This is depressing.

[rocka21]

An omniscient God can not hope for anything. He knows what's going to happen. To hope for a different outcome than He knows will happen would be a contradiction in His nature.

very False.

but this will get me into anther off topic debate.

for the record , God does NOT know all the choices we will make. WE MAKE THE CHOICES OF OUR OWN FREE WILL.

 

[MaddLlama]

very False.

but this will get me into anther off topic debate.

for the record , God does NOT know all the choices we will make. WE MAKE THE CHOICES OF OUR OWN FREE WILL.

If God doesn't know the choices a person will make, then doesn't that make god not omniscient?

 

[rocka21]

If God doesn't know the choices a person will make, then doesn't that make god not omniscient?

omniscientia
1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge


yes God has that, until it comes to our choice. ( if you would like me to quote bible ref.s just let me know).

God gives man a choice.

 

[The Seeker]

God does love you, but if someone keeps ignoring you no matter what you say or do, do you keep responding? The problem is that you want God to do all the work for you. God wants to all people to come to Him, it certainly is not His fault if someone chooses not to.

Let's use an analogy- A man has a son. He raises his son, yet when his son is grown, he says to his father who has done nothing but love him "You are not my father, I have no father and I reject you". The father still loves the son, but he can't have a relationship with his son because his son rejects him. All the son has to do is say "I am sorry, you are my father" and the father will once again have a relationship with his son. It is the son's choice in this matter. The same is true with God and His children on earth.

Here is the problem that I have with this analogy. The father raises his son (presumably he raises his son as best he can) but the son is ungrateful and rejects his father. God, however, has not raised me. I have never seen him nor have I heard his voice. Therefore, I believe that it is quite reasonable for me to reject him. If God wants me to accept him then he should appear to me in a way that makes it clear that he exists. Until that happens I will reject him just like I reject the belief of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

 

[rocka21]

Here is the problem that I have with this analogy. The father raises his son (presumably he raises his son as best he can) but the son is ungrateful and rejects his father. God, however, has not raised me. I have never seen him nor have I heard his voice. Therefore, I believe that it is quite reasonable for me to reject him. If God wants me to accept him then he should appear to me in a way that makes it clear that he exists. Until that happens I will reject him just like I reject the belief of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

seek and you shall find.

my friend, i believe if you seek him with a pure heart he will make it CLEAR to you that he exists.

 

[MaddLlama]

omniscientia
1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge


yes God has that, until it comes to our choice. ( if you would like me to quote bible ref.s just let me know).

God gives man a choice.

That doesn't really make any sense, but ok.

 

[The Seeker]

seek and you shall find.

my friend, i believe if you seek him with a pure heart he will make it CLEAR to you that he exists.

Why should I have to seek him? This makes as much sense as hiding from my son instead of raising him. Fathers like this are called deadbeat dads.

 

[ChristineES]

I certainly can't make you seek Him, that is your choice. If you do not hear His voice that is not His fault either. We have total free will, God knows the outcome to each of our choices, He is hoping we will make the best choice. That is my understanding of God from reading scriptures.

About rejecting God, I see this all the time; people reject God all the time without ever knowing Him. I don't see how one can reject someone or something without ever knowing said person or thing and that includes God. That, however, is my own problem, I don't understand everything. I wish I could understand everything, but I am just a lowly human.

 

[wizanda]

Why should I have to seek him? This makes as much sense as hiding from my son instead of raising him. Fathers like this are called deadbeat dads.

If the found is within the seeker....
Like a mooring line from the heart, when is that lost?
So why is it we only talk to our soul, when we get lost?
If we spoke to our soul first, would we get lost?
Enlightenment is acceptance of it,
Grasping after it is desire,
so the heart moves further away from its origins.

 

[gnostic]

I certainly can't make you seek Him, that is your choice. If you do not hear His voice that is not His fault either. We have total free will, God knows the outcome to each of our choices, He is hoping we will make the best choice. That is my understanding of God from reading scriptures.

If what you say is true, then God shouldn't punish people, who don't believe in him, since you believe in free-will.

Punishing people who exercise free will is no better than oppression of people in a country that have dictatorship, communism or whatever extreme right- or left-wings. If God punish people simply out of belief or disbelief of a god, then how is God any different from tyrant or dictator?

Also I would prefer far more proof, then just words in some old books, supposedly written by some prophets or apostles. This is reliance only on faith, and that's not good for me, considering that the world is far too complex today, with people believe in so many weird things.

