Free will vs Omniscience

I would assume so, but have no way of knowing. To be honest, I dont know that either.

We can decide how to behave. We may not be able to decide our ultimate destiny though I believe that our behavior should somehow correlate with that. Note again what the Son of Man says to the sheep: So we can first ask the question of when the goat/sheep separation occurs. Does it only occur after humans have lived their life and chose their daily behavior?
After all, we know that the Son Of Man is eternal....thus He could hypothetically do the separating on Day 1 of the existence of humans.But note: Could it be that all of the people...both sheep and goats alike...had a kingdom prepared for them since the creation of the world? And if so, did the goats actually doom themselves due to their behavior within their lives?

Yes. That is what I said. [qs=Phat]1) God knows who the sheep are and who the goats are. They themselves do not know to which group they belong.
2) God informs them that they are sheep (or goats) because they did what they did. Thus, even if He foreknew their destiny, they chose their destiny based on what they did in this life.One cannot say that they didn't know what to do. We become the decisions we make.We are not mindless zombies living out a pre-planned script. We ourselves are writing the script as we live day by day. Whether God sees the finished script before we write it out in time, we are still the ones doing the choosing.Note how he says to the sheep, \[b\]Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.[/b] Does that mean that the sheep were foreknown to be sheep without the responsibility of their choosing their actions?[/qs]I elaborate further in Message 1071You have to understand that I am thinking on the fly. All of my beliefs are subjhect to change...though they rarely do. I am in a particularly sensitive mood this morning after reading the late Ed Braytons last Column. It got me thinking about sheep and goats and how they are determined. Ed Braytons Eulogy & Reflections About Purpose

I still dont get it. Lets get back to the dogma that is Lucifer/Satan. I know you think its silly, but it explains a lot...if in fact it happened anywhere near what humans believe.Did God initially create evil directly or potentially?Did Lucifer Rebel?Is God evil for sending Satan away from Heaven?We have not even gotten to the human part of the equation yet.Add: And since I know that you wont answer any of those questions, let me ask you ones which you might have at least a guess as to how to answer.Does God separate the sheep from the goats only after they have lived out their lives?If God existeed outside of time itself and was present when the human was born, at all points during their life, and at judgement after they died, would it matter whether God foreknew who would be on His right and who would be on His left?And if so, would God by delaying the separating until after the humans had chosen theior lifetime behaviors,cease being evil?Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

I have no problem understanding/describing my dogma. It is you who have problems accepting the plausibility. Yet you would believe a physicist who claimed that the universe could and will create itself from nothing.

Because God never created Himself.

Because it is more plausible that a Creator is running things than that human wisdom should be the preferred tool for the explanation of all seen and unseen. Also that given human nature, the Christian mythos is rational and has helped social progress more than it has hindered it.

that is an argument worthy of satan. It is irrelevant what God knows. All that is relevant is what we do. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Because we become the decisions that we make.We do not become the decisions that God has made about us.

Proverbs 23:7 Im not so sure about that. Has not God said to some, "Depart from me, I never knew you?"Do you imagine that God picks and chooses whom He knows, or is it more likely that we(whom He never knew) never fulfilled our part of the communion?You always place the onus on God to rescue us from everything harmful as if it is His human derived duty to do so...forgetting that we didnt invent Him....He created us before wee were even consciously aware of what life meant. That type of thinking is also a choice and decision that YOU have made. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

I awoke early at 430 am. Upon arriving here at the computer, (seeking to essentially win my debates, as I usually do) I read several positions by my ideological opponents/adversaries/comrades and found several points of contention which I disagreed with in my mind. The subject overall was God. (OK, in my mind it was GOD) My opponents are in my mind not understanding ME and My position regarding GOD, Who He is, was, and forever more shall be, and that they all obviously have a faulty understanding and belief regarding the hypothetical and actual communion between GOD and myself (and my ideological adversaries).
For the record, my ideological opponents are primarily jar, ringo, Tangle, and Stile. (Stile is the nice one, by the way. ) Here are my rebuttals to each of my opponents, the points of contention, and my understanding in refutation of their understanding:
***************************************************************************** In other words, ringo is arguing that the God whom I market sends the message that Christianity is about what we do for others rather than what God has done for us. (and jar agrees.)
Where ringo gets me off track is this point of contention: Both ringo and jar do this. They market a God Who is invented by humans in the mythos, is responsible to humans for what He/She/It does, and who is an invention of our minds. It is appearing clearer to me that jar and ringo agree on a lot of these philosophical arguments. Jar says that Christianity is about what *we do* and not a magical free pass based on what Jesus did. Ringo, in a similar vein, argues that the message is the focus and not the messenger.(Who I would argue IS Jesus Christ, alive eternally.) Thus, I think I can understand what ringo is trying to show me. Jar, OTOH is a bit more difficult. As I try and frame the issue by saying that God already knows what path I will take, (as well as the path jar will take) jar argues that If either of us ended up damned then that God would be an evil SOB. So I am slowly understanding where jar is coming from. I hope that he can understand that I am attempting to describe a God Who is Omniscient yet not evil, since we still made our own decisions as humans.Ringo again has opinions on this: And ringo is correct. I AM trying to advocate omniscience. Thus, jar is essentially saying that IF God has prescience then God is evil. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that argument. *sips coffee* Edited by Phat, : further elaboration on prescience.

No.

According to logic, reason, and reality, our parents made the decision through behavior that sparked us into physical existence. As far as anything else, (ostensibly God) I would have to study the scriptures. If God is the Creator of all seen and unseen, He logically would have allowed our parents parents, etc...all the way back through the history of the human to also freely (or ignorantly) decide to create the spark. The jury is out on whether or not God was more Deistic, allowing natural events to happen, or whether He intentionally had a hand in human development. But thats another topic.

Oh grow up.Do you have any reason for your opinion on my alleged Carny Hucksterism?You have a massive chip on your shoulder against the apologists, and are quite good at telling me that I dance away and palm the pea, but you provide no reasoned argumentation as to why you carry this massive chip nor why you favor the critical thinking, scientific methodology and naturalist approach that you were taught and why the Christians are liars and/or fantasy based. The God I market is the God I accepted into my heart and mind. I have no idea what your God tells you that distinguish's Her from my Guy, but perhaps instead of insults you could attempt more of an entertaining and rational discussion.

Explain. You asked me two simple questions and I answered them honestly. Im trying to understand your world view, which one would think would be easier seeing as how we both claim to be believers. Lets try this again. So if God created all humans, and only later separated them into sheep and goats after they had lived out their life choices its kosher, right?But my point is what difference would it make if God knew what our choices would be before we made them? How does that added knowledge stamp the Deity as evil (at least in the eyes of humans)? Is it because we would have expected Him to save all of us, like Joe Woods hypothetical Warlord?