God's omniscience

Great Debates
62

That is of course your meaning for the word God, and it is either from your own thinking or the teachings of others.

A good loving father would not act as the Christian God does, and we wouldn’t think a father was good, one can love what is good, but first they have to see that good, and according to the OT and the NT, God doesn’t act like a good loving being.

We only have human minds to use, and can only use human understanding of what good is. The writes of the OT show God as being unfair, cruel etc. Hardly a good being! He kills people even the innocent children because the parents did a bad thing, He created a monster, didn’t destroy it , but lets it destroy his (so called) children, when he was said to know the monster would harm his first children because they now knew the difference between good and evil. Truth isn’t contradictory! Love is not self seeking according to the writer Paul. He picks out a favorite child and then lets his favorites Kill a whole town of people(Innocent Children etc.) just to give land to the favorites…sorry it doesn’t sound good or loving to me.

63

…and then cast them into a lake of fire for all eternity for all eternity if they do something you disapprove of. Yeah, exactly like parents. :rolleyes:

As Carcasm said, your post is breathtakingly arrogant. In trying to paint your god as the source of all good, “complete and perfect”, you simply make him sound instead like a selfish jerk, trying to catch his creations out so he can wash his hands of them.

64

It seems like we’re getting off topic- but I can’t help myself :slight_smile:

Terrible, nightmare stuff happens to innocent little children. According to the Bible as I understand it, there is a being who ALWAYS has the knowledge of these events, and ALWAYS has the power to stop it. And yet this being does not stop it.

Any being, just like any man or woman, who has knowledge of and ability to stop terrible things happening to little children, and does not take action to stop it, is unworthy of respect, much less love and devotion.

65

The whole concept of free will is meaningless in my view, but I don’t see why predicting someone’s actions is such a problem for it.

If I’m watching a tape of a football game, and I know that Team A won’t score any points, does that mean the players of Team A don’t have free will (to score)?
So what’s the problem with god knowing how the game will turn out? Especially since he’s usually posited to be outside time.

FTR I am an atheist. I disregarded the OP’s command.

66

Um… Yes.

The figures on the tape have ceased to be moral agents. They are marionettes, or audioanimatronic figures. They cannot act. Rewind the tape, and the quarterback will still throw way behind the WR (the cement-handed incompetent overpaid choke artist!)

67

You were asked whether the football players lack free will when they perform their actions. Here you’ve changed the subject and answered, instead, in terms of the figures on the tape. The figures on the tape are not the football players.

68

Others have brought up some good points with regard to your post, however one thing struck me while reading this: why?

Seriously, I know that we are supposed to be worthless sinners, evil at our core and all that, but when I think about what you say here, what I come back with is that “we” (humanity) don’t add anything to the equation. The “good” that we do is from/of God. So the only thing we could add to the equation is evil. So why would God want (or even create) that?

Now, some answers might be that it’s God’s grace and forgiveness… But that doesn’t answer the question at all.

69

That is the devil, the false Prophets and the beast to be cast in the lake of fire for ever and ever (or ages of ages), not the children.

70

We’re talking about predestination, and a video tape of an event is a model for a predestined event. Do the figures in the tape have “free will,” given that we know how the event ends.

In your interpretation, where the question is about the real football players, then the issue of a video-tape has no relevance at all, of any kind. Of course the tape of Saturday’s game has no effect whatever on the real players’ will to win on Sunday. But that makes the issue of the tape irrelevant.

Your interpretation makes the original question meaningless.

71

You’ve misunderstood the argument concerning the videotape. I’ll rephrase it.

The claim being argued for is:

Someone knowing that X does Y at time Z does not mean X is unfree with respect to doing Y at Z.

The argument for this claim is:

I know that Payton passed at 11AM, because I see an image of him doing so on a recording. Yet it is clear that this does not mean Payton was unfree with respect to passing at 11AM.

72

Yes, exactly.

