I believe in an omniscient God. I just don’t think that means the future is already written. Those are two completely separate and different things. It is a scientific fact that things can exist in a superposition of possibilities. To know the future is to know those possibilities only. This is the only thing which is logically coherent if you believe in a God who interacts with us. You cannot interact with the characters in a book which is already written.
And obviously you didn’t understand my comment about racism and misogyny. These are cases where other people think things about people of a different race or sex which isn’t true. We who know they are not true therefore condemn these things. But you apparently think it is all true. At least that is what you said. But perhaps you don’t see the logical consequences of your rather bizarre claims.
Guess it is incomprehensible to you to figure that God already knew 2million years ago what you will do in 2 days because he already know what happens to you tomorrow morning that will cause you to want to do something tomorrow evening that will have a consequence the following morning just because you think it makes him incapable of interacting with you today.
You must have a strange concept of time - and God - to think he could not do that any time. Are you sure you have a logically coherent view of a God that can interact with you in a timely manner? Do you think he could not have known that he was going to send Jesus either because if he knew the future already at the beginning he would have known that we f***ed up and should have given up there and than?
If you cannot accept your existence in a book who’s characters are already written based in the interaction that has already happened because you want to have reality according to your own wishes as in convincing God what to do according to your will you will fail reality. Guess you have to learn to trust God after all and that he saw that it was good already. In that lies our only hope.
But then you could say that it makes you only the character in a book you do not want to be part of because you do not like the author and how he interacts with his characters. Could it be that you want to be an author in your own right writing a better book?
You guess wrong. What you suggest is easily and perfectly comprehensible to me. I just read a book and I knew exactly what was going to happen before I even started reading. Even if the story covered 2 million years I could still have already known what was going to happen from the start. That is because it is just book and none of the characters in that book are alive or have any consciousness of anything. So for me that is sufficient evidence that we are not characters in a book which is already written. Instead we have every reason to believe that what is shown to us in quantum physics about things being in a superposition of possibilities is how things really are. But… I guess all this quantum physics stuff is incomprehensible to you.
I am a physicist, and what we have learned in physics about time and space is indeed VERY strange to most people. They have this mistaken idea that the universe is like a movie film with a stream of snapshots following one after the other. In such a view you can talk about what is happening on Titan right now by just looking at Titan the snapshot representing now. But this picture is incorrect. Right now on Titan is a period of time which is between 2 and 3 hours long. And the farther away it is the longer that period of time is. The universe is not a movie film where you can just look at a snapshot some time in the future and it is not a book where you can just turn to a later page. The objective physical evidence disagrees with such a picture of things completely with everyday measurable consequences.
God is all knowing and all powerful but the truth is that people have no comprehension of what this really means for they are like children who equate this all to magic imagining it means that they can have whatever they want. But that is just a dream where nothing has to make the slightest bit of sense because it isn’t real. And those people in the books and movies, it may be hard for a child to understand, but they aren’t real either.
No I choose life and measurable reality over the book and dream world that you are describing.
you contradict yourself. It is your denial of giving God the freedom to have already found out what is happening in your future as it would deny you of your free will and make you a puppet character. Just because someone would know how you react does not deny you of acting out of your free will. The whole point is that what for you is a sequence of time is instantaneous for the outside observer. One the one hand you seem to get it but then you also deny it.
Sounds more like “I reserve myself the option of free will that I reserve myself the magic of free will so I can have whatever I want” as otherwise I am not alive or conscious. I would think of that more down to the limitation of looking at a book and it’s character in 2 dimensions only 4th dimension, which is probably an analogy to the body and spirit dimension
The whole point is that antequated view of time has been conclusively proven to be incorrect. It is not a sequence of snapshots at all. To both see the future and to be able to do anything requires that the future not be written already. God has the freedom to do both because He sees not a future already finished but an open future of possibilities to choose from. And giving us free will means that He gives us the ability to choose possibilities also and that is what makes us different from the characters in books and movies. It is claiming that the future is already written which makes God powerless in the world and takes away all life and consciousness from us as well.
No it is the difference between looking at the universe as a dead inanimate object or as something alive with possibilities.
That is what happens when you become so obsessed with power and control. You leave no room for life and freedom of others. Everything becomes objects in a dead world. I do not believe in such a pathetic god. I believe in a God who chooses love and freedom over power and control and demonstrated this to us discarding knowledge and power to become a helpless human infant to grow up and walk among us that we might have more life and freedom ourselves.
The whole point is that whatever antiquated view time of time you’re worried about is irrelevant. God is independent of your view of time.
Both predestination and free will are taught in scripture and you can deny it until you are blue in the face, but it does not change the fact. And no, predestination does not make us robots.
Ok… I am now officially complaining of you people trolling this thread which is NOT about time, free will and trying to change your stubborn medieval magical nonsense contrary to the discoveries of modern science. You want to believe in Flat Earth, Geocentrism, alchemy, necromancy, or other nonsense, that is your business and I don’t care any more. None of that junk was the topic of this thread.
The topic was the relationship between physical and spiritual and I will no longer respond to these off topic babblings.
Dave, just because you make stuff up in your imagination does not mean that the things which disagree with your fantasies are antiquated.
