Omniscience, Omnipotence, the Fall & Logical Contradictions.

If God exists in timeless eternity (a reasonably well established if not unchallenged view) then 'future' must be dropped insofar as it concerns talking of him. The name he gave Moses to describe Himsself was "I AM". Jesus calls himself "I AM" a number of times - which drove the Pharisees into a rage - they saw this as Jesus calling himself God.I AM indicates 'ever present'It is unlikely that Dawkins factored this well established notion into his argument. Otherwise he wouldn't have one

By "reasonably well established view" I mean the view is reasonably established. And the evidence for that view is an interpretation of what the Bible says - much like ToE is a well established view: an interpretation of what nature says. Within its own area of operation both these views are well established. I don't see a problem with God being able to change his mind - in the sense that we would percieve him acting so. However, in the area of language, God is constrained to describing himself, his attributes and methods in terms of our own limitations of understanding language based concepts. For example: using fire and brimstone language to describe the torment of Hell doesn't mean that Hells torment involves high temperatures or a standard hunan nervous system to experience it. Torment beyond imagination is the message conveyed. What it will actually be like is another story. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I don't get what you are after here Mark. I'm not sure talk of odds is the correct way of examining these things. A timeless, ever existing God steps outside the zone of logical analysis for me. In another thread I spoke of how we just assume our objective reality to be so - then we move on with the business of living life. So to here. An assumption: timeless God. Then analysis of how all that we are told fitting together.For myself, God being timeless certainly allows for a pre-fall situation + genuine free-will (meaning the choice could have gone either way). God knowing (by way of being in a position of timeless observer) the choice wouldn't mean the choice was a foregone conclusion. If the choice had been otherwise then that is what he would foreknow. In other words he foreknows (from his dimension) what there is to know (what we will chose to happen).If this is not what you are seeking clarification on then let me know

What don't you believe? That the view the God exists in timeless existance isn't a well-established one? For some reason I can't copy the section but its at section 3. Eternity in Christian Thought (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) You bring up a problem which occurs very often when it comes to deciding what can and cannot be possible in our deliberations as to the nature and workings of God. We are constrained by our logic in other words. But God is not.Because if God is constrained only to be able to operate within the bounds of our logic then we have brought God down to our size. But our logic cannot be said to bind what is logical and reasonable to him in the dimension he operates in. Our (lets call it: single dimension) logic is like, or in the manner of, his (lets call it: multi dimensional)logic. But not the same because of the dimensional differences.Its a bit like us being able to look at the plan view of a house and extract certain useful information as to what that house looks like. Whereas God has a 3D solid model available to him and can access all the information possible as to what the house looks like.We can see the colour of the carpet. God can see the height of the pile of the carpet. We are not seeing the colour incorrectly but we are not seeing all there is to be seen about the carpet.So, if timeless, he exists in a zone which is not fully open to us. In so far as he aligns one dimension of himself with time (ie: he align one dimension of himself with our only dimension) he changes his mind. But that is not the only dimension open to him so his changing his mind cannot be said to be constrained in the same way that our changing our mind is constrained.

A view under debate does not mean it is not a well established as a view. Let me put it this way so we can move on: I didn't lick the idea off a stone. And that age old view: God operating in timeless eternity - permits both free willed choice for Adam and Eve alongside God knowing which choice they would make. Is this not another way of saying just what I said. Unless God operates within the level of your logic then his operation is not possible to occur?Nobody is reasoned into Christianity. It can only make sense from the perspective of having insights currently closed to you. The catch-22 of faith. "Faith is the evidence of things not seen" - but you don't get that faith (evidence) until you have faith (belief)The reason for reasoning is to combat reason that rejects. Since no view regarding the nature of the dimension God exists can be made concrete then one can argue from what the Bible indicates is a possible view. And the timeless one although debated is not plucked from thin air. It permits God's foreknowing and free willed choice Whatever...Edited by iano, : No reason given.

