Simple question?

God as described is the ultimate designer, he kills them or lets them be killed. A lot of laws won't establish a punishment for someone who doesn't report or interfere in a crime -- but regardless, certainly people don't talk about respecting, much less worshiping and praising people who stand by and do nothing about perpetrators.

God gave us free choice. Why not free choice between things like vanilla or chocolate, apples or oranges, Door #1, 2, or 3? Instead god includes awful choices. This makes him supposedly loving.

And I've never seen any designer who has ultimate control over his design being able to argue -- well some them I made f*** up and it's not my fault.


(see you can compare apples and oranges, hah, I think.)

If it were possible to exist outside of time, and see the past, present, and future all at once, then:

the future would be a fixed set of events like the past that are fixed, and could not be changed.

If the future, present, and the past were a set of all possible events, then you have a multiverse theory, which still collapses into one possible past, present, and future for one universe for the things that exist within that one universe.

for us to have free will, it is necessary for there to BE more than one future (EvenBob started to hint in this direction) AND that god can't know what the future is, because if he knows what the future is, that is the path that everyone must or "will choose" follow, leading to the illusion of free will again.

Quote: Dalex64

for us to have free will, it is necessary for there to BE more than one future (EvenBob started to hint in this direction) AND that god can't know what the future is, because if he knows what the future is, that is the path that everyone must or "will choose" follow, leading to the illusion of free will again.

For this to work, god would have to be
a totally different kind of being than
Christians portray him to be. He could
not be an interactive god who has any
power in the present moment at all.

Not to worry, there are no gods, only
an emotionless universal consciousness
that is constantly evolving and that has
been here forever and that we are a part
of. It's what the yogi seeks who sits in
meditation for 20 years staring at his navel.
To experience the universal consciousness
on this plane of existence.

Quote: Nareed

Outside of time you could not move, think or perhaps even exist, as there'd be no time to make change possible.

I think we have to remember what time is. For us time is essential and it makes sense, it measures the passing moments. For God there is no time. If you are an eternal non-contingent being who always was, is, and will be without beginning or end then time is not essential nor does it really make sense for you. What we see as change is not seen the same way for God. This is good stuff to think about it stretches our brains a little bit.

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Oh, well. You know how it is. We have so many examples, studies and demonstrations of a timeless existence, that it's easy to get them mixed up.

Oh, wait.

Good point. Which is why your earlier statement declaring that moving, thinking, or changing outside of time is impossible doesn't really hold water. We don't have the possibility of ever knowing what a timeless existence looks like. We only know about it because of logic and our reason. It is necessary to posit it for the ultimate creator of all things. Without things (matter/energy) there is no time. So before the existence of our universe God existed but there was no time.

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If Jehovah's actions are predestined because he has already performed all actions at all times, past, present and future, then he's little different from a computer program running without inputs. He can only do what he's already done. Ergo far from being all-powerful, he's powerless.

On the contrary the programmer is more powerful than we can imagine. Maybe you are thinking it is us that are powerless in the grand scheme of things. You would be more correct if you said this. God knows you and loves you and God knows all that you will do and choose for your entire life. However, you are still free to do whatever you like. These might seem like a paradox but only in our high philosophical discussions of it. Someone's foreknowledge of our actions do not dictate or force us to act in a certain way or do certain things. Don't rail against God, it's not His fault that God is who God is. This is the unavoidable consequence of being all-knowing, eternal, and all-powerful.

Quote: rxwine

God is at least as culpable as the getaway driver in a crime. Getaway drivers are punished for their involvement, even though their free will only indirectly involved the violence.

I don't follow your argument here. How is God like a getaway driver?

Quote: Evenbob

It's ridiculous, poorly thought out statements
like this that put another nail in gods coffin.
If this describes a god, he
is about as different from us as possible.

Good point, He is. However in the person of Jesus Christ he sacrificed this and became subject to time and our experiences. Yet another amazing thing about God. He knew how different He was from us and that we could not truly enter into an intimate relationship with one so different than us. So He gave it all up, the infinite eternal all-powerful, all-knowing God became a helpless baby and was fully human. Willingly taking the form of a slave and subjecting Himself to time, space limitations, and the joys and sufferings of our life so that when we experience the many challenges of life we know that we have a God who knows what it is like to be human and identifies with us.

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Imagine laying in bed in the morning and
knowing exactly, in detail, what is going to
happen to you that day, and the next day,
for the rest of your life. You wouldn't get
out of bed, no human would.

No human would have this knowledge would they? Groundhog day is coming up and you should watch that great movie again to try to understand how difficult this would be for a human being to handle. You are conflating a timeless being's knowledge about all things with a being in time's limited knowledge and creating an impossibility.

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he just loves knowing
everything at once. Which means giving him
human traits, like the ability to love, is pure
folly.

Please explain why this is pure folly.

