What the Bible Says

If he exists, then yes, he does know. The answer? No. Schrodinger's cat died decades ago from old age. It's not like cats are immortal.

...More to the point, I find that an omniscient God is frightening. Not because I don't like being spied on, but because of the implications.

How does God know he's omniscient, I ask you? Try not to use circular logic to explain this. I can only come up with one solution, and it's terrifying.

The answer is that he's most likely tested his omniscience, a la the scientific method. How would an all powerful God test his omniscience? Through testing each and every imaginable possibility. Again and again and again. Looking for the tiniest quark of inconsistency between his knowledge and what actually happens, his power and what he builds.

I'm not sure if anyone else finds this possibility as horrific as I do, and it's certainly not a certainity, but it seems...disturbing.

You know what I hate? Hypocrites. That and obscure self-referential statements.

Actually, omniscience doesn't need testing. Not all knowledge is experiment-based.

Now using Trivialis handle.

He knows because he's omniscient. Of course that's circular, but if he had to test this first, meaning that at some point he did not know yet, then this means he is not in fact omniscient. So if we work under the assumption God is omniscient, then he knows about it because he is omniscient.

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I don't follow.

If someone is omniscient, they know this because they know it. Sure, they might know what they know due to their omniscience, but the crux of the matter is how they can trust what they know.

Humans know what they know due to experience. We see an object go from above the ground to the ground, we theorize about gravity. We witness curvature in the space-time quantum subatomic observational field or whatever, we theorize about it and come up with an explanation. Humans know what they know through testing. And yet we still doubt it. You'll always find some stoned college kid wondering if everything is actually The Matrix. Now imagine if your knowledge didn't come from the world around you, but was an innate aspect of your being. How would you know? How would you be able to trust it? I find it unlikely that any rational mind would actually trust something that happened to be in their head without any testing. Mathmeticians bust their asses trying to prove the most basic, inherent laws of mathematics that everybody accepts, that small children believe to be common sense. Whenever we do find knowledge within our own minds, we doubt it, and not in the Shakespearean sense.

You know what I hate? Hypocrites. That and obscure self-referential statements.

Now, this is supposed to be about biblical verses, so lets keep it on topic folks.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I don't think God as described in the Bible is any degree of omniscient or any degree of omnipotent.

God in the Bible is very powerful but he only rarely does anything that Zeus or Odin couldn't do.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Revelation 19:6 conflicts with that view, among other verses:

That's the only verse that actually uses the word "omnipotent", but here are some others that carry the general idea:

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OTOH, Judges 1:19

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The traditional explanation of that passage is that the implied "they" as the subject of "could not" was Judah, not God, and that God had ceased abetting Judah at that point- possibly because Judah grew afraid and lost faith in Him at the sight of the intimidating chariots.

edited 14th Apr '12 4:58:33 PM by Muramasan13

Smile for me!

Okay, then:

Makes sense, but there's nothing in that passage that says God wasn't with Judah any more. If it wanted to say that, then it should've said that; the Bible has plenty of instances where the text is very clear about God withdrawing his support or getting mad at someone.

So the most sensible interpretation of the passage is that Judah STILL couldn't drive out the inhabitants of the valley, even though God was with him, because they had iron chariots.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

I disagree that that is the most sensible interpretation, simply because it is so at odds with the rest of the Bible. It is a possible interpretation, to be sure, but one that, given context, is not to be preferred to others.

Basically, your argument is that it's more likely that the God-Of-The-Angel-Armies who can incinerate fifty-one men with a thought could not prevail over some iron chariots, than that someone was lazy and/or cramped for space when describing exactly why and how Judah didn't triumph over some valleyfolk.

edited 14th Apr '12 5:04:34 PM by Muramasan13

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I don't generally hold with "it contradicts the rest of the Bible, therefore it can't be true [or at least, the original intent]". The Bible is full of contradictions even within each testament, and often within individual books. BETWEEN testaments is obviously going to cause contradictions, because they were written thousands of years apart.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Um, question, does that "he" refer to Judah?

Now using Trivialis handle.

Yes.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

They were written hundreds of years apart, at most you could stretch it into a thousand if you compare the Jahwist source of the Torah with, say, the Gospel of John, but not thousands.

Testament just is the division between Jewish writers and Christian writers, pre-Christ and post-Christ. At the extreme points of closeness 1 Maccabees was written in 100 BC, and most of the New Testament is dated to 50-70 or so.

