God's little version of abortion.
It is a well known fact that if there is an all knowing all seeing, all loving, all powerful God (or if there is a God) he allows bad people to live in this world. Better yet, many of us think he created people to be bad (so he can show off), because despite what the life he might have wanted them to live, he knows how they will live already. Some of us also wonder why an all powerful all knowing God couldn't be able to change the bad people to be good. It doesn't matter how we argue it, God ends up looking like a bad person.So, according to God's creation, HE IS A BAD MAN who pretends to be good. From what I can gather, many atheists would prefer if God never created bad people in the first place: if when he thought of making little Joseph Stalin he changed his mind because of foreknowledge. We would prefer if God made better children: not bad in any sense of the word. So essentially, we should be born buffered and polished to God's little liking and that would be GOOD. Or better yet, God should make everyone live out their life and find a way to make them GOOD. At the same time, he should promote free will, because free will is GOOD. But that should not be problem for the all powerful God. He could do this and none of us would notice the difference right?I don't want God to look weak or anything, but when you think about it, if he did what we asked he would be aborting children because they don't "fit". He would be killing something that was living, even if it never had a body. The conscious (or human being or child) is good (or at best neutral) but it would be unfit because the conscious would eventually be warped to be bad. So this is what God does, he changes that conscious until it will become good, no matter what it did. Being good was never it's decision, in God's eyes. God can fool us, but can he fool himself to think the child chose to be this person?Finally, this argument raises one more problem: if everything I said was right then God indiscriminately making children no matter what they will become still makes him bad. This is because he plans for bad things to happen when he can change them at the end of the day. He then says all things are planned, so does that mean he planned evil? It may be that he never planned evil, he just planned around it. It is like this, we never plan the rising of the sun, we plan our day aroud it. Intangible told me that the sun rising is not a decision, that is true. It is an independent factor in our lives. But I must say if God made free beings he made independent factors, which is interesting. It means he planned for independent factors, preferring them to be good, but because they are going to be bad, he works his plan around them so he can still be good.
I WILL NOT PUT IT ALL, IT IS MUCH TO
OH GOD! YES.
Side Score: 6
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Dribble.
Side Score: 4
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This debate is hinging on one particular view of the trait of omniscience attributed to God. Specifically, the idea that God knows what every individual will do before they do it, and by extension, that everything we do and every choice we make is predetermined. That is a non sequitur. Obviously, the ideas of free will and predestination are not compatible. So what, then? It is possible that omniscience does not include future events. While I'm not a scholar of the original recorded languages, and am limited to English here... http://www.merriam-webster.com/ http://www.merriam-webster.com/ http://www.merriam-webster.com/ None of these have the slightest implication of including future events; in fact, they cannot by their own definitions. Almost all are restricted to present and past tense in their definitions, and purely speculative where they aren't. Read them yourselves. Now, maybe the idea of omniscience not including future events won't fly for some. Ok, fair enough. But that still does not mean predestination. Suppose that God in fact has knowledge of all possible future scenarios and their relative probabilities of occurring, including the aggregate likelihood of scenarios hinging on prior decisions by multiple parties. Consider that while individuals are unpredictable, populations are quite predictable, and you've got a recipe for near-certain knowledge of many/most large scale events, without stepping on the toes of any individuals free will. Side: Dribble.
Consider that while individuals are unpredictable, populations are quite predictable, and you've got a recipe for near-certain knowledge of many/most large scale events, without stepping on the toes of any individuals free will. The whole debate is considering that though. Except it considers all things to have been known by him. Even individuals, but consider this: do you believe God must plan everything to know everything? If I could see into the future, does it mean what you are going to do is your destiny? Or does it mean that I saw what your conscious decisions will cause? I am saying that for the most part, God in general knows the outcomes of our actions but he never caused them. Side: OH GOD! YES.
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I am suggesting that if you could see into the future, what you would see would be the myriad possibilities of all potential decisions I may or not make, including scenarios that would be dependent on independent decisions made by others, and their relative probabilities. Also that, taken in aggregate, Some events involving populations can be predicted with near certainty without the actions of individuals mattering so much. Take development of nuclear weapons, for example- some are of the mind that we owe these to key members of research teams, and without them we would have no nukes. I suggest that given the direction science was already going, they were an inevitable development, and changing the team would only change the timeframe. I am alternatively suggesting that by our own definitions, future events do not fall under 'knowledge,' and as such not knowing the precise actions any individual will take is not a limitation on omniscience. Possible a combination is most accurate; In this model, God knows every potential decision we will make and the possible outcomes of said decisions, and as such knows everything we will do, but doesn't precisely know which decision we will make, only the general likelihood. Whether this would be a limitation or contradiction of omniscience would depend on how you define knowledge in general, and as I noted we don't really count future events that have not happened yet as either fact or knowledge. Side: Dribble.
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