The Problem Of Evil?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

You didn't give any reasons, just claimed it was so.

You seem to have problems remembering what I have written.

[tabibito]

None of that gets you to a specific number of three without foreknowledge, unless it was a lucky guess.

No foreknowledge needed - with a detailed understanding of how trends unfold and enough background information, a calculation of probabilities could conceivably produce just such a detailed result.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Yet three is the definite number, he had to deny three times. Why not two or ten?

Because three is one of the magic numbers. Hence fairy tales/folk tales often have three wishes, three choices, three tasks for the heroine/hero. There were believed to be three Fates, three Furies, three Gorgons, and three Norns. Shakespeare's Macbeth has three witches. Mozart's has three ladies and three boys and of course Tamino and Pamina have three tasks. In some folklore there are often multiples of three [nine] and of course seven [seventh son of a seventh son, seven swans/brothers, seven dwarves].

There are deemed to have been three magi despite no mention of a figure in Matthew. Hence three cockerel crows and three denials.

[seer]

No foreknowledge needed - with a detailed understanding of how trends unfold and enough background information, a calculation of probabilities could conceivably produce just such a detailed result.

Really tabibito, how do you calculate of probability of three times over two, or four or six. This is a stretch bro....

[seer]

Because three is one of the magic numbers. Hence fairy tales/folk tales often have three wishes, three choices, three tasks for the heroine/hero. There were believed to be three Fates, three Furies, three Gorgons, and three Norns. Shakespeare's Macbeth has three witches. Mozart's has three ladies and three boys and of course Tamino and Pamina have three tasks. In some folklore there are often multiples of three [nine] and of course seven [seventh son of a seventh son, seven swans/brothers, seven dwarves].

There are deemed to have been three magi despite no mention of a figure in Matthew. Hence three cockerel crows and three denials.

Sorry I was speaking to a fellow Christian.

Why don't you deal with my point:

You said: If you indeed "know all that" then you have your answer.

I said: And we know that we are just animals doing what animals do - so logically why are you objecting to nature?

[tabibito]

Really tabibito, how do you calculate of probability of three times over two, or four or six. This is a stretch bro....

Oh, I couldn't do it I'm sure - but then I'm not privy to all the information that would make such a calculation possible. I've known prophecy to be more detailed, but it still did not deal with every detail, just the salient points.

[Sparko]

You seem to have problems remembering what I have written.

You seem to have a problem distinguishing between making a claim and backing it up. I have explained my claims several times now, and in return you just ignore my points and examples and just claim you already defended yours when you did not. That pretty much tells me and everyone else that you are all bluster and have no game. But, hey, maybe God made you do it.

[tabibito]

You seem to have a problem distinguishing between making a claim and backing it up. I have explained my claims several times now, and in return you just ignore my points and examples and just claim you already defended yours when you did not. That pretty much tells me and everyone else that you are all bluster and have no game. But, hey, maybe God made you do it.

At a guess, these are what she says are her reasons:

Once again you do not have foreknowledge and nor are you an omniscient and omnipotent Creator Being that exists outside of Time.

[Sparko]

At a guess, these are what she says are her reasons:

Once again you do not have foreknowledge and nor are you an omniscient and omnipotent Creator Being that exists outside of Time.

That doesn't explain why God's foreknowledge precludes free will. And as she is not Omniscient nor Omnipotent nor exists outside of time, I suspect she will be unable to explain such without showing herself to be a hypocrite.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

You seem to have a problem distinguishing between making a claim and backing it up. I have explained my claims several times now, and in return you just ignore my points and examples and just claim you already defended yours when you did not. That pretty much tells me and everyone else that you are all bluster and have no game. But, hey, maybe God made you do it.

You are attempting do draw a comparison between human beings and a belief [put forward on this thread] in an omniscient and omnipotent supreme creator being that exists outside of time and knows Past, Present, and Future. Under that scenario humans have no free will because everything we do is already by this omniscient and omnipotent deity.

If that being is, as has been described by some here, it knew before it even created humans exactly humans would do and it knows everything every human being it has ever created, or will create, will do. Under that belief this entity therefore continues to create humans knowing it will consign billions of them to everlasting damnation.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Emendation

You are attempting do draw a comparison between human beings and a belief [put forward on this thread] in an omniscient and omnipotent supreme creator being that exists outside of time and knows Past, Present, and Future. Under that scenario humans have no free will because everything we do is already known by this omniscient and omnipotent deity.

