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A
The classical theistic view of God's infallible foreknowledge, which has dominated the orthodox Christian church from the very beginning, has no reason to step aside for any recent view of limited foreknowledge, either on biblical or theological grounds. Indeed, there are good reasons biblically, historically, theologically, and philosophically to retain it. Omniscience means that all events are present to the divine mind; that is, God has direct cognition of everything in creation.
This is why we have a disagreement.
Even if God is beyond human logic and understanding, why should I have faith that it is true?
Maybe in some other dimension the rules of logic are different but until I have reason to think that I would not accept it as truth.
We are coming at this from two sides:
You are assuming the proposition until it is shown false.
I am rejecting the proposition until it is shown true.
P.S.
I like your signature...have you seen the bumper sticker "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned"
Even if God is beyond human logic and understanding, why should I have faith that it is true?
Maybe in some other dimension the rules of logic are different but until I have reason to think that I would not accept it as truth.
We are coming at this from two sides:
You are assuming the proposition until it is shown false.
I am rejecting the proposition until it is shown true.
P.S.
I like your signature...have you seen the bumper sticker "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned"
Agreed. Faith is the key. It is the idea of faith I reject.
Yet in 1Peter 3:15
"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."
You are asked to accept a claim as truth, then try to justify it. This seems backward, why not only accept a claim to be truth after it is justified.
Yet in 1Peter 3:15
"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."
You are asked to accept a claim as truth, then try to justify it. This seems backward, why not only accept a claim to be truth after it is justified.
A
It is possible to exist outside of time, in fact, we know that it is necessary that something exists outside of time. If you are an atheist, you have to believe it was some sort of aimless energy, if religious, then God. The alternative is that at one point literally nothing existed, and then suddenly something existed. You might be imagining something appearing out of thin air, but it would be more absurd than that. Either nothing exists, or something has always existed. Whatever thing caused time and the universe to exist, itself existed before time, and therefore always existed.
If the thing is God, we know that it must see everything simultaneously. If, for a moment, you will imagine the events in your life as a line going from left to right across the page like so,
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where as you move from left to right you are going forwards in time. You can see that if you turned the line so that it went up and down, it would be as though all things happened at one specific point in time. (In this example, right at the beginning of time
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There would be no sense in talking about the order of events then. For example, if anything is known at some point, it is known immediately. We are not used to this sort of thing, because we do not know something today, and tomorrow we know it. But if you exist outside of time there is no before and after, so you either know something, or you do not. This is a necessary property of existing without time.
God is incapable of changing himself, yes, but he is not incapable of action. It is true that he did not at some point decide (I am going to create something new). Being outside of time, if he does something, he does it always. For us, we see him doing it at a specific point in our timeline, but for him, the act of creation is just as much happening now as the acts he performs during the end times. If we think of our lives as a story playing out scene by scene, it would be much better to think of describing God's life as a painting. The painting can have blue strokes, and red strokes, and the image of a giant, but you do not talk about the order of any of these things, you are just describing the way that it is. In describing God you could say that the creation of the Universe is just one of the things in the picture. It is in the picture because of God's character, but that doesn't mean that at some point it wasn't in the picture, it actually means the opposite, that creating the Universe is in a way just as much part of the God as his perfection is. He has no past, the concept of a past is only relevant to us, and in our past, he created the Heavens (sky, space, and that paradise place) and the Earth.
So as for your next point, we have to consider why God created us. It is difficult to know exactly why, but we know that he wanted creatures that are like himself in the sense that they choose, and create; they have character in a way that volcanoes and rocks do not. Consider that the only thing that separates you from me is that you do not have complete control over me. If you could control me in the same way that you control your own arm, then I would be just as much you as your arm is. So in order for the creatures to be distinct from God, he cannot have complete control over them. If he wanted to control them completely, he could, but they would just be an extension of himself. Apparently he did not want this. But another consequence of making creatures like this is that they can go wrong. Because of this, he feeds events into our timeline that will help to set us straight, and ultimately lead us to choose to do right on our own accord. But we are by no means forced to do right. Just as I can reason with a man to try and get him to do good, God can reason with us to try to get us to do good. He can show us the terrible consequences of evil in our own lives, or the people around us, or in history. It is true that when he creates a person he knows whether they will choose good or evil, but that does not mean that he is choosing it for them. Just because God knows that something is going to happen, this does not mean that the thing he knows about need not exist. God knows it will happen because it does happen, but if it no longer happens (i.e. the person doesn't get created) then what is there for him to know about?
