What the Bible Says

Go back to Adam and Eve for a second. They were not automatrons. But consider what their life would have been without the tree:

-Blissful life free from pain and death -Eternal companionship with god -Stewardship over the earth, creatures, and plants without the toil -Painfree childbirth

They make out well and so does god. Why is there a need to introduce sin? There isn't one if god is all loving. God would be as content with their companionship as they were with him.

Now what I want to know is what can any human possibly do in one life that merits an eternity of torture?! Even someone like Hitler, Albert Fish, or Ghengis Khan would eventually pay their debts. It may take thousands or millions of years, but forever? That is not justice, that is cruelty.

To believe in a Christian god, in my study, takes one of two things: the acceptance the bible is a creation of man and no matter how divinely inspired, it is flawed because man has written it. And one needs to either accept the view of the Jews and Muslims who say God opperates on his own logic and is capable of jealousy and wrath so he isn't omnibenelovant; or limit god's power or knowledge less than omni level.

A god that knows all but doesn't have the power to stop it can honestly weep with his followers; this would make his compassion and love even more profound. A god who has power, but can't know everything can try and fix it after the fact. (This is of course, the lesser of the satisfying answers.)

The problem is when it comes to gods people want the biggest, strongest, and most capable on their side. They want to be safe. And they want to know they have someone on their side who will beat the hell out of those they are against.

Because of this, we will always have biblical fundamentalists. No one does punishment quite like the Christian god.

The "tree" was there to represent freedom of choice, I would say.

It's not about paying the debts but whether you're with God.

Also, about knowledge: I would say God knows what would happen as a result of humans' own choice and God's best efforts to help steer them in the right direction.

To answer this:

God's plans don't have to be entirely deterministic. Because choice is involved, God's plan could be this way: "if A chosen, follow with B. If A' chosen, follow with B'." The very fact that free will is involved should hint that.

Because God wills that free will does exist, God's actions would avoid tampering with it. That would be the "limit" - something else that God imposes.

Again, free will and omniscience don't mix well. Even if we are "free" in making the choices we make, an omniscient God still knows what we will choose before we even make them. Furthermore, since God "has woven (us) in (our) mother's womb", we are exactly as He wants us to be, in the exact situation He wants us to be. This logically means that God manipulates us in His will anyways, diminishing the meaning of "free will" even further.

edited 12th Apr '12 1:20:41 AM by neobullseye

Why does knowing the choice affect the choice?

Free will doesn't mean we can do anything possible at this moment (like go skydiving in the Alps right now or fly a jet over the Atlantic right now ). It's situational; we have ability to choose and can apply that ability to a particular situation.

edited 12th Apr '12 1:29:35 AM by abstractematics

At its base, this seems fair enough. However, it becomes problematic when you include the choice wether or not to follow Christ; according to the Bible the only way to get into heaven. Due to God's omniscience, He knows in advance who will follow Him (out of free will). Due to his omnipotence, he could just only make people wo will follow Him (again, out of free will). Yet still He makes people who will not follow Him, wether this is due to active rejection or due to never even getting the chance to follow Him (Think of tribal people living in the middle of nowhere, children dying extremely young, EVERYONE who died before 0-30 AD., etc.). The combination of all this means taht God is de facto sending people to hell for something He knew they would do before they were born, and could've prevented from happeneing by not letting them be born.
Freedom of choice is completely worthless if the right choice is not available, and inversely does not need a wrong choice to be meaningful.

edited 12th Apr '12 1:59:21 AM by neobullseye

Is the God of the Bible omniscient? I don't think the text bears that out. God supposedly sees everything, but is there anything that says God knows the future? God gets angry, tests people, has regrets, and at times even seems surprised. No being who knew the future would do those things.

If God cannot see the future, then the entirety of Revelations must be made up, and all other prophecies would only be fulfilled due to random cahnce/ dumb luck.

Also, a few (admittedly googled) verses:
Psalm 139:2-4 - "You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether."

(Editing)

edited 12th Apr '12 6:56:16 AM by neobullseye

Revelation is a book describing contemporary events in highly symbolic language and reassuring its audience that things would get better.

The Psalms is a book of poetry. Again, one person's impression of their God's nature isn't necessarily accurate.

As far as prophecies go, very few of them are actual predictions of the future, and the few that are are incredibly vague. How many highly-specific predictions found in the Bible actually came true?

@neo: I believe that in OT times, they were waiting for a future Messiah or savior. From what I've learned, people who wanted to be saved in the future and believed went to Paradise.

More than you would think. And I would say, if you find Revelations symbolic, you have to present an interpretations for it. You can't use "it's symbolic" as a way to negate its meaning.

Personally I'd prefer an Omniscient and Omnibenevolent god. That way it'd always be trying to make things better, but couldn't fuck things up by accident.

Heh, this always comes up: Most Christians do not believe Satan or the Holy Spirit exist. Relevant because it demonstrates the variety of belief within the Christian community, and the fact that most of us do not actually believe that anyone is going to burn in hell for eternity due to some cosmic misunderstanding.

Standard disclaimer: Take this and all other surveys with a grain of salt, everything relies on how they asked the questions.

More survey findings in the same vein.

