Validity of the Bible

[mightyal]

he would have to sit there and see every single way it could ever possibly happen,

No, He already knows how it will happen. He knows what you will type in your next post..... and he knew if before you were born!

So why was I born. Why do you call predestiny free will?

[MeDeFe]

jay, maybe you don't get it, but free will is not compatible with omniscience.

If god exists and knows what will happen BEFORE IT DOES there is no choice. It HAS to happen. And without choice there cannot be free will, because that implies that there is a choice.

Now have fun and work your way out of that.

[vtmarik]

Actually the Bible doesn't say wether angels were created with or without free will (It was an assumption on my part that they were created without free will and later given free will). They had to choose between Lucifer and God so at this point they obviously had free will. It is possible that they were created with free will but that there was no sin yet so they would not disobey God. Angels, like humans were created to worship God. How are we doing with that?

Deflection, rationalization, and the hidden response? There is no verse or chapter in the Bible that says explicitly if the Angels were given free will or not.

If the angels had free will, why create humans? Obviously he's already got a group that can choose to love him or walk away from him with their own minds. Thus the rationalization for creating Man goes away.

If the angels didn't have free will, then Lucifer could never have rebelled. Lucifer was devoid of free will when he "decided" to try and take over Heaven.

I submit to you that based on these conclusions, and the fact that there are no verses in the Bible that explain this one way or another that the Book is not the perfect Word of God but was, in fact, written by man without any guidance from the divine. Glaring oversights in plot lines like this one are clearly the work of an imperfect being.

Ya, ok. The defense objects to such speculative evidence. The prosecution is submitting opinion rather than fact.


Judge : Ojection Sustained.

You call my evidence speculative? So is your explanation that the angels had free will when 1/3 "chose" to go with Lucifer.

There is no scriptural basis for my argument, nor for yours. Sorry, but we both lose.

I lose because I used logic to deduce those two conclusions and you lose because that big of an oversight is an imperfection. And a perfect being cannot create something imperfect.

[jay_a2j]

jay, maybe you don't get it, but free will is not compatible with omniscience.

If god exists and knows what will happen BEFORE IT DOES there is no choice. It HAS to happen. And without choice there cannot be free will, because that implies that there is a choice.

Now have fun and work your way out of that.

He KNOWS what will happen but does not MAKE what happens, happen! Lets say I knew 9/11 was going to happen on 9/10. That does not give me control over the terrorists who hijaked the planes! They still made their own choice to hijack the planes... I just knew it was comming. (this is an example: I am in no way saying that I knew 9/11 was going to happen. But God did.)

[cowshrptrn]

Lets us a much smaller analogy then, i know that i will get into a car accident if i take a certain route, so i take a different route and dont' get into a car accident, hey, i've just changed history!

If god knows what will happen then that implies that what will happen has already been ordained, so we must follow it

[vtmarik]

Lets us a much smaller analogy then, i know that i will get into a car accident if i take a certain route, so i take a different route and dont' get into a car accident, hey, i've just changed history!

If god knows what will happen then that implies that what will happen has already been ordained, so we must follow it

It's the conceptualization that humans have problems with.

Being all-knowing means that God knows everything about what you are going to do. This actually means that he sees every single possibility all at the same time, so he knows what's gonna happen no matter what path you take.

The point of this is, of course, is the position of observer. God doesn't interfere with us for the same reason that scientists don't interfere with an experiment: it would completely f*ck up the results. If He was to come in and stop something from happening, He would be interfering with His experiment.

[Backglass]

He KNOWS what will happen but does not MAKE what happens, happen! Lets say I knew 9/11 was going to happen on 9/10. That does not give me control over the terrorists who hijaked the planes! They still made their own choice to hijack the planes... I just knew it was comming. (this is an example: I am in no way saying that I knew 9/11 was going to happen. But God did.)

OK...this god of yours "Knows All, See's All" even "Before you were born!" but somehow he doesnt "Control All" as well? We are all just out of control robots running amuck in "Diety World"?

