"Why bother with earth?"-Atheist

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Epearl03

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Hi, I’m new here so apologies if this is under the wrong title. Anyways, one of my atheist relatives is always asking this same quetion(as well as others)

“Why does God bother creating us and this world if he knows what will already happen bc he’s all knowing? What’s the point of earth at all then?”

I’ve answered him multiple times but he doesn’t seem to legitimize any of my arguments. Does anyone mind giving me some tips on better explaining it? Also he doesn’t take “it’s God’s myster, and we don’t know why he does some thing but there is always a reason” for an answere.
Thanks 😀
 
I don’t understand why God should (or, would) not create the world simply because He knows what we will do with/on it. That’s like saying Michelangelo shouldn’t have worked on the Sistine Chapel ceiling because he knew what it would look like if he did.
 
Well, there IS a point since everything / everyone was created
& the great drama is being played out.
God is likely to be “foreknowing” but seldom “predestining”
Sin allowed because free will is a much greater good.
Don’t love relationships require free will ?
 
I think what my relative is trying to say is that “if God knows person a will go to heaven and person b will go to Hell why not just put person b in Hell and a in Heaven”. But aren’t we put on earth so we can make are own path and choose to love good or not? He gave us free will and earth is like a test right? At least that’s my idea. Is that not correct?
 
I think he’s trying to prove that he is right an I’m stupid for following God, or something like that. Idk.
 
I’ve tried telling him that but then he just attacks free will. His all time favorite is “if we all have free will and someone shoots me why don’t I have free will to live” but it’s not like God gives us free will to be immortal.
 
Its strange, but there are several Atheist “Missionaries” on
CrgsLst ReFo.
 
They must not understand, then, that not creating someone- even to keep them from Hell- would be- in a sense- punishing them for something they haven’t even been able to do.
 
What the even 😂 I mean I guess they would be like ‘preaching’ against God then
 
There is a lot left out of this conversation for us to “assume”. So I’ll just state my assumptions and go from there.
  1. Assumed this deity knows everything to happen: past, present, and future. There is no new knowledge this deity will acquire after our free-will to pick a path. There is no new future knowledge for it to gain.
  2. Assumed: This deity will punish it’s created beings for their choices.
With perfect knowledge of all your future actions and the future actions of all of reality, you have just locked yourself and all of reality into a paradox where there is no longer choice and free-will. It’s all already predetermined and the program is just running along. You can’t have a choice if you already know what you will choose.
This deity will punish people for the results of their lived lives. However, again, see above paradox. This deity has built a program of reality to run that even it is not able to change due to having “perfect future knowledge”. So this deity has already determined who is going to hell and heaven. The point of running the world experiment is for what?; if the point of existence is to end up with the deity in heaven or be punished and sent to hell. But since, the program, the dye, has already been cast from the beginning of reality, the logical conclusion is that there is nothing we can do about this anyways and there’s nothing your deity can do either, till the program ends. The deity already knows it’s own actions in the future for whom it will direct towards heaven, who will go to hell, etc. The illusion of free-will is on the entities it created.

Ex: pick a number between 1-10. But I already know you will pick 7. You have the free-will to pick, but I already know what you will do. So, unless I intervene and allow you to change my future knowledge of your choice to something even I don’t know, you’re path can not change unless I allow it when I go to pass judgement on your choices. Since I have perfect knowledge of all your actions, all your actions are now just programmed to run. You are no longer a moral free-will agent and are just a computer program running in my experiment. The one’s I’ve designed to go to hell, the moral culpability is all on me for programming reality that way.
 
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Not predetermined, likely foreknown. Grace is given to ALL
sufficient for Salvation. God mostly keeps His foreknowing
to Himself
 
Foreknowledge does not equate to predetermination.

Think back on what you ate for breakfast this morning.

You know what you ate, right? But, you could have chosen something else. You even know you had a choice, but you still know you chose a instead of b.

Punishing for what is not done but simply what you would have done is not itself just.
 
Epearl03 said:
“Why does God bother creating us and this world if he knows what will already happen bc he’s all knowing? What’s the point of earth at all then?”
Click to expand...
Ask him why he bothers to go to work everyday, when he knows what is going to happen? His answer will probably be “Because I get a paycheck.” Well, that is the same reason God made us. God gets a “paycheck”, which is our love.

You don’t need to scour your brain coming up with a dynamite theological answer. He’s just playing “stupid-ball” so put the stupid-ball back in his court and don’t cast your pearls before swine.
 
You’ll have to explain again more on this for me. How is knowing the future not predetermination for everyone if that future is locked it and can not change? Predetermination is the same as having foreknowledge and not intervening to change that future event that you know will happen.
Breakfast example doesn’t work since I had no choice but to pick that option for breakfast. Knowing the future, means that you are watching an unchanged time line unfold as it happens. It can not be changed except by the people that know that future and can intervene to change that future result. That’s soo blatantly obvious to me and I assume to everyone else, that I don’t know why you presented your response that way. It did not address this problem.
 
So you are saying you didn’t choose what to eat for breakfast? Most people do, so that’s my example. But, say you can choose to eat or to not eat for breakfast, then.

My point is that, you’re viewing it in an incorrect way. To a timeless being, the future is already come to pass. However, that doesn’t mean that those are in time do not choose. That is what I am illustrating.
You chose to eat or to not eat for breakfast. You could have chosen the other, but you didn’t. However, you know what this choice was. Your knowing what you ate for breakfast now does not affect the fact that you chose whether to eat breakfast or not. You still chose, but it’s just that now you know what you chose. You now cannot change what you chose, but you still chose it.

In a similar way, it doesn’t seem clear that knowing what happened at some point in the time line affects the free will of said time line.
 
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BoomerangToo said:
Ask him why he bothers to go to work everyday, when he knows what is going to happen? His answer will probably be “Because I get a paycheck.” Well, that is the same reason God made us. God gets a “paycheck”, which is our love
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Then, for the atheist, the question might likely next be: Why would an all powerful God need love from beings it creates itself?
 
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Brittany said:
People are not always interested in learning, even if they appear to be on the outside. Sometimes, people want to look open-minded so they pretend to ask questions, but really, they don’t care to be open-minded. They’ve already made up their minds.
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Brittany hit the nail on the head. I’ve never met an atheist or agnostic (or even most protestants) who are genuinely interested in objectively and with sincere interest, in learning about almost any and all questions they have of a religious or spiritual nature. Usually they just want to argue or impress others with their own perceived superiority.
 
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