I have recently been reading in Richard Dawkins' book, the idea that God being both omnipotent and omniscient is a contradiction. I think it is something along the lines of: if God is omniscient then He already knows how He is going to deploy His powers, which means He is effectively bound to act in a certain way -- meaning He is not omnipotent. But I'm not sure I've totaly got my heads around the concept. Can anyone add anything more?

Many people think that God's having foreknowledge of my actions is incompatible with my acting freely. The argument you describe applies this reasoning to God Himself: His foreknowledge of His own future actions would render Him unfree. So either God is not free to do whatever He pleases (i.e., is not omnipotent) or God lacks foreknowledge. I find the original argument dubious. God's foreknowledge of my actions is not really incompatible with my freedom. For more on this, see Question 579 .

If God exists and he knows it all, even the future, then he knew Hitler would go to hell before Hitler was even born. Why would God give someone life, just to send him to hell for all eternity? Is this fair to Hitler and all those doomed to go to hell or is this proof that God doesn't really know it all, not the future at least?

Assume God knows that Hitler will go to Hell, because God knows all truths and it's true that Hitler will go to Hell. Does it follow that Hitler was "doomed" to that fate, that he had no say in it? I'm not sure that it does. For the reason it's true that Hitler will go to Hell might just be that Hitler freely chose actions that will condemn him to Hell. Some of the truths God knows may well have been made true by free actions on our part. See also Question 7 and Question 579 .

Since all decisions are made from our brains and we do not get to choose what brain we are born with, do we really have control over our decisions and are we really responsible for these decisions?

First, I'm not sure I'd say that my brain makes my decisions for me. I make my own decisions. When you win a game of chess, it's you who won it, not your hand (which you used to move the pieces around). But alright, so I use this tool, my brain, to make my decisions and, yes, I didn't ask for this particular tool and, yes, it's functioning might follow rules that I didn't have a say in constructing. Some people do think that this poses a big challenge to our possession of free will. And if having free will is necessary for being responsible for our actions, then some people think this poses a great challenge to our taking responsibility for our actions. Others, however, believe that there is no incompatibility between all these facts about how my decisions get made and my having free will. You might look here (and further references in it) for an article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Hello. Why is it so that when it's night and my mom tells me to go to bed, I never want to. I want to stay up and not sleep. But then in the morning when my mom tells me to get out of bed, I never want to. Then I just want to remain in bed. Please, why is this so?

You might try testing Peter Lipton's suggestion. You could ask your mother to tell you to stay up one night, or to tell you to stay in bed one morning. If it turns out that you then find it easy to do what she says, then Peter's suggestion sounds like it's on the right track. On the other hand, if you find yourself then wanting to go to bed early and to wake up early, we need another explanation.

Is it true today what I will do tomorrow?

If on Tuesday you play chess, then if you had said on Monday "Tomorrow I will play chess" you would have said something true. It's easy to think that the truth of that future tense statement as uttered on Monday constrains what you can do on Tuesday; that is, it's easy to think that the claim's truth on Monday restricts your freedom . It seemed as if you had a choice about whether to play chess on Tuesday — but really you didn't, since it was already true the day before that you will play chess! Most philosophers reject this threat to our freedom. To many, it seems like a piece of verbal trickery. Yet there are disagreements amongst them about what precisely the trick is.