Is There One Sound/valid Syllogistic Argument For The Existence Of God?

[sealybobo]

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

Actually, when we were younger and more gullible, we believed like you believe. It wasn't until we got older and wiser than we wised up. We are able to put aside what we want to believe and only go with what is believable.

It all seems made up to me Did Jesus exist

 

[Foxfyre]

I took his post to mean that the Bible doesn't support that everything is already determined and planned out and we are just characters in a script that is already sealed and unchangeable. If that is what he was saying, then I do agree with him. But my point wasn't focused on whether everything is already programmed and decided, but looks ahead to all the surprises that await us out there and ahead of us. Not only do I think we're all going to have a good laugh when we get to heaven and find out how much we got wrong theologically, but the scientists a hundred years from now are likely to look at this period in our history as a scientific dark age.

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and Q.W. is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

I don't see how my concept limits God in any way. I base my perceptions on what God has revealed of himself to me personally, however limited that may be. That I do not require God to be this or that is not coercive of God nor does it restrict him to any particular character or state of being, but it is simply what I believe he has revealed to humankind. To insist that God MUST be this or that seems to me to be much more coercive.

 

[Justin Davis]

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

I tried to explain what you call the "infinite simultaneousness" thing to Q.W.. I've never even heard of anyone arguing against the organic rules of logic with things like electromagnetic radiation. Either I'm right or I'm crazy but the organic rules of logic don't prohibit things like that as far as I know. I couldn't find anything on the Internet where anyone else has argued something like that, though somebody put a video on this thread where the atheist hints at something like that but doesn't say what it is. But it's just wrong either way as far as I can see. If this is the way we see things, how could we be able to see these things if the rules didn't allow it? What 'am I missing?

 

[sealybobo]

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and Q.W. is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

I don't see how my concept limits God in any way. I base my perceptions on what God has revealed of himself to me personally, however limited that may be. That I do not require God to be this or that is not coercive of God nor does it restrict him to any particular character or state of being, but it is simply what I believe he has revealed to humankind. To insist that God MUST be this or that seems to me to be much more coercive.

What has he revealed to you personally?

 

[sealybobo]

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

I tried to explain what you call the "infinite simultaneousness" thing to Q.W.. I've never even heard of anyone arguing against the organic rules of logic with things like electromagnetic radiation. Either I'm right or I'm crazy but the organic rules of logic don't prohibit things like that as far as I know. I couldn't find anything on the Internet where anyone else has argued something like that, though somebody put a video on this thread where the atheist hints at something like that but doesn't say what it is. But it's just wrong either way as far as I can see. If this is the way we see things, how could we be able to see these things if the rules didn't allow it? What 'am I missing?

I tried googling infinite simultaneousness and I find nothing.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.

Yes I have.

All arguments to prove the existence of God rely on premises being accepted that are themselves arguments that one is under no rational obligation to accept as fact.

An argument that is not based on fact is not a sound argument.

 

[Justin Davis]

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

Actually, when we were younger and more gullible, we believed like you believe. It wasn't until we got older and wiser than we wised up. We are able to put aside what we want to believe and only go with what is believable.

It all seems made up to me Did Jesus exist

And yet none of you have really refuted the ironclad arguments about the objectively apparent evidence for God's existence made by Foxfyre and especially the killer arugments made by M.D.R.. And none of you have ever defined what kind of evidence you're talking about.

 

[Justin Davis]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.

Yes I have.

All arguments to prove the existence of God rely on premises being accepted that are themselves arguments that one is under no rational obligation to accept as fact.

An argument that is not based on fact is not a sound argument.

Then you don't understand the transcendental argument or are closing your mind to it. It's unasailable. In fact, you're claim right now proves its major premise is logically valid, and you just don't get why that's true.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.

Yes I have.

All arguments to prove the existence of God rely on premises being accepted that are themselves arguments that one is under no rational obligation to accept as fact.

An argument that is not based on fact is not a sound argument.

