My point is that it’s an all powerful god. A god who can do anything. If you are saying that a race of beings who are sin-free and have free will cannot be created, then you are arguing for a god who is NOT all powerful. Because there is something that it cannot do. Regardless, you would think that a god who was omniscient would have seen beforehand that people with free will would sin at some point, but it went ahead with the experiment anyway. That seems stupid or cruel. If I were going to create a race of beings I knew beforehand were going to wind up in hell because of something I didn’t want them doing in the first place, hmm… maybe I shouldn’t create them. After all, I can do anything…
First, to address the OP, let’s put it in mathematical terms so we can bring out the nature of the paradox. Let x be the weight of the rock, and let y be the most that God can lift. Then the question you’re actually posing is “Is there a value of x and y such that x>y AND y>x?” Posing it this way, removes the whole issue of what God can or cannot do, and points it out as what it is: a clever brain exercise to attempt to disprove God, but ultimately, pointless; a semantic exercise much like the four-sided triangle, squared-circle, changing the value of pi, etc. that were mentioned earlier
Or, to expand one what Thudlow Boink and **Lord Ashtar ** said, the fourth option, there may be something greater that allowing sinning may serve. As I’ve always understood, sinning is doing anything but that which is God’s desire for us. Expanding from that, given a choice with n alternatives, there is one alternative which is not sin (exactly what God wants us to do), and n-1 alternatives which are sin (ie, not exactly what God wants us to do). Thus, to eliminate sin, each choice must have only one alternative. Further, to have free-will, one must have a options from which to choose; that is, it is not a choice unless there are at least two alternatives. Thus, it follows that free-will and “no sin” cannot exist simultaneously.
Hence, we have two possibilities, a “no sin” utopia of automatons, or a sinful world of free-willed individuals. That is, this “conundrum” is no different than the rock one; except this logically reduces differently. Let x be the boolean for “no-sin” and y be the boolean for “free-will”, then you’re saying God->x&y AND !x THERFORE !God. As I stated above, I think the premise God->x&y is fundamentally flawed because it is post hoc reasoning and it depends on a logical impossibility of x&y to be true, but it never can be because x->!y and y->!x.
Playing devil’s advocate, if a god can do anything, why not make every choice a sin-free choice to begin with? See, when you talk about a being who can do anything, you have to think of EVERY possibility.
God created everything therefore god created sin, and knew ahead of time sin would happen. The buck stops with god. In the rock scenario, there are no motivations to speculate about. However, I have serious concerns about a god who can do anything it wants and yet it created beings it knew would do things contrary to its desire, thereby dooming members of that race to eternal punishment when it knew ahead of time that would happen. And we’re supposed to worship this being??
Okay, let’s run with this. I’m going to keep going with my definition of sin (as I defined it above, that sin is that which is against his will). Thus, the position you are holding is technically possible, but nonsensical. It is a sin to murder; could God make it not a sin? Sure he could, but why would he? Or to relate it back to us, I think murder is bad too… I could murder someone, but why would I? The capability to do anything does not necessitate the nature to desire to do it.
This sentence alone is loaded with things that are contrary to at least my understanding of general theology. And at least if they’re not contrary to general theology, they certainly are to mine. Saying God created sin, is like saying God created darkness; this is twisting of the truth, at best. Darkness, in and of itself, is nothing more than a lack of light. Sin is a similar concept; it is a lack of something God did create: love. That is, God did not create sin and darkness per se; God created love and light.
Further, in my philosophy, the concept of “knew ahead of time” is foreign. God exists outside of time, and so any reference to past, present, future, or even order of events is contrary to that.
How common these beliefs are or are not, I cannot say. But I can only argue from the perspective that I believe and understand.
I addressed some of what you say here above, but another part that concerns me is your interpretation of hell/hades/she’ol. While I understand it is a belief held by popular culture, I, personally, do not see sufficient scriptural support for that belief. While I am still in flux on my own views on what exactly “hell” is and is not, I do not believe that it is not a “place” of eternal punishment. Perhaps this is why you misunderstand God’s motivations.
