I've got a few questions...

[TheThinker]

This will be mainly Christian-based but applies to all religion

If God is all knowing+all powerful then it's pretty safe to say that he knows exactly what has+will ever happen...So what is the point in time when he knows the exact outcome of anything that will ever happen? There would be no reason to just 'let it play out' and see what happens because He would already know. It would almost be a type of personal hell for some people who are tinker'ers/experimenters...There would be no point in trying anything because you already know exactly what will happen in any action that you take.


Why does the bible+contact with God just stop once you reach more modern times? (And those who claim to speak with God are simply classified as nutjobs by the mass majority and not believed in?)

Why does someone (even those of extremely high faith/very religious) need proof of believable/physically possible things yet need no proof of anything in their religion? Furthermore, if a man walked upto over 99.99% of people nowadays and claimed he was the son of God, they would need proof/wouldn't believe him...while they don't even question for proof that Jesus was the son of God...why?


Why do people rarely question their religion/beliefs? That's my definition of blind faith...

[ironeagle]

Question One: God knows but we don't, so the point is to allow us to learn and grow not give us all the answers ahead of time.

Question two: I think you may have partially answered your own question. Has god's presence truly ended our are we to vein and naive to accept his miracles? Look up Fatima, in reasonably modern times thousand of people witnessed a miracle performed by the Mother Mary, to this day that area is still considered sacred. In the Bible God destroy sadom, Gomorrah, Zoar, and Zaboim, for lude acts of sin and idol worship, recently New Orleans where the Holiday Marde Gras originally a Christian holiday celebrated before lent, has been turned into a party to rape, sexually assault, act promiscuous, defecate in the street and murder has run a muck. New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Question three: Because faith equal belief. There is no proof a man claiming to be a deity or son of a deity would not be believed. Jesus also performed miracles which assisted in that belief, in addition the bible has accurately portrayed history confirmed by scientific and historical documents of that time, and in addition has accurately predicted future events, which assisted to belief. I think that people value their magical god differently than they value mans theories of nature. I think too that people believe if we are not meant yet to understand god then asking for proof is futile.

Question four: I don't think it's true that people only rarely question their beliefs. And if they don't what is the point of you defining them with blind faith? Is that an insult or a question?

[TheThinker]

What I meant by the first question is that he already knows exactly what/how we will all learn ahead of time, everything that we will ever think/say/do he will already know, so what's the point? This also means that God definitely knew that Eve would eat the fruit, so what's the point of them having the Garden of Eden in the first place? And I also meant to add a question to link to this one since He's all powerful+all knowing...why did it take God any amount of time to create Earth/do anything? Time shouldn't even be a factor for a creator with infinite power/no limits...7 days (well, 6)? Really?

The second was meant more as a question to point out how there is almost nothing in modern times even within the same realm of magnitude/importance as the events as in the bible. As for the fatima event, I still am quite skeptical on whether or not this would be classified as a 'miracle' in my book. And it was stated that no adverse solar activity was reported for that day. Well, it was in 1917...it's pretty safe to say that our capabilities to monitor solar activity/flares etc etc were pretty much nothing in comparison to today. It's kind of like your average person nowadays reading/hearing about how religions/cultures of the past try to interpret events that they don't understand and stating that the "Blank" God of the sky made it happen because they didn't sacrifice enough of their livestock...in our heads almost 100% of us think "that's rediculous" but then turn around and provide equally as unlikely an explanation.

Yes, human science/reason can't answer everything and definitely has it's flaws but at least it can provide an answer and an explanation as to why rather than just tieing events together and seeing things people were doing wrong and saying that it was God making them pay...c'mon. Why wasn't it another religion's God/symbol doing this? Why are they wrong for saying that it was?...An endless circle of assumptions that one's religion is the 1 true religion, when it's more likely that it is not. This is why I call it blind faith, because so few come to this reality and just follow what the bible/their book of choice says...a book written by humans in ancient times (humans in an era of our past used to think bathing was bad for you...) and has gone through a couple thousand years, now, of translations and (here we go) God-knows what changes (unknowing changes/interpretations while translating or more sinister changes for political leverage etc etc). Anything they didn't want us to read in the bible isn't in there and things that couldve very well been overexaggerated can be in there and people embrace it with open arms through faith.

Question 4: that has to be a joke, right? How many people sit down (speaking on Christianity) and collect all of their beliefs together and question them bit by bit? Very few, I'd boldly say. They'd then notice that they believe in talking animals, people coming back to life, the entire planet flooding but there's a boat with a pair of every animal on it, and burning plants that the creator of the universe communicates through...

And it wasn't quite an insult but you can't deny the fact that the vast majority of "religious" people out there simply absorb everything as 100% fact in church...they don't even know "why" they believe it.

[ganglier]

What I meant by the first question is that he already knows exactly what/how we will all learn ahead of time, everything that we will ever think/say/do he will already know, so what's the point?

You don't know what will happen. Maybe this whole world is created for us, not god.

[Night]

Yes, your first question can be taken to contradict free will, since a god would know all of your choices beforehand...and would know all of the variables that led to your choice.

[grandpa]

Yes, your first question can be taken to contradict free
will, since a god would know all of your choices
beforehand...
and would know all of the variables that led to
your choice.

I doubt there's an answer to a question like that. "Will" is what a religious person would say; "It's God's will."

Filed under: Cop-out.

On free will:
"Learn from other's
mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself." - Hyman
George Rickover (1900-86), Admiral, US Navy, advocated development of
nuclear subs & ships.

Grandpa h.

[King]

To answer your first part, life is made for us to make decisions on our own. No one can blame God for not giving them a chance to do what they wanted and just sending them to heaven or hell. To make it simpler, God knows what you end up when he gave you the freedom to decide on your own in life.