I have seen no "miracle". Everything I have seen has only been either natural or artificial, but there is absolutely no evidence of divine intervention. Couples have sex, conceive a child, and it is born. All of this is natural, I don't see any God taking a hand in the conception or birth of child. It is proof of nature taking its natural course, not God playing games of creation. If he was involved, then why do some babies are born healthy and others are born unhealthy or deformed. If God was ultimately responsible for such birth, then he is playing an awful games with people's lives, by making them born with diseases or deformed.

 

[gnostic]

To all who wrote about seeking and finding.

Well, I always prefer the journey instead of just arriving at the destination. Part of the fun is seeking the answer. Actually arriving at solution is just bonus to the journey.

 

[Super Universe]

The gate is not a physical opening, it symbolizes time.

The narrow gate is full ascendence to heaven reached in a minimal amount of time.


The wide gate is the continual recycling of energy (souls) into material beings because they still have not found the way.

 

[Prometheus]

Yes we do. God is not predestining (is that a word) us to heaven or hell. Since He is all-knowing, He knows who will choose what in the end, but that does not mean we do not have free will. God has a different sort outlook then we do.

I've always understood the reasoning behind this position, but it just doesn't make sense if you believe in causality, which you must if you believe the future can be seen.

God created all the energy and matter in the universe and set it in motion to run its course. The universe is God's massive Rube Goldberg device.

If there is causality then free will is an illusion. We can't actually choose to do anything that wasn't predetermined. As the saying goes, you can't trick God. If you really had free will you could do something spontaneous right now that God didn't see coming. You can't actually do such a thing because God knew your action before you did it. You didn't actually have a choice to do anything but that very thing God knew that you would. It only appears that you have a choice because you live in the present. If the future is knowable then it is predestined eliminating all choice. All the decisions you make appear to be free choices to you, but they were predestined. The molecules in your brain were already set up just so to make these choices.

I really need to get an explanation why an omniscient, omnipotent God would create a reality and set in motion a causality which would result in the damnation of most of mankind.

 

[kmkemp]

I've always understood the reasoning behind this position, but it just doesn't make sense if you believe in causality, which you must if you believe the future can be seen.

No, not really. Foreknowledge is different from predestination. The concept of foreknowledge is that God created time and exists apart from it. Today is the same as a billion years ago to Him. He dwells in eternity. Time is something we use to order events chronologically because it makes sense to us. God has already seen everything that has and will ever happen, but that in no way means that He predetermined it to be that way (and also doesn't mean that He didn't do that as well, obviously).

God created all the energy and matter in the universe and set it in motion to run its course. The universe is God's massive Rube Goldberg device.

If there is causality then free will is an illusion. We can't actually choose to do anything that wasn't predetermined. As the saying goes, you can't trick God. If you really had free will you could do something spontaneous right now that God didn't see coming. You can't actually do such a thing because God knew your action before you did it. You didn't actually have a choice to do anything but that very thing God knew that you would. It only appears that you have a choice because you live in the present. If the future is knowable then it is predestined eliminating all choice. All the decisions you make appear to be free choices to you, but they were predestined. The molecules in your brain were already set up just so to make these choices.

I really need to get an explanation why an omniscient, omnipotent God would create a reality and set in motion a causality which would result in the damnation of most of mankind.

Sorry, but pretty much any philosopher will disagree with you. Foreknowledge in no way affects our free will. If you mean to argue against our free will, your best bet would be to argue in favor of causality.

 

[ChristineES]

I have had many debates in the past about predestination. Most people I have known, whether theist or atheist, seem to believe that everything in their life is preplanned ahead of time. That just never made logical sense to me. A split second decision can change the outcome of most any situation. A person can choose walk into the street and get run over a car or he can choose to stay on the sidewalk. I have always believed that people make their own choices. If they choose God they do so on their own (they answer God's call), and the same if they don't.
If someone believed in God just because God made him, then there would be no reason for us to continue since anyone who is saved has already answered God's voice.

 

[gnostic]

Most people I have known, whether theist or atheist, seem to believe that everything in their life is preplanned ahead of time.

Then you don't believe that Judas was destined to betray Jesus? Or that Peter would deny Jesus 3 times during Jesus' captivity? Or that was Joseph would be predestined to be sold into slavery, but later become powerful in Egypt save his family from the famine?

If you don't believe in predestination, then surely you can't believe in prophecies. And if there are no prophecies, then there are no prophets.

 

[Hope]

I'm still wrestling with a lot of these issues. The human mind has a difficult time grasping the concepts of free will and the sovereignty of God.

An element no one has mentioned yet is the absolute holiness and purity of God. People keep saying, why does mere unbelief in God qualify me for hell? It seems unfair, and I agree, to an extent. But to talk only about unbelief is just skimming the surface. What truly qualifies us for hell is our sin and filth. Even Satan believes in God, but he sure ain't going to heaven.

