God has FINALLY heard my prayers . . .

[hnumpah]

It is free ,of the interference that would prevent us from haveing a real choice.

I am sure that you have had someone tell you "I told you so" it is a very common experience , if someone ever tells you not to do something but you do it anyway they have interfered in your free will?

I might tell someone not to grab that hot iron and they might still do it , they have burns that are not my fault then even if I heated the iron myself. 
Once ,one of my sons got burned on some Iron I heated , then because I had not warned him , I felt terrible on top of terrible not only that he was hurt but also that I could have so simply prevented it.

I can't make that complaint against God , the warning was put where I could find it for everything that I have ever done badly or chosen poorly , but not in such a way to make choice impossible even when the diffrence between the better and worse choice was clear.

Okay, the free will thing.

Telling us all these stories about the creation, man's fall from grace, the flood, slavery in Egypt, coming out of bondage, etc, right on up through the crucifixion and Saul's conversion, are all well and good, if one is disposed to take things on faith. Where is the proof, the hard evidence, that any of these events occurred? All we have is a a book, full of inaccuracies, that has been around several thousand years, with the latest additions being some two thousand years ago. Based on this, we are expected to take it as holy writ that god exists, we are all sinners, his son died for our sins, blah blah blah. That's what you are calling free will. I call it a leap of faith.

How would it be interfering with free will if your god, or his son, were to appear in, say, Central Park - no, better yet, since he is omnipotent and can be everywhere at once, in every 'Central Park' in every burg all over the world - and demonstrate just exactly why we should believe. Not explain, demonstrate - give the people some concrete proof that there is a god, that he is that god, and that he is omnipotent, omnipresent, whatever. How would that be interfering with free will? Is giving someone all the facts, with concrete evidence to back them up, somehow interfering with their free will? I don't think so. But to then condemn those who don't believe, whose logic prevents them from making that leap of faith because they have not been given enough evidence to convince them, does not strike me as a benevolent being.

[Plane]

Hebrews 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Hebrews 11:5-7

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=65&chapter=11&verse=5&end_verse=7&version=31&context=context


God has indeed appeared to people, even to Thomas who doubted , but what did Jesus tell Thomas on that occasion?

I can only suppose that it is part of the scheme to make free will work for us . If only doing things Gods way would ever be right , do we have no choices to make?

To have freewill we have to have the imperfect alternatives , the ability to choose wrong, and an element of doubt.

I beleive that there will be an accounting for all sin , but not for some that do not sin willfully.

John 9
39Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."

 40Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?"

 41Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=9&version=31


  So that a sin is not simply doing something that is wrong , the way that breaking the law is , but it is willfully departing from Gods guidence. Without an understanding of right and wrong it is impossible to sin like that , so I don't think any thing I can't understand will be charged against me , unfortunately I have done things I knew were wrong and so must have forgiveness to have hope of heaven.

It is said that ignorance of the law is no excuse , but God isn't interested in the letter of the law as much as he is in an attitude of love . 

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=48&chapter=3&version=31
Mark 3
35Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

[hnumpah]

To have freewill we have to have the imperfect alternatives , the ability to choose wrong, and an element of doubt.

How would having more solid evidence than a flawed thousands-year-old text (I'll come back to this) subtract from one's free will in making a choice whether to believe or not?

Hebrews 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

I believe an apple exists, not because of faith, but because I can see it, hold it in my hand, smell it and taste it. I believe my employer exists because he signs my paycheck - my reward - for putting in x number of hours on his behalf each week. Neither of those has anything to do with faith. They are the result of hard evidence and experience, not just taking someone's word for it that either exists.

As for the bible itself, it is riddled with errors and inaccuracies. If god is omnipotent and incapable of error, one has to wonder how those crept in. I know, I know, the claim is made that god himself, personally, did not write the texts, he relied on humans to do so, and humans make mistakes; however, god should have been hanging around in the background somewhere, proofreading his followers' work, and pointing out the errors so they could correct them.

Bear with me a bit longer here.

