God does have free will, this does not negate the free will of His creation.
Humans have free will also. Though you will decide something and God knows what you will decide does not mean you didn’t come to that decision on your own.
The 2 are not mutually exclusive, God is big enough to allow both of them to coexist.
You fail to grasp the concept that you can have free will and a all knowing God.
You can certainly have free will and an all-knowing god, but that isn’t the objection here; I think actually you’re mistaking which argument is being made. If begbert2’s right in what you suggested, then there’s a problem.
Imagine if God’s will were just one single commandment - Do not eat green apples. In a world without free will, it’s easy to know; everyone eats green apples, we have no free will, ergo God wants us to eat green apples. Now, because people do have free will, they might not eat them, and they might decide to eat them. God knows, of course, because he is omniscient, which you will choose.
Here’s the problem, though; you’ve suggested that from human actions, we can tell what God’s will is. So imagine we don’t know God’s single commandment; let’s look at human behaviour. We see that some people don’t eat green apples. And because of free will, we see that some people do. So how can we tell what God’s commandment is? People are free to disagree with it, and people are free to not care about it when they don’t believe in God in the first place. Human behaviour can’t tell us anything about what God’s will is, because in a situation with free will, our will is totally seperate from God’s. If it is truly free will, God can have no influence on it whatsoever, and thus we can’t tell from one what the other is.
Not so much from human action, but what the Word of God has told us. We as humans can’t know the divine plan the Father has/is working out, but we can know pieces of it at times as He allows.
In your example of eating the green apples, or not it would be very vague but you are leaving out the spiritual gifts God has promised us to help guide us into knowing which apples should be eaten and which ones should not.
Looking at scriptures Paul on a boat trip to Rome encounters a storm that threatens the boat. Paul receives a vision from God that the boat will be lost but everyone on it will be saved. With this you would think that everyone can just sit tight and wait for God to deliver them, this is not the case, they still had to do what they could, again be activaly involved, but God will provide guidance when we need it.
You keep using the phrase “God has told us” This argument is meaningless to people who do not accept the Bible as God’s word. It is a known fact that humans wrote the Bible, called it the word of God, said it was inspired; that is like preaching to the choir. The writers of Scriptures were human beings like our selves. I could write that God told me the scriptures were not his word and one could believe me or not. Muslims believe the Koran is God’s direct word to Mohammad, it is a matter of belief,not fact. So we do not have what God said or wants, but what some human said God wants it.
Does God guide the Muslims to accept the Koran? Please do not say ‘It is the work of demons’ as that is not proven either.
Monavis
Except that no one knows what the “Word of God” is, or has proof that there is one. There’s plenty of people who say they know God’s word, but they contradict each other. And there’s no objective reason to consider any of them more valid than any other, since there’s zero evidence for the truth of any of them.
Lack of evidence is good reason not to consider something invalid, widespread disagreement on the subject is not (necessarily), because widespread disagreement can be found on many subjects for which there is a discoverable truth.
Except there’s a complete lack of evidence, and widespread disagreement.
I understand, it’s just that there’s widespread disagreement about nearly everything, so it seemed pointless mentioning it as if it’s significant.
To a follower of Christ I look to the life of Jesus to see what He did. It is clear from scripture that He read the word of God (OT) very intently, knew it by heart and used the Word in spiritual warfare against Satan many times. I believe that He referenced every book of the OT except one in His teachings. His examples show me that the Bible is important to God and important for man to know if he is to come to God, and defense (and for that matter offense) against the enemy. It may be perfect, preserved by God, or it may be flawed by man, but either way God is wise enough to compensate for our imperfectness.
Another way I see it is in a sense is Jesus’ life was so remarkable that no exaggeration was needed as any such exaggeration could only detract from Jesus. His followers were devoted to God and truth and would not want to lie about Jesus, either that or the whole entire thing is a fraud, nothing inbetween is even conceivable, and considering the diverse background of His followers it is very unlikely that such a fraud could be pulled off.
You want me to argue part of my faith while intentionally leaving out the other part, sorry that’s not going to happen, they are linked and I have said many times if one believes in Jesus as stated in the Bible one has to also believe in the existance of satanic and demonic beings IMHO. I really don’t know much about the muslim faith nor much of the Koran, What I do know is much of the OT prophecy points directly to Jesus, both His first coming and His second coming, I have not seen any reference to a phrophat coming after the Messiah, especially not in a context to change, basically disregard the OT and NT in favor of another book EXCEPT as a warning to followers of Jesus not to be deceived with a direct reference to the spirit (demon) of the anti-Christ. So I’d say that God has permitted some (many) people to be deceived and they follow false gods.