What distinguishes the antiquated notions of time in medieval magic and theology from the discoveries of modern science is measurable objective evidence. So let’s check if you have any comprehension of this evidence whatsoever. Please describe to us the the calculations required to adjust for the discrepancies between clocks on satellites in orbit and clocks on the earth in order to provide GPS services?
Science studies the measurable physical universe and all the mathematical measures of things in that universe including space and time. And you are right this has nothing whatsoever to do with your fantasies about God. It does however tell us a great deal about what God has created including time and space.
And so that we can check whether the stuff you say is anything other that made up fantasies: Please describe to us the the calculations required to adjust for the discrepancies between clocks on satellites in orbit and clocks on the earth in order to provide GPS services?
Sorry, your gotcha challenge is irrelevant, too. And you pretend to comprehend God and that there is nothing about him, nothing mysterious, which you do not understand?
So nothing which is actually measurable is of relevance to you. The only thing you care about are the things you have made up about God? I hope you understand why I have no interest in being a part of your fantasies. I choose to live in the real world.
Refusing to jump into your fantasy world of things you make up about God has no connection whatsoever to whether I think I know everything about God or not. There is a lot I do not know. But the questions I have about God I will keep for answers from reliable sources.
What is irrelevant to me is bar room banter. I am only interested in whether you can demonstrate actual knowledge of space and time. Please begin by describing to us the calculations required to adjust for the discrepancies between clocks on satellites in orbit and clocks on the earth in order to provide GPS services. Let’s see some real world stuff from you.
Edited because I finally realized I misunderstood the question. See below for the answer which addresses the question correctly.
I do not believe either God’s involvement in our lives or our own consciousness are possible unless the future is a superposition of possibilities. A future which is already written would preclude both of these things. If the future is already written then all you can do is read it and the characters in it cannot be alive or conscious any more than the characters of a book or movie.
I read this again and now realize I misunderstood when I read it before! Gosh! Maybe it is because I am currently watching “Edge of Tomorrow” that I finally read this in the correct way!
YES! Knowing all the possibilities is certainly something God can do. He is infinite in His capabilities. So this means He COULD certainly plan out His responses to all the possible choices which people might make. BUT… I am not sure that He needs to or that He would do so. It would only be necessary if the possibilities of His success are few. I think more likely that He would only have to consider a few possible futures to see that the likelihood of His success no matter what we choose is pretty much assured.
By success I mean the changing the world to something better, and not assuring success in the case of each individual or even a maximum number of individuals. In the former case it sounds contrary to His motivation in the creation of life in the first place and I am not sure that choosing which are saved in the end is something that would appeal to Him. In the latter case, I doubt that such a utilitarian approach would appeal to Him. It is hard to imagine a loving parent liking either of these options. But more than any of these reasons, I don’t really believe that the results are that independent of the means. I think that in the end it is acting according to principle rather than mere prediction which will ultimately arrive at the best result in the end. Or maybe there is a balance between the two approaches somewhere… so that some of the things which God does and seems incomprehensible to us is explained by looking ahead.
But there is also what we read in Genesis 6 which suggests that there is also a possibility that God doesn’t even look at all the possibilities. The regret we read in the story told there suggests that if God knew this was coming then He would either find away to avoid it or see it all as part of His long range plan. I don’t know. So my final answer is that He could, but I know that He would.
the arrogance of your statements speaks volumes about your relationship to your God. Peace be upon you. Just because you may have mastered the calculus to correct for the time discrepancies between systems you still seem to have trouble with the concept that God would not know all possible outcomes of your life as compared to all actual outcomes of your life as that would rob you of your freedom of choice and make you a puppet in our fantasies. To me the question is more who’s puppet you are when you exercise your “free will” .e.g when we want to follow our desire to have our own authority over actions as compared to do what God has scripted us to do. If I kill a cyclist tomorrow with my car, does it mean God would be to blame as he knew this would happen already yesterday and did not stop me, thus either he is not all loving, is a daft script writer or does not exist? Sure I must have a fantasy of God because I choose not to live in the real world and have no life.
To me life is not about “my will be done” but “thy will be done” because the way you look at it I believe in a God obsessed with power and control and a dead universe and leave no room for the life and freedom of others
Relax, nobody is after your life when they question your worldview. It raises existential angst in us but feel safe here as I have the feeling we are here to help each other to come to a better worldview for the sake of all of us and for the glory of the Lord. That God knows what stupid things we will do tomorrow and reads us like a book he has written does not make us walking dead but keeps us very much alive. If we want to reach everlasting life we better learn our script in this everlasting book, not become the author of a book that is in the bin of tomorrow.
It is my ability to see my body in this book but my spirit to be with the author that allows me to jump in and out of the page and live. And that spirit can come out of the book, the letters that we are that can come alive in any reader. I would however wish that it is in the words that the author intended it to be even at the risk of being accused of not living in a materialistic reality, but then I know that I don’t so that accusation does not matter to me, as I know that this materialistic reality is coming to an end sooner or later and I can live outside of it. I wish you to find a similar peace with being a character in a book of a loving author. We have been given the free will to do so.
, modern science tells us a lot about God, does it, and his relationship to time?