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To: P-Marlowe
Your theory reduces God to a mere observer of his creation. Taking away the veneer from your premise here, it would appear that what you are preaching is some kind of Pelagian Deism where Man is in control and God is ultimately irrelevant.

A step too far, let's back up here to the chess game.

Do you agree that there are fixed rules to chess? That therefore, one can enumerate every possible choice for the next move on the board?

If so, one can (for each possible move listed) figure out all possible choices for the next move; and so on, and so on. (In principle there are an infinite number of choices due to unresolvable stalemates; but you can think of them as an "equilibrium" situation where there is no gross change over time.)

Let's say you had a super-duper êber-computer that could do 10100 calculations per second, or whatever, so that within ten seconds of any move on the board, the computer would have neatly calculated and catalogued all possible moves to the end of the game. The computer wouldn't *know* which move you were about to make, but it could "see" ALL of them in advance.

But doing so would not make the computer a passive observer, would it?

And so with God, except that instead of chess, one has the entire real world, and everyone's mind and heart, and all of their myriad choices, moment by moment. (And, if you want to get picky, every tree, animal, molecule, atom, electron, and elementary particle, down to Planck's length and whatever infinitesimal division of time you want.)

God knowing in advance everything that could possibly happen, does not preclude him from interfering -- any point at which he acts, and his actions have effect, that state of the universe is one which he can use as a starting point now and see all interactions possible, until the end of time.

Cheers!

13 posted on 05/21/2011 8:54:00 AM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: grey_whiskers
Feh, didn't proofread.

super-duper êber-computer = super-duper über-computer

14 posted on 05/21/2011 8:58:33 AM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: grey_whiskers
God knowing in advance everything that could possibly happen, does not preclude him from interfering --

Your point was that God does not interfere in our free will. My point is that unless God interferes with our free will, we cannot be saved. Hence our salvation is not dependent upon our free will, but upon God changing our will to conform to his.

God doesn't simply know your destiny, he has chosen you in him from before the foundation of the earth.

That is the premise upon which you must build your answers to any perceived paradox between your alleged Free Will and God's determined will. To state that God's election is determined by his response to your free will is to render God irrelevant to your salvation.

God chose you in him before he even formed the earth. Start from there.

15 posted on 05/21/2011 9:05:35 AM PDT by P-Marlowe (LPFOKETT GAHCOEEP-w/o*)
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To: grey_whiskers

Now rethink your reasoning, only this time take dimension time to be a volume rather than a stream, for that is the perspective which God has since He isboth inside and outside of the spacetime universe. Which perspective He chooses to take is His purview, and even Jesus taught this, and He is God with us.


16 posted on 05/21/2011 9:07:06 AM PDT by MHGinTN (Some, believing they can't be deceived, it's nigh impossible to convince them when they're deceived.)
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