Is it 'boring' being God?

Yes, God created this material universe and made our bodies out of physical stuff. Not at all. Definitely. No. Matter can't sin anyway. It's the CONSEQUENCES of sin that have brought the deterioration of health unto death. How that plays out in terms of the physical laws I don't know, but our bodies became vulnerable when sin entered the universe, and this vulnerability extends to all life since God "cursed the Creation" for our sake. You can't as things are presently constituted. But the Buddha never discovered the Fall.

This was your reply to my claim that God did not know FOR SURE if Christ would go through with the crucifixion.Free will defined: the ability to change ones mind at will; the freedom to do otherwise.Because free will self evidently exists = God did not know FOR SURE. I have already supplied Biblical references completely ignored by the Calvinian mindset. Agreed. It was prophesied. Your error is confusing prophecy with done deed. When these prophecies were uttered the possibility of them NOT coming to pass is the risk factor in prophecy WHEN the utterance depends upon the free will of a human being.The point is God did not know FOR SURE. There is no mutilation. Suffering Messianic psalms are a perfect shadow/fit cast by the substance of Christ. I have no idea what you are talking about.IF Jesus went through with the crucifixion THEN God promised to raise Him after 72 hours elapsed. Jesus had faith the Father would keep His promise, however, Jesus did not know FOR SURE until God actually did. Even God has the freedom to do otherwise - obviously.This is the risk of faith.The Bible was written to instill within mankind that whatever God says - good or bad: will come to pass = a record showing that God is trustworthy: a basis to have faith = the only thing God wants = the only thing God does not know for sure: if a person with the freedom to do otherwise will have faith in a promise of His that fits their circumstance. He had faith that it was temporary: God kept His word to Him. The point for us is that God will treat us the same IF we trust Him like Christ did.How could you insult Christ's sacrifice since it could benefit you (receive forgiveness of sins)? You know the meaning of the atonement was for this purpose. Having a careless attitude about sins being forgiven shows a frightening condition, unless I am misunderstanding you ? I have defined the minute exception to perfect omniscience via the Bible = you have ignored. This means you have no source for the above belief and it is entirely subjective.The Bible says God's omniscience is DELAYED in one small area, that is when a free will being is facing a "vertical delta" = to trust/fear/love God or not.In this precise context He does not know FOR SURE UNTIL the being does whatever they do. God can predict and be correct but it doesn't matter since the person facing the choice can go either direction. God is prepared in either case but He does not know for sure.Genesis 22:12 says it bluntly.Abraham could have chosen to disobey God. He chose to trust God. Hebrews 11 tells us way after the fact what Abraham was thinking; that he thought God WOULD raise Isaac from the dead. This is ALSO typology. Christ thought the same. God kept His word and raised the Son. In Abraham's case God was convinced that after taking the knife he would go through with it, instead, God ended the horrific test with an imperative command to not harm the boy.Genesis 22 IS in its entirety: forerunner typological drama of what God would do thousands of years later, only there would be no one to make that imperative command. Atheism and its utter senselessness. Atheism making total sense.The only error here is the evasion of Genesis 22:12.God meant what He said when He said "NOW I KNOW...thou fearest God"Fear is a synonym for trust and love.Genesis 22:12 and other passages substantiate the asterisk next to God's omniscience. Now its a farce. WHY ?Ray

if he is god, then why would he ask questions,why would he ask "father,why hast you forsaken me?" there would be no point to this unless he wasn't god, and if he was god he wouldn't be a man

"at will"? What is mind and who is it that changes it? How is it this change happens?I think free will is an illusion created because the brain, complex as it is, nonetheless can't keep track of the complexity of itself and all the influences acting on it.lfen

Our society--all societies--are based on the concept of free will.Free will is a given in all human endeavors.

You are describing what is known as confusion.The Bible tells us the source of confusion is not God. This leaves only Satan as the source.The Bible also tells us that IF we apprehend Christ - He will shield our minds from the Adversary and his confusion.Ray

I think I tend to agree with you, jar, about what the sacrifice was. I've puzzled over this for a long time. Anyone can die for the sake of others - what was so specific and special about Jesus dying? OK, He was the Son of God, but I've always thought there was more to it than that.I came to the conclusion that it wasn't so much dying as a man as it was living and dying as a man. I suppose my pet theory is that God, becoming wholly human experienced first-hand just what it was like to live in this world as a human. That's what I think formed the basis of the new covenant and why God became a God of love and forgiveness, rather than remaining a God of wrath and punishment - He empathised with us after the life and death of Jesus.I have a slight problem with God being omniscient - taken to it's logical conclusions it smacks of predestination. Admittedly it's a long and tortuous route, with a left at the traffic lights, but predestination removes free will and I do believe that we have free will. If God knew everything that was going to happen He wouldn't have planted that damned tree in easy reach, would He? I do believe that God is able to do whatever He wants to, He has the power to do it, but that doesn't mean that He will do everything, just that He can.I haven't thought this fully through, but I'm getting there.

