religion- is there free will?

[Hooahguy]

this thread really is only for the religious folks out there, but atheists are welcomed to read and comment!

this question popped up in my mind today during my Jewish philosophy class.
we were discussing Immanuel Kant and how his question on prayer turned many away from it.
Kant's question was "if god knows everything, then he obviously knows what we want, so why do we have to ask through prayer?"
my teacher then presented Rabbi Issac Kook (a Jewish philosopher) and his answer to that question.
according to Kook, god knows what we want. but through prayer, we make ourselves worthy of receiving what we want.
that made a lot of sense to me.

then i began to ponder if there was free will, since if god knows all and what we are going to do, then we dont have free will. yes, its an age old debate.
i remember i had this debate 2 years ago, but i wasn't smart enough to really think about it.
what i came up with today is this.
we sorta have free will. its like a fork in the road. we have options of what we can do, but god knows what the consequences are depending on which path we take. but then again, that has a big hole in that theory, since if god knows all, he knows which road we are going to take.
im still divided on this issue and i spaced out in every class today thinking about it.


in addition, i learned something else to day- Pascals Wager.
this, IMO, is brilliant.
my teacher explained it like this: you have a steak. there is a 50% chance that it is poisoned. now, do you take that chance and eat it, or do you leave it alone? the obvious thing is that you leave it alone.
now, when you apply this to religion, you come to this:
if you think there is no god when there is, you go to hell when you die, or something like that. now, if you do believe in god when there is none, what happens when you die? nothing. you just die.
the safer of the 2 routes? id say the religion path is.

gee, i guess it is true that you learn more as you get older.

meanwhile, i think after today im going to devote my life to philosophy. it just makes so much sense....