As I understand it, it is from the Bible as a whole that the idea arises. That folk took some time (as did/does Science) to get around to the deeper layers of the onion doesn't mean those layers weren't lying there all the time

If you would put smilies beside your humorous bits it would help. We aren't that familiar with each other to spot it clearly In case you are being serious though. I know this computer screen exists. How it works is beyond me. There can be all sorts of mystery about something you know exists. Sure you can embark on finding out but at this moment timeless existance steps beyond the capablilty of my logic to resolve it. If the outcome is determined then there can be no free will. I agree.God knows (now) everything there is to know (whether in our past our present or our future). I agreeHe knows what's going (human-speak) to happen in the (human-speak) future. But our space/time dimension would have to exist within eternity - there being nowhere outside eternity for it to exist. Eternity, being timeless means that our future is present tense to God as is our past.The way I visualise it (for it cannot be rationally resolved - but no matter) is as I would a novel. The novel (history from beginning to end) is complete and sits on the bookshelf of eternity. A reader (God) can pick up the novel and open any page and see NOW what is going on in the novel at any point in the novel. We are the characters in the novel. In our dimension we are making choices and living day to day. We, the characters do not know what will happen on the next page. The reader can of course - just by flipping it over. In fact the reader has already read the complete novel.This novel however, has been written by the characters in it. They have made all their choices and it is the interaction between all those choices (Gods input notwithstanding) which have determined the course of the novel. A completed novel it is though, laid on the bookshelf of eternity - even if the characters do not know that yet.That's the best I can describe it Mark. Sure the time elapsing dimension cannot be circumvented completely. Time gets shifted to the reader and the stasis which can only be imagined of timeless existance gets shifted to the characters of the book.In the heel of the hunt we are left with a Bible which points out again and again that mans will is involved in his destiny. If it is not and all is determined then so what? There is nothing to find out by us because determined creatures find out what they are determined to find out - by him.Not much fun in that Edited by iano, : No reason given.

It is well established as a view. I am not saying it is well established as being true. There is a difference you are not getting here That is exactly what I was saying. Dawkins argument, if it relies on limiting God acting only in ways which are permissable to our logic (and then finding him illogical) - is setting up a straw God to demolish. God, by definition, is not confined to operate within our logic and cannot therefore be demolished by our logic. We might have to hold our hands up and say "shucks - I don't know" but that isn't really Dawkins approach usually. Faith adds another dimension to single dimension reason. Reason it remains but it is expanded upon. Whereas standard reason views a plan view of a house and can take you so far, faith adds glimpses into the 3D solid model. Unless you see it yourself of course it will seem unreasonable. It is unreasonable from your perspective. You know that the bible talks constantly of this blindness (to this other dimension).You don't have to believe me (or it) but there is no point in getting into assertion and counter assertion. If you have no interest in the view from 3D model land then fine. Lets cut that bit out

You mean demanding God to conform to the image and likeness of your logical limits... or else (insert gap to be closed here) is conducive to debate?Why are you always so eager to self-proclaim victory when you sail in the same boat that I do?Better discuss than debate these things though for truly there is no rational resolution either way. Not that Trickie Dickie Dawkins would ever admit as much. He's got sales targets to meet!

"The well established view that is not necessarily true" we could call it. Similarly, the less well established view (one which open theism holds) that suggests an elapsing-time-eternity which permits things such as all-knowing = no free will. Similar in that it also is not necessarily true.Since no resolution is possble either way we can say that Omniscience must= no free will is going a tad too far. That's fine by me... No. My argument was: don't do a Sir Dickie unless you want to sell lots of books.

With the apple came a disease called death. This infection meant that his spirit died to God and his physical death became a certainty.Thus infected Adam passed on his genes to his offspring - including lil old you and me. You didn't ask for it but infected you are, sin you will, die you will. Just like a child born with Aids didn't do anything to get it - they still get it.Death - the infectious disease to beat them allEdited by iano, : No reason given.