If that being is, as has been described by some here, it knew before it even created humans exactly humans would do and it knows everything every human being it has ever created, or will create, will do. Under that belief this entity therefore continues to create humans knowing it will consign billions of them to everlasting damnation.

[Machinist]

It looks like there are different varieties of omniscience and open theism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_theism


Are there implications either way, in what one believes to be true in this matter?

[Alien]

Emendation

May I have another crack at this?

Here's God, outside time and space, or perhaps I should say our time and space, because without hyper dimensions of time and space God could only be an instantaneous being of zero size. He looks at our universe and sees a solid unchanging object in four dimensions, three dimensions of space and one of time. By looking around, he can see anything anywhere any time, and thus see our present, past and future. This is not miraculous, just a function of his position. Because God can see what I will do tomorrow, it would seem that any choices I make would already be determined, as the universe has to become what God already sees. I think this is Hypatia's point.

Now let's take me, stuck halfway along the time axis of the universe. Because I am aware of only four dimensions and seem to be traveling along one of them (time), I can only be aware of three spacial dimensions and a single instant of time (my knowledge of the past is memory, I don't actually see the past). OK, from my point of view, not being able to see the future, I can make decisions that, to me, seem to involve free will, as, within the constraints of the universe, nothing is forcing me to make any choice.

So here we have two view points, one of which suggests there is free and the other that there is not. How to resolve it? Maybe we don't have to. We have free will from our own point of view, and that's maybe good enough. In a way God is seeing the universe after it has run its full course in time (got to be careful which time I'm talking about). So though he sees all times, on our time line we made free will decisions as they came up.

What's an interesting question is, how does God make changes to the universe? Obviously he can pick any time (our time) and place and make a change, but what happens then? From our point of view, things are suddenly different, and, though we aren't aware of it so is the future to some extent. To use a Biblical example, Joshua experiences the sun standing still in the sky, then his victory, and doesn't know that a split second (God's time) ago it moved normally, and he lost the battle. How about if God killed me yesterday. Everything I have done since then no longer exists, including me.

Just for fun, how does this look to God? When he makes the change, does he immediately see the changed universe from the point of change up to the end? Or is there a change propagation maximum speed? Also he wouldn't have to calculate every part of the resulting universe at creation time. Just do anything, observe the result, change it, rinse and repeat, until he got the result he wanted.

Hey, maybe we're living in one of these experimental worlds and that's why it doesn't seem good to us! I've solved the problem of evil! Hang on though, at any time he may make the next change and everything will be diff

[seer]

May I have another crack at this?

Here's God, outside time and space, or perhaps I should say our time and space, because without hyper dimensions of time and space God could only be an instantaneous being of zero size. He looks at our universe and sees a solid unchanging object in four dimensions, three dimensions of space and one of time. By looking around, he can see anything anywhere any time, and thus see our present, past and future. This is not miraculous, just a function of his position. Because God can see what I will do tomorrow, it would seem that any choices I make would already be determined, as the universe has to become what God already sees. I think this is Hypatia's point.

Now let's take me, stuck halfway along the time axis of the universe. Because I am aware of only four dimensions and seem to be traveling along one of them (time), I can only be aware of three spacial dimensions and a single instant of time (my knowledge of the past is memory, I don't actually see the past). OK, from my point of view, not being able to see the future, I can make decisions that, to me, seem to involve free will, as, within the constraints of the universe, nothing is forcing me to make any choice.

So here we have two view points, one of which suggests there is free and the other that there is not. How to resolve it? Maybe we don't have to. We have free will from our own point of view, and that's maybe good enough. In a way God is seeing the universe after it has run its full course in time (got to be careful which time I'm talking about). So though he sees all times, on our time line we made free will decisions as they came up.

I give you an A for effort here. Many physicists hold to the B theory of time, i.e. Block theory. Where past, present and future exist simultaneously, so you may be onto something.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

That doesn't explain why God's foreknowledge precludes free will.

If the deity knows what every being It has ever created [or will create] will do, there is no free will. There are only actions and thoughts that the deity already knows will occur.

Hence if you decide to have muesli instead of toast for breakfast tomorrow, when on most days you prefer to choose toast, that deity will have known before It created the world that tomorrow [3 February 2022] you would decide to have muesli.