If a person found himself in hell out of nowhere, it makes sense if he said i could have done better if i was given the choice. But with life existing, people ending up in hell will know what they did to be punished.

[TheThinker]

To answer your first part, life is made for us to make decisions on our own. No one can blame God for not giving them a chance to do what they wanted and just sending them to heaven or hell. To make it simpler, God knows what you end up when he gave you the freedom to decide on your own in life.

If a person found himself in hell out of nowhere, it makes sense if he said i could have done better if i was given the choice. But with life existing, people ending up in hell will know what they did to be punished.

*sigh* people aren't really getting it...I'm more referring to the question from the perspective of an all-powerful, all-knowing creator with infinite power...not really asking "what's in it for him?" but more along the lines of "why would he even be interested in creating us, with souls to be judged, constrained by time etc etc when he already knows the outcome of everything?"

[Peter]

*sigh* people aren't really getting it...I'm more referring to the question from the perspective of an all-powerful, all-knowing creator with infinite power...not really asking "what's in it for him?" but more along the lines of "why would he even be interested in creating us, with souls to be judged, constrained by time etc etc when he already knows the outcome of everything?"

Ever watch a movie you've seen before because it makes you feel good? God is just watching a movie that he knows the ending to and enjoying the hell out of it.

If there's an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god up there we're his entertainment. We're the Sims for god.

[GiveMeABreak]

The Thinker, those are excellent questions

For your first question: When did God know how things would be? That has been a question that philosophers of religion have been trying to grapple with for ages. I personally like an approach called Middle-Knowledge. Look up some essays written by William Craig and Alvin Plantiga they explain this a lot better than I'm about to. Basically Middle-Knowledge claims that God looked at all the possibilities of if God first did an action at creation and then allowed free-will to take over from there what would be the final outcome. God then saw that the greatest possible number of people who would respond through free-will and thus enter heaven would be this world, he then created this world. Any other possibility would have an outcome of less people going to heaven, or basically to say would not achieve God's goals as well, and allow for free-will. Therefore it is not that God has predetermined your choices for you. But God just is all knowing and able to predict what your choices will be. Thus it allows for a state of providence and free-will at the same time.

I forget who proposed this example of the problem of when does God know when an event will happen. But its another good antidote for your question. Let's say that 50 years ago God knew that tomorrow you would go home after work and mow your lawn. Tomorrow, comes you go home after work and you just feel too tired to mow the lawn. So by your free-will then you chose not to mow the lawn. Does that make God out to be a liar or wrong? It is a very good hypothetical speculation about the problem of free-will and predestination.

For your second question: There is still the belief that God contacts us. The difference is God doesn't speak in an audible voice and if you claim you do you are viewed as being schizophrenic and in need of help. However I purpose that even back in the Biblical times people thought the prophets saying they heard from God where considered to be crazy. There are many stories of prophets having claimed to hear from God and the people then killing them or persecuting them because they didn't believe they did. After all that is one of the reasons Jesus was crucified.

On a side note to the second question: Ironeagle....Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans because of its evil? Please don't imply that God is doing that kind of thing. Jesus specifically taught against that one is punished by natural disaster or illness because of a sin. I point to his refuting that the three people who the tower fell upon died because they were sinful, or the blind man who was blind because of something he or his parents did. Those type of statements are a gross misrepresentation of basic Christian teaching and create confusion. Yes I know there are some difficult passages in the Old Testament about punishment to some societies, and I am not trying to ignore them. But I am a Christian and I go by what Jesus said that those things don't happen necessarily because of someones sin.

Back to the questions:
The Thinker your third question: Why does someone (even those of extremely high faith/very religious) need proof of believable/physically possible things yet need no proof of anything in their religion?

I have always been puzzled why is it assumed that to belief in a religious premise without solid proof is considered unwarranted or unjustified, yet one can make a physical or premise of science without solid proof and it is considered warranted and justified. For example: we cannot prove string theory, or the Big Bang, or even the existence of multiple universes, yet they are accepted as real. For example in finding multiple universes or the eleven dimensions believed to exist. CERN and FermiLab are conducting experiments to show they do exist. They are not approaching it from a view of well we just belief it to be so. They are saying well from doing some math and thinking if this happens when we collide protons together it shows there is multiple universes and other dimensions. But they admit they cannot prove multiple universes exist. Yet current cosmology is based on the belief that string theory and multiple universes do exist. We can push it more to say those theories are the best explanation we come up with for things observed and predicted. But they can't be proven because of our limited humanity. Yet, I can't say well a god is the best explanation we can come up with for things observed and predicted. But we can't prove it because of our limited humanity.

I submit that since one cannot prove necessarily to another that multiple universies exist, then it is also justifiable too for on to belief in a god even though they can't prove it without a doubt to someone else. I will submit they need to have their belief based on their experiences and some logical train of thought. I am not proposing a blind faith based on nothing.

[Peter]

But God just is all knowing and able to predict what your choices will be.

Is god ever wrong in his prediction?

[GiveMeABreak]

Is god ever wrong in his prediction?

That is what the illustration of having the free-will points out. There is a paradox with having an all knowing God able to foresee the future, yet there also being free-will to choose. If I choose differently than what God originally predicted does it make God false? Its an old philosophy of religion questions and it has been debated over for centuries.

If you are asking me what do I believe. I refer back to my post and explanation of Middle-Knowlege. For me it is the best explanation for this paradox I have come across.

So no I do not believe God is ever wrong in a prediction? In the illustration for thought it fails to say. But then again God knew you would not mow the yard anyhow.