That isn't my approach. Someone says "Gods omniscience means no free will". But they cannot escape the fact that such comments rely, at their root, on the presumption that God is limited to operating within the confines of our logic. By definition this cannot be the case. We are made like God. We are not God ourselves. So absolutes such as those statements are out.I don't know it all nor do I have to. In suggesting the age old idea of timeless existance for God I give a possible (not proven) way whereby he could know all choices that will ever be made before they are made (by observation) without determining that they be so.In posing an alternative I am attempting to prevent a door being shut to God. For if not shut then open it remains. If I can get the idea across that we have no business limiting God by our logic then I have done my work. A person can go read all about how much God knows and all about how much our will is made plain in the Bible without worrying their heads about Adam not having free will.Its an apologetic - not a proof. Apologetics is the business of preventing doors shutting/opening doors. I might not do it well but that is what I attempt. So we may conclude...

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Omniscience is not incompatible with Adams free-willed choice - for want of being able to show that God is constrained to operating according to our logic

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Nor can it be helped that, by definition, a Christian is going to have more insight that a non-Christian into the workings of God. They have been made alive to God and his ways. They don't see it all (they see through a glass darkly) but they are not blind as bats either. They have the evidence whose currency operates in spiritual land: faith. It is not something can be proven in empirical land for its currency is not for that zone of reality. But it does explain why I presume to know more about God than you do. Not that I am smarter or anything - I can see s'all (if through a glass darkly).Lets face it: the dumbest sighted man in the world can see a lot more than the smartest blind man. I might well be the dumbest sighted man in the world.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Lets leave the writing aspect aside for a second.The decisions we make were known "before the creation of the world. I agree. They were known in a dimension called eternity. The dimension Jesus refered to when he said "Before Abraham was, I AM". Eternity envelops time (or time exists as a bubble in the sea of eternity) and is as much before the world began as after the world ends. The same dimension without beginning or end.If so, then God is looking from before and also from after. In other words, the world has already ended from Gods perspective. His knowing all the decisions that would be made arise out of all the decisions having been made already. His foreknowledge comes from his having seen it already happen. Not in a predictive sense but in the sense of looking back at history already made.If so, then his foreknowing interferes not in our being the ones who wrote (from his perspective) the story. Any story is possible - he just knows the one that is already written. This last sentence doesn't read correctly in time but we are trying to mix two dimensions as best we can.It all hinges on the nature of eternity. No time in it? Then it can be as I suggest it is.

Try looking at it this way. Lets assume that Adam had free choice (Jesus, "the second Adam" had too but lets leave that). Adam chose against God and instead ate an apple infected with a disease (he was told of this beforehand.."On the day you eat..)So Adam is infected through his own choice - God is not implicated. Now Adam transfers this infection to all his offspring. Every gets the disease and Adam is to blame for giving it to them. This disease means that mans nature is geared to sin - just as a cats nature is to kill mice. Its called a sinful nature.As soon as a person is able they will act according to their nature. They will do things that God finds objectionable - just as my cat leaving a half eaten bird on my bed is objectionable to me. In that sense it is not their fault that they act so - even if objectionable. They didn't give themselves this nature - Adam did. And it would be as unjust to punish people in Hell forever for doing that which they did by a nature as it would be for me to punish my cat for half eaten birds. When they die God would have to simply let that be that - we would cease to exist. We wouldn't exist anymore and would be back to the place before we did exist. Nothing lost, nothing gained.But men are not left completely alone by God. They, unlike cats killing mice have this thing called conscience. Conscience is God operating on a person with a sinful nature calling them away from that nature and empowering them to do so. If a person sins in this instance it was because they chose to ignore the call of conscience which convinced them not to sin. And for this they can justly be punished. Not because they were born with this nature but because they chose to sin when they didn't have to. Sin only becomes sin if a choice is made to do so. It is different than simply acting according to animal nature.There is a fine balance to be struck by God. Yes, attempt to restore things to the way intended in the beginning. But not push so far as to compel a person who does not want to be restored, to be restored. By chosing to call people through conscience God is making it possible for them to sin - instead of them just acting with animal nature. He is taking the risk that they will refuse in which case he risks them not being able to avail of simple non-existance but puts eternal damnation as a possibility for them. To balance that negative risk he places a positive - eternal bliss - in there too.Gods options:a) objectionable animals who cease to exist after they dieb) the risky business of objectionable persons who might go one or other way.He chose the latter. It is his right to do so. He's God.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

That is what salvation is. A cure for this deadly disease. But if a person doesn't want it then what is God to do? Force them to be cured?