Are you claiming that as a result of your beliefs you right now know the level of thryoid, testosterone, adrenlin, etc. etc. circulating in your body and the state of neuro transmitters in the brain plus all the neuro connections resulting from the complex interactions that conditioned your taste in foods, clothes, entertainment, etc.etc.?I was describing what is known about brain function. Maybe the Bible said something about that but my impression was that the writers of the Bible had no idea what the brain's function was or at least had no interest in the brain, endocrinology, and neuro transmitters.lfen

And myself and a handful of others disagree that there is free will.The unit of society is the human organism. That is where the focus of control is. Free will is a concept that developed as part of the social control of society through religion and jurisprudence. Free will is a legal fiction used as part of the process of controlling individuals. It works but it's fictional. I'm hoping a good analogy might be how gravity works as a fictional explanation for the way objects behave in inertial systems or in curved space.lfen

Free will may exist, but its existence is not totally evident, Biblically or otherwise. Paul talks of predestination, and there's no practicable experiment which can prove that we have free will.Regarding Genesis 22:12: either God was lying to Abraham, or Genesis is at odds with Romans, among other NT books. If you want to put God's word before Paul's word, then I'm fine with that, but may I suggest that you convert to Judaism.

I recall someone saying that many do not believe in free will, but none can live that way: how would one enact a belief in predestination? By acting immediately on each whim? Even that would be a choice.My parents were fond of asking, in frustration, "What's wrong with you kids?" My favorite reply was, "Gee, I don't know, Dad--whaddya think, genetics or environment?"So much of our identities and so much of our choice-making contexts are dictated by circumstance, I guess I'd say I believe in "not totally unfree" will.While freely willed human choice may be possible, I'm not sure it often occurs. I see it most in perversity or contrariness, acting against apparent interests from such deeper motivations as love, hate, and contempt, or faith, belief, and sacrifice.The defiant, "spit in your eye" spirit of some overmatched victims comes to mind: choosing to abandon the small chance of survival through appeasement for the sooner-doomed satisfaction of one last assertion of freedom. Of course, this drama could simply be a tendency to confound expectations, and no more free than any other act.A number of Biblical circumstances raise the question of how free God's free will might actually be, for example, to exercise unconstrained omnipotence. My favorite is the very notion of a covenant: God, apparently, can be bound by contracts, and thus freely agrees to constraints on his omnipotence--or, having made us, did he bind himself already to consequent choices?It's true that we cannot cohere socially without supposing that each member is responsible for his/her actions, and thus a free will actor, even though we can see it is only somewhat true, some of the time.Social truths often successfully appeal to consequences. It is interesting to ponder the notion of free will beyond the by-now-cliched debate of I believe/I don't: If we have free will, is it quantifiable? Can we increase the amount we have? Do we spend it? Do the consequences of an exercise of free will make subsequent exercises of will less free, or more?Perhaps there are only a few moments of authentically free will in each life.This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 01-14-2006 09:37 PM

A small side topic to this, which relates to his existence, is "Isn't God lucky?" What I mean is, he just got to be God. He just happened to be that way. Isn't that very lucky for him?He's God "by birth", he didn't earn it. He just got to be the superior being by pure luck.Anyway, it's off topic just thought I'd throw it out.

Yes, and one might assert that we have no eyes--we only think we do. We don't actually "see" things; what we do is mentally project the outside world. To me, that view is on the same level as asserting that we have no free will.

Rank hath its responsibilities. It's lonely at the top.

Are you saying that we do have free will, or that it's impossible to know?Regardless, I don't think those two assertions are on the same level. There's no reason to believe that the mind is immaterial, and everything material is ultimately deterministic, or at least probabilistic. We can see this determinism in things like planetary orbits and pool balls bouncing around, but as Ifen noted, the human brain is very complex. So we cannot yet predict with certainty what a person's choices will be, just like we could not predict the final position of trillions of marbles rolling down a hill, but that doesn't mean that either people or hordes of marbles have free will.This message has been edited by Funkaloyd, Sun, 15-Jan-2006 11:31 PM