Lon
Well-known member
:think: Matthew 14:22-33 Luke 6:6-11
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Is there a Christian cosmology that doesn't include miracles?
- Thread starter tieman55
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:up:
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a definition, but I think we're on the same page.
Are you concerned that too much is categorized as a miracle when perhaps it need not be? I would be sympathetic to that point of view. As a creationist, it is common for any idea I have to be dismissed as requiring the miraculous when the fact is that I'm sticking to science far more closely than the Darwinists.
You think that it is physically possible to bring a man back from the dead?
I think it was Josh Craddock who said it best: God is natural, everything else is supernatural.
Depends on the incident. I think it is safe to say that when God acts, it's a miracle. That doesn't do justice to Jesus' time on Earth, but it might cover the time prior.
If we are doing science, then we should assume that the things we see have an explanation from physics. If we are doing philosophy, then we can acknowledge that every aspect of physics has a "natural"* explanation.
*Or supernatural, if we ignore Josh.
First of all, I have not read the whole thread. I will read the thread but time doesn't permit me to do that and still write a post so I'm choosing to write the post first and so I hope this doesn't turn out to be a total repeat of stuff that has come before!
It sounds to me like you're trying to have it both ways, where God both creates nature and allows natural processes to "create" much of the world we see around us. I don't think you can have it that way. At least not during the creation week, anyway. Certainly after that God has, for the most part, permitted nature to take it's course, the most obvious exception being Noah's Flood. In fact, it seems fair enough to say that those two events, the creation week and Noah's Flood, comprise the lion's share of most all Christian cosmologies that exist.
The creation week was clearly six days of mostly continuous supernatural events. I can't think of any of the significant events that are recorded in Genesis that would not qualify as being miracles in the sense that it took something outside of nature to cause them to occur.
The Flood, on the other hand may not have been miraculous at all. The flood was triggered by the downing of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which was done by regular human beings. When the Tree fell the fountains of the great deep, which it had apparently been holding back, broke forth and flooded the whole Earth causing all kinds of different phenomena that we observe all over the planet by normal natural processes.
Having said all that, I understand and empathize with your complaint. Many christian cosmologies tend to pull out the miracle trump card too easily which just makes them seem less scientific and more of a contrivance than anything else. I encourage you to look into the Hydroplate Theory. It, to my mind, seems to have the least "contrived" feel to it than any other I've looked into. It's all about explaining the geology we see via entirely natural processes precipitated by both the manner in which the Earth was made and by Noah's Flood.
https://www.creationscience.com/
Clete
Thank for your wonderful response, One correction, I am really not complaining.
I would just like to see more cosmologist explore how and why God did what He did and less on the fact that He did it! YES, He created, now tell us how and why.
Let me try my inquire this way.
I am in manufacturing. I have conceived, designed and manufactured many different products. That is how I make my living and I am doing pretty well.
At any time before God Created, in any duration of time, did God follow any of the process that I follow when I am manufacturing? Conceive, design and then manufacture.
Did God conceive the idea for creation before He instigated creation? Yes or No
Did God design creation at some point before He instigated creation? Yes or No
Did God engineer creation at some point before He instigated creation? Yes or No
If we can agree that He went through a process in creating, maybe not the process above, but that God went through a process, maybe just maybe we can explore that process to get some insight into God ways.
Right Divider
Body part
The ONLY place that you will find "why God did what He did" is in the Bible.
Probably.
Is this going to be a scientific inquiry or a philosophical one?
If it's science, we have to stick with reason, logic and what we can see.
If it's philosophy, we stick with scripture.
Aimiel
Well-known member
Actually, matter can be created and destroyed; energy cannot. I believe that's why God created the greatest form of energy first: light. He likes to show off.
Aimiel
Well-known member
Yes, God knows the end from the beginning. He didn't have to plan anything, since he knows the fingerprints of your great-great-grandchildren before they're born. He isn't watching the news to see what's going on. He knew everything before it happened. He didn't experiment or study to find anything out. He already knew everything, even before He created light.
