That Onion article really does sum up my feelings on the whole "Jesus" thing (and I really don't understand myself why I so vehemently despise organized religion). I remember in college, a woman had recently stopped drinking and gone through AA and was about 8 months sober. She said, "If it wasn't for Jesus helping me through, I never would have been able to do it."

I asked her, "Well, don't you feel a little bit responsible for owning up to your problem, and taking charge and fixing it by stopping drinking?"

She replied, "Oh no, it was all Jesus. I was in the back seat while he took over and got me through the toughest part of my life."

Bullsh!t. The whole organized religion thing to me really just (and this is MY OPINION again) seems like a convenient excuse for people to shift responsibility elsewhere, whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. Quit drinking? Jesus did it. Kill someone? Satan made me do it.

Not to say that there isn't PLENTY of valid thoughts and ideas in the Bible/Torah/etc. The 10 Commandments are a pretty good set of rules: don't steal, don't kill, don't fukc your neighbor's wife, and be nice to Mom & Dad. The thing that I think WAY too many folks forget is that the Bible is full of SYMBOLISM. And apparently that Jesus was black, but that's an whole 'nother issue.

Deism FTW

For shame, that logical leap made my airbag deploy.

I get what you're saying, but I think you might be misunderstanding what she was saying. For her, trusting in Jesus was her way of admitting that she needed help. For her to say that Jesus got her through it is to say that she felt incapable of dealing with the problem on her own, and that the peace and stability that her faith brought to her life allowed her to get to the point where she could get away from the booze. I think that's why AA encourages belief in a "higher power;" it can serve as a helpful object when you're trying to escape addictive behavior. It's not for everyone, but if it gets the job done, cool.

There's no leap. If God knows everything, as omniscience implies it, then there is no choice because there are no options because there is, in fact, a script.

If we have freewill, God cannot know everything. He can be damn smart. He can be the smartest being in existence.

But he cannot be omniscient.

See, now I asked for more clarification on that exact point, and she totally denied having ANYTHING to do with having thstrength to do that herself, and that to me is one of the pussiest things imaginable.

Who wrote the script? We did.

SO are you totally discounting the possibility that God's omniscience couldn't maybe allow him to see every choice we are going to be presented with, but our freewill allows us to make the choice ourselves? I think it's pretty presumptive to say, "Well God's a know-it-all, and I know this for a fact, and I have no choice, so why bother?"

I'd like to think that God didn't put my family through some of the things we've been through just to "test" us.

But the script isn't done being written, and He still knows what those pages are going to say - ergo, we're not writing as an act of creativity, we're transcribing.

Freewill and omniscience are mutually exclusive, unlike freewill and an informed choice, which are not.

a) If God is the creator of the universe, then he exists outside of time and space. The passage of time would be meaningless to him. All things would be one big "present" which he could observe.

b) If God is our creator, then he is also our designer and understands us intimately. I can predict what my young children are going to do and say, simply by virtue of knowing them and their thought processes as I do. Surely God would have even greater knowledge of our minds, and surely the gulf between God and man is far greater than the gulf between mature human and immature human.

So what if he can look at the entire timestream all at once? So what if he can see the entirety of multiple timestreams all at once?

The bottom line is, if he is omniscient, he still knows beyond all doubt, what our ultimate fates are and what choices we will make. Knowing the future erases the possibility of it changing, even if, to him, it isn't technically "the future". If he knows all we have no freewill.

Informed prediction is not the same as knowing. Omniscience means "all-knowing", not "really good guesser."

However, I think the real confusion here is that "free will" is a loaded term.

Omniscience can be defined in multiple ways, actually. just FYI

I agree.

However, it's perfectly valid to come along later, say "all right, we know that this didn't proceed from the mouth of God" but still take a look at it to see if there's anything in what these people wrote that might be valuable.

So as long as you're not trying to hold to the orthodox line about IT'S THE WORD OF GOD EXCEPT FOR THE PARTS I DON'T LIKE, I think it's okay.

However, it all falls apart again when we ask if God is omniscient, does he himself have free will?

The problem is "omniscient" has a very clear meaning people want to ignore so they can call God one thing, but not feel like their fate is determined.

Either God doesn't know the choices we will make, in which case he is not omniscient, or he does and we do not have freewill.

It's a pretty simple and accepted paradox.

"Omni" meaning "all" "science" meaning "knowledge".

"All the knowledge."

What else can it mean?

I'm curious - does the Torah ever actually mention the word "Omnicient"?
or is that just the PR company so the Christians and the Jews can say - Our God is Omincienter than your god nanner nanner nanner times infinitey.

I'm curious - does the Torah ever actually mention the word "Omnicient"?
or is that just the PR company so the Christians and the Jews can say - Our God is Omincienter than your god nanner nanner nanner times infinitey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_fatalism

The circular reasoning in your argument is demonstrated there.

These are Greek terms -- omniscience, omnipotence, etc. -- that were later brought into Christian theology (just as other classical Greek stuffs influenced European culture in general). You're absolutely right that the Hebrew God was not defined in such terms.

*goes to read link*

Can we all (except AZ) agree that an informed decision is not the enemy of freewill?

Can we all (except AZ) agree that an informed decision is not the enemy of freewill?

So maybe this whole discussion is Moot.

So he's a really good mechanic - but he cant tell if some idiot is going to drive the car into a ravine or something.

I don't even understand what that means.

So, "yes"?

Hunter: really it shouldn't surprise you to find that the Hebrews didn't use these philosophical terms to define their God. Their theology was always much more... visceral. God is big and bad and he'll totally kick your ass if you farg with him, and that's all you really need to know, puny mortal! And clean up your room.

That's not far off, actually. See "Golden Calf, Story of"

Let's consider the complexity of the question at hand.

If I roll a fair die, the result can be regarded as causally deterministic (based on physical mechanics). It is a simple system where the input is the motion for the die toss; the output is the result. But as the observers, we aren't likely to know that result because it depends on a lot of physical factors -- imperfections in the die, our exact hand motion (many of which would all seem the same to us), the movement/pressure of the molecules of the air, friction, the surface on which the die lands, gravity, etc -- interacting in a complex number of ways beyond our capacity to anticipate their affects on which face the die's center of gravity will ultimately end up lying over

Hence, a normal human can say the result of a fair die roll is random. But it's only "random" with respect to an observer who can't anticipate how all those factors will affect the final result. An infinitely smart (omniscient?) observer would be able to know the outcome.

And what exactly does "free will" mean?

Yeah, there's plenty of times in the Old Testament where something will happen and God's all like "hay WTF is going on" like he's just finding out himself.

Yeah, there's plenty of times in the Old Testament where something will happen and God's all like "hay WTF is going on" like he's just finding out himself.

So we all agree that God doesn't know everything anyway.

I don't even understand what that means.

So, "yes"?

So we all agree that God doesn't know everything anyway.

Questions about omniscience and free will have nothing to do with the Old Testament, as I already pointed out.

It's that thing I argued with AZ over for ten pages...

he claims that God coming down to provide clear and updated information would negate freewill because we'd all know He exists.

That's a question I don't want to get into. Not for theological reasons, but just for MY HEAD ASPLODE reasons. I think that if you really get down to it, our biology and psychology and all that stuff makes our actual range of options a lot smaller than we like to think it is. I mean, there's a difference between the idea of being able to do whatever you want, and the options available to you.

oops I got into it

Okay, right. I've heard that before, but I think AZ is getting it wrong. That wouldn't negate free will; that would negate faith.

That I agree with.