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Trump's Christian supporters are unchristian

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  • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
    God designed the board and the rules of the game, but he doesn't control the actions of the players.
    That's just the point MM. If god has foreknowledge of each move in the game, then they are the result of his control, of his engineering it that way from the beginning. If the moves were free willed choices, then god couldn't have that knowledge prior to the moves themselves.
    And btw, simply saying that he can, isn't an argument.
    Last edited by JimL; 01-05-2019, 10:13 AM.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by JimL View Post
      That's just the point MM. If god has foreknowledge of each move in the game, then they are the result of his control, of his engineering it that way from the beginning. If the moves were free willed choices, then god couldn't have that knowledge prior to the moves themselves.
      And btw, simply saying that he can, isn't an argument.
      No. This is an assumption on your part. You are assuming that for God to know something is going to happen means somehow,somewhere God has make it happen. I gave you an example involving superposition and retrocausaility that show there does not have to be direct control over the event by God, or even a causal connection of the event with past events, to know about it in the past. But you didn't understand it. You are asserting something to be true without justification, and in this case because of your own ignorance of possible constructs that contradict your assertion.

      MM has said it concisely: An omniscient, omnipotent God doesn't have to control or set in motion a set of physical causes for an event to know its outcome.

      Jim
      My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

      If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

      This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
        It is only a “teaching of the scriptures” by implication. God's bestowal of human "free-will" and the limiting of himself is not overtly stated.
        It says God will 'remember our sins no more' (Hebrews 8:12, Jeremiah 31:34). That is an example of an overt statement in scripture that God limits himself. In this case, He limits his knowledge of our sins.



        This is about available substantive evidence, of which there is none regarding the existence of a deity, not incomplete sets etc.
        That specific comment is about JimL's general dismissal of a concept relating to God because it can lead to a paradox. And I'm simply showing that a concept leading to a paradox does not invalidate the concept.

        I further pointed out that the unprovability of a truth does not make it untrue. Godel showed that non-trivial forma systems of mathematics are always either incomplete or inconsistent as an example.







        The life experience of yourself and "literally billions of other people on this earth" is that God is discerned in purely subjective ways. That’s all. There is no substantive verifiable evidence to back up your beliefs, or any good reason why I should accept your beliefs other than your say-so.
        It is not 'purely subjective'.

        The resurrection itself is substantive evidence. But it is not scientifically verifyable.

        The redemption of the unsaved, the Alchoholic or drug addict that on the acceptance of Christ as Savior is completely changed, sometimes miraculously released from the physical addiction, is substantive evidence. Concrete answers to prayer, Elements of Gods direct intervention in life's circumstances are substantive to those that receive them. These events are verifiable, though the skeptic dismisses the possibility of a divine cause.

        God deals with all of us on an individual basis. We come to know Him individually. But the Scriptures state that without faith it is impossible to please Him. So while each of us may experience Him in various ways, nothing that happens will be so unmistakably source in God as to require no faith on ones own part to understand it was from God.

        Your 'faith' in the power of reason and the scientific method to bring you all knowledge is in this case misplaced. There are many elements of human life and soul that simply can't be validated or proved though those mechanisms - at least not fully. That is just the way it is. But you see or watch a person go from the depths of destruction by the simple power of faith in Christ - see them completely restored and making a difference in the world, know intimately such a person before and after, and your attempts at explaining it as less than a miracle will always be empty. You see that over and over again enough times and even you might begin to think there is a God after all.