Jay, the further you stretch, the sillier you become. You are a smart man, I know you are. Surely even you can see that these explanations you give are just grasping at straws in an attempt to fumble for an answer.

[s.xkitten]

do y'all ever get tired of this debate?

[MeDeFe]

jay, please define your idea of "knowledge", while you do that I'll explain my argument from my last post in more detail.


Finding the correct words in english isn't easy for me here, but something along the lines of "true, well-founded opinion" comes pretty close to the definition of "knowledge" I'm working with.


So... god knows things before they happen, for god to know things his opinion of what will happen has to be well-founded, we'll have to leave it at "he's god", since there's no other explanation and we're talking of human behaviour and complex actions and not of things like "I know this ball will fall if I drop it" which can be explained by basic laws of nature.

For his opinions to be knowledge they have to be true, that means they MUST happen, if they didn't it wouldn't be knowledge.


This isn't a case of "I know what will happen if Person X chooses option A and what will happen if he chooses option B". No, it's a case of "I know every action every person will take before they take it and I know what consequences these actions will have".

That doesn't leave any room for choosing. There are no "alternative paths", if there were god wouldn't be omniscient. But he's defined as such.


So you either have to rethink your definition of god or give up free will, which will it be?

[vtmarik]

There's two explanations to free will. It's either the random swerving, at the quantum level, of molecules which cannot be predicted. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot determine both the momentum and the direction of a particle at the same time. If that was possible, we'd be able to predict every event to come.

The second explanation is that the concept of free will is a human's inability to conceptualize infinity, which Douglas Adams describes as "flat and uninteresting."


Personally, I go with the first option, since free will doesn't seem to have any biological or psychological origin that we can divine at this stage in our evolution, it's just there. We aren't cogs in some deterministic machine.

[MeDeFe]

random movement of sub-atomar particles is not the same as free will. You misunderstood that one, vtmarik.

[vtmarik]

random movement of sub-atomar particles is not the same as free will. You misunderstood that one, vtmarik.

You have your theories, and I have mine.

The chaotic nature of emotions and the distinct influence they have on the decision making processes and thus free will can be attributed to the random nature of particle interactions. I have no proof, it just seems to make sense to me.

[Skittlesandmnms]

wow... um... this is quite a heated debate.

[Drakkon]

yeah I should just stay out of this and not even post in here

[Skittlesandmnms]

yeah I should just stay out of this and not even post in here

wtf... posts saying im not going to post are kind of lame.

[MeDeFe]

vt, if human behaviour is nothing more than the random way those particles move it is NOT free will. Free will implies that one is able to control ones own actions. How do you control those particles?

[Drakkon]

yeah I should just stay out of this and not even post in here

wtf... posts saying im not going to post are kind of lame.

you're right, that was somewhat uncool... but I am tired and extremely bored!

[jay_a2j]

If god knows what will happen then that implies that what will happen has already been ordained, so we must follow it

No it doesn't. It just means God knows what will happen.

[Skittlesandmnms]

If god knows what will happen then that implies that what will happen has already been ordained, so we must follow it

No it doesn't. It just means God knows what will happen.

Hypothetically: If god knows what will happen, that is what will happen.

So we must follow that. So cowshrptn is right.

[MeDeFe]

jay, please respond to my post, too. The one where I first ask yourself to define knowledge, maybe you can come up with a definition that won't lead to the 2 possibilities that should be equally difficult for a diehard religious person to accept who also wants to believe that people are responsible for their actions.

[vtmarik]

vt, if human behaviour is nothing more than the random way those particles move it is NOT free will. Free will implies that one is able to control ones own actions. How do you control those particles?

*shrugs* I don't know, I'm not a neurologist or a psychologist. However, I am a big proponent of chaos theory and I can understand the nature of how tiny oscillations on the quantum level can affect the larger picture.

Nobody knows for certain the root cause of emotions. They can point to an area of the brain and say "It comes from here," but at the same time they can't tell you precisely why something funny makes you laugh or why you cry when you're both happy and sad.

And by attaching quantum mechanics to it, I feel like it makes more sense to me. I guess it is egoism in a way...

