I thought about free will again today, and I started to think about how it really seems like a great argument against biblical truths. I’m not saying free will could affect a supreme being, but that free will affects biblical prophecy. For instance, if we all got together in a mass suicide, the biblical prophecy would not have come true. Since this freedom exists, it seems to undermine biblical ‘truths’. Jesus can’t come back if we blow up the earth. We most likely won’t, but if we could and we did, what would happen? Would God say he was wrong about the future? Or perhaps the writers were not of him? Or perhaps things would somehow fit together to still sustain the prophecy? I’m sure I’m one of several to bring this point up, heck I may have brought it up before even, but I wonder what a defense would be from a biblical perspective? Would the answer be, “yeah well that just won’t ever happen you see” ?
From a speculative point of view, it seems true that this could happen. We know that the bombs exist, et cetera, and that there’s a potential for the world to be blown up. A Christian would probably just make the claim that because it would be against prophecy then it wouldn’t happen, like you say. If they were to wise up a bit and take on speculative reasoning however, then they could at least stand a chance of making a big long-winded complicated argument against it that would probably be at least a bit more philosophical than the former, maybe make some ignorant spectators think that they’re on to something, but it’d probably be no more valid by the time you shave off the b.s. language that they’d have to use to even get that far.
Well since the Christian God is omniscient what would it matter, he has already forseen everything and so is content with the needless suffering and self-destruction caused by him granting free will for humans.
Yeah, way to completely ignore the opening post. What is being said here is basically this:
If we are free, we are free to disrupt biblical prophecy, meaning that God will have been wrong. If we are not free to disrupt biblical prophecy, we are not completely free.
I don’t think we’re free-willed anyway, but lots of religionists seem to.
Biblical prophecies were non-absolute.
For example,
If I did shrooms
And said that a 12 horned beast would rise from the sea
Then it would eat 4 trees
And a large goat would eat it.
You’d either say:
A# “Holy shit, man, lay off the shrooms.”
Or
You’d say:
B# “Dude, that’s awsome! God is so smart.”
And about 2000 years later,
Some kind of nation arises on the earth
That has 12 states.
It declares war
On 4 other countries,
One after the other.
Later, a large union of nations
Retaliates
And defeats the would-be conquerers, etc.
So,
Did the shroom monster shit
Predict that war
2000 years earlier?
Or is the symbolism so vague,
That you can make it into anything at all?
That’s how biblical prophecy is,
Man, it’s wacked out!
The weather-channel gives you better future-telling than that.
Also, do realize that there has been a hermeneutic trend in both Christianity (from Ockham if not earlier) and Judaism (Maimonides if not earlier) that supports free will. In fact, Maimonides conceives of God as being “pure intellect” where factual knowledge is “king” and knowing the little bitty details of one’s life are so useless to God, that knowing these things would actually be an imperfection. I’d argue that using free will to negate the Bible would only work in some circles (Reformed/Calvinist traditions, mainly).
A being of “pure intellect”?
That’s an interesting idea…
I noticed some dimensional layers of what we’d call “reality” are made entirely of consciousness, and those exist on the outer-most layers or spheres of this All. It’d usually throw anyone or anything away from itself, if that thing tried to take from, or alter its own will. In the same way you would throw a fly out of your way, if it was buzzing around your eyes, or landing on your food, etc.
That layer of consciousness was mostly awareness, and transmition…
It was bright white, and had so many other colors, too.
It had a network of fabrics across itself.
It possessed briliant color, beyond and within its light.
All kinds of signals and frequencies pulsed through its fibers.
It had a greater mind behind it, which was almost impossible for me to observe.
That layer could be likened to one of the “skins” around the spheres of our reality/universe. I’d name it the “transphere”, and talk complex physics bullshit, if I had the tools and was a scientist for it, etc.
Basically: the skin has allot to do with touch, feeling, sense, protection, filtration, etc.