If the thing is God, we know that it must see everything simultaneously. If, for a moment, you will imagine the events in your life as a line going from left to right across the page like so,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
where as you move from left to right you are going forwards in time. You can see that if you turned the line so that it went up and down, it would be as though all things happened at one specific point in time. (In this example, right at the beginning of time
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There would be no sense in talking about the order of events then. For example, if anything is known at some point, it is known immediately. We are not used to this sort of thing, because we do not know something today, and tomorrow we know it. But if you exist outside of time there is no before and after, so you either know something, or you do not. This is a necessary property of existing without time.
God is incapable of changing himself, yes, but he is not incapable of action. It is true that he did not at some point decide (I am going to create something new). Being outside of time, if he does something, he does it always. For us, we see him doing it at a specific point in our timeline, but for him, the act of creation is just as much happening now as the acts he performs during the end times. If we think of our lives as a story playing out scene by scene, it would be much better to think of describing God's life as a painting. The painting can have blue strokes, and red strokes, and the image of a giant, but you do not talk about the order of any of these things, you are just describing the way that it is. In describing God you could say that the creation of the Universe is just one of the things in the picture. It is in the picture because of God's character, but that doesn't mean that at some point it wasn't in the picture, it actually means the opposite, that creating the Universe is in a way just as much part of the God as his perfection is. He has no past, the concept of a past is only relevant to us, and in our past, he created the Heavens (sky, space, and that paradise place) and the Earth.
So as for your next point, we have to consider why God created us. It is difficult to know exactly why, but we know that he wanted creatures that are like himself in the sense that they choose, and create; they have character in a way that volcanoes and rocks do not. Consider that the only thing that separates you from me is that you do not have complete control over me. If you could control me in the same way that you control your own arm, then I would be just as much you as your arm is. So in order for the creatures to be distinct from God, he cannot have complete control over them. If he wanted to control them completely, he could, but they would just be an extension of himself. Apparently he did not want this. But another consequence of making creatures like this is that they can go wrong. Because of this, he feeds events into our timeline that will help to set us straight, and ultimately lead us to choose to do right on our own accord. But we are by no means forced to do right. Just as I can reason with a man to try and get him to do good, God can reason with us to try to get us to do good. He can show us the terrible consequences of evil in our own lives, or the people around us, or in history. It is true that when he creates a person he knows whether they will choose good or evil, but that does not mean that he is choosing it for them. Just because God knows that something is going to happen, this does not mean that the thing he knows about need not exist. God knows it will happen because it does happen, but if it no longer happens (i.e. the person doesn't get created) then what is there for him to know about?
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I don't think that was what Peter was meaning when he said that. He saw Jesus after he was crucified. He saw miracles. He saw that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of scripture that was written long before. This is why he believe that Jesus was the messiah. I agree that today many Christians are going the other way around, believing it first, and then finding evidence, but this is just because they are born into a Christian home, so they have no other choice. If Christianity is true, you cannot blame them for being in this situation anymore than you can blame someone who goes about proving 1+1=2 because he was raised to believe that 1+1=2 (by the way, bigger proof than you might think, 1+1=2 (link) this is the short version) .The reason that the early church exploded in growth is because the evidence was all around; eye witnesses were still alive, people that had been healed were still living. Nobody at that time was raised believing it, but instead they looked at the evidence and saw that it was true. And people were not stupid, they knew full well that people don't rise from the dead, and that the blind do not just suddenly have vision. They knew that babies were only conceived when two people have sex; this is why Joseph planned to divorce Mary when she was pregnant. But even though they knew these things were not naturally possible, they had evidence that they had occurred. I think all Peter is saying here is to remember the things that convinced you in the first place.