Not so. People claim the word of God to be many different things. Simply knowing something yourself is extremely poor evidence just by itself. After all, I know God doesn’t exist to the same level you know he does. You can’t generalise from human behaviour, as guided by the Word of God or not, because we’re unable to judge whether the Word of God is effective without comparison, which we can’t do.
Spiritual gifts can only ever be evaluated from the outside. Just as you have no privy into God’s mind, you don’t have privy into the mind of any other human, either. In fact, it brings up more problems, since you’d expect spiritual gifts to be helpful in discovering the truth. To go back to the green apples, you would expect, if we had such gifts, that most people would be able to divine that they were not to be eaten, and thus we could tell from human behaviour what God’s will is. Problem is, what if most people do eat green apples anyway? Most people in reality do not follow your particular set of beliefs. No set of beliefs has a majority of all people following it (same for lack of beliefs, of course).
In other words, helpful spiritual gifts should allow us to tell God’s will from human behaviour. But we can’t. I would suggest that they then aren’t all that helpful.
I would disagree. Widespread disagreement on a subject which should be obvious and which we are apparently being helped towards - by a pretty powerful/omnipotent being, at that - makes me pretty suspicious.
If I get two classes of children to do some difficult maths problems, and give one class calculators, I would suggest we’d expect that class to be both quicker, more accurate, and agree more amongst themselves. If they don’t, I think i’d want to get the calculators checked out. 
There is widespread disagreement on everything religious, but that is not the case in science. Plus, religious disagreements only seem to get worse.
It might be true that lack of evidence and disagreement are not reasons to consider something false, but they sure aren’t reasons to consider something true. In this case, the only rational thing to do is to withhold belief until the evidence comes in, and investigate, looking for more.
Basically that is what atheists do.
It is significant, if the only “evidence” for the claim in question is people’s word.
Jeez, I’m sorry I propogated this hijack. I’ll wait until another, more-relevent-to-the-OP thread to point out holes in kanikbird’s statements.
Re the OP, the way I was taught way back when was that sure, God knows everything you need, and what’s good for you. But there’s a subset of the things that are good for you that he deliberately withholds unless you ask (pray) for them, because he likes to be prayed to and prefers to encourage that behavior. Rather mercenary on God’s part, but it is a rationale that I’ve heard seriously presented.
(It of course runs into the standard problem of foreknowledge vs free will (if God has foreknowledge), but then, what doesn’t?)
I do agree with this in this context, a person can have all the ‘proof’ they need to know something is true yet not be able to ‘prove’ it to another person. But this is exactly how God wants to ‘prove’ Himself to us, on a personal level. I don’t expect anyone who knows God exists is able to prove it to a non-believer without God’s help.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
You’d think so, but this is not always the case. The gifts are given to advance God’s Kingdom, not for our own pleasure or enlightenment.
I would disagree with this, but it has been my experience one must be activaly seeking God before they are given spiritual gifts (from God, as there appears to be a Satanic set of spiritual gifts also).
This sounds very closed minded, and insulting to some very intelligent people who have dedicated their life to God and studying God and knowing Him more. It also is a bit silly if you don’t think God Himself can’t convince you.
Well, I do agree with your first point. But really my overall point was that even just “knowing” something is true on a personal level isn’t good enough evidence for your own self, or at least shouldn’t be accepted as it. I believe very different things to you, right? Logically, then, either yours or my “knowledge” of the world is faulty (or both). Either way, we’ve proved that our knowledge can be flawed. Ergo, knowing something alone can’t be used as evidence, even only evidence to convince onself.
And a good thing too, because looking back on it, I was wrong to generalise so much.
By “outside” I mean that level of awareness God-level beings theoretically hold. Outside the universe, really. Spiritual gifts in general could be evaluated from the inside, for example, if some people suddenly grew 6-foot wings. While of course this still depends on our own potentially flawed understanding (i.e. we could all be vats in a jar) and so to an extent only evaluatable from the outside, we can at least work with it in reality. It’s something we can share with other people, really. The type of spiritual gifts that you’re talking about (if I am understanding you right) can’t be evaluated from the inside, since they’re personal if they exist. For examples, you can’t compare what your spiritual gifts are like with me, who we’d probably both agree don’t have them, or even with another person who you think does.