        Jim
        Last edited by oxmixmudd; 01-05-2019, 11:29 AM.
        My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

        If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

        This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

        Comment


        • Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
          No. This is an assumption on your part. You are assuming that for God to know something is going to happen means somehow,somewhere God has make it happen. I gave you an example involving superposition and retrocausaility that show there does not have to be direct control over the event by God, or even a causal connection of the event with past events, to know about it in the past. But you didn't understand it. You are asserting something to be true without justification, and in this case because of your own ignorance of possible constructs that contradict your assertion.
          No, you gave me an example of something that you obviously don't understand yourself. Retrocausality assumes the future exists and reaches back into the past in order to effect the past. For one thing that is a hypotheses that very few are adherents to and neither do they understand it. But the most important thing that you are missing in that scenario is that according to it the future already exists, there is no foreknowledge involved, the reason that it could influence the past is because it already exists, and if future already exist, then it isn't foreknowledge. Right.
          MM has said it concisely: An omniscient, omnipotent God doesn't have to control or set in motion a set of physical causes for an event to know its outcome.
          Then you need to explain how he does it in logical terms without going into the weeds of quantum mechanics which you don't understand well enough to make such assertions..

          Comment


          • Originally posted by JimLamebrain View Post
            If the moves were free willed choices, then god couldn't have that knowledge prior to the moves themselves.
            Exactly. Which is why our freewill choices are what cause God's foreknowledge of those choices.
            Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
            But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
            Than a fool in the eyes of God


            From "Fools Gold" by Petra

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
              Exactly. Which is why our freewill choices are what cause God's foreknowledge of those choices.
              Then it isn't foreknowledge, ya dumbbell.
              Last edited by JimL; 01-05-2019, 11:36 AM.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by JimLamebrain View Post
                Then it is foreknowledge, ya dumbbell.
                Don't get caught up in semantics. It's only "foreknowledge" from our temporal perspective. From God's perspective, it's simply knowledge that he has acquired as a result of the choices we make.

                (Don't stop now, Jimmy... you're this close to getting it. )
                Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                Than a fool in the eyes of God


                From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                  God designed the board and the rules of the game, but he doesn't control the actions of the players.
                  Doesn't work in Molinism when in said system God chose the actions of the players based on His desired outcome. Your other responses don't work either. God's foreknowledge is logically prior to people's "decisions" in an exhaustively foreknown universe, therefore He chose them, and not the people themselves.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
                    Doesn't work in Molinism when in said system God chose the actions of the players based on His desired outcome. Your other responses don't work either. God's foreknowledge is logically prior to people's "decisions" in an exhaustively foreknown universe, therefore He chose them, and not the people themselves.
                    But if we have freewill, then it is literally impossible for God to foreknow anything other than the choices we freely make. This is why the coexistence of our freewill and God's omniscience are not paradoxical. You just have to work out the logical relationship between beings within time, and a being without time.
                    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                    Than a fool in the eyes of God


                    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                      But if we have freewill, then it is literally impossible for God to foreknow anything other than the choices we freely make. This is why the coexistence of our freewill and God's omniscience are not paradoxical. You just have to work out the logical relationship between beings within time, and a being without time.
                      And you have yet to do that other than to assert it. You lose!

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by JimLamebrain View Post
                        And you have yet to do that other than to assert it. You lose!
                        I guess you missed this post.

                        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                        You're making this a lot harder than it needs to be, Jimmy. It's only the future as we see it. Your argument is like saying that because you know what choices someone made in the past that therefore, that person didn't have the freewill make those choices. But logically, if humans have freewill, which seems intuitively true, then you can only know a person's past choices because those are the choices they freely made. In other words, your knowledge of their choices is logically dependent on their freewill. It's similar with God. If we have freewill, which, again, seems intuitively true, then it is literally impossible for God to know anything other then the choices we freely make.
                        Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                        But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                        Than a fool in the eyes of God


                        From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                          You're making this a lot harder than it needs to be, Jimmy. It's only the future as we see it. Your argument is like saying that because you know what choices someone made in the past that therefore, that person didn't have the freewill make those choices.
                          No, my argument isn't like that at all which is why I know you have no clue, MM. As a matter of fact, that is your argument, that knowing the past is no different than knowing the future. Well dud! It's completely different, MM. And if your argument is that god can see all of time, then obviously, all of time, includingt the future time, has always existed, and if all of time has always existed, then there is no free will choices. That concept has been explained to you only about 2000 times over the years. So tell me, do you understand that concept now or no?

