, so you don't have it. But you have to have it for it to be able to be removed from you. And the presence of an omnipotent being who spends all day sitting on the couch doing nothing doesn't in any way change your free will status simply because "he could have acted."
It's like a doctor just stopping treating people because "hey they could die of a heart attack tomorrow and it'd be beyond my control. So I might as well let them die, since there is stuff I can't control that can override anything I do."
That's what your saying. Basically if there is any element in the universe that can dictate and control your actions that you cannot control then you have no free will. Basically under your criteria, only an omnipotent being could have free will, since any choice you make is already constrained by the laws of physicals, chemistry and all sorts of other stuff. When I choose to try to fly, I can't fly because physics has the final say, therefore I have no free will.
Your point of view just isn't very logical at all. Up until the oob actually steps in, it seriously doesn't matter if it exists or not. What it can or can't do is actually irrelevant if it chooses to do nothing. In fact its existence has less of an impact on you than gravity does.
The oob doesn't make any choice for you unless it actually forces you to do something. If it sits on its ass and lets you decide on your own, you have free will. To remove free will, it must do more than observe. And there's no guarantee that it will.
Granted an oob can remove free will at its whim, but if it sits on its ass and doesn't affect you at all, I fail to see how its existence does anything. Just because it could control you doesn't mean that it does. And as stated earlier, the laws of physics could easily be substituted as the omnipotent power in your proof to deny free will. Indeed any absolute restriction or law could be substituted.