Then you don't understand the transcendental argument or are closing your mind to it. It's unasailable. In fact, you're claim right now proves its major premise is logically valid, and you just don't get why that's true.

The transcendental argument, to be valid, forces one to accept a premise that has never been demonstrated to be factual.

 

[Justin Davis]

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

I tried to explain what you call the "infinite simultaneousness" thing to Q.W.. I've never even heard of anyone arguing against the organic rules of logic with things like electromagnetic radiation. Either I'm right or I'm crazy but the organic rules of logic don't prohibit things like that as far as I know. I couldn't find anything on the Internet where anyone else has argued something like that, though somebody put a video on this thread where the atheist hints at something like that but doesn't say what it is. But it's just wrong either way as far as I can see. If this is the way we see things, how could we be able to see these things if the rules didn't allow it? What 'am I missing?

I tried googling infinite simultaneousness and I find nothing.

It's not a technical term. I just know what he means. He's talking about the obvious facts of the rules of thought that Q.W. is missing but admittedly the only ideas I grasp in that way are is the well-known observation of the simultaneousness of existence and knowledge that every known things shares at the same time and the idea of infinity, though that gets pretty complex. I understand in general.

 

[Justin Davis]

MD.R., can you explain the spontaneous thing in better detail?

 

[sealybobo]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.

Yes I have.

All arguments to prove the existence of God rely on premises being accepted that are themselves arguments that one is under no rational obligation to accept as fact.

An argument that is not based on fact is not a sound argument.

Exactly. Even the Bible should in no way be considered factual evidence. One would have to assume on faith it wasn't all made up.

So what we have are lies from organized religions.

So if we toss out all the organized religions, god is pretty much non existent. There may be a god but from as far as our telescopes and microscopes can tell so far there is zero evidence a god exists.

In fact we even know when man first invented god(s), what part of the brain came up with the concept and why. We also know how rulers used the concept to control people and force fed it to us. If you denied you died. Luckily today we don't get burned at the stake for speaking to truth.

 

[sealybobo]

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

I tried to explain what you call the "infinite simultaneousness" thing to Q.W.. I've never even heard of anyone arguing against the organic rules of logic with things like electromagnetic radiation. Either I'm right or I'm crazy but the organic rules of logic don't prohibit things like that as far as I know. I couldn't find anything on the Internet where anyone else has argued something like that, though somebody put a video on this thread where the atheist hints at something like that but doesn't say what it is. But it's just wrong either way as far as I can see. If this is the way we see things, how could we be able to see these things if the rules didn't allow it? What 'am I missing?

I tried googling infinite simultaneousness and I find nothing.

It's not a technical term. I just know what he means. He's talking about the obvious facts of the rules of thought that Q.W. is missing but admittedly the only ideas I grasp in that way are is the well-known observation of the simultaneousness of existence and knowledge that every known things shares at the same time and the idea of infinity, though that gets pretty complex. I understand in general.

Does any of what you say prove a god exists or is this just the ramblings of a mad man?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I don't know this stuff as well as others on this forum but I understand the nature of the rules of organic logic very well. You can't understand anything in philosophy, theology or science without them. The rules of inference and the scientific method are based on them. I don't remember what post it was now but you were saying things that seemed to be sort of right but also sort of wrong at the same time and what I couldn't put my finger on was how to explain what's causing you to mix up the two. But I do know exactly why your idea about the majorana fermion is wrong. I just didn't get into the mix over that because you wrote your post to M.D.R.. He just proved that this kind of argumentation is the logical fallacy of false predication. Even I know that and why that's logically true. There's no contradiction between this well known fact of electromagnetic radiation and the laws of logic, any more than there's a contradiction between the majorana fermion and the laws of logic. The second and third law of organic logic are just detailed annunciations of the universal rule of identity which holds that the predicate of any whole cannot be divided. This is understood in the logic of sets. one whole set can theoretically be an infinite number of things simultaneously just like any whole can be theoretically divided an infinite number of times. There's nothing in human nature's basic rules of logic that says these kinds of things are contradictory or can't exist. I don't know where you're getting this from.