In the same way that a planet has an atmospheric layer around it, in a sphere-shape, so too does the universe have this layer of awareness and transmition around itself.
Besides that, I’d still think that a being of pure intellect did NOT create the universe, due to how many non-intelligent, non-sensical things there are in reality.
Nobody
That’s definitely true, I think I end up falling into one of those circles, though. One thing to bare in mind with this issue is that God isn’t just a voice, He’s an actor- He does stuff. So, many of the prophecies would be of things He could just bring about, without violating anyone’s free will. There are exceptions, though, Peter’s denial of Jesus comes to mind most readily. That’s an intimate prediction of what a particular person will do in the near future, and puts us right in the spot the skeptic wants us to be in- God knowing specifically what some little person is going to do in some little moment.
Nostradamus predicted everything. Did he have shrooms? Discuss.
I don’t think Nostradamus had shrooms.
I was just messing around, about the shrooms thing…
Just like in dreams
Certain parts of the mind use pure symbolism
And relative concepts.
Part of the reason why the human brain
Is far more efficient than a computer
Is because it can estimate,
And it can “cut corners”, so to speak.
That’s a kind of ESP
Which is easier to produce
Than direct knowledge or facts,
And sometimes
Situations are so complex
That it is impossible to reduce them down to specific, simplified and systemized singular events or objects.
Non-theists
Have been able to make “prophecies”,
As you’d call them.
A few sensative psychic friends
Is all that is needed.
But back in the good old days,
If you didn’t attribute your “supernatural” powers to God,
They’d kill you in cold blood!
And a step up from a “prophecy”
Would be exact seeing of events,
From far away in time or space.
There have even been a few later “Christians”,
Such as the founder of what some have named “Spiritualism”,
Which is a very occultish verison of Christianity.
That founder
Was a very advanced sort of “prophet”.
But it’s very dangerous to get involved with these spirits,
In general… Dangerous to try to do what he did.
It’s best to control and use your own mind,
Instead of trying to obtain that information
From an unknown and misunderstood stranger
Of another species.
I don’t like prophets.
Real ones or fake ones,
I don’t like it.
I’m sour like a lemon,
At all of those channelers…
Too much corruption.
If you were driving your car
At high speed
In one direction…
I could predict where you were headed,
And at the same time
You’re still driving
And self-determining the destination of your car.
Prediction for human events doesn’t falsify “free will”,
So much as it shows
Direction can be seen
Before the goal is reached,
In the same way that you know
An egg is going to go splat,
Pretty soon,
After someone throws it up into the air.
I actually this is a problem with Western theology. Conceiving of God as an ontological being ruins theology. Sorry, but God isn’t like one of us.
But Biblical prophecy isn’t just a prediction, it’s a statement that this is going to happen to this and that that is completely true.
Nobody
Well, it does a lot more than (potentially) ruin theology, it IS theology. If you take God as a Person out of it, you aren't talking about Christianity, Judaism, or any of it anymore. Really, I don't see the point to applying the term 'God' to whatever concept you have left over after that change, it would seem misleading.
What are the problems you see with God being an actor in history? I can think of a few serious benefits.
Actually, it is onto-theology that requires God to be a being. With a rejection of that, God can be conceived of differently (Caputo suggests God as an Event). As Caputo writes in his [i]Weakness of God[/]i:
Yes, that’s very interesting stuff, I haven’t seen anything quite like it before- or I suppose I have, but not in that vocabulary. Still though, I think it’s true that rejecting onto-theology is rejecting Christianity (or what-have-you). The idea of God as a person isn’t a conclusion that the Church Fathers came to after much deliberation, it goes right to the very core. It seems it would involve a throwing-out and starting over again. If that’s what’s necessary, then so be it, but I still don’t see any problems big enough to warrant that.
It’s possible that god’s prophecies change so that they are never false, which lessens their value quite a bit, but solves this problem. Close the thread.