God knew the future before there was even a "future" and the past before there was a "past". These are relative human terms. He knew everything about everyone before there was even a universe. God certainly knows the path that we must take for us to develop spiritually in our humble service to the Lord. If wants us to have life and have it more abundantly. It is up to the individual as to what path to choose once they come to the fork in the road. Choose life, confess your sins and accept Jesus Christ into your heart. Stay close to God and apply the wisdom and teaching of the Lord in your everyday life.
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How comfortable this must be for you doseofreality to discard everything that's been shown to you up to this point so you can agree with a non-specialist that "faith is the key" after being exposed to a sampling of the enormous body of irrefutable empirical evidence collaborating God's existence and the Christian worldview that exists while simultaneously discarding the large body of experiential eyewitness testimony confirming that enormous body of irrefutable empirical evidence.
As I explained to you before in the "Ask an Atheist' thread (that is now closed), your problem isn't one of faith for you have many beliefs, of which a large number cannot be proven, that you apply your will and faith to daily.
Will -->Faith-->Knowledge/Experience-->Belief.
The key isn't faith. The key is to apply your will toward what is true to form a correct belief.
That's why faith is always a verb in the Gospel of John (e.g. a direction of life that God begins validating).
Think of Abraham who experienced times of doubt, didn't always do the right thing, and had motives that weren't always pure. Yet, he is remembered as the "father of the faith."
Abraham made a choice to apply his will to believe God and God interacted with him validating his faith through real life experiences and special revelation (e.g. knowledge from God) until Abraham had all the experiential content and knowledge he needed to never doubt God again. That is why Abraham is called the father of the faith.
Because God actually is real, one can exercise their will toward creator God and receive the experiential content and knowledge to arrive at a correct belief.
Many smart people have exercised their will toward faith on the corroborative evidence that exists for God subsequently gaining the requisite knowledge and experience from God resulting in correct belief.
This why the Bible paints a picture of faith as an instrument. The imagery is that of saving faith appropriating Jesus Christ and everything he has to offer (Jn 11:25–26; 14:1; Acts 16:31; 1 Jn 3:23), the means by which a person is justified (Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16; 3:8, 24), sanctified (Acts 15:9; 26:18), adopted (Gal 3:26), and the action through which a person receives the righteousness of Christ (Rom 3:22; Phil 3:9).
You exercise your will to put your faith in a metaphysical view that is false. You exercise your will to put your faith in many beliefs that you hold some of which can not be proven.
You say you reject the idea of faith yet you believe in all sorts of things; some are true, some are false, and some might be true but which you cannot prove are true.
You're exercising your will in faith regularly but you're on here falsely asserting that you aren't.
Why the last time you ate a new restaurant you exercised your faith that you wouldn't die of food poisoning and ate the meal. I've got a million of them.
You're not being honest with yourself.
As I explained to you before in the "Ask an Atheist' thread (that is now closed), your problem isn't one of faith for you have many beliefs, of which a large number cannot be proven, that you apply your will and faith to daily.
Will -->Faith-->Knowledge/Experience-->Belief.
The key isn't faith. The key is to apply your will toward what is true to form a correct belief.
That's why faith is always a verb in the Gospel of John (e.g. a direction of life that God begins validating).
Think of Abraham who experienced times of doubt, didn't always do the right thing, and had motives that weren't always pure. Yet, he is remembered as the "father of the faith."
Abraham made a choice to apply his will to believe God and God interacted with him validating his faith through real life experiences and special revelation (e.g. knowledge from God) until Abraham had all the experiential content and knowledge he needed to never doubt God again. That is why Abraham is called the father of the faith.
Because God actually is real, one can exercise their will toward creator God and receive the experiential content and knowledge to arrive at a correct belief.
Many smart people have exercised their will toward faith on the corroborative evidence that exists for God subsequently gaining the requisite knowledge and experience from God resulting in correct belief.
This why the Bible paints a picture of faith as an instrument. The imagery is that of saving faith appropriating Jesus Christ and everything he has to offer (Jn 11:25–26; 14:1; Acts 16:31; 1 Jn 3:23), the means by which a person is justified (Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16; 3:8, 24), sanctified (Acts 15:9; 26:18), adopted (Gal 3:26), and the action through which a person receives the righteousness of Christ (Rom 3:22; Phil 3:9).
