Free will vs Omniscience

Really? I thought you were just asking a silly question because you couldn't be bothered to understand the arguments.Even the subthread title says "knowing" - and guessing is not knowing.

Two points. First phrasing a point so obvious that it's hardly worth saying as a question is not a good way to get productive conversation. Second it's up to you to make progress to meeting your point. And so far I see no sign of any effort in that direction.

Guessing and knowing (neither of which is purely a mental state) are different in ways directly relevant to the arguments of this thread. Pointing out a similarity, even if it were correct would not change that.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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Nonsense.

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No, just your ignorance. To count as knowledge in the full sense, in the sense used in this thread a belief has to be true.

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The knowledge folks had of the Sun going around the Earth didn't change the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun.

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An erroneous belief doesn't count as knowledge. And the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun is not part of anyone's mental state.Now if you had just got down to the point straight away all this could have been cleared up much faster. Instead you chose to waste time talking about guessing when it wasn't even relevant.

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The OP asked how foreknowledge and freewill could coexist.

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And obviously assumed that "knowledge" could not be wrong. And it must also be pointed out that the possibility of error has been already dealt with sufficiently.

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Discussing the potential deficiencies of the common pop-philosophy understanding of knowledge is not an act of ignorance or error, but spot on the topic and (seeing as no one has offered a fully agreeable solution) probably not a waste of time.

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So please explain why it's worth taking 8 posts to get to a trivial point which has already been covered - by way of an equivocation (whether based in error, ignorance or whatever).

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Until you can test and show that your ideas of knowing-the-future MUST mean that whoever knows it is prescribing it.. then the equally unevidenced idea that knowing-the-future can be done in a descriptive way is also valid.

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That's not my idea. The idea that God prescribes the future is derived from God's role as Creator, as I have argued, not from mere foresight.

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Nope. Unbelievers are hopelessly confused about it, that's all, because you refuse to obey the very first requirement of understanding it.

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Which is, apparently: "Ignore what the stupid Bible says and worship Faith's idols instead."

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First requirement is "Believe."

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Which you get by quote-mining the Bible. As we already know from previous discussions. Message 487

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That means you know it's God's word so it can't contradict itself and therefore what looks like a contradiction

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In other words exactly what I said. Your idols proclaim the Bible as the "Word of God" so that they can abuse it to put words in his mouth. And when they get their congregation used to covering up the disagreements through distortion and invention they legitimise abuse of the Bible.If you want to reduce God to a stupid sock-puppet, that's up to you. But you can hardly complain that people who take the idea of God seriously are "dragging God down"Edited by PaulK, : Added link to past discussion

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There are things in the Bible that are hard to understand and need to be interpreted and to trust oneself alone with that responsibility is foolishness.

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There are two problems with this. First, sometimes your difficulties - as with Isaiah 7 - are mainly because you are looking for a way to make the text say what you want, rather than taking it as it is.And second, where there are genuine difficulties - and these are often because the book in question was not written for modern readers, such as Ezekiel's use of Babylonian symbolism - evaluating interpretations purely on whether you like the theology is not a good way to get to the truth.

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I do NOT judge any of it according to whether I LIKE it or not, but according to consensus of the most persuasive interpretations by the most authoritative sources over the last two millennia.

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No you don't.

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You may have problems with Isaiah 7; I do not.

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You certainly did until you found a commentary that allowed you to believe that Isaiah 7 meant what it said.

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The meaning of Isaiah 7 is given in the New Testament.

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Wrong. At best the New Testament assigns a secondary meaning not present in the text of Isaiah 7. And if you understood the Bible you'd know that. But thank you for proving my point.

Clearly you have no idea what Isaiah 7 says.

I see no mention of Israel, Aram or the Assyrians, all central to the prophecy of Isaiah 7Nor do I see any explanation of what sense it makes to send a sign centuries after the events it is supposed to portend.Ignoring virtually all of a prophecy is not a good way to understand it.

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If you read the link you will find all that dealt with.

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Yes, it points out that there is a whole lot more to Isaiah 7. As I have been saying. I should know you now to never trust your assessment of anything you link to.

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But the point of Isaiah 7 to a Christian is what the New Testament says about it, which I've quoted above.

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Which relies on taking a part of the prophecy out of context.

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This is my last post to you. You are aggressively off topic. End of subject.

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Which is your way of politely admitting that you were wrong. Charming.

i'd say that there is only one prophecy in Isaiah 7. If you choose to take the Assyrian conquest of Judah as a separate prophecy then obviously the Assyrians are still a central part of that.