That is certainly what philosophers want you to believe. The problem is, that as I explained, some things in the universe just are not explainable using logic, which leaves us with a few choices. The top three as I see them are that we can ignore the part of the universe that logic insists does not exist, we can ignore logic when it conflicts with the universe, or we can admit that our understanding of our mental abilities is limited by the fact that we are, at least in part, limited by our brains ability to understand itself.

Personally, I opt for the latter, especially when we consider that the same people that developed natural logic insisted the the Earth was the center of the universe.

By the way, there is more than one form of logic. One I find particularly useful, probably because I was forced to learn it as part of programming IFTT functions, is fuzzy logic. Perhaps you should look into the various fields of logic before you decide to use one of them exclusively.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Not exactly. Aristotle was a philosopher. Copernicus a mathematician. Coprnicus tried to calculate the movement of planets and simply found out that this works with the heliocentric model, but not otherwise.

Sorry, but Aristotle knew about math, he just didn't use it.

Of course our senses limit us. We cannot detect x-rays. We cannot see quarks.
Which makes the second part of the sentence true.

Funny, I know how to detect X-rays, I have even used them to take pictures. We know that X-rays exist, and have proved that quarks are real, which actually proves that our sense do not limit us, at least not the way you want it to mean that they do.

 

[Foxfyre]

The OP asks for a sound argument, in the form of a syllogism, for the existence of God.

Clearly none has been provided.

Clearly you haven't been paying attention.

Yes I have.

All arguments to prove the existence of God rely on premises being accepted that are themselves arguments that one is under no rational obligation to accept as fact.

An argument that is not based on fact is not a sound argument.

Then you don't understand the transcendental argument or are closing your mind to it. It's unasailable. In fact, you're claim right now proves its major premise is logically valid, and you just don't get why that's true.

The transcendental argument, to be valid, forces one to accept a premise that has never been demonstrated to be factual.

But again we come to the argument that knowledge does not have to be demonstrable to be factual. For instance, you saw a pink flamingo on your neighbor's lawn yesterday but it flew away. So far as you know there are no wild flamingos in your state, but you know for a fact that is what you saw. But you have absolutely no way to demonstrate it to another soul and your testimony is all that you have to offer re a fact that you know to be fact.

And yesterday you saw a hooded stranger driving slowly through the neighborhood, obviously looking for something. Once it was out of sight you did not see it again. You know for a fact that you saw it but you have no way to demonstrate the fact that it drove through. All you have is your recollection and testimony that it happened at all.

Or awhile ago you were trying to remember the tune and lyrics to a childhood song you had not heard in decades. Moments later, you heard that very song in an advertisement on the radio. The unlikely coincidence you know to be a fact. But can you demonstrate the coincidence to another soul? No you cannot. If another is to believe it happened, they must rely on your testimony of what you just experienced.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Correct on both counts. The fact of the matter is that Aristotle's organic logic was rock solid insofar as its unaided analysis of the raw sensory data went. This was not a breakdown in logic. This was merely mathematically unamplified logic, essentially, insufficient data. All the while the organic principle of identity was doing precisely what it's supposed to do, including eventually alerting us to the actual nuts and bolts of the problem. Ultimately, the real problem was simply a lack of knowledge, not a problem of logic at all.

But QW knows these things . . . except when his ill-considered expressions confuse the matter, as in his FYI that there are things that exist that our brains can't detect, which, ultimately, is the same thing as saying that our senses limit us. Yet we know these things exist! How? Because as he tells us we can imagine the existence of things (via the organic principle of identity) and build technology that magnifies our senses that we might perceive/measure the effects of their presence, which was initially conceived to be in our minds because of other effects that we were able to perceive/measure due to other forms of technology. But then who in their right minds believes that we can reliably explain things based on what our senses convey alone in the first place?

No one who understands the principle of identity believes that for moment.