Only if you choose to. If we make it so everyone is incapable of sin, yet, it is in God’s desire to be worshipped; then we would not have the free-will to worship him. Hence, the only way he can give us free-will is to allow us not to worship him, but because that is against his will, it is, by definition, sin. Thus, we are back to the free-will <–> sin issue.
Why not take the possibility of murder out of the equation altogether?
God: “Hmm… let’s see… murder will probably be something sinful so when I create these beings, let me just take out their ability to murder each other.”
(Repeat for every other sinful act.)
What’s so difficult about an all-powerful being making things the way he wants them to begin with? Unless, of course, that being was merely made up without people thinking about these inconsistencies to begin with?
And as far as creating sin, he created the race that is full of sinful members. He is ultimately responsible for the creation of sin. If he didn’t want sin, then he shouldn’t have created the race of sinners.
I don’t think people understand what the implications of “all-knowing” and “all-powerful” bring with them. As far as I was taught, a Christian god is all-knowing, that means he knows everything that is happening. Everything that did happen, Everything that WILL happen. A million years before you were born, he knew it was going to happen.
Which brings me to the next point.
Let’s make these presumptions (if they are not accurate, please let me know)
Christianity teaches that god is all-knowing, all powerful, never wrong and everything happens according to his plan. Is this accurate?
That means that millions of years ago, he knew I would be born. Nothing could change that from happening because god is never wrong and everything happens according to his plan. Even if he changed his mind, he already knows everything so he knew ultimately which way his mind would end up (again, implications from being all-knowing). So, at this point in time today, god knows when I will die. He also already knows whether I am going to heaven or hell. If he knows I will go to heaven, then there is nothing I can do to prevent that because god is never wrong. If he knows I am going to hell, again, nothing I can do because god is never wrong. Either way, living my life is pointless with an all-knowing, never wrong god.
Sorry, I meant lekatt’s past posts. I don’t recall that phrase specifically, but you’ll probably notice a consistent pattern of glurge and contempt toward skepticism and skeptics.
The thing that is confusing me about this free will subject is whether or not we are specifically talking about the Christian god.
:::::::warning this next section has nothing to do with that free will/sin subject I am just curious as to whether or not it is true:::::::::
From what I hear the old testament god is nothing like the new testament god. I have been told the old testament god was a very angry god who’s hobbies included turning a guy into a pillar of salt.
Whereas the new testament god is more forgiving, loving figure.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::Back to the subject at hand :::::::::::::::::::::::
If, in fact (the Christian) god does know what we are going to do at any given point in time, then why did he give us free will at all. If you do believe in fate then usually you have to believe in something or someone who is creating fate. Consequently if your believe in fate then you do not believe in free will???
You’re not addressing my point here. If God removes all of the sinful things, then there is no choice; if there is no choice, then there is no free will. Do you disagree with the definition of sin I’m using? There’s no “sort of sin”, it’s either exactly what God wants, or it’s not; thus, for a given choice, there is one option that is not a sin, and the rest are sins. To have this world you are creating, you must either remove free-will OR you must be using a different definition of sin than the one I’m using. If it is the first, then you’re ignoring a huge part of the equation, and if it’s the latter, please give me the definition you’re using.
That is, I do not agree with your claim that no-sin and free-will can go exist. In fact, I counterclaim that sin must necessarily exist for free-will to exist. I further theorize that God put greater value on free-will; hence, sin must exist.
Did you miss my light/dark analogy? Can you please address that directly? You’re simply reitterating the same point I addressed above. Some things exist in concept, but only because we refer to them as an absence of something. Let’s try a simpler analogy. I have a car, someone who does not have a car does not possess some quantity of a “no-car” concept; they simply do not possess a car. Sin is similar to the “no-car” concept, it exists as a concept only, that is a lack of love and a lack of God’s will. Please address this view.
