Free will vs Omniscience

Parents do not have foreknowledge of what their offspring will do, do they?If a parent knew in advance and for sure that, for example, their offspring would go on to eradicate millions of people in a mass genocide but went on and had the child anyway, would they be responsible?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

The point is that if God is not responsible for YOUR choices, then He IS irrelevant TO your choices.It doesn't matter whether He's human or not. It doesn't matter whether He exists or not. He can not be relevant to your choices unless He influences your choices.

OK, I think I see your point. I would tweak it a bit, though. So if I believe that He exists and that He is in Communion with me due to my having accepted Him, and if I then try and live my life as close as possible to reflecting what I would imagine His choices to be in my daily behavior, (spare change, doing good for whomever crosses my path, smiling more...impacting others lives in a positive fashion) then He is in a sense responsible for taking care of all of us and fulfilling His duties as a sovereign good God. We were taught that it is by Grace we are saved and not solely by works...in other words, we cant legally hold Him liable for saving us from eternal death. Our only job is to try and do our best as our own conscience dictates. We freely choose our choices and decisions, however. God does not control us like marionettes or zombies. So in that context I agree. You claim that the message should influence our choices and that it is an internal charge. Or at least you hold me to that standard while declaring that you owe no "God" anything. Am I not right?

How can they be responsible for the childs decisions? They would be responsible if they aborted the baby, however. Responsible for one death rather than many thousands, you might say.

They're not responsible for their child's decisions, they're responsible for THEIR decision to have a child knowing in advance what that child would do. Forget abortion. It's possible not to get pregnant at all. Would you have a child knowing in advance that he would murder a million people? Do you think it morally reasonable to just shrug and say 'not my problem?'Try it another way. Would you give a gun to someone who you knew for certain would use it to kill children at a school? Would you have any morally responsible for the murders?

Well, if God is omniscient and He "advises" you on what to do, why would you not take His advice? And if He's feeding you the "right answers" how is He not responsible for you acting on them? The message supersedes any voices in your head. If any messenger denies the message or alters the message, shoot the messenger.

Many of us do take His advice...on most things. As I drive to work, I often say a prayer regarding the day ahead of me. And as I drive by the "homeless tree" under which is always a panhandler or two, I often give to them...thopugh not every time and not every day. You have argued before that the message is the sum of what He says to us...but how on earth realistically could every Christian give away all that they had? Why on earth would I even be working...for everyone else? In that I was the provider for a whole street full of homeless people? I dont take scripture to be an ongoing message for me on a daily and ongoing basis. As I said, I dont give up my spare change every single day and especially if its the same guy (which it usually is) I dont donate a daily wage to him. But back to God: If that were true, He would save everybody by default and be 100% responsible for our destiny. I dont believe that everyone will be saved and I dont believe that 100% of that responsibility is Gods. We too choose what we listen to and act upon, and thus we too are responsible.

What do you think I'm attempting to say?
Because I don't think you understand what's going on.This is my run-down: Stile: "God can create a universe where free will exists and He can know the future."
PaulK: "A universe cannot be created with perfect foreknowledge of it's events and have free will existing." Stile: "Yes, I agree with that. However, a universe can be created without perfect foreknowledge where a play-back recording of it occurs. During this play-back recording, God can have "perfect foreknowledge" (because He has seen the full playback) and free-will can still exist (as the choices were made during the real-creation-and-run-through-of-the-universe - where God did not have any foreknowledge at all.) Therefore, although perfect-foreknowledge and free-will cannot co-exist; we can consciously run-through the experiences of a universe where free-will exists and God has fore-knowledge of events "before-they-happen-within-that-run-through." That is, it can seem to us that we are in a universe where free-will and God-having-fore-knowledge are co-existing, even though that's not exactly what's going on."... PaulK: "A universe cannot be created with perfect foreknowledge of it's events and have free will existing."
Stile: "Yes - um... I agree. But the universe I describe can also exist, or, at least, it can be imagined as a possible idea if any God is powerful enough to create it as such." PaulK: "You are leaving out the question of certain foreknowledge."
Stile: "Yes - it was removed on purpose in order to have God "know all" (about the recording...) while also preserving free-will (from the real, non-physical universe where the choices were made and God didn't know what they would be.) That was the point of my scenario after agreeing with your initial point." PaulK: "You are unable even to accurately represent my position."...Okay then - perhaps I do not understand your position.What is your position?

I have argued that Jesus happened to understand the message - as many preachers, priests and prophets have done throughout history. Ask the early Christians. Ask the disciples. That's what Jesus recommended. That's pretty clear. It's hard to understand why you pay any attention to scripture at all. According to what Jesus said in the Bible, YOU won't be saved - so it's no surprise that you don't like what the Bible says. I didn't say He was 100% responsible. I said He was more than 0% responsible. And if He is more than 0% responsible for bad things that happen, He can not be 100% good, as you fantasize.Edited by ringo, : Soelling.

