Posted on 08/28/2006 2:05:21 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Who created satan, knowing beforehand, what he would become?
The tendency of your argument lately with me (and others) seems to be that uyou want to make God the only free will in the Universe. The only one with the liberty to desire, or act. And therefore the only one with responsibility.
The astounding thing is that God did indeed make creatures with wills which could truly and effectively oppose his own. It is possible for us to oppose the will of God, and do it with consequences which are real, and indeed permanent.
As for resolving the paradox of human freedom and divine omniscience and oimnipotence: that's as impossible for YOU to do, as to look directly into your own eye.
Can you actually prove any of this, or is it what you believe?
In this case, of course God cannot be required to submit to examination under a microscope (or telescope) because He is the Creator of the physical Universe, and hence outside of its laws; in fact, He pervades and yet exceeds the Universe He made, and is outside of time and space.
However, He does reveal himself.
We can know something about His character by His works of art, just as we can know something about Shakespeare or Van Gogh or Michelangelo from the whole body of their works. In addition to this natural revelation, there is also supernatural revelation: the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets, through the words they spoke, through their recorded words, and through the Church, which is the guaranted interpreter of Scripture.
"Upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Such is the evidence.
I realize that not everybody accepts it, but that could not be because there is too little evidence, but rather too much for us to compass, since it includes the entire Cosmos. And more.
http://www.existence-of-god.com/
See especially the sidebar on the left, with the "problem of evil" and so forth.
One other thing I remember is how Muslim terrorists literally defecated all over a church they had been staying in during a sort of stand off, I think it was?
We were talking about evidence of free will, not the existence of God.
That's true, but they're related. Without God, there could be no free will, because all our thoughts and actions would be full explainable by irresistable deterministic materialistic causes, just like everything else in the Universe. Only God is free--- and those whome He creates in His image and likeness.
Of course it's true, because everything is relative to what we believe, and to what God wants.
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