Today you logged in to funsubstance and looked at this thread. You can’t go back in time and undo that choice can you? Does the fact you can’t change the past mean you don’t have free will? No. In abrahamic religion God has absolute omnipotence. Exists beyond time, past, future, present- meaningless. A being that knows everything that has or will happen and all possible things that could happen. That knows you better than you know yourself. So to a being beyond how we view time, the choices you haven’t made yet are already made. They’ve seen them. It isn’t that you don’t have choice, it’s that you can’t see all your choices and possibilities, and how they connect to others, all at once as they can. So if a being had these powers, and that being couldn’t make a plan where everything it wanted worked out in the larger sense, while allowing the little things to sort themselves out however, they’d have to be a real loser. We don’t even know what the “plan” is, it doesn’t require us to.
This is where the three O's come into play, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent. As long as God is all three he knows the outcome of everything that ever was or will be, has infinite power, and is able to be everywhere at once. Now if he knows with 100% accuracy the outcome of everything past, present, and future. You can still have free will. It literally doesn't matter because every choice you make, while still your own, has an outcome. If he's Omnipotent that means he has the ability to create a plan that takes into account everything. Now if that's not enough for you remember he's not bound by the rules of existence, everything that is possible or impossible, plausible or implausible, and probable or improbable can be done by Him as easily as you can think.
I am a Project Manager. I makes plans and implement them. Does not mean I control the free will of my peers in that.
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· 6 years ago
Here’s a question: if god knows everythkng in advance, he knows what sins people will commit. If he’s omnipotent, he can make people good so they won’t sin. If he’s benevolent, he won’t want people to go to hell. If all three of these are true, why does god not make all people good so they won’t have to suffer in hell? Why does god let people suffer forever when he could easily change it?
I'm not a religious person but a friend of mine, whom i respect a lot, is. He asked me to read "Letter from a Skeptic". That author would answer your question something like this:
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God wanted people to have free will. That means people need to poses the ability to make their own choices, even if they're wrong. He would say that God certainly could have made the 'perfect' world you're invisioning but it would look like a bunch of robots absent any color or any real beauty.
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The book didnt change my mind on religion but it makes me think about countries and governments differently. I think people need that freedom to make the wrong decision, otherwise it's not truly living.
A classic question. Why does a good god let bad things happen? Let’s start with “good.” The concept of good and bad are philosophically debated. I’ll use homes. In the housing bust a lot of people lost money and homes. A lot of people were finally able to afford a home in areas they never could have before. Does that make it a 0 sum game? If you lost a home it was “bad.” If you got a home for cheap it was “good.” Subjectively it was one of the other for many individuals. In a religious view, “good” is that which a god says is good. It’s hard to argue morals with an omnipotent being. Scaled down quite a bit, imagine a young child and a parent. The parent says school, or vegetables, or whatever is “good,” but the child doesn’t follow the logic. They simply know they were told by a parent, and whatever their personal opinions are they follow that or they don’t. The parent will generally know better than a young child. God is a parent who can’t be wrong. Whatever they say is good just is.
Of course, we can’t directly equate human concepts to a god, but for our understanding, for whatever reason humans were given free will according to abrahamic religion. Whatever the purpose it seems to serve some purpose that makes it so that giving free will and then taking it away by forcing people to behave a certain way isn’t what God wants. Maybe there’s some higher purpose or challenge, or concepts humans must learn on our own to be ready for later or in an afterlife, maybe God is big on personal accountability, maybe we are like TV or the sims and are just toys, maybe this is all just to teach Satan a lesson and after Armageddon he finally gets it and apologizes, who knows. With or without religion we live in a world that runs on certain rules, if you start asking “why” and keep asking that of every answer, you’ll get to a point where science and religion both just have to say “dunnoh... it’s just because..” maybe searching for the answers is the whole point. No one can say.
Nope. Interesting viewpoint though. If Satan gave us freewill God would not have needed to forbid the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
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God wanted people to have free will. That means people need to poses the ability to make their own choices, even if they're wrong. He would say that God certainly could have made the 'perfect' world you're invisioning but it would look like a bunch of robots absent any color or any real beauty.
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The book didnt change my mind on religion but it makes me think about countries and governments differently. I think people need that freedom to make the wrong decision, otherwise it's not truly living.