As hinted previously, I do think that there are problems with the concept of free will, but a third party being able to predict my actions is not one of them.

Of course if you believe in fatalism and someone were to tell me my future, then that’s incompatible with free will. But the issue there is with fatalism, not the predictive element.

73

One problem here is that “the Bible” is a man-made compilation. Many have the opinion that while some of it is viable scripture, not all of it is. I do not see any value in Chronicles as scripture–useful history, yes–the word of Yah, no. Heresy, I know, to mainstream traditionalists who act as though the Bible popped into being in its present form one day. In my view, Chronicles is not that much about praising Yah but more about recording the events of men.

Now concerning Hosea 8:4, (I do consider all of the books of the prophets as scripture) the hebrew word translated as “knew” is yada. Some of the possible meanings of Yada include:

  1. to know

a) to know, learn to know

b) to perceive

c) to perceive and see, find out and discern

d) to discriminate, distinguish

e) to know by experience

f) to recognise, admit, acknowledge, confess

g) to consider

Therefore, perhaps Hosea 8:4 could be better translated as “I acknowledged them not,” or “I distinguished them not.” It does not have to mean Yah did not have knowledge of them, and since a translation that seems to say Yah didn’t have awareness of an event is contradictory to other scriptures which claim Yah knows all, I’d prefer a more consistent translation.

74

I apologize for missing the point… But… Um… I still don’t get it.

At time Z, we don’t know if Payton chooses a pass or run play. Only after time Z can we look back and say, “Wow! He passed!” And we can watch the videotape any number of times.

At time Z, the videotape is in the process of being recorded, just as all the fans in the stadium of in the process of observing the event, which is being impressed on their memories, so they can remember it over and over.

At the moment we call “the present” free will becomes frozen in place. Once it is in “the past,” it doesn’t exist any longer: the decision is permanently imprinted, on videotape and on human memory.

If there is a vast “meta-video-tape” or an entity with “meta-memory,” so that some observer of some kind can “remember” events that haven’t happened yet, then the question of free will becomes open to a new kind of dispute. Because, at least in one interpretation of the theory, we might be able to look at this meta-tape and see, in advance, what our decisions will be tomorrow, and, even with this knowledge, be unable to change those decisions. We might all be flies in amber, trapped, fixed in a four-dimensional photo-album.

That isn’t the only interpretation of a fixed four-dimensional “omnipresent,” but it is at least arguable…

(Or…um…am I still missing the point?)

75

FTR, I’m an atheist.

The mind of God is necessarily much more complex than ours, much as the mind of a man is much more complex than a stapler. We have experiences that are filtered through our non-universe-creating minds. The very question of “how is God omniscient” is a false question that cannot address any real quality God possesses. Further, because the question cannot be properly formulated, the answer doesn’t matter.

As for the issue of good God/bad God… my kids don’t always understand right away why I smacked one of them, or why they can’t go play. I will help them to understand the best I can, but trying to explain to a three year old, who does not have the experience of cutting his finger, that slapping his hand was GOOD FOR HIM is often a losers task.

Point is, you literally can’t know. You believe, and it’s beautiful.

76

Does not our penal system punish transgressors for their free will choices to do a thing despite being told there will be consequences for such actions? You wouldn’t claim that our prisoners aren’t really guilty because they had no free will in the matter?

77

I have no expertise in mathematics, but what is the proof there is no last digit of pi? The way I am figuring, since there have been no repeating pattern found in pi, it is possible that there could be a final digit, is it not? Perhaps one of these days one of those computers busy calculating pi will tell us there is a last digit.

78

Hosea is OT, and is plenty consistent with OT stuff where the big guy doesn’t know all. Plenty of NT stuff doesn’t seem consistent with the OT, but that’s why I’m a Jew.

79

Twice before I have had dreams that seemed to have had precognitive value–both dreams concerned upcoming future events. Both dreams gave me favorable outcomes, and both situations had me worried.