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Better to stick with the Roman or Greek gods, they
were all about having human traits and foibles.
Your god is a child's god, a child who hasn't mastered
common sense and logic yet,

If you weren't so angry and prejudiced I think you might see how close you are coming to understanding the logic of the Incarnation.

Quote: rxwine

God as described is the ultimate designer, he kills them or lets them be killed. A lot of laws won't establish a punishment for someone who doesn't report or interfere in a crime -- but regardless, certainly people don't talk about respecting, much less worshiping and praising people who stand by and do nothing about perpetrators.

Take a look at what happens eventually to all perpetrators and tyrants in this life. I love Virginia's flag with an image of David standing over Goliath with the Latin phrase, "This is what happens to all tyrants". God's justice will always win out in the end. You might not be able to see it being limited to the short time on Earth, but from the vantage point of Heaven when you get there you will see God's plan and the justice that is meted out not only on earth for those who kill but the eternal justice they earn as well. You will then see and know that God does the opposite of standing by and doing nothing!

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God gave us free choice. Why not free choice between things like vanilla or chocolate, apples or oranges, Door #1, 2, or 3? Instead god includes awful choices. This makes him supposedly loving.

This is a position we haven't discussed yet and another option. God instead of either giving us freedom or taking it completely away could have limited our freedom so that in certain choices we had freedom but in other choices we were forced to obey some prime directive like Robocop or other artificial intelligence stories. I think without the radical choice to hate completely we would not have the ability to also radically chose to love completely. I also think God has given us all a conscience to help us to make the right decisions without limiting our freedom. In a certain way I believe God has stacked the deck in our favor. It is harder to hate than it is to love. We have to be taught and formed with rigor to become prejudiced and to hurt people and be mean to them. Even then we are always fighting this innate programing to respect and care for people.

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And I've never seen any designer who has ultimate control over his design being able to argue -- well some them I made f*** up and it's not my fault.

(see you can compare apples and oranges, hah, I think.)

God does not exercise ultimate control over us. He has taken a big risk in giving us freedom. A risk you can complain about and rightly criticize God for. I often wish He wouldn't have given me the freedom to make such stupid decisions in my life but then I think about the alternative and always come back to praising Him.

Quote: FrGamble

If you are an eternal non-contingent being who always was, is, and will be without beginning or end then time is not essential nor does it really make sense for you.

That's the old "And from nonsense like this Einstein made a living?" joke.

Yes, one hour to you is far different than one hour for a dog, and even far different than one hour for a child. But for changes to happen, you need the passage of time, like it or not. I don't care if one billion years seems as short as one day seems to an average person.

You can always make any being incomprehensible, if any attempt to comprehend it is met by meaningless, senseless double-talk.

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Good point. Which is why your earlier statement declaring that moving, thinking, or changing outside of time is impossible doesn't really hold water.

The point is there's no such thing as "outside of time." There can't be.

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On the contrary the programmer is more powerful than we can imagine.

That's a very tall assumption, completely unsupported by logic, reason or observation.

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Maybe you are thinking it is us that are powerless in the grand scheme of things.

In the grand scheme of things, I side with Arthur C. Clarke. "It may be the astrologers were right, but had it backwards: rather than control human destiny , it will be humans who determine the fates of stars." (paraphrased from memory). I can accept "sentient beings of any kind," as a stand-in for "humanity."

Quote: Dalex64

If it were possible to exist outside of time, and see the past, present, and future all at once, then:

the future would be a fixed set of events like the past that are fixed, and could not be changed.

I do think this is how God sees it.

Quote:

If the future, present, and the past were a set of all possible events, then you have a multiverse theory, which still collapses into one possible past, present, and future for one universe for the things that exist within that one universe.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean but even in a multiverse theory you cannot escape the need for God as the ultimate creator or the fact that God being all-knowing would still know all events past, present, and future for every universe.

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for us to have free will, it is necessary for there to BE more than one future (EvenBob started to hint in this direction) AND that god can't know what the future is, because if he knows what the future is, that is the path that everyone must or "will choose" follow, leading to the illusion of free will again.

This is incorrect. For us to have free will all that is necessary is for us to be able to freely choose our future. If God already knows what that future will be it has no bearing on our free will or our freedom to choose whatever it is that we want to do.

Quote: Evenbob

For this to work, god would have to be
a totally different kind of being than
Christians portray him to be. He could
not be an interactive god who has any
power in the present moment at all.

This doesn't follow. God can still be and is vey interactive in our present moments

Quote:

Not to worry, there are no gods, only
an emotionless universal consciousness
that is constantly evolving and that has
been here forever and that we are a part
of. It's what the yogi seeks who sits in
meditation for 20 years staring at his navel.
To experience the universal consciousness
on this plane of existence.

You should really stop considering yourself an atheist and look into pantheism. I think it fits your thought very well.