A message needs to be created/formed/defined by a human who speaks the language. Messages dont just appear out of thin air.
...but how on earth realistically could every Christian give away all that they had? Think this through. Lets say that next Tuesday in N.America, everyone who professed to be a true Christian was ordered by Rome and the WCC to give away all that they had. Now...who would they give it to? Rome? Their Pastor? The government? (Surely not! BIG Mistake!) There are no Apostles to whom we must lay it at their feet. Thus...the question remains. Who would get YOUR house, ringo? (Oh thats right...you are not a believer! You got outta that one!! You dont know the first thing about what Jesus would say to you or I today. All you do is quote a 1000 year old book. Your argument is designed only to expose Christian hypocrasy. You have no other motive nor reason to make it except to explain why you stopped believing. Well I know why YOU do it. It happens to support your favorite axion: From Each According To His Ability To Each According To His Need.
According to what Jesus tells me, I am only to try and do my best every day and listen to His inner voice. I am in no way told that His message is limited to the book nor that He is only a character within that book.
... and I dont believe that 100% of that responsibility is Gods. And to whom is He responsible? If you say "to all of us" I will charge you with making up a God who is a product of your imagination.bThe One whom I imagine is all knowing and all powerful and has no obligation towards humanity beyond providing us with eternal life IF we try our best and believe that He is ultimately good and not a bad God in need of elimination from our collective consciousness.

The reason that people challenge perfect foreknowledge is that it eliminates their right to freely choose a course of action (and able to change their mind in so doing) which thus negates Gods foreknowledge. In other words, Paul is charging that God does not get to change His mind and play back the tape but that PaulK does hypothetically get to change his own mind and thus have a perfect free will which is unencumberedby God knowing the decisions after the fact. Does that make sense?

No. But its different applying this argument to indict God. Perhaps He never should have created humans at all then....according to your logic. OR more precisely he should have only created good humans. In which case one could argue that by allowing Satan to exist, God blew the whole deal BIG TIME. Again, No. But should we hold the initial creator/inventor of guns responsible for all deaths made by guns?

How do we know that our actions and choices don't play a role in the outcome? Whether He foreknows it or not is none of our business. Our business is to merely try and do our best. Whether that action in time reflects on His foreknowledge in eterntity is outside of our knowledge anyway. No. I am merely arguing that the focus is to be on our responsibility given what we know. It is irrelevant what He knows and is outside of our power to judge, influence or change...apart from our behavior and choice of actions. In addition, suppose that God allowed Satan to exist and thus we are in a universe with the free choice to internalize Gods Spirit or listen to the other spirits. The choice then again becomes ours. God is only responsible for allowing evil to exist, but it couyld be argued that He did that to give us a choice and to allow us to choose Him rather than be manditorily forced to accept Him. It also gets Him off the hook for evil...apart from allowing it to manifest. Gotta look this up. I would argue that we are not necessarily sycophants towards God. In fact, such behavior would lean more towards the evil side. Of course, you may reject the idea of the possibility of a cosmic spiritual war and insist that all blame and responsibility be placed on God. It may be too late though. Satan very well could exist.

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How do we know that our actions and choices don't play a role in the outcome? Whether He foreknows it or not is none of our business. Our business is to merely try and do our best. Whether that action in time reflects on His foreknowledge in eterntity is outside of our knowledge anyway

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If our actions and choices are predetermined by God they are clearly subordinate to his decision. That is more than foreknowledge,

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No. I am merely arguing that the focus is to be on our responsibility given what we know. It is irrelevant what He knows and is outside of our power to judge, influence or change...apart from our behavior and choice of actions

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Obviously it IS relevant to the question of responsibility.

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In addition, suppose that God allowed Satan to exist and thus we are in a universe with the free choice to internalize Gods Spirit or listen to the other spirits. The choice then again becomes ours.

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In the scenario we are discussing God has already decided our free choices.

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God is only responsible for allowing evil to exist, but it couyld be argued that He did that to give us a choice and to allow us to choose Him rather than be manditorily forced to accept Him. It also gets Him off the hook for evil...apart from allowing it to manifest.

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If you are proposing a different scenario, you are the one engaging in irrelevancies. If you are not then you are simply ignoring the issues. Either way it changes nothing.

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I would argue that we are not necessarily sycophants towards God. In fact, such behavior would lean more towards the evil side.

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I was referring to your attempts to deny God’s responsibility even when God clearly does have the primary responsibility. Again either you are proposing a different scenario or ignoring the issues in the scenario under discussion.

Well in a grand cosmic sense, God is responsible for everything. The only question left is whether or not we have free will.