What i’m really saying is that, for us, there is no real way to know whether our spiritual gifts are actually real or if we’re imagining them. We would have to have some idea of the nature of reality to know that, and since we don’t, we can’t. The truth of them can only really be established by an “outside” figure.
Well, this I find confusing. I assumed the point was that these spiritual gifts aided God’s will on Earth. If indeed they are helpful to that cause (not us), we should see over time a fairly universal trend towards God’s will in the world. In other words, there should be some general facets of human behaviour that have a clear majority, one that’s stayed roughly constant over time. If he’s guiding us, we should look guided. I don’t really see that.
As i’ve said to you before (at least, I think it was you), I am both willing and able to seek God. I am attempting to read the Bible (it’s pretty long, though ;)) and I do read threads like these with an attempt at an open mind. By your view, I should have been given such spiritual gifts by now.
Just as a question, though; by what means would you personally know that someone was actively seeking God? What evidence would you require before you believed someone who claimed it?
Then who cares ? Let God build his own ego.
And how do you tell the difference between two sets of “gifts” that you can’t even show exist ? Let me guess; it’s the people who disagree with your particular One True Way that are satanic.
And assuming you are right about this, what reason is there to prefer God’s “gifts” over Satan’s ?
They may have been intelligent, but they were fools, ignorant or insane if they believed in God, much less studied his nonexistant self. And God can’t convince anyone of anything, being fictional.
There are quite a few ways to look at it along the lines. God has provided a way to you to get all that you need, one such way is your ability to pray. I don’t see it so much as God withholding till you ask, but God provided you the method, you just have to use it.
Many people care, but you are free not to care, or even oppose God’s ‘ego’
Actually that was a issue for me at first, as there is a gift of discernment of the spirits, which I didn’t receive at first. Without God’s help you can be very easially deceived.
You are free to chose either, and the way I read it you actually can try out Satan’s ‘gifts’ first then try God’s, then decide which one you want, but it seems like it has to be done in this order. You also run the danger of dieing in service to Satan before experiencing God’s gifts, which is never a pleasant thing.
The Bible points to a almost total takeover by Satan before the second coming, where most followers of Jesus will be put to death. So if anything scriptures point to the world going away from God.
The gifts come with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, everyone (who has the Holy Spirit) gets at least one gift. The Bible says seek eagerally those gifts.
I don’t know how far along you are with your reading of the Bible, if you have a feel for who Jesus is, and if you accepted Jesus as your king. You are doing the right thing, God says to seek Him, which you are. and you are trying to do so with a open mind. Going back to the OP, I think you should ask God to guide your readings of His word, and to change your heart towards Him and make Himself known to you.
For someone who has already received the Holy Spirit scripture answers to look for the fruit of the Spirit, in short the love of Christ. For someone who is seeking God and has not really found Him yet I personally would not require any evidence, I may ask questions to see how it’s going and might notice something they do or say that may have me question it.
Your argument is circular,the New Testament was written by humans ,so your belief is in what some human said, not necessarily what God or Jesus said,that is okay for you,but it doesn’t prove anything except that you believe that way. Your belief seems to come across to me that you give demons and Satan more credit or power than your God. Your belief is more in the Bible writers than in a God.
You of course( like any person) has the right to your beliefs and if that helps you to live a better life, then fine, but your arguments are not convincing. I find a God who would create a being then let a evil being that he created and knew he would lead his children to a disastrous end could not be a loving father but a bad one.
Monavis
As I said above I don’t expect to be able to prove my faith to you on my own, I don’t believe it can be done. It can only be done if God calls you and wants to use me in His service to that end. The Word of God as recorder by men is not the totality of God’s interaction with man, just a part that He can chose to prove to you way beyond your satisfaction.
That is a way to look at it, another way is that man asked his Father can I go out on my own, which the Father not only complied but gave man his share of his inheritance. The loving Father will at any time take back any of His children who comes back to Him and fully reinstate them as it was before, and take great delight at that. The initial choice of us leaving God appears not to be made by us, but our ancestors, and we are the great…grandchildren and the Father is still willing to accept any of us as His children.
Should people be able to chose their own God, or should God force himself on His children?