Free will vs Omniscience

But that is NOT what the story of the prodigal son says. It's specifically about a son who does NOT accept the "communion". Remember that the chapter containing the parable begins with the Pharisees complaining about Jesus eating with publicans and sinners. Remember that the two other parables in that chapter - the lost sheep and the lost coin - definitely do NOT require repentence.Apparently, Jesus preferred the company of those who did NOT just mouth, "Lord! Lord!" Sometimes people do change but it clearly is not restricted to believers - nor does it happen to all believers. So it isn't about belief. It's an internal conflict. There's no reason to think there's anything external involved.

A minute after an all-knowing deity creates our universe, that deity already knows the trajectory of every single proton, neutron and electron from then until any point in the future you please. They, and everything else in the universe, can only follow the path prescribed by that all-knowing deity when it created the universe. It is all a great clockwork.You, I, every living creature is part of a clockwork created by that deity and we act only along the prescribed path that the deity has set out at the beginning. We have no more choice than the wooden cuckoo has to pop out of the clock and chirp every hour.

If we have no more free will than a cuckoo clock does it make any sense to hold people responsible for their actions any more than we would hold the wooden cuckoo responsible for it’s?Isn’t everything, every good and every wickedness, ultimately just God’s doing in this scenario?

Good questions. I just heard a podcast that got me thinking also.

Is Faith In God A Crutch? If nothing else, read the transcript and tell me if any of it spurs you on to further questions also.

That is indeed my point!However, I see no reason to postulate a creator, whether all-knowing or not, so I certainly wouldn't live my life as if people weren't responsible for their actions!

That link isn't a transcript. Do you have a link to the transcript?

I have come around to semi-agreeing with this philosophy. One of the prime arguments that we have here (primarily between jar, ringo, and I)is the whole idea of "waiting on God, praying, and trusting in God to inspire,motivate and equip you vs simply going out and getting the job done. I see value in both disciplines. The main reason that people don't see any need for God to exist, be relevant in their lives, or a necessary Head of a Spiritual Body of Believers is (in my opinion) because unbelievers can't conceive of the fact(for us) that He is indeed real. Your side will attempt to scientifically explain away the feelings that we believers havee that for us verify His presence. That all being said, I do respect my opponents position that Jesus was the messenger of a very humane, Spirit Filled and sensible message and ringo will argue that it is only the message that is important to follow and do. In his mind, the "messenger" could have just as well been Fred Flintstone.

Yeh, surprising isn't it? Exactly how you feel about all the other gods except the one that you thinks talks to you. And is - purely coincidentally of course - the one you were brought up with. It was Fred, or someone of the same era.But given that the message when condensed is just 'do as you would be done by', it actually was anybody, or more accurately, everybody that said it.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Oops, something lostScroll down and the transcript is at the bottom.

Personally, I have to say I disagree with the "message" of religion as a whole. One can pick and choose part of the message ("Thou shalt not commit murder" is one example) but taken as a whole it does more harm than good.

Thanks, I finally got the browser to show the transcript.Sadly, there's nothing in it that's new to me.

But God did not make the choice of how the actual universe would go.
He made lots of the choices (ones that aren't affected by our free will, like if a mountain should be this big or this small...) but we were the ones who made our free will choices.As well, sure - God may very well have to bear responsibility for creating the universe. That seems correct. But that's not my point, my point is that God (if powerful enough/correctly) can create a world where He knows the past/present/future and free will still exists. Example:Two men are working on a renovation.
One paints a room, but doesn't tell the other.
The second man comes in to the room, and is tired... there's a wall and a counter. This second man decides to lean on the wall. He gets paint all over him.The first man is responsible for creating the wet paint.
The second man still made a free-will decision to lean on the wall and not the counter.Responsibility does not necessarily remove free will. Not at all.Especially if we define a power for God during the creation of this universe that our choices are used - choices He did not know the outcome for - before creating the universe using those choices.No contradiction. Why not?You're telling me Wile E Coyote can fall off a 1000 ft cliff and survive, but he can't survive a stick of dynamite to the face.We are making this up.If we are making it up that God can create universes... than we can also make up that God's process for this creation involves identifying our real, actual free-willed choices before we physically exist.Perhaps if I phrase it in an if/then format:qIf it is possible (somehow, somewhere...) for God to identify our actual free-willed choices before we physically exist, and then create the physical universe based on those free-willed choices that we made.... then, our free will is preserved.I agree with you that if this is not possible - then free will cannot be preserved.
But, what I'm saying, is that if we imagine if this is possible... then free will can be preserved.Just as if we imagine Wile E Coyote surviving a stick of dynamite to the face... then we can make the cartoon where it happens. What if the thought experiment is the actual universe, just not in physical form?
That this universe is just the physical form of that actual universe?You seem to be insisting on details that do not required insistence... unless you simply do not want to consider the possibility. Because it comes from the free-willed choosers, not God. God simply requests the information, and gets it from us.
Perhaps you think there is some sort of "time-based issue" here - but what if God has a way around it that we cannot explain right not?What if God actually can get the information from the real, actual us... and then create the physical universe?If that's possible... then this situation is possible.
If it's not... then it's not.Speculation on "how it would work.." is akin to speculation on "how Wile E Coyote survives a stick of dynamite to the face."That's the power ("magic") of making things up.

If you make the free choice to select pink lemonade over white lemonade, and I record it.... was your "free will" removed?We can watch the recording over and over and over... it is a "clockwork" recreation of your free will - no?If we can do it with a camera and some lemonade... why can't God do it with a universe and some people?

You are recording after the fact an event that happened involving something that you did not construct.The idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful creator deity requires that the universe the deity is created is a clockwork, something where all the atoms, every neutron, proton and electron, every erg of energy, every photon and graviton behaves exactly as the deity set it to behave from the "creation" up to now and on into the future.

Exactly. Just like me recording your free-will choice about pink lemonade over white lemonade.And, if God incorporates our free-willed choices while creating the universe instead of making his own - then our free-will is preserved within the recording.
Just like the lemonade.