This failure to verify the accuracy of his followers' work and insure only the facts made it into print goes hand in hand with another problem I came across some years ago. I asked a minister once why, in the face of all the scientific evidence to the contrary (geological, astronomical, etc), did he believe, as the bible states, that creation took place about 6000 years ago. His response was that god planted all that evidence to create doubt. I pointed out that this would, in fact, amount to misleading people about the origin of the earth (and, in fact, pretty much everything); and I found it hard to believe someone could believe that a god was so good, so benificent, and yet could still lie to the very people he demanded unyielding faith from, in order to create doubt and undermine that faith. I believe the failure to correct the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the bible amounts to the same thing, basically an attempt to mislead the people away from the path you claim he wants us to follow.

So you can say we should take it on faith all you want; I have my own very good reasons for refusing to make blind faith my only criteria for deciding for myself whether your god is real or not.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I also recall a bout two months ago I was trying inexpertly to cut down a tree on our churchyard, I was not really worried , but I was haveing a hard time. In the Chapel my wife and the Pastors wife were praying that we would not get killed .

========================
This and the incident with the safety equipment are examples of what I call luck. I also think that it is highly possible that you were cutting the tree with a chainsaw. These make a lot of noise, a noise which is more than familiar to anyone who cuts trees down and is looking for free wood.

It is not strange that people attribute good fortune to God, nut when something perfectly hideous happens, guess what? They thank God for that, too, because although it wiped out their entire family, business and home, it didn't kill them of their faithful dog, Bingo.

I say God is mute for the same reason I would say a person is mute. He does not talk.
He doesn't write messages in the sand, post e-mail, or use the US Postal Service either. You are assuming that events which involve your wife praying and you avoiding accidents are in some way messages from the Almighty. Of course, no one can disprove this, but neither can it be proven. In each case, however, God was mute. He said not a word.

[Plane]

I also recall a bout two months ago I was trying inexpertly to cut down a tree on our churchyard, I was not really worried , but I was haveing a hard time. In the Chapel my wife and the Pastors wife were praying that we would not get killed .

========================
This and the incident with the safety equipment are examples of what I call luck. I also think that it is highly possible that you were cutting the tree with a chainsaw. These make a lot of noise, a noise which is more than familiar to anyone who cuts trees down and is looking for free wood.

It is not strange that people attribute good fortune to God, nut when something perfectly hideous happens, guess what? They thank God for that, too, because although it wiped out their entire family, business and home, it didn't kill them of their faithful dog, Bingo.

I say God is mute for the same reason I would say a person is mute. He does not talk.
He doesn't write messages in the sand, post e-mail, or use the US Postal Service either. You are assuming that events which involve your wife praying and you avoiding accidents are in some way messages from the Almighty. Of course, no one can disprove this, but neither can it be proven. In each case, however, God was mute. He said not a word.

Job himself makes this complaint, but God does show up to make answer.

How God chooses to talk to you I cannot guess , but I expect there is something , but you may not be interested .

I remember you telling how you have learned some usefull things about the Stock market, what is the situation of an investor who begins investing and always maintains that he always knows enough already?

[Plane]

How would having more solid evidence than a flawed thousands-year-old text (I'll come back to this) subtract from one's free will in making a choice whether to believe or not?

http://www.hutchcraft.com/A-Word-With-You/Your-Relationships/Pillars-That-Hold-Up-Nothing-5400

http://answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/did-jesus-say-he-created-in-six-days


These are tough questions.

Gods scheme is not one I would have used , I imagine my scheme for creation would have been simpler and I don't really know what use for us God has. I understand what I can see imperfectly and what I cannot see is as through a glass darkly.


So Jesus told his deciples that without the faith of little children they could not hope for heaven, is Jesus dismissive of our intellect? I don't think so because he on other occasions resorts to logic, but it does seem clear that he isn't relying on our understanding of creation to cause our salvation .

Putting oneself in the shoes of God is a rediculous thing , I can't imagine myself into omnipotence but I can sometimes get an insight into a problem God might have. If one of us were talking to Moses with our modern understanding of science , how much accurate information about creation could we impart to Moses? Moses was very likely just as well educated as anyone on Earth at the time but the greatest mathmaticians of the day had not yet made a term for Billion , not yet had the decimal system been developed for numbers , only the highly advanced Geomatricians could accurately describe the size of the Earth , it was an age of awakening but there is a limit to the awakeining availible.