It looks like you’re trying to assign “blame” for sin. I believe we have free-will, thus by making the choice to sin, the responsibility lies only with me. This is like blaming Albert Einstein for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because his work made the creation of the atomic bomb possible. Or for a more relevant example, the constitution grants us free speech, which in turn allows us to make racist remarks; by your logic, the constitution is ultimately responsible for anyone who decides to utter a racist slur.
Essentially, my point reduces to the idea that creating someone/something with the ability to do a particular act does not necessarily equate to responsibility.
This is a strawman. I explicitly stated above that I believe God exists outside of time. Any arguments about “did happen”, “will happen”, “before you were born”, etc. are nonsensical in the context of my beliefs.
In a word… okay.
I addressed my issue with this above. I do not hold the belief that God exists within time, and I will not attempt to defend such a position, precisely because I believe it is indefensible. If you can reframe your point within that context, I’ll be happy to take a stab at it.
My perspective is based within my belief system, which is the “Christian God”.
I would advise you read the scripture and decide for yourself. You cannot believe everything you hear, especially about such a controversial subject as religion. I’m sure that if you have specific questions about that, you can open a thread and you’ll see posts from both sides, with scriptural cites.
This is a complicated issue. From my experience, the vast majority of people would say yes. I, personally, do not see the concepts as contradictory, but it is an interesting discussion, namely, Does an omniscient God mean no free will? I’m sure with a little searching you can find plenty of threads covering that topic, or start one of your own
Blaster Master, I don’t have time right now to address everything you bring up, however, I will try to address this point:
In those examples, you are talking about entities that have no knowledge of the future. I am arguing that god, being all-knowing, has foreknowledge of the outcome of every action he does. I just feel that if god were truly perfect, he would have come up with a better system where everyone wasn’t disappointing him all the time. It’s like he set up the entire human race for failure, when he had the power to make it the way he wanted to to begin with. Instead of sin, why didn’t god say: “Well, why don’t I just make it so everyone is so intelligent and rationally thinking that to think of doing anything wrong would seem patently illogical and ridiculous?” Instead, we get this system whereby we are scared into thinking we’ll go to hell if we don’t comply. And heck, just being born makes you a sinner when you haven’t even done anything yet because of original sin.
In your analogies, I would say that if Einstein were all powerful, and all knowing, and had ultimate power over atomic energy, he could make it so that atomic power could only be used for peaceful means. But Einstein did not have such control, so he could not be blamed for how it is ultimately used.
Okay, so let’s address your free-will/sin point. You say more or less that sin has to exist for choice and free will to exist. So, let me see.
So, god creates this universe with free will and some of the choices will be sinful (or not what god wants)…
So basically god is saying this:
God: “Okay guys, I made this universe for you. By the way, you have free will, however, if you actually utilize free will and make the choices I don’t want you to make, you’re going to eternal damnation. So make sure you only make the choices that are sin free.”
Me: “yeah, I’ll keep that in mind…”
What kind of free will is that? You’re saying that the universe is set up for free will, but ultimately there is only one choice: the one god wants you to make otherwise you’re going to hell.
It just seems to me that if someone were “perfect,” “all knowing,” and “all powerful” they could have come up with a better system. It’s like he’s given us free will, but it’s not really free will because really, there’s only one path to take. So, all the “choices” are really non-choices.
You could read the Bible; then you would know for yourself what it says. That’s also a good idea if you wish to have a background for studying history and literature (along with that handy-dandy grammar manual). Be sure to do it before you go to college, esp. if you’re going to be a literature major.
A multi-threaded God could simply create the stone, then fork a God[sub]2[/sub] who could either be granted superior lifting capacity or reduce the mass of the stone so that God[sub]1[/sub] could lift it. All the latest Gods have this capability. It’s not God’s fault that technology has left you behind.