Aimiel
Well-known member
As for those who still pretend to not know God, they are without excuse, since they clearly see Him:
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
An excellent question!
In a sentence, you're asking whether God used reason during the creation process. I believe strongly that the answer is an emphatic, "YES"!
God is not a magician. He is more powerful than we are by far, obviously. In fact, more powerful to a degree that it hardly makes sense to even state it aloud but that doesn't mean that his actions do not have both causes and effects and that the first cause of any meaningful action by a rational being is thought. Thus, we can know that God, being Reason itself (John 1), proceeded in a logical manner starting at the beginning and working toward a final goal. Any complex task, if it is to be done wisely and accomplished well, begins with an idea that then becomes a well defined goal and then a thorough plan for achieving that goal and then action toward accomplishing it, which then continues, step by logical step, until it is accomplished.
The process from nascent idea to step one of the act of creation may not have taken but a moment in real time for someone as awesomely intelligent and wise as God but that doesn't mean it didn't take place. Indeed, it had to have taken place because God is Reason and God cannot act contrary to His nature. The Cosmos is not a giant Jackson Pollock painting where rational thought is all but totally absent from the creative process.
Of course, there are millions and millions of Christians that would be appalled by what I just said. Calvinists and Catholics alike who glean their Theology Proper from the Greeks rather than scripture would insist that no such thought process could possibly have taken place no matter how brief it might have been because, they say, God is not a contingent being. There is no process of any sort in God, He is now precisely as He has always been. He is totally and utterly immutable and no new thought, no new action, no new anything could ever be introduced into God's experience or existence. There can be no such thing as an unrealized goal for God to achieve. Such an idea is considered blasphemy by nearly all "orthodox" Christians. Never mind that the entire book of Genesis, not to mention the incarnation, death and resurrection of God the Son, contradicts all that. That's what we have fancy terms like "hypostatic union" and "antinomy" for, don't you know!
Now as for knowing what God's nascent idea was that later became a fully realized universe or much about what the process inbetween looked like, I doubt we could ever discover this side of glory but that doesn't mean we couldn't speculate about it and have a great time doing so to boot! I can't think of much that is a better use of time than attempting to think God's thoughts after Him, even if we fail miserably!
I mentioned a couple of times that God is Reason. That might be a new idea for you. If so, I'd encourage you to read this post I wrote eight years ago (almost to the day). I'd be interested in what you think of it.... ECT: Is God Moral?
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That's an interesting dichotomy you've drawn there.
Do you believe that philosophy can be rightly done or that scripture can be rightly understood without reason and logic?
Can any truth be irrational, whether scientific, philosophical, theological or whatever?
Ha ha. You got me. Actually, I think the topic should be approached using both.
No. :up:
If your bible tells you this, it has been translated incorrectly and even if that weren't the case, it's bad theology anyway because the bible is full of examples where God didn't get what He thought He would get no matter what He did to get it to happen, not the least of which is found in Isaiah 5:1-7...
Isaiah 5:1 Now let me sing to my Well-beloved
A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard:
My Well-beloved has a vineyard
On a very fruitful hill.
2 He dug it up and cleared out its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
He built a tower in its midst,
And also made a winepress in it;
So He expected it to bring forth good grapes,
But it brought forth wild grapes.
3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard.
4 What more could have been done to My vineyard
That I have not done in it?
Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes,
Did it bring forth wild grapes?
5 And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard:
I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned;
And break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
6 I will lay it waste;
It shall not be pruned or dug,
But there shall come up briers and thorns.
I will also command the clouds
That they rain no rain on it.”
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,
And the men of Judah are His pleasant plant.
He looked for justice, but behold, oppression;
For righteousness, but behold, a cry for help.
Not true!
He doesn't even know whether he will have any great great grandchildren. Not in the sense you mean it, anyway.
