Posted on 11/22/2004 11:12:20 AM PST by stuartcr
No, you aren't the creator, and didn't have anything to do with my wearing the shirt or making the time machine.
"That's what I figured, but if the outcome is known, how is this really free-will?"
Very simple. Every action or thought(the outcome), whether good or bad, moral or immoral is already known by God before it happens.
I'm not disputing here whether God is truly omnipotent, ominiscent and omnisapient; I'm simply saying that your logic is faulty.
God gives man free will to do as he chooses. Man behaves. God knows of his behavior before hand. God does not interfere with man's behavior (outcome), yet he knows of it before the event. That's all there is to it.
The Lord God nevers explains why He did what He did to Job. What He conveys to Job when He speaks directly to him is: "Don't question anything I do. I know a lot more than you." Forever is infinitely more important than what happens to us in this part of life, and painful stuff that results in heavenly rewards, beause the pain changes our behavior and help us earn rewards that last forever, is worth what it costs us. Job says "He knows what I'm like, and when the testing is over, I'll be like refined gold."
God says that He himself dwells outside of time. That is, he does not exist in a linear timeline as we do. What to make of that? C.S. Lewis attempts a word-picture that describes an onlooker looking down on a parade from a height that allows him to see the beginning and the ends and all places inbetween. He is not marching in the parade, however, but observing it as it progresses.
Some folks liken God to a watchmaker who, confident of His design, winds the well-made clock of human existence and sits back and lets it unwind, according to His design. This does not address free will, and dampens the idea of prayer, and He does tell us to pray for His will to be done. Are we to pray that the clock works correctly, for the parade of our linear life to progress on course?
We cannot comprehend the idea of dwelling outside of time, any more than our youngest child can comprehend the enormity of travelling to China and meeting people who don't understand his speech. As the child grows and experiences time, distance, speed...the elements of his linear life, he comes to comprehend the strange idea of China. In fact, if he really dedicates himself to study it further, he can imagine the speed of light, the expansion of the universe, the power of an atomic reaction...even attempt to think about a fourth dimesion.
Just because we cannot yet grasp the enormity of free will and presdestination, does not mean that we weren't meant to consider it, think about it, puzzle over it, discover new layers of thought about it.
But, if I waited until I perfectly understood the nature of electricity and the nature of light (particle or beam?) before I turned on the switch and got busy, I'd be living in the dark all my days, accomplishing nothing.
If any man will do, he will know.
"If God is the creator of all that exists, why isn't He also the creator of our behavior?"
But he is.
God intented to create us with free will. It is up to us what we do with it. If we're virtuos, then we will find God.
God is truth and you can only get to Him through truth. If you look for truth you won't find God; however, if you look for God you will find truth.
This is where you are going off the rails. You are imputing to God responsibility for the decisions we as created beings make, with the rationale that those decisions are a result of how we are made. This is the same argument used by many homosexuals. It ignores the fact that man is a self made soul in the sense that who we are and what we do is partially based on all of our previous decisions. Every decision makes a subtle change in who we are, and the sum of those changes equals who we are "right now."
G-d does not live in the dimension of time. It has been oft speculated that we do as it affords us an opportunity to be changed before we leave "time" as all of eternity would be like "now."
To us it seems somewhat paradoxical, but I'm willing to give G-d the benefit of the doubt as I can't see His side of the equation.
"How is someone free to act, when their act, and the results of their actions, is already known?"
Why aren't you free to act if your behavior is already known?
Are you saying that if God didn't know a priori your actions then you would not be free to act? Or, are you saying that since God knows your actions, your acts should differ from what God already knows?
Think of it as an indepedent event like playing the lottery where the numbers drawn are equivalent to someone's actions, and your guessing them beforehand is like being God. So, when you play the lottery, you're attempting at being God.
Of what value is a "love letter" if you have to ask your spouse to write it?
Uh oh, now you've done it! You had to go and make too much sense with that answer didn't ya? :-)
It was an analogy in an attempt to try to explain how G-d's knowing your future doesn't deny you free will.
:)
Try looking at the entire book of Job as one big metaphor. The fact that the Almighty and Satan are sort of casually hanging out and playing one-upsmanship should have been the first big clue.
In the physical realm, muscles are built by resistance. The same thing occurs in the spiritual realm.
God knows but YOU do not know until you do it. His knowing what you WILL do has nothing to do with the fact that you can CHOOSE to do either good or evil. Saying God knows what you will choose doesn't say WHICH you will choose, does it? And we don't know which we will choose until we choose, do we? So His knowing has nothing to do with OUR choosing. Got it?
But He still lets you choose. God may know what you will choose, but YOU do not until you choose it. Here's something for you: With my predictive capacity, I can predict that someone assaulted by the basketball player "Artess(?)" is going to sue him. Now...when that comes true, does that mean that I caused it?
No one is saying that God causes us to choose as we do.
Many Christians can't make the distinction between discipline and punish. He disciplines those who are in faith, punishes those who are unfaithful.
What most of us don't understand is that except Christ there, are no "Heroes" of the Bible. All of the folks mentioned in scripture were sinners who were declared righteous through faith. (Hebrews)
So, it is your opinion that if God knows something that that means God caused it?
You can only affirm that as a personal opinion and never as a fact.
We agree that God knows what will happen.
I'm not saying God interferes with man's behavior, I'm saying God makes man's behavior, because God made man, and everything else.
I don't think we can really apply our logic to what God does, because we are so limited when compared to God, and all that He can do.
You should tell Pete that, as he is the one my reply was directed to. I happen to believe that God created our behavior, that is why I do not believe we really have free-will....since our behavior is created by God, we may think we have free-will, but we really are only doing what we are supposed to, according to the creator. Whether we believe we have free-will or not really doesn't matter.
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