Jesus Christ

I don't know where you got your information, but you could not have interpreted me any more incorrectly. I've had numerous "spiritual awakenings" and I believe in "God" (whatever that means) with the entirety of my being.

 

My fault Neo, I must've severely misread you because you were coming off like an atheist to me. My apologies.

@ Twang, I take it you're not too familiar with quantum physics.

 

There's no knowledge I'm able to access that the rest of you cannot. We're all capable of accessing the same information. Problem is human beings are conditioned to only believe things they can verify with their 5 senses.

And I know God is real. You can argue all you want to but it aint gettin you anywhere. Those of us who know the Truth know the only way to find God is to look within, not asking a bunch of people on a message board. Unless of course, you're not interested in finding God and just come here to argue with people who do know or believe. If that's the case, carry on.

 

I feel where you're coming from. And I agree atheists and traditional Christians do have a lot in common. I don't know about agnostics since I guess I'd technically fall under that. I dunno much about the titles since I don't identify with them but if an agnostic is someone who believes in God but has no religion, some would describe me as one. I personally don't "believe in" God, I know God. A belief is something held for something that could possibly be untrue. However, some may describe me as agnostic anyway due to the general connection with someone and God absent of religion. I have very little in common with atheists and even less in common with traditional Christians.

 

I post in an attempt to find out why people believe, you say the way to find god is to look within ut what does that mean?

In my opinion if you constantly look within yourself for answers to difficult questions you end up with a very biased view.

 

Or we can end up having a group mentality, there is a mixture of taking in what we find within ourselves and incorporating the outside world. It's a balance.

If we hang on to every word of intellectuals, scientists, theologians, philosophers, then we risk going only as far as these people have gone.

 

I’d like to touch on Free Will and God’s omniscience.

Free will just means having the ability to make choices for yourself with out them being made for you.

Free will does not mean that all your decisions will be good ones, free will means you can make bad decisions as well.

Free will does not mean freedom from consequences, if you use your free will to jump off a cliff, that is your freely chosen decision but that does not mean that there will be no consequences from doing so.


Now some say that Free will and God’s omniscience are contradictory and there are many explanations.

This is how I view it, many seem to want to put limitations on God by saying omniscience is all or nothing but I believe that God’s omniscience means not that he knows everything but that he has the ability to know everything and can choose not to know something if he chooses, without giving up the ability to know everything.

I believe that in order to impart free will to his creatures, God choose not to know what those creatures would choose to do, because once God in his omniscience chooses to know something what he has chosen to foreknow it must happen as he has foreseen and then there is no more a choice in the matter and so there can be no free will.

 

As a matter of fact, you seem to me less like an agnostic than a gnostic. A divine spark or seed (Inner Light) is implanted in each of us, and our job is to become aware of it.

 

Instead of being and agnostic, I think you may be a Gnostic, with an inner spark or light planted in each of us and our job being to discover it.

 

And that has always been an extremely, extremely, extremely, extremely flawed explanation in my opinion.
First of all, this comes from interpreting God in a humanizing manner. I.E. "God must act within my limits of logic, and there must be some way that we have free will according to my beliefs, so I have to set God up as a human-like entity in order to rationalize my own beliefs."
I mean seriously, does "forgetting to know the future in order to put a limit on omniscience" really sound like a God-like thing? And even further, you are saying that "God" did this so we could make our own choices? It's the most arrogant thing I've ever heard of, no offense. It takes power from an all powerful, all knowing thing in order to place it in our measly, earth wrinkled, molecule-hands.

Secondly, it just doesn't make any sense. If God knew it in the past, and THEN chooses to "unknow" it, it doesn't change the fact that he predicted it at some point, and so it will still be as he predicted it, even after he blinded himself to his own predictions. So even if God "chooses" to make himself blind to the future, all this means is that God is now in the same category as us.

 

Amazingly enough, I kinda agree with OWB on this (This rarely happens). I'm not saying that God has given us free will, but I think OWB's explanation as to how He could have done that consistent with his omnipotence and omniscience is not illogical. We're not taking "power from an all powerful, all knowing thing in order to place it in our measly, earth wrinkled, molecule-hands". He's doing it because He wants to. If I were an omnipotent, omniscient being, I think I'd want to, too, because it would be so boring knowing for all eternity how everything is gonna turn out. If you think that's outrageous, check out Hartshorne, a Protestant "process theologian" who thinks God did this with all of nature, so that He can be omnipotent and omniscient without being able to do a whole lot or know squat. It's not that He's blinding Himself. He just gives us the will to choose freely, which by definition means He can't completely predict what we're going to do, even though humans are somewhat predictable.