God knows what He wants to know of that which is knowable. He doesn't have every event of all time planned out and predetermined. He has set in place the process that causes finger prints to form and has no need to meticulously control or to even pay any attention to how that process plays out for every individual. Likewise, God isn't paying attention to the number of rain drops that fall from the sky nor the order in which they strike the ground. He isn't the least bit interested in the exact path that each bolt of lightning takes as it makes it's way to (or from) the ground or which molecules of air are super heated by it's passing. All such silliness is a mindless theological contrivance based not on scripture or any sort of sound reason but on pagan Greek philosophy that Augustine introduced into Christianity in the late 4th and early 5th century.
Once again, there is example after example in scripture of just the exact opposite!
Here's some examples just from the very first book of the bible alone, a book I'd encourage you to read for yourself and stop listening to your pastor or priest. There are a great many more such examples but since this thread is not intended to be a debate about predestination or exhaustive divine foreknowledge, or immutability or any other Calvinist doctrinal distinctive, I'll leave at these few...
Genesis 3:22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
Genesis 2:19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
Genesis 18:21 I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.”
Genesis 22:12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Thanks once again for your thoughtful reply.
First two things, I am going to go read that old post and I will get back to you, second and I couldn't agree more about thinking God's thoughts after him !
My reason for asking about process in creation is to explore the process of creation not so much as to prove anything, just in an attempt to know God better.
The easy way to explain everything, to be sure, is to just say it was a blink of the eye, but humans certainly don't do it that way, perhaps since we are made in His image, He's default mode is thinking and not blinking.
While the amount of time that was needed in the initial steps of creation may be subjective the fact that there was a gap between conceiving and instigating creation tells me that God is thoughtful and is reasoning, just like a Christian should be.
We were created in the image of God. We are creative beings. We go through a process of doing things, if we are in His image, then it is likely God goes through a process as well.
In making a living, I conceive, design, engineer and manufacture auto parts. After I have an idea to create a physical item, I start the design. Lets assume that God has the idea for creation Then He starts to envision His creation (I call it design).
As I start that process of envisioning my creation I start the design work, with 30+ years of experience, my brain pretty much knows what is possible to manufacture and what is not possible.
I have a few times, gotten through the whole process and have gone to manufacturing only to have the machinist tell me it can't be made, and I had to go back to the start all over again. (Taking a completed set of drawings, and code to a machinist, who in about 1 min tells me that it can't be built, is a very humbling experience! LOL) I am not suggesting that this happened to God, I am only suggesting that He probably followed a process.
Since God is not a magician can we please just for the sake of argument only, say that God could conceive of something that was not in all circumstances practical? Example : A free will being that is not eternal may not be possible to create. If you don't agree with my example I am sure you can come up with one.
Take the human genome being a few billion base pairs. And for the sake of argument, lets say God didn't consider any other mechanism first, His very first thought was the double helix design. As God is envisioning the double helix, He works through, one by one each mechanisms interactions and workings. He reasons through it. That is part of the design process. (You make up the amount of time He spent, a nano second or 1000 years it is not important)
As He reasoned through that process, He is keeping in His thought process what is possible with the physical laws He has/was creating. Those physical laws are the foundation to the functionality of the genome. Question: Why wouldn't/couldn't those same laws be the foundation for the manufacture/creation of that genome?
If God reasoned all of these things out over a period of time, His reasoning would have always had in the back-round, just how He was planning on the implementation/making of that genome. Would He use a miracle or would He choose another process for manufacturing the finished design. Can His decision be discover-able? Just maybe, He reasoned out how do the actual manufacturing in a way that followed His physical laws. I know many will say that He can't do that, but I think it likely He did.
As far as how long it took God to create . . . I don't think that it is completely subjective. It took Him 6 days in creation, most miracles are thought of as being in an instant. I am not saying that He could have not done it quicker. But that is a human mind set to do things quickly we are always in a hurry (at least I am LOL).