Yet Copernicus, with that same rock solid analysis of sensory data, reached a different conclusion, and used math to prove it.

What did Aristotle use again?

That's right, he didn't use anything. Why? Because philosophers think their brain is better than science.

 

[Foxfyre]

This entails the intimate things of God that are not objectively or universally apparent. These are the additional things that God has revealed via inspiration. These things can of course be objectively weighed, but they're not intrinsically apparent to all.

The God of the Bible is omniscient without exception. The Bible unmistakably asserts a doctrine of predestination, yet it simultaneously holds that creatures have free will. What do we do with this?

There are two views that I'm aware of: the "Foreknowledge" and the Calvinist view.

The Foreknowledge view holds that God simply foreknew that a portion of the angels would reject Him, that humanity would fall. Knowing this He predestined that He would provide a means of redemption . . . for mankind. But the terms predestined and foreknowledge go to our perspective of time, not His. There is no past or future for God. Everything is now for Him. From our perspective of time, everything that has ever happened, is happening or will happen, is happening right now for Him. The contention is that His knowledge of what we will do, from our perspective, is what we are doing right now, from His perspective. He is viewing those things we will do, according to our sense of time, in the same sense that I'm viewing this screen right now, knowing precisely what I intend to say. I'm free to write what I will, but He's here, with me, right now . . . right now . . . one hour from now, right now, if you follow, viewing my thoughts and intentions. He is here with me at this very moment ten years ago, for example, from my perspective.

The Calvinist view holds that God predestined, without regard to His foreknowledge, who he would create to choose Him.

I opt for the Foreknowledge view as it seems to reconcile the whole of scripture, but I don't pretend to know if it works based on my limited understanding.

I know this won't be satisfactory for many. It remains mysterious to me. The Foreknowledge view is the closest I can get to making sense out of it all. But I do believe from other evidence that there is "a unifying principle" that is rationally coherent in the light of all the pertinent facts that are simply beyond my ken from this side of heaven.

Again setting aside the heavy theology that is mostly an alien language to probably most on this thread, I go back to the KISS principle.

For every passage asserting the omniscience of God, you can find another stating that God relented, God had compassion, God changed his mind. For example, the scripture would suggest Abraham was able to bargain with YHWH to have the life of Lot and his family spared when God destroyed Sodom. And later God wanted the people to depend on Him for what they needed, but they clamored for a king until God finally gave in and gave them one.

Exodus 32:9-14:
(Following the people making the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain). . . .
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.​

I personally cannot square a concept of free will against a concept of a life and universe in which it is already scoped and planned and determined from beginning to end. I can't see how that would make us more than puppets forced to go through it all without purpose since the outcome is already determined. If everything is already decided, there is no real purpose in repenting, in changing, in doing things better or being more wise, or in prayer that we are commanded to do without ceasing. Despite the joy and blessings given us, there is also great suffering and cruelty of the most horrible kind. I can't square the loving God I know up close and personal with one who would have planned all that out.

I have to believe that free will includes the ability to change things and make a difference; otherwise I can reason no purpose for going through all this at all.

So for want of a better explanation, I see God's omniscience as being able to see what will happen if we continue on the course we are on, but who loves us enough to allow us to love so we do have the ability to change our circumstances and our destiny.

I kept it simple. That's as simple as it gets. The Bible asserts the following things: (1) God exists in the eternal now, (2) God is omniscient; (3) creatures have free will; (4) God predestines history/historical figures. The Foreknowledge view is the best way that I know of to square all these things.

We'll have to just accept that we have a friendly disagreement on that one. I do not subscribe to the Calvinist doctrine and while I do believe God has a grand master plan, I don't pretend to be privy to why he calls who he call to implement it. And my mind cannot conceive of free will and a future that is already set in granite. Once the movie is in the can, the actors cannot alter it in any way. I just don't see us an actors in some kind of cosmic movie being played out for all of what we call eternity.