 

God of the Bible is considered to be the most wise. While he has given up his right to know exactly what we will do, he can forsee what we will do based on our actions. As an example, if someone has a growing interest in cocaine, then it would not be too difficult to foresee that this person is leading down a road of addiction. God has this same ability, but I would say that He is much better at this than anyone else. When God senses the path that we take with our hearts, then God, through his infinite wisdom, will know where this holding of a wicked heart will lead; He will know its outcome. Just like when you see a nation oppressing their people, more likely than not, the ones being oppressed will usually rise up against their oppressors.

I believe that actions, or at least certain actions, leads towards a universal reaction.

 

First, it doesn't matter how many times you say extremely, it won't make it any more or less flawed. If it’s flawed, it’s flawed and if it’s not flawed it’s not.

You make it sound like I'm doing this to God, when the simple fact is God did it for us.

Omniscience is God’s to do with as he pleases and it seems to me that you are the one putting limitations on God by saying just because he has the ability to know everything, then he has to know everything. All I’m saying is if God chooses not to know something, who I’m I or who are you to say he has to know it.

God knew full well what it would mean to give others free will and your saying; “It takes power from an all powerful, all knowing thing in order to place it in our measly, earth wrinkled, molecule-hands.” just means that we should appreciate even more the precious gift God has given us and perhaps stop abusing it as much as we generally do.

God didn’t know it in the past and so did not have to “unknow” it. It seems that you keep believing that omniscience means that he knows every thing, when in fact it could mean that he just has the ability to know everything, it’s much like a man who can lift 500 pounds, it doesn’t mean that he has ever lifted 500 it just means he could if he chose to and if he chose to lift only 450 does that mean he can’t lift 500, no it just means he chose not to.

And that does not mean that God can not know the future, all it means is that he has chosen not to know what choices are to be made by those he’s given free will.

 

Thanks, some interesting points.

Just wondering if you ever read the SF foundation series, in it a concept of psycho-history is talked about, where a scientist finds that given mankind as a whole, he can predict the future of mankind as a whole but what an individual will do is not predictable.

 

That sounds interesting. Do you happen to have the exact title of the book/s? I searched but I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to find.

 

No, I haven't read it, but it would make sense. At the quantum level, all sorts of crazy, unpredictable stuff seems to go on. Physical objects have both local particle and non-local wave properties that appear depending on whether wavelength or position is measured, and the value of a future measurement is unpredictable. But the statistical distribution of is predictable. We know that tomorrow downtown Manhattan will be crowded, although we also know that a bunch of people will stay home for various reasons, and we don't know who those will be.

According to the Dhammapada: "what you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow." In that sense, human behavior is relatively predictable, but not necessarily determined or lacking free will.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll express myself according to your whims next time.

Simple fact? Prove it.

I don't really think you even understand the gravity of what you are saying, and why I consider it so intellectually and spiritually offensive. If God has limited himself in order to give us free will, then that is basically a power of God that we now have, and I brought this up in another thread, how can you "abuse" free will? It doesn't make sense. "You can do anything you like, I leave the future of my entire creation in your hands, but there is still only one choice to make and if you don't do that then you don't exist."
I mean seriously, what is the definition of free will. Will that is free. The will to do whatever one would like, make any choices you want to. If that kind of power is given directly by God, then how, how can you make a WRONG decision?

Wow, yet another analogy comparing God to a man. Where do they end..
Well, here, OlderWaterBrother, I'll go ahead and tell you something. Omniscience means "all-knowing". And all-knowing means, KNOWING EVERYTHING. It doesn't mean "the ability to know everything" it means knowing everything. If you think that your God does not even know the future of his own creation, then your God is not omniscient. Simple.

 

One of the major problems I have with this is that not only is it extremely humanizing and offensive to my concept of what "God" is, it also places God in some sort of linear perspective.
I'm sure you've heard the Einstein quote that goes something like "No problem can be solved on the level in which it was created."
To me, God would ultimately be operating outside of the limitations of space and time, or would be so perfectly integrated into space and time that he would literally be all-pervasive throughout space/time, which would pretty much still put God outside of them limitations of them. To say that God is reliant upon things like "the future" and "the past" in order to give us free will indicates that God is a subject UNDER time, and is also not omniscient as well. This is just not congruent with what "God" would be in the truest sense.

 

God is pure intelligence, why would God choose to "not know" something? Especially just for the sake of gaining some kind of thrill out of leaving the world up to the chaotic choices made via humanly free will?

But I guess these are the kind of assumptions people need to make in order to carry on with their religions.

How about everyone has free will and God isn't worried about what people do because God can always turn any situation around? I guess that would make too much sense to conclude that while things may appear to be bad in our eyes, there is nothing to worry about because God has everything under control.

This is why I say faith and fear cannot coexist. Faith in God would relax your mind because you'd know that absolutely NOTHING happens without God's permission. Fear makes you think God has to be limited in order for us to function. Fear also makes you think free will gives humans more power than we really have.

I'm with Neo on this one 100%.