God knows what will happen in the future, correct?

[Bookcat]

If one keeps approaching God as if God is of a creature in time - one simply will not get anywhere in understanding the matter.

Even will all the time in the universe

 

[Bahman]

Sarcasm is said to be the second last effort of one without a rational argument.

I was in fact very serious. It sounds ironic but that is what you believe.

 

[Bahman]

If one keeps approaching God as if God is of a creature in time - one simply will not get anywhere in understanding the matter.

Even will all the time in the universe

I am trying to approach God from his perspective. What is the concept of creation from timeless God perspective? Nothing is changing in timeless frame hence the very concept of creation is meaningless.

 

[Bookcat]

I am trying to approach God from his perspective.

You are not - your trying to put yourself as a creature as if you were God. Using the way things are in creation.

Like an ant trying to understand a man by thinking of a man as an ant…(but so much more off the right road).

God is not a creature. God is outside of time.

 

[Bahman]

You are not - your trying to put yourself as a creature as if you were God. Using the way things are in creation.

Like an ant trying to understand a man by thinking of a man as an ant…(but so much more off the right road).

God is not a creature. God is outside of time.

I am not and you are not making an argument. What is the concept of creation from timeless God perspective? Nothing is changing in timeless frame hence the very concept of creation is meaningless. It seems illogical. Isn’t it?

 

[Bookcat]

I am not and you are not making an argument. What is the concept of creation from timeless God perspective? Nothing is changing in timeless frame hence the very concept of creation is meaningless. It seems illogical. Isn’t it?

How can I argue about the nature of a duck when the other keeps saying and thinking that a duck is an insect that flies.

I have been posting both on the matters in question and also regarding that one cannot understand the matters being discussed if one keeps thinking of them as one would *other *matters.

If the person thinks that a duck is an insect - it will keep seeming illogical when one discusses that a duck quacks.

 

[clem456]

…
the very concept of creation is meaningless.
…

…says a human being who at one time did not exist, and now does exist, without any consent or act of his own.

And then claim this is the coherent position.

 

[GaryTaylor]

Nothing is changing in timeless frame hence the very concept of creation is meaningless.

Time is a learning experience, when there is nothing else to learn for man, it will cease to exist. God is timeless and there is no sequence of lapsed time. He exists in each and every moment in time. So we could say while God is eternal, He is temporal in time, because time is temporal.

 

[davidv]

I was in fact very serious. It sounds ironic but that is what you believe.

There is nothing ironic about an invalid argument.
Your position is indefensible as evidenced by repetition rather than explanation and seriously flawed logic.

 

[MarcoPolo]

How God could know? Guessing or seeing?

Whatever term you want to assign to His knowledge is not pertinent to my view. If it’s perfect “guessing” or actual “seeing” or simple knowledge of all things, does not matter. God knows our every action from birth to death, and that knowledge does not eliminate the free will we exercise in that life. It does not make sense to me that one being’s knowledge could affect another’s free will.

 

[TarkanAttila]

What’s so impossible to believe, about a God who sees without dictating, like a referee or a helicopter cam?

What’s so impossible to believe about a state of being that is perfect, and yet creates?

Bahman, your questions are not silly. But you are looking at it as if you were looking at the Earth from the wrong end of a telescope.

Tell me: if a doctor knows you have been smoking heavily for 40 years, and he tells you that if you do not stop you will die of emphysema, is he denying you your free will if you continue to smoke and do indeed die of that very thing? How much difference does it make whether a man knows a little, or a lot? How much difference would it make if God knew everything about us, if a doctor can make an accurate prediction based on little information? Would you really deny free will over a small amount of easily gotten information?

Similarly, why do happy people create things? If they’re happy, they do not need anything else, right? So why, if they are happy, do they make more things? Is it not to express that joy that they have? Why do some men and women make children, when they are happy as they are, and know they are? Why do religious people desire to make statues and monuments to their leaders, and to their God - why did the Buddhists make a statue to Gautama that is taller than all the rest - if they have already found satisfaction in what God or Buddha or Mohammed or Joseph Smith or whomever has already given them? Why do atheists still preach materialism and determinism if it’s already a foregone conclusion?

Happiness breeds more happiness. Love breeds love and monuments to love. The thing Christian and atheist evangelists share in common is the desire to share the love that completed them. And if merely human love and happiness can produce more happiness, I don’t see anything wrong with a perfectly happy, loving God creating things like a universe which reflect this capacity to love, to be happy. Or, simply, to exist, alongside Him.

I suppose the real question, then, is: why must pantheism be true, or atheism? Why must God either be everything, or nothing at all? Why cannot God simply be distinct, and yet within everything outside of Himself? Why cannot God, who is infinite, define the numbers 1000, 5254, and 10,043 as distinct from Him, and still participate in those numbers?

 

[Bahman]

How can I argue about the nature of a duck when the other keeps saying and thinking that a duck is an insect that flies.

I have been posting both on the matters in question and also regarding that one cannot understand the matters being discussed if one keeps thinking of them as one would *other *matters.

If the person thinks that a duck is an insect - it will keep seeming illogical when one discusses that a duck quacks.

You are not making an argument. Our situation is very clear and we can easily imagine the situation. The concept of timeless God is illogical.

 

[Bahman]

…says a human being who at one time did not exist, and now does exist, without any consent or act of his own.

And then claim this is the coherent position.

How things started? We can be honest and say we don’t know instead of striving in false belief.

 

[Bahman]

There is nothing ironic about an invalid argument.
Your position is indefensible as evidenced by repetition rather than explanation and seriously flawed logic.

One needs to strive on logic to show the flaw of an argument. Where is your argument?

 

[Bahman]

Whatever term you want to assign to His knowledge is not pertinent to my view. If it’s perfect “guessing” or actual “seeing” or simple knowledge of all things, does not matter. God knows our every action from birth to death, and that knowledge does not eliminate the free will we exercise in that life. It does not make sense to me that one being’s knowledge could affect another’s free will.

Guessing things always correct is very unlikely. Seeing things is impossible.

 

[clem456]

How things started? We can be honest and say we don’t know instead of striving in false belief.

But remember, you stated that mystery is not something worth pursuing?

So you have come full around in your circle.

 

[Bahman]

But remember, you stated that mystery is not something worth pursuing?

So you have come full around in your circle.

My objection was a response to your claim which you called a illogical situation mysterious. Can we call the problem of our origin mysterious? Sure, yes. Can we defend an illogical theory by saying that the problem is mysterious? Sure, no.

 

[rstrats]

MarcoPolo,
re: “God knows our every action from birth to death…”

Does He know every action before He creates the individual?

 

[davidv]

One needs to strive on logic to show the flaw of an argument. Where is your argument?

Explanations of the flaws in your position have been given and have been rejected without explanation. Why repeat them?

My argument: Until someone proves that knowledge equals cause, free will and omniscience are compatible.

 

[Bahman]

Explanations of the flaws in your position have been given and have been rejected without explanation. Why repeat them?

My argument: Until someone proves that knowledge equals cause, free will and omniscience are compatible.

The problem is where does the omniscience come from? You can strive on timeless picture to argue that God sees the future events in his eternal now but we are faced with two problems that you constantly ignore: 1) How the act creation can be performed in timeless pictures?, 2) How God could knows our decisions assuming that he present in all times? The second question is valid since being present to future just resolve half of the problem about God’s knowledge. The part which is unresolved is that how God could have access to our minds at the moment we make decision?