                          But logically, if humans have freewill, which seems intuitively true, then you can only know a person's past choices because those are the choices they freely made.
                          Duh! Again, knowing the past is not knowing the future. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
                          In other words, your knowledge of their choices is logically dependent on their freewill. It's similar with God. If we have freewill, which, again, seems intuitively true, then it is literally impossible for God to know anything other then the choices we freely make.
                          Yeah, that's the argument alright, now get a clue, MM. You obviously are not using your head. The past is not the future. I'm assuming your arguing about the past because you can't make the same argument with respect to the future.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                            I'm not sure what you mean by "absolute foreknowledge".

                            Also, your first premise needs to be fleshed out. If I'm outside of time and able to view your life from the end to the beginning, how would my knowledge of what you're about to do be the cause rather than the result of your freewill? To put it another way, God can only know what I will choose to do because I freely chose to do it.
                            Absolute Foreknowledge is pretty self explanatory I would have thought. Okay, do you prefer Exhaustive Definite Foreknowledge usually abbreviated EDF?

                            You're begging the question when you posit God outside of time. After all, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus came as a human, and he was surely in time.

                            Again, as Cere has already pointed out, You are describing Fate or Destiny even if you think you aren't.
                            "What has the Church gained if it is popular, but there is no conviction, no repentance, no power?" - A.W. Tozer

                            "... there are two parties in Washington, the stupid party and the evil party, who occasionally get together and do something both stupid and evil, and this is called bipartisanship." - Everett Dirksen

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                              OK let's leave God out of it. Let's assume X is you eating cheerios yesterday, and you told me about it today.

                              P1 - If I have knowledge that you ate cheerios yesterday, then it is necessary that you ate cheerios yesterday.
                              P2. If is is necessary that you ate cheerios yesterday then you were not free with respect to eating Frosted Flakes (it was necessary for it to happen in order for me to know about it)

                              C If I have absolute knowledge you ate Cheerios yesterday then you were not free with respect to eating Cheerios, you must do it because I know it as a fact.

                              Do you see the flaw? Me knowing what you ate isn't what causes you to eat it. What you ate is what causes me to know it. IF you ate Frosted Flakes then that is what I would have been told by you and what my current knowledge is. But you didn't.


                              God knows your choices BECAUSE you make them, His knowing doesn't CAUSE them.
                              So, God's just a video recorder? What you seem to be downplaying is God's omnipotence in favor of his omniscience.

                              Well, none of us are God (obviously) and saying that our knowing something is the same as God's knowledge is a problem IMO. If (as in Molinism) God looked at all the possible worlds and decisions and created the one he wanted, how do you get around God choosing which decisions you would make? You can't have it both ways. In some worlds you would have made opposite decisions, even possibly not have accepted Christ, but you made the decisions you made because God created this world and not another...that seems the very definition of Theological Fatalism...
                              "What has the Church gained if it is popular, but there is no conviction, no repentance, no power?" - A.W. Tozer

                              "... there are two parties in Washington, the stupid party and the evil party, who occasionally get together and do something both stupid and evil, and this is called bipartisanship." - Everett Dirksen

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                                But if we have freewill, then it is literally impossible for God to foreknow anything other than the choices we freely make. This is why the coexistence of our freewill and God's omniscience are not paradoxical. You just have to work out the logical relationship between beings within time, and a being without time.

                                You're basically saying that exhaustive foreknowledge and free will can't conflict, and haven't shown such. God being "without time" has no bearing on the logical impossibility of free will in an exhaustively foreknown universe existing at the same time as free will. He exists logically prior to creation, and chooses all initial conditions. In Molinism He even chooses a universe in which all decisions are made, just in the way that He deems best out of all other possible outcomes. It's nothing more than illusory free will in Molinism, rather than the nonexistent version of Calvinism. The "outside time" thing just isn't a live option for explaining this. It would only work with regards to a passive observer.

                                Free will, or an exhaustively foreknown universe, choose one. They can't exist in the same universe.

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