Guest post by billybob
In a debate between David Silverman and evangelist Frank Turek about the problem of evil, Turek stated that God is omniscient and knows all that has happened and will happen. Silverman made the point that if God knows all and the future is fixed then Adam had no choice but to follow the script and eat the apple. Adam had no choice and God had no choice but to expel Adam from Eden then send Jesus to redeem him. God is a prisoner of his omniscience.
If the past and the future are known and are fixed, what decisions could God or any of his creatures make? A divine plan that is fixed allows no changes, no need for a brain! If god is omniscient, then God is irrelevant and all events are predestined. Whether you are an atheist or a born again Christian is not your decision if there is an omniscient God.
If God is omniscient, then God is irrelevant. The only way God or humanity would need to make a decision is if God did not know the future. A non-omniscient God would not be an all powerful, maximally great being. The Christian God would be either irrelevant or not all powerful.
Starting at 3:30 in the video Turek keeps contradicting himself. Watch it if you want to see how religion can turn someone’s brain into cabbage.
I’ve been thinking about the soul. Did the other hominids have souls? Did god wipe them out because they didn’t have souls, were their souls improperly formed, or were god’s “besties”, homo erectus, the only ones to get them? Did they evolve I were there “proto-souls” and why don’t we find “transitional” souls in the spiritual fossil record? How can my pet join me in the happy ever after without a soul? Will cro-magnon join me there? So much to think about no?
WOW – if a theist claims God is omniscient – the tree of knowledge argument in this video is dead on – no free will for humans.
If God is omniscient.
What a laugh. The Old Testament God was the Canaanite God of War who was formerly married to a fertility Goddess. He didn’t have to be omniscient to inspire bloodletting and she didn’t have to be omniscient to inspire mating.
God didn’t have to be omniscient to create huge, ugly, carnivorous reptiles and dinosaurs. He probably would have done no worse on acid. Whenever you witness nature at its worst, is more comforting to blame an uncaring deity or to just reconcile the debacle to a totally oblivious Universe?
God isn’t a being and doesn’t “know” things but, while the word is arbitrary, the processes result in a scientifically observable non-supernatural “miracle”. Some evidence at least hints that while time exists in discrete segments, some very large, others extremely tiny, they nevertheless are limitless…
Lotsa’ big and li’l ever-changing bangs form an ultimate reality which extends forever. No sense in praying to god unless doing so makes yon feel good, but despite being totally different from the mistakes created by hubristic supernaturalism the processes of (arbitrary word) god are no less powerful.
To put the arbitrary word (“god”)concept into context; which is more probable, that all that is occurs once and then fades to black or that since it’s happened once it’s not forbidden by the laws of physics and nature and will occur again and again for an infinite number of times?
God has no obligation to its creations to provide heaven or hell for them, but it allows at least the one example we know firsthand, US, to create values, morality and ethics, from neverending conflicts brought about through constant application of the laws of nature.
BTW, feel free and disagree. Doing so is part of the magnificient game.