the robot analogy works to illustrate the nature of ominpotence as well. if i know the future, as well as created everthing that exists to my exact specifications. there is no free will. incorrect! if i was omnipotent, my child would only be able to perform what i gave it the ability to perform, which is completely unlike a child. parents are not omnipotent! that is why i used a robot in my example, and not a child, because a robot, you could build every part of it and have complete understanding of its workings. here is a question for you: i do not believe in god. my parents never forced it on me. it seems irrational to me. i cannot imagine any reason i would believe in stories so fantastic that you would laugh at them if i told you in a context that wasnt brainwashed into you as a child. now when i die my punishment is the eternal damnation of hell? this is what god has for me? that cruel bastard is going to punish me eternally for using the same free will he supposedly gave me? is this true? now think about that literally. my punishment, according to your superstition, for using my rational approach to life, is that i have to burn in hell forever. true or false, i die tonight, i burn in hell forever? just like a childrens's morality fable. be bad or the big monster will get you. be good and the eternal bliss. like the moronic terrorists, promised virgins in the afterlife. let me preface this last statement. i respect your views, you people are intelligent. that said, let me be honest. christianity is so stupid, i am amazed that anyone who is not retarded or over the age of 16 can possibly believe it. its complete and utter lunacy. the idea that anyone can possibly believe any word of the incredible foolishness is stunning to me.
Martin, your response leads me to believe that you think that anyone could predict future behavior if you knew all of the initial conditions. That is simply incorrect. You cannot predict exactly what a photon or an electron will do in the future. On a macro scale, there are things that work most of the time (at least have not failed in a labratory yet), but not everything is deterministic. Free will by its very nature is unpredictable, at least in the sense that we know it. As for what that does to our ideas of Godly omniscience, I don't know. I figure he knows things that I don't. In fact, I have a hard time with the non-existence of a supreme being because of the way that a lot of things work on a micro level. A photon always exhibits the behavior that you're looking for - even when the behaviors that you look for are contradictory! How do it know? Other particles do the same thing. There are whole lists of that kind of thing. The all scream GOD to me.
i understand chaos theory. i have read about quantum mechanics. i know things are often inherently unpredictable (for humans), but god is OMNIPOTENT! has god given us so much freewill that even he cant predict what we might do? is he a square circle? an inherent contradiction? of coursE! THE WHOLE IDEA IS SELF CONTRADICTORY!
Let me make sure I understand what you are saying. You are saying you have no free will, no freedom of choice in how you live, that everyting you do is as a result of some sort of pre-programming, right? Pre-programing that just happened by chance. Or am I misinterpreting? A robot, by nature, is nothing more than a glorified computer. You program it and it does what you tell it to, right? If you tell it to turn right, it does so. I f you program it to go in circles, that is what it will do. Unlike us, if it comes to an intersection, if yu hve programed it to go straight thru, that is what it will do whereas we can be told to go straight but we also have the ability to turn left or riight or go back where we came from. Whereas a robot is FORCED to follow the rules, we are not. As far as your question of "If I die tonight, I burn in Hell forever?" I honestly can't answer that because I am not your judge. It is not my place to judge you and condemn nor reward you. That is left to a higher power. I can tell you what the Bible teaches and what I believe and that is if you were to die tonight and not make your peace with the Lord, then yes. But that is not for me to decide. That is for you to decide and you and only you will be held responsible for your decision. But then I forget, you don't have power to make a decision do you? It's already been predetermined for you. You're a lawyer, aren't you? Criminal or what? If you are a criminal lawyer, what do you tell your clients when they are arrested? Do you use the defense that they couldn't help it, that they were predestined to commit their crime? If so look at your last statement, because it would certainly apply.
yes, misinterpreting. i am poorly trying to make a point about the incompatibility of god's omnipotence and our freewill. to me it seems incredibly obvious that the whole idea is an inherent self contradiction. nevermind. oh, and i am not a lawyer. since you can't judge me, let me ask you this. isnt it true that a person (who in this case isnt me) who doesnt believe in god burns in hell? arent' they punished for their lack of belief by the worse punishment imginable? the eternal pool of fire?
My apologies. I thought I read in one of your other posts that you were a lawyer. Must have you confused with someone else. And the answer to your question is according to the teaching of the Bible (and Jesus) that is the punishment of one who rejects God. Try to think of salvation as a gift, which it is, ok? If you were to get a letter in the mail from someone you didn't know and didn't have the slightest idea of where it came from and in it this person told you that if you believed him and if you did certain things, in 15 years he would give you 5 million dollars, tax free. The only proof that you had that this was real was the word of others that this would happen. What would you do? Would you just throw the letter away? Would you believe the word of those you know to be reliably credible and believe and change your life accordingly? The choice would be yours, wouldn't it? If you accepted it then the money would be yours. If you refused it, then you would suffer the consequences and stay relatively poor for the rest of your life.. And that's the way it works. It's only a gift if you receive and use it, isn't it? Otherwise it justs sits there, unused and like a plate of food in front of a hungry man, if he doesn't eat it, it doesn't do him any good, does it? By his choice he starves to death. He condemns himself, not by the person who offered him the food. Likewise Gods plan for salvation, He offers it but it is up to us to accept it or reject it, thereby saving or condemning ourselves, reaping the reward or suffering the consequence.
except instead of either getting a prize, or not getting a prize, i get crushed with a worse punishment than i can imagine, eternal damnation. pools of fire, satan, all that stuff. eternal damnation, and all i did was live a life based on reason and not magic. seems pretty harsh to me.
I once received a letter in the mail from a TV preacher. I think it was the Reverand Ike, the guy from Harlem who drove around in Rolls Royces and bragged about having hundreds of suits in his closet. The letter contained a plastic glove with the instuctions that I was to put the glove on and if I wanted money I was to hold my wallet or if I wanted the return of a loved one I was to hold her picture while wearing the "prayer glove." I was then to return the glove in the mail with a "free will donation" of $23 and my prayers would be granted. It went on to say that if I threw the prayer glove away disaster would come my way. Of course I was too afraid to throw it away and I didn't want to send $23 of my hard earned money to the Reverand so I kept it to show my friends. They all got a good laugh out of it.