Also, I think the passage you are looking at wrt iron chariots is the typical sort of religiously-loaded language common in any historical books. Its not against the majority of the Bible, its a non-issue. Particularly due to the fact that God's omnipotence doesn't mean anyone with God is also omnipotent. Saying God isn't omnipotent because Judah didn't win all his battles is...eh. There are better verses you could have used, I think.

Also I am semi-late on this, buut....

"The tree" can be anything in Scripture. The "tree" isn't itself sin—the disobedience, turning away from God, etc. is what is known as sin. It is precisely because God is goodness/love that turning away from God results in evil consequences, which is the entire point behind said story. (Not so much to avoid eating apples, as I thought when I was younger )

Similarly, the "torture" of being without God (ie Hell) can only be done from turning away from God/love. At lest in the traditional Western view, Hell would be a total absence of God, and therefore a total absence of love/goodness. By definition, it can only be freely chosen. For most Christians, Purgatory can be about paying a debt and generally becoming a better person worthy to partake of God's divinity. Hell is just leaving God, out of the picture entirely.

edited 15th Apr '12 3:25:33 AM by Tiph

Black Humor: I didn't say it couldn't be true. I said that, if multiple interpretations are plausible (and here, I feel they are), the one consistent with the rest of the text is generally to be preferred to the one that is contradictory in context, don't you agree? I mean, if you're reading a novel, and you find a sentence in it that is ambiguously constructed, and one reading of the sentence is contradictory with the rest of the book and one isn't, don't you usually interpret it the latter way?

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You are right, mea culpa.

Well, if God was on Judah's side (pretty clear) and he COULD have made Judah win that battle (if he's omnipotent this should be clear) then why didn't he?

Either God wasn't with Judah at all, and the passage is right-out wrong, or else he was with Judah but he couldn't help him.

EDIT:

With most texts, that's a good rule of thumb, though with something as clear as the verse in question I think I'd ignore it even in a novel. But in the Bible, which is already known to be contradictory, the assumption underlying the rule of thumb, that the text won't contradict itself, is wrong, so the rule of thumb doesn't apply.

edited 15th Apr '12 5:35:15 PM by BlackHumor

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

I would say that the hidden assumption behind the rule of thumb isn't that the text is never self-contradictory, but rather is that the text seeks to display some meaning of some sort, and that the text is reasonably adept at soldiering towards that goal throughout the passages of itself- because to that end self-contradiction is rarely constructive.

My opinion on this matter, and, it seems, the unified opinion of educated scriptural commentators who analyze this verse is that (as previously detailed) God withdrew his support from Judah at some point between the conquering of the mountain-folk and the attempted conquering of the valley-folk for some reason not elaborated on, and thus, Judah was on his own when he threw himself against them to no avail.

It is my belief that there are sound logical arguments to be made against the Bible and the God it portrays. This particular passage does not seem to be one of the more airtight ones.

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I figured that was just idiom of the day. "The Lord did _____" is a fancy way of saying "____ happened".

Do you highlight everything looking for secret messages?

Not if you believe in a literal God.

Now using Trivialis handle.

Well, logically, God being omniscient and omnipotent, anything that happens happens because he allows it to- thus, God has indeed, in a sense, caused every event that has ever occurred.

Smile for me!

Believing in a literal God does not mean that idioms mentioning God must be taken literally. Much of the Bible was written in a vastly different literary tradition. How many modern readers are going to know what chiastic structure even is, for instance?

edited 15th Apr '12 9:28:51 PM by Tangent128

Do you highlight everything looking for secret messages?

Or "God is with ____________ " is a common phrase and doesn't mean you are omnipotent. Not that it matters, since it never even says God is with Judah for said chariot fight, and also being with someone is different than helping them. All the Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, but all but one were martyred, some in quite a brutal manner.

lol no. Most people believe in a "literal God" but can say for example "God damn it" without meaning it in any literal sense. It doesn't somehow remove the poetry from language. And ancient Jewish writing is filled with that sort of phraseology.

Not that this even matters either way, since even if you take the line literally it introduces no real problems.

Obviously, but if we're assuming omnipotence the whole verse doesn't make sense.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Its made sense in every Christian commentary I ever read, certainly made sense to me and I had to sort of struggle a bit to see what your issue with it was at first. There are difficult verses, but this just plain isn't one of them. It's as straightforward as it gets.

This is because even if we take "God was with ______________" literally and not just as a saying, this doesn't mean ________________ is omnipotent in all situations or God will somehow grant __________________ everything he/she desires.