After one of us goes to a part of the Earth where science is less studyed , do we give enlightenment or confusion when we discuss science? That Genisis is free of absolute error I take as a matter of faith , but that it isn't puirposed as a science text I accept also , it is probly as close to the truth as anyone was ready for at the time , and its real purpose was spritual rather than scientific.

I don't feel compelled to disbeleive the evidence for evolution as some do , I accept all evidence on its own strength and so far Evolution seems likely to me , Genisis is only vaguely right in order of creation , but has some interesting points correct. Man is the latest creation mentioned and what do you know, we are pretty recent in geological terms, but does this matter? The allegorical parts of the book are truelyu reveiling in terms of human nature  , more important to me than whether Cain and Abel are precicely true as history , is the concept of murder being a disaproved means of solveing problems.   

[Plane]

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2068

[Xavier_Onassis]

God has indeed appeared to people, even to Thomas who doubted , but what did Jesus tell Thomas on that occasion?
======================================
That was Jesus that appeared to Thomas, not God.
By the way, Thomas schlepped around with Jesus for a rather long time, and should be able to recognize his voice, his appearance, his manner of walking, just like you recognize all these facets your family and friends, and of everyone you work with on a daily basis.


So if Thomas didn't recognize him, how the poo are we, who have never seen the dude, supposed to know him at all?

Jesus came from a long, long tradition in which the Sacred Word was written, carried about in the Ark of the Covenant, and regularly read by rabbis. And yet, Jesus never wrote one word. He instead left it up to four guys who may or may not have known him and they waited at least 40 years to write it down. So, please. Don't tell me that's the best a Perfect Being can do. Really.

I can only suppose that it is part of the scheme to make free will work for us . If only doing things Gods way would ever be right , do we have no choices to make?
[/color]

To have freewill we have to have the imperfect alternatives , the ability to choose wrong, and an element of doubt.

I beleive that there will be an accounting for all sin , but not for some that do not sin willfully.

Whatever that means. If it isn't willful, how is it sin?

John 9
39Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."

This sounds like gibberish to me. Why punish those who can see? What is the point?

 40Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?"

 41Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Best I can figure is that God, as described in the Bible, thinks of us and big, dumb pets.  He relishes watching us, and kicking us when we screw up and occasionally throwing us a bone when he likes what we do.

I disagree that any serious deity would hold these views, so I choose to disbelieve the Bible.

[Plane]

So if Thomas didn't recognize him, how the poo are we, who have never seen the dude, supposed to know him at all?

Thomas did recognise him , immediately , but what did Jesus then say?

This sounds like gibberish to me. Why punish those who can see? What is the point?

the occasion in context starts with the healing of a blind man's blindness , but it seems as if the subject has shifted to willfull ignorance. The underestanding of scripture is a direct gift , there are lots of things you are not supposed to understand without being blessed with the understanding.

 40Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?"

 41Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Best I can figure is that God, as described in the Bible, thinks of us and big, dumb pets.  He relishes watching us, and kicking us when we screw up and occassionally throwing us a bone when he likes what we do.

I disagree that any serious diety would hold these views, so I choose to disbelieve the Bible.

If it isn't willfull, how is it sin?

That is Gods attitude as I understand it , with God ,ignorance of the law is an excuse.

[Xavier_Onassis]

the occasion in context starts with the healing of a blind man's blindness , but it seems as if the subject has shifted to willfull ignorance. The underestanding of scripture is a direct gift , there are lots of things you are not supposed to understand without being blessed with the understanding.

=========================================
You have to be blessed with understanding.

Simultaneously, we must be as a young child. We are compared to errant sheep, in need of a shepherd.

So Jesus had trouble staying on topic. We heal a blind guy and then switch over to how those who could see soon won't be able to. That is silly. And there is no evidence that it happened, either.

[Stray Pooch]

Jiminy Christmas, XO, you make this into such a complex mishmash.

First of all, I believe that everyone INCLUDING God has free will and can make whatever choice they want to.   They cannot command the consequence, but they can choose the action.