Hm... maybe I should just get more sleep so I can remember how those two thoughts converged in my head. They don't seem to make much sense now...

[jay_a2j]

jay, please define your idea of "knowledge", while you do that I'll explain my argument from my last post in more detail.


Finding the correct words in english isn't easy for me here, but something along the lines of "true, well-founded opinion" comes pretty close to the definition of "knowledge" I'm working with.


So... god knows things before they happen, for god to know things his opinion of what will happen has to be well-founded, we'll have to leave it at "he's god", since there's no other explanation and we're talking of human behaviour and complex actions and not of things like "I know this ball will fall if I drop it" which can be explained by basic laws of nature.

For his opinions to be knowledge they have to be true, that means they MUST happen, if they didn't it wouldn't be knowledge.


This isn't a case of "I know what will happen if Person X chooses option A and what will happen if he chooses option B". No, it's a case of "I know every action every person will take before they take it and I know what consequences these actions will have".

That doesn't leave any room for choosing. There are no "alternative paths", if there were god wouldn't be omniscient. But he's defined as such.


So you either have to rethink your definition of god or give up free will, which will it be?

Knowledge is information based on facts.


WE aren't talking about opinions. God KNOWS the future. Lets look at the Titanic for a second. Because it was moving at a high rate of speed it could not avoid the iceberg which caused the ship to sink. If the ship was going slower it might have avoided the iceberg and not sank. God saw what was going to happen. If the ship had reduced speed and avoided the iceberg it wouldn't have sank and God would have known this. On the contrary it was going at a high speed, hit the iceberg and sank.... God knew this. He knows what will happen even though we choose our own path. He knows the path we will choose.


God knew your name before you were born, before your parents were born, before thier parents were born....etc. God knows how you will die, the time, place, date and cause.

[vtmarik]

Knowledge is information based on facts.

Knowledge is also information based on experiences and from deduction. For example, you may know that pasta tastes good, but that isn't a fact. It's an opinion.

WE aren't talking about opinions. God KNOWS the future. Lets look at the Titanic for a second. Because it was moving at a high rate of speed it could not avoid the iceberg which caused the ship to sink. If the ship was going slower it might have avoided the iceberg and not sank. God saw what was going to happen. If the ship had reduced speed and avoided the iceberg it wouldn't have sank and God would have known this. On the contrary it was going at a high speed, hit the iceberg and sank.... God knew this. He knows what will happen even though we choose our own path. He knows the path we will choose.


God knew your name before you were born, before your parents were born, before thier parents were born....etc. God knows how you will die, the time, place, date and cause.

So the Tree of Knowledge was another bit of psychodrama? If he knows it all, why the trappings and the mystery? Why does the Bible even exist? Since He knows who's gonna join and who isn't, then the entire religion is completely unnecessary.

Do you see what BG means now?

[MeDeFe]

Knowledge is information based on facts.

That's pretty close to my definition, too. "True, well-founded opinion".


We form opinions based on what we observe, perceive and are told. In short: We receive information from exterior sources.
I think it's safe to say that an opinion based on facts is well-founded.
Facts are by definition true, so information based on facts is also true.



I also noticed you didn't reply to the rest of my post, could it be the case that you're already being forced to ignore the important parts because you don't have a reply?

[jay_a2j]

Knowledge is information based on facts.

I also noticed you didn't reply to the rest of my post, could it be the case that you're already being forced to ignore the important parts because you don't have a reply?

Ummmm, really? What was this post then?

WE aren't talking about opinions. God KNOWS the future. Lets look at the Titanic for a second. Because it was moving at a high rate of speed it could not avoid the iceberg which caused the ship to sink. If the ship was going slower it might have avoided the iceberg and not sank. God saw what was going to happen. If the ship had reduced speed and avoided the iceberg it wouldn't have sank and God would have known this. On the contrary it was going at a high speed, hit the iceberg and sank.... God knew this. He knows what will happen even though we choose our own path. He knows the path we will choose.


God knew your name before you were born, before your parents were born, before thier parents were born....etc. God knows how you will die, the time, place, date and cause.