But the failure to consider the unlimited possibilities or modes of existence due to God's unlimited power is the sort of thing that lets fuzzy thinking jam Him into a box in my experience, not the a careful definition of these implications. If God can do anything but something that would contradictorily deny Himself then what stops Him from being totally omnificence and there being total free will at the same time? What I'm getting from you and QW is that you flatly reject that possibility base on our conception of time.

The key to what you're saying is understanding God's sense of time in the eternal now and as you appear to believe, I think, by definitively grasping the implications of God's infinite power to conceive of and create an infinite number of possible existents or states of existence that we ourselves might very well be in right now that make the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will a snap.

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness. And what we're getting from QW is that he flatly refuses to believe that the simultaneous coexistence of absolute omniscience and free will is possible as he fails to grasp that the laws of thought actually assert the existence of things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously and anticipate the existence of other things that are coherently two or more things simultaneously.

As for Fox, she thinks a careful examination of this means being "overly technical," that objectively thoughtful and precise definitions of the apparent attributes of what a transcendent origin would be like limits God. But that's false. On the contrary, objectively speaking, if God exists, the fundamental things that everybody can know about God because they are objectively apparent from careful thought would necessarily be coming directly from God as impressed on our minds. And the fact of the matter is that the precise definitions/apprehensions of these things divulge that it is QW and Fox who, unawares, are putting artificial limits on God and artificial limits on what we may objectively know about Him from nature.

But I can tell from her responses, bless her heart, that (1) we don't need to carefully define certain things with regard to the cosmological argument, especially, by the way, and (2) that absolute omniscience necessarily = Calvinism, which it doesn't, or necessarily = the movie's in the can, which it doesn't, and she could know this is she were to open her mind up a bit. Certain things do need to be known before getting into the arguments for God's existence.

In other words, she could have a V-8 moment of "Oh, my God, it is I who am putting chains on God, not Michael." *Sigh*

Well you are entitled to your opinion MDR. I know you think I am inadequate in my views about this. But I think categorically stating that God is this or that is putting artificial limits on God far more than refusing to say that God is this or that. And if I decide the more technical concepts of theological studies to be rather tedious and mostly not useful when discussing the concepts with those who haven't had that intense theological grounding, well I'll just have to be simplistic I guess. Believe me I had years and years of those scholarly theological studies, and, while interesting so many theologians, I just don't see that they are necessary to discuss a syllogistic definition of God.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

MD.R., can you explain the spontaneous thing in better detail?

Yes. I can. In fact, I'm working on that because QW still doesn't understand it even after I showed him he's got it all wrong. So apparently a more comprehension explanation is required, though in fact it's easy for anyone to see once it's explained.

It's obvious. Objectively self-evident.

It's one of the things that everybody knows if only they would stop and think about it long enough to note the fact that they exist and the awareness of that constitutes an simultaneously inherent existent just as you say. From there you go onto the demonstration of what we're actually appending in the construct of infinity, which is easy to see too.

So it's not really complex at all, unless you want to dig really deep into the mathematical expressions of the various attributes of infinity by way of the more advanced functions of calculus, which, frankly, are over my head, but I can do the basic-to-intermediate functions demonstrating why the principle of identity holds up in the face of simultaneously compound phenomena and the attributes of God all day long.

I'll share just one, the most important which touches on the idea of the cosmological order's mutability-divisibility vs. the immutability-indivisibility of the construct of God, which is merely the function of division by infinity. We can all get that.

As for the functions that go really deep into the attributes of the concept of infinity, functions within functions with multiple variables, which invariably give rise to additional, intuited functions with multiple variables, proofs that can go on for pages, forget about it. I might as well be trying to read Chinese, let alone contrive one from the conceivably more complex analytic premises.

Give me another fifteen minutes or so.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Unlike QW, it appears to me that you understand the implications of infinite simultaneousness.

I fully understand the implications of the eternal now.

I also understand that the concept cannot be supported using the Bible, which is why I sneer at people who think it provides an answer.