If we assume (and I do not) that God knows every action we will take in advance (down to how much mayo to put on our bologna sandwich on Monday, Augues 4, 2008) that still does not, in any way, lessen our free will.  What WOULD lessen our free will (eliminate it completely, in fact) is if God DETERMINED in advance what we would do.  You are effectively equating the two.   That God may have foreknowledge of our choices is simply that - foreknowledge.  That differs from predestination, in which all of our actions are, in fact, determined in advance for us and pre-programmed.  Predestination, IMO, eliminates sin, since everything is God's will and that will cannot, by definition, be sin.  Satan is no longer evil because he is simply the agent of God. 

I have often accurately predicted someone's actions based on past observation of their behavior and a foreeknowledge of the circumstances.  Police and Intelligence Analysts do the same thing.   If there are two out and the count is 3-2 with runners on base, I'm going to predict the runners are going on the pitch.  If a porn store opens down the block from a known sex offender, I'm going to predict that he willl eventually enter the store.   If I leave chocolate cake in a room with an overweight person, I'm going to bet he takes a piece of cake.  These are likely to be correct predictions, and that based on my very limited skills as a prognosticator of human behavior.  But that knowledge does not, in any way, affect the choices these people will make.  A baserunner may forget the count.  The perv may worry that the cops are watching him.  The fat guy may be on a diet.  OTOH God has a perfect knowledge of human behavior and can understand us better than we ourselves do.  So there is no reason why God cannot accurately predict our behavior 100% of the time without manipulating the data.  Again, I personally do not view it that way, but there is nothing in that scenario that would contradict my personal belief.  Whether or not God knows the outcome, the choice is still mine.  Only if God has PRE-DETERMINED the outcome and I am simply acting on the program He put into me, do I lose my free agency.  I believe that Satan wanted everything to be pre-determined to eliminate the chance for error.  That is why he opposed God and fell.

What you are doing is putting a lofty intellectual spin on God.  He is, in fact, far more simple than that.  It is our own minds and our tendency to lose ourselves in self-serving philosophical tangents that make religion so complicated.  God is simple.  God is logical.  God need not pass the criteria of the ability to create a rock so big he cannot lift it because that question is illogical.  He CAN choose wrong, but the consequence would be that he would no longer be God.  That means that God only chooses good, and it is not made good because of God's choice, but vice versa.  God is not a Nixon-like figure who says "When the President of the Universe decides to do something, that makes it legal."  Rather, he chooses to do good at all times because it is good. 

As to answering prayers, which started this symposium, God answers all prayers, in his own due time and method.  Ambrose Pierce, I believe, defined prayer as "A request to change the laws of the universe on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy" or words to that effect.  If that is your definition of prayer you are right; God will not answer those prayers.  Emo Phillips said "When I was a kid I asked God for a bicycle.  But then U realized that God doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked him to forgive me."  I don't consider that a blasphemous joke.  I think it makes a wonderful point about the expectations of people concerning prayer and what prayer really is.

So you can logically attack prayer, its answers, and the ominpotence of God all you want.  Those of us who experience direct answers to prayers, who experience grace, who experience God, know him - and know he knows us.

That's logic. 

[Stray Pooch]

That's what you are calling free will. I call it a leap of faith.

This statement confuses free will and faith.

Free will is the ability to make choices.  That's it.  It is not the ability to make choices without consequence.  Your free will may get you killed, injured, eternally damned, or a bad case of diabetes.  But that there are consequences does not mean that you are not free to choose.  Even if someone holds a gun to your head, you can choose to let them shoot rather than comply with their demands.   Free will just means your will is yours to control - not God's.