It’s not your “meta-tape,” but, as I doubt any of us will produce such a meta-tape, it’s in the ballpark as far as being close, if we assume for the purposes of argument that my dreams were indeed glimpses of the future.

Now, in both instances I followed the course of conduct I took in my dream. I did this because the outcome was favorable to me, and decided to behave as in the dream, well, because I had nothing else to guide me any better. At the time, whether it was precognitive or simply my dreams working out my problems, i decided to go with it. In both situations, I could have disregarded my dream, but I chose not to and to behave as I did in the dream.

Now, not all the events that resulted in favorable outcome were seen in the dream. In one, I happened to go out of my way to stop in a restaurant and have a cup of coffee before work. This was not my usual habit–usually I drank coffee at home and then went straight to work. In the dream, it was frivolous with no consequences and there was no good reason for stopping for coffee.

When I stopped for coffee I met someone who had an answer for me as to my problem. It was the same argument that I had made in the dream. At this point I was certain that was the winning argument, and I went through with it and the results were exactly as in the dream.The dream had already shown me what to say, but meeting this man with the same argument astounded me and convinced me I should make that argument.

Now, if we assume I did have a glimpse of the “meta-tape,” it may seem to reinforce an argument that I had no freewill because I did just exactly as I dreamed. However, I do remember how I first was blowing off the idea of stopping off for that cup of coffee; I was on the verge of not doing that. I definitely chose to do it. Normally I sometimes do things in dreams I would never do, and I don’t purposefully do them after the dream because it is simply a dream. But I did stop off with that cup of coffee, and the argument that won was an argument I didn’t like. I only decided to do it after stopping for the cup of coffee and having this stranger affirm it for me.

It seems to me that even though I had seen the immediate future (only the next day) I still made choices. It would have been disastrous (lost my job) had I not followed the dream.

I believe in freewill.

80

A lot of people think I am a messianic jew because I reject a lot of mainstream christianity’s practices, for instance, I keep Sabbath rather than Sunday. That said, Shabbat Shalom, Waldo!

As I showed an example that Hosea 8:4 might not say he didn’t know everything, if we choose a different meaning of Yada than the translator did, I would ask if you’ve examined each of these other OT verses to see if the same (alleged) mistake is possible? We have to remember that translators are fallible.

One thing a translator should do is to look at the context when faced with a word with multiple meanings. Since I believe that scripture is consistent, I favor the idea that Hosea 8:4 is traditionally translated poorly and would better read “I acknowledged them not.”

So, is it possible the same translation correction could be applied to these other verses you speak of, Waldo?

I’m also curious about the inconsistency of the NT with the OT that you disapprove of. I have run across many interpretations of NT passages resulting in inconsistency, as far as mainstream interpretation is concerned, but in contemplating these I have discovered other interpretations that make them consistent. Perhaps it is possible you haven’t searched out the intended meaning of some of these passages and applied the mainstream interpretation?

(I don’t wanna highjack the thread, but perhaps we could discuss this in some more appropriate thread or by PM, if you like. But, let me give one for-instance: In Acts 15 we see that a conflict arose over what Hebrew practices should the gentiles follow. The council in Jerusalem decided that it was sufficient if the gentiles obeyed four things: that they abstain from the pollutions of idols, from sexual immorality, from strangled things and from blood.

The next verse then asks the question, “For is not Moses of Old taught in every synagogue on the sabbath day?”

Now some modern Christians will tell us that because Sabbath is not mentioned in the list of four things, that modern christians are therefore authorized to ignore Sabbath. Yet, it appears to me that keeping sabbath was a foregone conclusion, because they mention that Moses is taught. This must mean that those four things are a starting point for new converts; why mention Moses is taught on the sabbath? Seems to be saying, "start with these four things and go at your own pace thereafter as you learn Moses in the synagogue on Sabbath, so I think the mainstream has it wrong.)

81

Well, let’s start with the obvious one – with Adam and Eve hiding in the garden before getting asked how they know about nakedness.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”