There is some scriptural support for the idea of universal salvation: http://www.americanunitarian.org/fristadfundamentalism.htm (scroll down to paragraph 5).

Obviously, if God doesn't actually condemn people to eternal damnation, then the issue of his responsibility for the existence of sin is more a matter of degree.

edited 12th Apr '12 1:34:10 PM by DeMarquis

"Negate" its meaning? What do you mean by that? And can you show me some clear, definite examples of biblical prophecies coming true after they were written?

edited 12th Apr '12 2:04:49 PM by Lawyerdude

The coming of the Messiah is one, and the most important one.

It won't matter to you, though, if you don't believe in it.

By the other comment, I mean that you need to present your interpretation of the events of Revelation. You can claim that it's symbolic, but symbolism has its meanings too. Just obscuring the meaning with symbolism argument is not reading Revelations correctly.

Revelation is a pretty big book. Can you bring up something specific?

Well, you brought it up. How would you interpret it? What parts of it do you find symbolic?

I certainly think there are symbolic representations in there, though not as much as some people would think.

edited 12th Apr '12 5:29:18 PM by abstractematics

Lawyerdude was originally responding to Neobullseye's point, who was arguing with you that God is responsible for sin because he is omniscience and also creates everyone. Lawyerdude was pointing out that the God described in the bible doesn't act as if he is omniscient. Neo BE countered that with "Revelations", among others. But Neo is also assuming that human categories of logic apply to God, which in my opinion is a very shaky assumption. Not to mention my earlier point that the God in the bible doesn't necessarily condemn anyone to eternal damnation.

edited 12th Apr '12 9:02:31 PM by DeMarquis

I'm just using human logic and values because that's the only one I have.

Also, I thnks what Abstract is trying to say is that the simple fact that Revelations is symbolic does not take away the fact that it's a vision of the future given by God. Logically, this implies that the Biblical God has knowledge of the future.

Of course, this does not mean that all filfilled prophecies are proof that God exists/the Bible is true. Due to the human mind loving patterns and such, we like to see things that just randomly happen as miracles and fulfilled prophecies.

(Also, semi-off-topic: I'm looking at this from an atheistic point of view, while still staying within the spirit of this topic: dicussing the Bible and its implications)

As far as what Revelation says, look at the very first three verses (from the NIV):

So, the author identifies himself as John, a servant of Jesus Christ. He claims he received a vision from an angel, that he is going to testify as to what he saw in his vision, and that certain things are going to happen soon. He goes on to say that he is writing to seven churches in Asia, and that he received a vision while in exile on Patmos "because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus".

That is all we have to identify the author and the source of his alleged visions. There was serious dispute as to whether this John is the same John who wrote the Gospel and the three Epistles of John. Ultimately we don't know who this person is, other than that he may have been a leader of the early 2nd century Christian community.

edited 13th Apr '12 8:41:40 AM by Lawyerdude

The biblical scholars right now do think that it may be a different John, due to the distinct origins of the writer.

Even if God has knowledge of the future, that doesn't prove he is "omniscient", whatever we think that means.

An interesting and valid point. I never realized that I've been conflating "made the universe and knows people's thoughts and tracks every darn sparrow on Earth" with "omniscient", when they could in fact be distinct.

Still, it seems strange that he'd make everything, and then kinda lose track of some parts of it. I mean, if God knows the starting conditions of the universe, and subsequently the minds of everything with free will, doesn't that amount to omniscience? Hmm.

I'll think about this one.

EDIT: So, there are two definitions of omniscience: inherent omniscience, or the ability to know anything you desire; and total omniscience, actually knowing everything all at once. I don't think it can be scripturally proven that God is totally omniscient (as distinct from inherent omniscience), but that's the stance that Calvinists, among others, traditionally took. Many more modern theologians prefer the idea that God is inherently omniscient, choosing to not know some things to as to preserve free will, but that may raise problems of its own.

edited 13th Apr '12 3:07:11 PM by Muramasan13

Every bible verse quoted so far is consistent with what you are calling inherent omniscience.

"I mean, if God knows the starting conditions of the universe, and subsequently the minds of everything with free will, doesn't that amount to omniscience?"

Are you aware of something called "Complexity Theory?" It's a type of mathematical algorithm in which you can set the starting parameters, you can know the actual formula which controls how a system of variables will change, and still not be able to predict what state the system will eventually end up in. They use this to run computer simulations of things like weather patterns or the stock market. If even humans can create a system like that...

All Bible verses of which I am aware that support omniscience are consistent with both inherent and total omniscience (no, the naming there doesn't make much sense to me, either).

I believe by complexity theory you are referring to "chaos theory", or the study of systems in which even a small change in the initial parameters causes a large change in the ending state (e.g. weather simulations). I don't think that's strictly relevant (since it only causes problems when one doesn't know the starting conditions to an arbitrary degree of precision), but the fact that the universe is non-deterministic (see: quantum physics, radioactivity) does indeed shoot down my earlier supposition.

edited 13th Apr '12 8:34:53 PM by Muramasan13

I would presume that being the stronger claim, total omniscience would require stronger support, which I believe is lacking.

edited 13th Apr '12 10:06:37 PM by DeMarquis

Does god know whether Schrodinger's Cat is alive?

edited 13th Apr '12 10:38:49 PM by nightwyrm_zero