Faith is only incidentally related to free will.  Faith is evidentiary.  It is described as the evidence of things unseen.  It differs from simple belief.  When I was a kid I believed in Santa Claus.  I believed it because I was told he would come.  It was even encouraged by the seemingly-miraculous appearance of toys on Christmas morning.  But it was just a blind belief in a deliberate (albeit benign) deception.  Faith, as the scriptures speak of it, requires much more.  It requires us to actually examine, study out, and put to the test things which, if we rely only on our powers of direct observation, seem unlikley or even impossible.  Faith requires action - belief simple passive acceptance.  Those who decry faith on this thread equate faith with belief.  Sometimes the scriptures (in our tranlations) refer to faith as belief.  (John 3:16 comes to mind)  But God does not want passive acceptance.  He tells us in Malachi and elsewhere to "prove" him.  He wants us to test our beliefs and build our faith.  He does NOT want us to, in denial, avoid those who question our beliefs, but rather to listen to the counter-arguments, examine them, weed out the weak, silly things and question honestly the good points.  Where poor, weak arguments are made, I generally dismiss or ignore them.  I've heard them before and they are usually based on ignorance or misunderstanding of a principle.  Where honest inquiry is made on such points, I may choose to explain.  Where the arguments are being used to belittle or minimize faith, I simply turn away.   

But there are excellent points made too, by detractors.  These deserve both debate (if in a sensible atmosphere) and investigation.  I have never had a principle brought up under such circumstances whose answer did not strengthen my faith.

The reason God does not simply reveal himself and make everyone equally aware is that everyone is not equally ready.  We learn nothing by simply being given a cheat sheet.  We should be given basic knowledge so we have a clue where to turn.  That is what the scriptures are for.  But it is not appropriate, to paraphrase Joseph Smith, that we should be taught everything.  We have to learn some things for ourselves.  That's the reason we are here on the plant in the first place. 

Again, Satan wanted to avoid that idea.  He wanted everyone to have total knowledge and no chance of failure.  That plan was rejected.  We were sent here to learn.  That cannot happen without challenge, without failure, without choice.

That's why we have free will, and why we must choose to exercise faith, rather than have faith superceded by absolute kniowledge. 

[Plane]

If we assume (and I do not) that God knows every action we will take in advance (down to how much mayo to put on our bologna sandwich on Monday, Augues 4, 2008) that still does not, in any way, lessen our free will.  What WOULD lessen our free will (eliminate it completely, in fact) is if God DETERMINED in advance what we would do.  You are effectively equating the two.   That God may have foreknowledge of our choices is simply that - foreknowledge.  That differs from predestination, in which all of our actions are, in fact, determined in advance for us and pre-programmed. 

Very well said.

 Predestination, IMO, eliminates sin, since everything is God's will and that will cannot, by definition, be sin.  Satan is no longer evil because he is simply the agent of God. 

Hmmmm...

[Xavier_Onassis]

If God knows and has always known, everything that will happen until the end of time, that is predestination, period. We think we can do something that God does not already have laid out in his mind, but we can't. There is no difference between predestination and what is described as foreknowledge. It is the same thing, revealed from a different angle.


I choose to believe that time is beyond God. God may be a tad better at predicting because of a greater experience, but in the long run, an immense great black hole could develop and we could all get sucked into it, perhaps even God as well. It could catch us all by surprise.

It might have started sucking already, way out past Andromeda and the Crab Nebula, and we only have several million years to go.

[hnumpah]

Quote from: hnumpah on August 01, 2008, 06:00:02
That's what you are calling free will. I call it a leap of faith.


Pooch: This statement confuses free will and faith.

Not in the context I used it.

Telling us all these stories about the creation, man's fall from grace, the flood, slavery in Egypt, coming out of bondage, etc, right on up through the crucifixion and Saul's conversion, are all well and good, if one is disposed to take things on faith. Where is the proof, the hard evidence, that any of these events occurred? All we have is a a book, full of inaccuracies, that has been around several thousand years, with the latest additions being some two thousand years ago. Based on this, we are expected to take it as holy writ that god exists, we are all sinners, his son died for our sins, blah blah blah. That's what you are calling free will. I call it a leap of faith.

Plane seems to believe that expecting someone to make a life altering decision without access to all the facts and evidence they might need to make the correct decision is somehow not interfering with that persons free will. I don't believe that requiring a person to make such a decision based on such skimpy, often inaccurate and self-contradictory evidence, when actual hard evidence could be provided but is withheld, is not promoting free will; it is requiring faith, and in my opinion, a huge leap of faith, to make that decision.