Maybe God took 6 days for many many reasons, perhaps that is an indication on how it takes to do things right the first time. We all know God likes symmetry perhaps God could have done it in an instant or perhaps He used symmetry and took 6 days to envision creation, 6 days to engineer creation and having used 6 twice, He used 6 days to create. Perhaps that period of time was, a day. That time period was then used to create the moments of our solar system and not reverse. We really have no idea if a day is a short period of time to God or a long period.
All of that to say, I believe that cosmologist can theorize ways that God could have done creation with very few miracles perhaps down to only one. I think that it is crucial that they at least pair it down to the absolute minimum amount of miracles. From my vantage point . . . those discussion would be far and away more interesting than beating the dead horse of evolution.
For me, I just don't believe that God often blinks stuff into existence. For me God is so so much more real than a magician. He really does things in a very thoughtful, loving way. and personal way.
Like you said, like Newton said science is thinking God's thoughts after Him . . . thinking is my favorite thing to do, perhaps it is God's favorite thing as well.
Aimiel
Well-known member
I simply believe that God is greater than we can know and that: yes, He does know the end from the beginning.
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure
Now if your Bible doesn't have that verse or you've re-written it by some obscure re-translation, that's up to you; but I'll stick with what my Bible says and the way that I see God revealed from There. God often spoke of things in man's terms merely so that He could be understood or so that we could understand the story being related. Your examples are obvious in that regard. Certainly God could have caused Israel to fulfill His Desire, but He likes to allow free will so that those who truly love and trust Him do so even when all their senses and circumstances and every available evidence seems to prove God to be false. Those who are NOT His will one day cry, "Lord, Lord..." and He will deny knowing them. Being Omnipresent and Omniscient: He does know them, but He meant that He has no relationship with them because they were more reliant upon their own knowledge than His Presence. In His Presence, you'll understand Him far better than you could ever do by study or knowledge. It's knowing. We become like Him because we see Him as He is. He is Omniscient. He isn't waiting to see the outcome, since He is Eternal. He's always known everything that will ever happen. He wrapped it all up in His Perfect Mystery. One day that Mystery will come to an end and all will be revealed.
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.
The Bible says "six days." It says that to tell us what happened. If it means something other than what it plainly says, explain what it really means.
Of course God is greater than we can know but the bible flat out does not teach that the future is is exhaustively known by God. It just does not teach that. You can choose to believe it but that doesn't make it true.
See what I mean?!
How can you quote a verse that does not say that God knows the end from the beginning one single sentence after having stating your belief in that doctrine as though it proves your point and not mine? I just do not understand it! Why is being right about something never sufficient to convince anyone?
Except that you don't stick with what it says! IT DOES NOT SAY THAT GOD KNOWS THE FUTURE!
Where you even aware that the verse you base a whole swath of your doctrine on didn't actually say what your doctrine teaches?
This verse is God stating that He tells people in advance what He intends to make happen and then He does it. It is true but not because God knows the future! God is smarter, wiser, better, and more powerful than His enemies. He cannot be defeated and if purposes to accomplish something then its going to get done even if it takes several generations of human life times to accomplish it. But even that is a generality and relates primarily to big picture issues. Isaiah 5:1-7 tells us that Israel was a big pain in God's neck and that they did not do what God expected that they would do or what He desired for them to do but that doesn't mean that Israel thwarted God's whole plan of salvation which was the main, big picture point of His dealings with Israel to begin with. God wanted to work with Israel to accomplish the plan of salvation but instead was forced to work His plan in spite of their disbelief and rebellion.
What so hard to understand about God knowing the future? If God knows the future and the bible talked about God in such terms, what would be so confusing about it?
How does God stating bluntly that He didn't get what He expected to get out of the nation of Israel keep anyone from being confused about anything? You're apparently here to tell me that He not only knew what He'd get from Israel but that He got exactly what He intended to get. So it would seem that Isaiah 5:1-7 is just flatly false and that the real truth is the precise opposite of what it says. How on Earth is that supposed to be less confusing or in any way more communicative to us poor stupid human beings who apparently are so incapable of understand that even God Himself can't find a way to state the truth to our hearing?