God wants, more than anything, intimacy with us. That's a pretty staggering thought, at least to me. But because He is so righteous and pure and holy, the intimacy He desires can only be fulfilled with those whose righteousness, purity, and holiness is like His own. He loves everyone, deeply and unconditionally, but ultimately He can't allow anyone into an intimate relationship with Him unless they are holy and pure too---no matter how much He loves them.

Suppose a well-groomed gentleman meets a young beggar woman. He can easily see she is beautiful, but she is also filthy, smelly, and has atrocious manners and vices. He is a compassionate, kind man, so he tries to help her, and as he does so, learns to care for her deeply, even love her. But unless she begins to bathe regularly, wear clean clothes, and mend her vices, the probability of the young gentleman wanting to pursue an intimate relationship with her is very, very slim. He can love her...certainly; have compassion on her...certainly; but be intimate with her? Who among us can say we would enjoy kissing or cuddling with someone whose very smell makes us nauseous? Whose behavior is crass and vile?

This the closest analogy I can think of in reference to how God sees us. The problem is we have no comprehension of how gross our sin is in comparison to God's holiness and purity. "Being good," by human standards, just doesn't cut it in God's eyes.

God's righteousness and holiness demand justice; and His love doesn't want to "settle" for anything less than intimacy.

 

[JayHawes]

The Human mind cannot toally grasp the concept of God. We have yet to grasp the whole concept of gravity, and natural time.

What we can grasp in the knowledge that God sent Jesus, his Son to die for our sins on the cross. And that Whosoever believes on him shall not perish, but have everlasting faith.

 

[ChristineES]

Then you don't believe that Judas was destined to betray Jesus? Or that Peter would deny Jesus 3 times during Jesus' captivity? Or that was Joseph would be predestined to be sold into slavery, but later become powerful in Egypt save his family from the famine?

If you don't believe in predestination, then surely you can't believe in prophecies. And if there are no prophecies, then there are no prophets.

T

I certainly do believe in prophets and prophecy and I never said otherwise. God knows (And Jesus in these cases) us better than we know ourselves. He doesn't control us, but he know by our nature what will happen in each situation. Jesus knew that Judas did not believe in His words and He would have know that Peter was afraid of death and knowing these things would determine which choice each would make. God gives each person the chance to accept Him, He knows that some people will not yet He still gives him that chance- He does not MAKE us choose to believe in Him; that choice is ours. On top of that, most prophecies are general, they are not dependent on one person's choice or even about one person, but rather about events.
I can't seem to put into words what I am trying to say.

What about Jonah? Ninevah was supposed to be destroyed and all of the people repented and God spared them. I have a hard time believing that they were predestined to repent, otherwise they would not have needed Jonah to come to them in the first place.

 

[slabbey06]

I'm still wrestling with a lot of these issues. The human mind has a difficult time grasping the concepts of free will and the sovereignty of God.

An element no one has mentioned yet is the absolute holiness and purity of God. People keep saying, why does mere unbelief in God qualify me for hell? It seems unfair, and I agree, to an extent. But to talk only about unbelief is just skimming the surface. What truly qualifies us for hell is our sin and filth. Even Satan believes in God, but he sure ain't going to heaven.

God wants, more than anything, intimacy with us. That's a pretty staggering thought, at least to me. But because He is so righteous and pure and holy, the intimacy He desires can only be fulfilled with those whose righteousness, purity, and holiness is like His own. He loves everyone, deeply and unconditionally, but ultimately He can't allow anyone into an intimate relationship with Him unless they are holy and pure too---no matter how much He loves them.

Suppose a well-groomed gentleman meets a young beggar woman. He can easily see she is beautiful, but she is also filthy, smelly, and has atrocious manners and vices. He is a compassionate, kind man, so he tries to help her, and as he does so, learns to care for her deeply, even love her. But unless she begins to bathe regularly, wear clean clothes, and mend her vices, the probability of the young gentleman wanting to pursue an intimate relationship with her is very, very slim. He can love her...certainly; have compassion on her...certainly; but be intimate with her? Who among us can say we would enjoy kissing or cuddling with someone whose very smell makes us nauseous? Whose behavior is crass and vile?

This the closest analogy I can think of in reference to how God sees us. The problem is we have no comprehension of how gross our sin is in comparison to God's holiness and purity. "Being good," by human standards, just doesn't cut it in God's eyes.

God's righteousness and holiness demand justice; and His love doesn't want to "settle" for anything less than intimacy.

AMEN