Strong Earthquake Hits Chile

Fox News ^ | none

[An.American.Expatriate]

SANTIAGO, Chile — A strong earthquake shook Chile Thursday, shortly before Sebastian Pinera was to be sworn in as president. The aftershock reached a 7.2-magnitude according to the United States Geological Survey.

[stuartcr]

Unless one wants answers from people, not the bible.

[stuartcr]

I’m not asking God, I’m asking you.

[stuartcr]

No, I’m not asking you to define God. I’m asking you for an answer based on what you believe, and/or know.

[stuartcr]

I guess it’s a sign of the times.

[stuartcr]

But man interprets that word differently. That is why I ask men questions, not God...for their interpretations.

[wk4bush2004]

“The last 5.8 was only about 1.2 miles deep which indicates a slight change in these aftershocks.”

And there was just a minor quake (3.3) in Southern California, but it was at the same depth on the same fault line as the one in Chile.

That concerns me.

[Star Traveler]

I'm sorry I can't make the issue of "Divine Omniscience" simple for you. As you can see below... if God was simple and "one-dimensional" so that people could list a series of checkboxes and say "yes/no" -- then God simply would not be God, would He? LOL ...

So, I can offer you a "study" in Divine Omniscience if you wish, from some of the articles below, if you're curious about what this means. I could list out a good summary of the relevant Bible verses about Divine Omniscience, too, if you wish.

If you're really interested in knowing more about God and His Divine Omniscience, I would advise some serious study on the subject with some well-known and recognized Evangelical Christian authors.

As far as I can go is the very simplistic answer that I gave you up above, which is definitely "simplistic" when you consider the study that has gone into this subject, from the standpoint of what the Bible says about it and what Biblical scholars have written about it.

And as for my answer not being "simple enough" for you... I'm sorry I can't make things more simple that my very simplistic and very inadequate answer. The people who are well-known experts in the subject and have careers in it (which I don't) -- don't get as simple as I have been on the subject, thus far in this thread...

See the following...

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Articles: Divine Omniscience

Writings of Dr. William Lane Craig on Divine Omniscience.

Middle Knowledge, Truth-Makers and the Grounding Objection

The so-called "grounding objection" is the most commonly raised misgiving which philosophers have to the doctrine of divine middle knowledge: how can counterfactuals of creaturely freedom be true when there is no ground of their truth? I hope to show that the theory of truth known as Truth-Maker Theory can help to shed considerable light on this objection, revealing just how difficult it is to formulate a compelling version of the objection. For it is far from evident that counterfactuals of creaturely freedom must have truth-makers or, if they must, that appropriate candidates for their truth-makers are not available.

'Men Moved By The Holy Spirit Spoke From God' (2 Peter 1.21)
A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration

Scriptural inspiration has traditionally been understood by Christian theologians to be plenary, verbal, and confluent. But how is the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture compatible with Scripture's being a truly divine-human product? How can one hold to the verbal inspiration of the whole of Scripture without lapsing into a dictation theory of inspiration which, in effect, extinguishes the human author? A theory of divine inspiration based upon God's middle knowledge is proposed, according to which God knew what the authors of Scripture would freely write when placed in certain circumstances. By arranging for the authors of Scripture to be in the appropriate circumstances, God can achieve a Scripture which is a product of human authors and also is His Word. Such a theory is compared and contrasted with similar views expressed by Lessius and Wolterstorff.

On Hasker's Defense of Anti-Molinism

In a pair of recent articles, William Hasker has attempted to defend Robert Adams's new anti-Molinist argument. But I argue that the sense of explanatory priority operative in the argument is either equivocal or, if a univocal sense can be given to it, it is either so generic that we should have to deny its transitivity or so weak that it would not be incompatible with human freedom.

Hasker on Divine Knowledge

William Hasker has presented influential arguments against divine foreknowledge and middle knowledge. I argue that his objections are fallacious. With respect to divine foreknowledge, three central issues arise: temporal necessity, power entailment principles, and the nature of free will. In each case Hasker's analysis is defective. With respect to divine middle knowledge, Hasker presents four objections concerning the truth of counterfactuals of freedom. Against Hasker I argue that such propositions are grounded in states of affairs belonging to the actual world logically prior to its full instantiation and are contingently true or false.

Robert Adams's New Anti-Molinist Argument

Robert Adams has presented a new argument to show the logical impossibility of divine middle knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. However, Adams's reasoning is unsound because the notion of "explanatory priority" as it plays a role in the argument is either equivocal or not demonstrably transitive. Moreover, his argument contains a false (fatalistic) premiss.

Adams on Actualism and Presentism

Robert Adams has defended an argument against the pre-existence of singular propositions about oneself on the grounds that it would have been possible for them to have existed even if one had never existed, which is absurd. But the crucial assumption underlying this reasoning, namely, that the only histories of a world which are possible at any time are continuations of that history up to that time, is false, as shown by the illustration of time travel. Furthermore, if Adams were correct, fatalism would follow. The failure of Adams's argument has important implications for the Molinist doctrine of divine middle knowledge.

Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience

For philosophers in either field, philosophy of science and philosophy of religion are too often viewed as mutually irrelevant disciplines. As a result, insights acquired in each field may not be appropriated by philosophers working in the other field. This is unfortunate because sometimes the problems can be quite parallel and a consistent resolution is required. One especially intriguing case in point concerns, in philosophy of science, the possibility of tachyons and time travel and, in philosophy of religion, the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human freedom. It is rarely appreciated by discussants of these respective issues that the problems are quite parallel and that insights garnered in the resolution of the difficulty in one discipline may have provocative implications for the solution of the parallel problem in the other field.

Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb's Paradox

Newcomb's Paradox provides an illuminating non-theological illustration of the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. We are to imagine a being with great predictive powers and to suppose we are confronted with two boxes, B1 and B2. B1 contains $1,000; B2 contains either $1,000,000 or nothing. We may choose either B2 alone or B1 and B2 together. If the being predicts that you choose both boxes, he does not put anything in B2; if he predicts that you choose B2 only, he puts $1,000,000 in B2. What should you choose? A proper construction of the pay-off matrix for the decision vindicates the one-box choice. If this is correct, then those who claim that God?s knowledge is counterfactually dependent on future contingents foreknown by Him are likewise vindicated.

Purtill on Fatalism and Truth

Richard Purtill's recent contribution to the fatalism debate does not, I think, succeed in the author's intent of proving that the omnitemporality of truth implies fatalism, nor that the past is unchangeable in a non- trivial sense, nor that the consequences of his argument are not detrimental to logic and theology.

"Lest anyone should fall"
A middle knowledge perspective on perseverance and apostolic warnings

Apostolic warnings against apostasy pose a difficulty for the classic doctrine of perseverance of the saints because either the warnings seem superfluous or else it seems possible for the believer to fall away after all. The attempt to construe the warnings as the means by which God effects perseverance fails to distinguish the classical doctrine from a Molinist doctrine, according to which believers can fall away but in fact will not due to God's extrinsically efficacious grace. A Molinist perspective is coherent and, unlike the classical doctrine, does not render superfluous the apostolic admonitions.

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About William Lane Craig

Biographical Sketch

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He and his wife Jan have two grown children.

At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.

He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

[Star Traveler]

You were saying ...

I’m not asking God, I’m asking you.

You're asking the wrong person then. You should be asking God, because I only know what God has revealed, in that area...

[winoneforthegipper]

Not the same fault for sure though, Chile’s is along the nazca and south american subdcution zone.

[wk4bush2004]

“Not the same fault for sure though, Chile’s is along the nazca and south american subdcution zone.”

Oops! Sorry, made a mistake. I was referring to the fault lines and their connections, which eventually leads to California.

[Star Traveler]

You were saying ...

No, I’m not asking you to define God. I’m asking you for an answer based on what you believe, and/or know.

Well..., you see... that's the problem. I don't know anything on that subject area -- "myself".

Only what the Bible has revealed to us -- is known -- about that. So, how can I tell you what I don't know -- but -- what I have only read from the revealed Word of God?

I think you're asking the wrong source of information. You need to get your answers from the Word of God, as He has revealed those things to us, in that Word.

All I can do is quote what He has said. I know nothing on my own in that regard.

[winoneforthegipper]

Not a problem at all.

That latest 5.8 at that depth was likely felt by the good people down in Chile better than a few of the other more powerful ones earlier.

[Star Traveler]

You were saying ...

But man interprets that word differently. That is why I ask men questions, not God...for their interpretations.

You actually need to do the following, in regards to that, in the Word of God. You need to listen to God on the matter.

That's not to say that you can't consider what others have studied from the Word of God. You can. But, in the end, you must take the Word of God, from God's mouth, Himself, as the final authority, and no other.

That would include me, too. I'm not the authority... it's God who is the authority on this subject as only "He" can reveal what is totally unknown from any human perspective... and I mean "totally" and "absolutely totally"... :-)

Again, here's what God says to you and to me... and to anyone else who may want to know...

James Chapter 1

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all
liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like
a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the
Lord;

8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

There is where you need to go for your answers (and this applies to anyone else, too).

[winoneforthegipper]

Speaking of which the USGS came out with there summary report for these quakes.

“Tectonic Summary
The Chile earthquakes of March 11, 2010, 14:39 UTC and 14:55 UTC, occurred in the region of the plate boundary between the Nazca and South America plates, in the aftershock region of the great Chile earthquake of February 27, 2010. The March 11 earthquakes almost certainly occurred as the result of the change of regional stress caused by the February 27 earthquake. Preliminary analyses of their locations and seismic-wave radiation patterns, however, imply that the March 11 shocks occurred as the result of normal faulting within the subducting Nazca plate or the overriding South America plate, unlike the February 27 earthquake, which occurred as thrust faulting on the interface between the two plates. At present, the focal depths of the shocks are not known with sufficient precision to confidently determine within which of the Nazca or South America plate the earthquakes occurred.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010tsa6.php#summary

[Star Traveler]

You were saying ...

Unless one wants answers from people, not the bible.

The problem there is that "people" don't know what is in the mind of God, unless He reveals it to them. And the "Word of God" is what He has written and revealed to us -- mankind.

Thus, it's not people you need to get your answers from, in regards to God, who He is and what He does and what He plans to do, etc., and etc. It's from God you need to get those answers.

[El Gran Salseron]

I couldn’t discern much from your video link. It would play for a second or two then buffer, a second or two then buffer. I’m on cable so that I know it’s not this computer.

Stay safe!

[El Gran Salseron]

I just learned the other day that major earthquakes do change the world time by a couple of seconds. They usually don’t adjust the atomic clock in Colorado until the New Year.

[Theophilus]

In other words, God not only has absolute knowledge, He has absolute power, and thus can change what His “knowledge” indicates will happen (if left on its own and to natural processes...)

I'm not sure I can wrap my brain around what you said. I don't think God leaves anything on its own. Nothing can exist without God's sustaining providence. For us, "natural" means normal but I'm not convinced that God acknowledges a distinction between natural and supernatural. God knows all contingencies but He knows nothing contingently.

[winoneforthegipper]

I went to an earthquake thread and a theology class broke out!....lol

[winoneforthegipper]

Star Traveler,

You guys got to save some of your positioning for this weekend. Dynamic qpf models are suggesting biblical(Imagine Noah's Ark)flooding along the mid-atlantic.