Saying it doesn't make it so, Aimiel!
What does Isaiah 5:1-7, a passage you didn't even know existed before I quoted it, mean?
You've clearly got the inside track on understanding God! Please, tell us all what that passage means!
While you're at it, please explain what God meant when He said that He would "go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it". What could that possibly mean other than what it states? Does it mean the opposite of what it says? What God lying?
If God already knew whether the outcry was accurate, why say otherwise? How is doing so more easily understood by us poor pathetically stupid human being than if He has simply say, "I know that these fools are guilty according to the outcry against them that has come to Me and I knew a thousand years ago that they would perform this treachery against my people!" What would have been so confusing about that?
Go ahead Aimiel! You claim that God is somehow making Himself easier for us human beings to understand things so explain it to me! What was God telling us in Isaiah 5:1-7 and Genesis 18:21? Be specific!
God is flat out not omniscient in the sense you mean it. This is all pagan Greek mythology brought to you by Aristotle and Plato.
The bible teaches that God is able to know anything knowable but that He only knows that which He wants to know. The bible teaches that God listens to and responds to prayer and, if need be, investigates to find the truth of a situation. That's what the bible explicitly states! Your doctrine, in this regard, is a lie.
I'm tempted here to list prophesies that did not come to pass but, as I said in my previous post, this is not intended to be a thread about Calvinism and so I'll restrict myself to simply pointing out that such unfulfilled prophesies not only exist but are numerous.
Clete
Thank you for asking good questions!
Awesome! :up:
If you think that through, even doing something via a blink of the eye requires a previous thought process. Otherwise, there'd be no desired outcome, no concept to bring into existence and so why blink in the first place? Even the act of blinking itself requires an act of the mind to initiate it.
You say very philosophically profound things, seemingly without realizing you're doing so.
It isn't just likely, it is certain. Just as the effect cannot be greater than the cause, the creation cannot be greater than the Creator. We know that God is rational because we are rational. There are people who deny this simple idea but there are only two alternatives. God is either irrational, which is obviously false, not only because of the creation we can see around us but simply because the irrational cannot produce the rational, or else God is somehow "super-rational" which is a fundamentally meaningless concept.
I hope the machinist tells you WHY it cannot be built. I, for one, don't like to hear, "It can't be done!" I mean, we all aren't Tony Stark building arc generators out of scrap in a cave but usually, where's there's a will there's a way, right? Maybe you should get your machinist a t-shirt that says, "Well, I'm not Tony Stark!"
(I really hope you've seen Iron Man or else that's going to sound dumb!) :chuckle:
In any case, I agree with you that God followed a process (no need for the word "probably").
Of course! God can conceive of anything we can conceive of and much more. If M. C. Escher can think of impossible structures, so can God, right?
So, a miracle is an event that does not have exclusively natural causes. In this sense, everything God does that has a direct effect on the physical world is a miracle. As such the creation week was pretty effectively a six day long string of miraculous events. Even if God was forming things within the confines of His previously created natural laws, He is still the one doing the forming and He is, by definition, super-natural and thus the forming is miraculous. An example of just this sort of thing was when Jesus healed people. There is no reason to believe that Jesus broke the laws of physics to preform such miracles. All that would have been needed to give someone their sight or to fix their dysfunctional legs or to remove a decease was to rearrange some molecules here and there.
666 ! Yikes! :noway:
Just kidding!
I believe that there is very strong, even insurmountable, biblical evidence that the creation week was an actual week like we experience today and not some prolonged period of time. The "Day - Age" theory of creation has been pretty thoroughly debunked in my view. Having said that, I completely agree with you that it is at least possible, if not probable, that God could have created the universe in whatever length of time He desired and that the time He took was probably decided upon in advance and for reasons other than simply taking His time. For example, man was created on the sixth day and throughout the bible, the number six is associated with mankind. I very much doubt that this is a coincidence.
