Agreed.
Sure. The time in our universe had a beginning. There may be multiverses with their own times, and those and the time in heaven (still part of God’s creation in other dimensions) does not have to correlate to ours.
Those times all had beginnings, and God is equally present in all of them, as long as they exist. When did “God’s time” start? And how does it correlate to the others?
It seems like that was Jesus.
Nope, He was the one who said it would have been better had such a person not been born. If someone says to a companion that he is going to make it better that he had not been born, that is a degree of hatred and evil I find it impossible to ascribe to Jesus. Some seem able to twist there mind into a pretzel in order to accept contradictory dogmas. I am not one of them. I either find a way to make the pieces fit or I discard them.
Good. It is written that he knew who it was, however. Ahead.of.time. It was not cruelty because it involved the instantaneous dynamic with God and Judas’ responsible free will.
Sorry, you cannot fit the elephant inside your head. I would advise not trying to discard it, though (neither the elephant nor your head… well, maybe some of your thinking ; - ).
Thanks. Regarding the question about whether this world is ideal or could be better, I think that world comes after the end times. In the meantime regarding this world, it was indeed meant as a sort of boot camp for salvation. If so, one could regard it as perfect boot camp for if we follow Jesus way and do the will of the father as guided by the Holy Spirit, then there is nothing in this world to fear.
Regarding the comment about whether God can be a personal God if He is without time, my way of thinking is that this is why there is the Trinity. The atemporal (is this a word?) Father alone without the Son or Holy Spirit would not be personal. C.S. Lewis does a better job explaining this than I can in his Book 4 Chapter 2 of Mere Christianity.
No, you did not. That does not explain God’s (Jesus’) prescience, and it excludes all prophecy.
Definitely, and more common than the one Mitch incorrectly and disparagingly says I coined (not that I would mind having coined it, since it’s a perfectly good word ; - ).
Forecasting the future doesn’t always require magical powers, let alone mean that the future is already written. Some things are simply predictable while other things are not.
You nailed it. Thanks. That explains absolutely everything.
Oh, but hey, ‘already written’ is past tense, innit. XD
But getting the elephant inside your head does.
Actually it is past participle “which is used in forming perfect and passive tenses and sometimes as an adjective.”
You got something right. ; - )
…raising a question in my mind. God is/was omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent. Thus He created perfection and nothing less. So what is necessary to “sustain” us today?
Exactly…if the future were “already written”, then our choices to do/act otherwise would not exist. We have those choices and it is called free-will. A God that sets all events to a script with no alternatives is one that is not very confident in what He has created. And His creation began in the form of very simple single-celled creatures that evolved magically as He knew it would. But the steps along the way, from 3 domains to our kingdoms we see today are the proof.
When He wanted it to. He is not subject to any external time. He simply uses temporal ordering when it suits Him.
There is no absolute correlation.
It is like a library of books where people can read them whenever they like, even more than one at a time. But if you are going to participate in the writing of a book then you can only do that when it hasn’t been written yet. If you go to read end of a book then it has already been written and you cannot expect to be part of writing it. This of course means all the time is the books and the people reading them. There is no absolute time over the whole library.
Given that God chose to create through the processes of natural laws, they take a while to produce conditions suited for complex life - making all the carbon and other elements takes a few rounds of stars forming and exploding or colliding; building complex life from simple takes a while, etc.
I think that’s called agreement.
Neither do I see anything that says God controls us, but yet somehow he causes our actions to fit with his eternal plan. It’s truly a marvel. Made more so by seeing it happen in real time. This is probably why Hitchens drawing off of someone like Heschel, refers to it as religious solipsism, because the whole world can appear to revolve around you.
Once as a young believer I began to worry for my father who was out for an errand. I don’t know why I began to fear for him, and so I prayed and was drawn into a deep sense of calling, and wrestling with God. I thought about promising God I would go into the ministry if he protected my father and brought him home safely. But bargaining with God didn’t seem appropriate as I thought about it. At some point I realized I could only trust God to take care of my dad, and the moment I put my trust in him, my dad pulled into the driveway.
Stars can produce up to iron and nickel by fusion, though mostly they only produce up to carbon and oxygen which are what white dwarf remnants are made of. Generally the elements higher in the periodic table are only produced by more massive stars with shorter lifespans with supernovae leaving either neutron star or black hole remnants. Neutron stars are like one gigantic atomic nucleus also given the name neutronium. If these are broken apart like in a collision of neutron stars then this could produce all the other elements in the periodic table.
Very much so!
We have seen some amazing objective examples posted here that massively changed individuals’ lives.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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