You exercise your will to put your faith in a metaphysical view that is false. You exercise your will to put your faith in many beliefs that you hold some of which can not be proven.
You say you reject the idea of faith yet you believe in all sorts of things; some are true, some are false, and some might be true but which you cannot prove are true.
You're exercising your will in faith regularly but you're on here falsely asserting that you aren't.
Why the last time you ate a new restaurant you exercised your faith that you wouldn't die of food poisoning and ate the meal. I've got a million of them.
You're not being honest with yourself.
I am treating these as separate topics with different levels of faith. The empirical evidence you are referring to, correct me if im wrong, deals with biblical claims mostly surrounding the historicity of christ.
This thread is specifically talking about the timelessness of God and the paradox of knowing future events without controlling those very events. Is there empirical evidence for a timeless being who can see all past/future events simultaneously?
There are different magnitudes of faith based on the magnitude of the proposition and the knowledge/evidence supporting it.
You are right, I am a hypocrite, in that I have faith in many things, things I probably don't even realize I am having faith in.
There are plenty of things I believe that very well may be false, certainly most things I think I know can't be proven absolutely true.
But having faith in the restaurant to have good quality food is simply a level of trust in the FDA regulations and the employee food-handling guidelines. Its based on empirical data that I have never gotten sick before and that reported cases are rare, thus I can predict a low probability that I will die from food-poisoning and the convenience is worth the risk.
So I feel I am being consistent, "faith is key" is relevant when speaking of a God claim whose attributes are such as infinite, timeless, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, sovereign, personal, triune, loving, just, righteous, and holy.
Notice I would admit that it takes less faith to believe the accuracy of the gospels than to believe the God claim.
There is evidence supporting some of what is in the gospels.
This thread is specifically talking about the timelessness of God and the paradox of knowing future events without controlling those very events. Is there empirical evidence for a timeless being who can see all past/future events simultaneously?
There are different magnitudes of faith based on the magnitude of the proposition and the knowledge/evidence supporting it.
You are right, I am a hypocrite, in that I have faith in many things, things I probably don't even realize I am having faith in.
There are plenty of things I believe that very well may be false, certainly most things I think I know can't be proven absolutely true.
But having faith in the restaurant to have good quality food is simply a level of trust in the FDA regulations and the employee food-handling guidelines. Its based on empirical data that I have never gotten sick before and that reported cases are rare, thus I can predict a low probability that I will die from food-poisoning and the convenience is worth the risk.
So I feel I am being consistent, "faith is key" is relevant when speaking of a God claim whose attributes are such as infinite, timeless, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, sovereign, personal, triune, loving, just, righteous, and holy.
Notice I would admit that it takes less faith to believe the accuracy of the gospels than to believe the God claim.
There is evidence supporting some of what is in the gospels.
...What? There isn't an "enormous body" of "irrefutable empirical evidence" concerning God's existence, much less the general Christian conception of God -- or, for that matter, Christianity's various theological perspectives and applications. To assert that eyewitness testimony of Jesus is tantamount to "irrefutable evidence" of his divinity, or that such testimony validates Christian theology in general, for instance, is to defy the general historical consensus concerning aspects of his life. Almost no historical scholars associated with research concerning Christ's general existence believe that there's any reliable evidence of his being entombed and resurrected, as an example.
In my opinion it is impossible to know the future unless you have control to predetermine that future.
So there are 2 options regarding God:
1) God knows the future because it is predetermined, but then we dont truly have free will.
2) We have free will, thus God can not know the future even if He is able to change events to still accomplish His will
Many christians will argue these are not mutually exclusive, but I disagree.
The answer to your question then depends on your opinion of free-will
So there are 2 options regarding God:
1) God knows the future because it is predetermined, but then we dont truly have free will.
2) We have free will, thus God can not know the future even if He is able to change events to still accomplish His will
Many christians will argue these are not mutually exclusive, but I disagree.
The answer to your question then depends on your opinion of free-will