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.
I personally think that prophecy is largely based on the fact that sin destroys free will and makes us very predictable. In the future view this would mean possibilities would be significantly reduced and narrowed by the degree to which sin dominates our lives. I don’t think there is anything absolute about free will. I think it not only varies considerably between people but can be altered by many different external factors such as illness and drugs, as well as by bad habits. Free will depends on our creativity and awareness of possibilities, so anything that affects such capabilities will also affect free will. And I think that Jesus makes a connection to spiritual death, when He says, “let the dead bury their own dead.”
What makes something objectively true is the ability to demonstrate it with scientific evidence. Only that provides a reasonable expectation that others should agree with you.
But I think you are using a correspondence theory of truth where “objectively true” means the words correspond with some singular black and white reality, which I think is just an invention of your imagination.
, modern science tells us a lot about God, does it, and his relationship to time?