Why do you say it is crucial? What difference does it make whether He performed a single super-natural act or a thousand or a million? I mean, except as a point of curiosity, of course?
I don't see anyway around the notion of a whole series of miracles. There would be no way to have the light from stars that we know for a fact are many millions of light years away in our sky if God did not cause that to occur super naturally. There would have been no way to assemble the Earth itself, with it's iron core and a trillion other details by strictly natural processes inside the span of time it takes for it to spin once about it's axis. The formation of Adam and then later Eve, was obviously not a strictly natural process. Etc, etc, etc.
Excellent book shelving of your post (beginning and ending with the eye blinking idea)!
Like I said, don't discount eye blinking too much! Every intentional act, requires a prior act of the mind.
Oh I think that there is just no doubt about it!
People often make the mistake of thinking that emotion is the opposite of reason but that isn't the case at all. Thinking is what makes anyone relational - including God Himself. Nothing can be communicated, no meaning can be conveyed, no anger can be felt nor love expressed, no evil despised nor good cherished without an intentional act of an actively thinking mind! Even those who despise reason are forced to use it to act upon that refusal or to even do the refusing in the first place. And even then, if they are to continue their existence, those who despise reason are forced to rightly use the very reason they actively are trying to escape. Sound reason is nothing at all other than conforming one's mind to the confines of reality. Anyone who attempts to wipe out reality will himself be wiped out by reality. The irrational is not real. God created us in His image and likeness for the very purpose of having a relationship with us. Therefore, we know that God is relational and therefore that He is rational. Amen!
Clete
Aimiel
Well-known member
I did so because it DOES prove my point.
Yeah, it does.
It isn't. It's quite clear. He is The Only One Who ever speaks in the future perfect tense.
It apparently makes you think that God is blind to the future. That would be a god that watches to see what's happening. He would have to watch the news to see what's going on. God isn't just everywhere, all at once; He is also every-when all at once. That's part of the meaning of being Eternal.
Now you've imagined that He programmed everything. I don't believe that. I believe that we make choices and they are our choices, but He knows what we'll do before ever. As in: "From the beginning."
He is Omniscient. Your visage of Him doesn't reach 1% of Who or What He is. Neither does mine; but I do know He holds the future, not chance. He knows the end from the beginning, as His Word says.
I'm sorry, I must have missed that verse. What book is it in?
Saying it doesn't make it so.
No, it does'n't Aimiel! You quoted the verse itself! It absolutely does not say that God knows the future! It says, as you clearly quoted it as saying, that God declares the end from the beginning. It's simply says that God tells people what He intends to do in advance. It's no different, in principle, than when American Airlines tells you that a particular flight will depart Tulsa International Airport at 8:00 am on the 4th of May. The only major difference being that God has more ability to make His plans come to pass than American Airlines does.
You see, if the verse you quoted actually said that God knows the future then I could not make the point I just made and have even the dumbest public schooled third grade child take me seriously because no such understanding of the verse would be possible. Not only that but if this verse stated that God knows the future then it would falsify the entire bible because there are lots and lots of times when the bible depicts God wanting one thing and getting another and where He states explicitly that some thing will come to pass that DOES NOT EVER HAPPEN!
And more than once when He has done so, what He states will happen doesn't happen!
It's really too bad that you've not ever actually read the bible for yourself and choose to blindly believe whatever that man behind the curtain - oh - I mean pulpit, tells you.
Who ever said that? I didn't say that!
God is incredibly wise and has immediate access to every pertinent piece of information that exists and He is able to work through (or in spite of) the people involved to bring to pass what He wishes to bring to pass. So, no, He isn't blind to the future. You and I aren't even blind to the future, not completely. I know that baring some catastophy, I'll be doing a home inspection on a new house later today. I know this because someone has called in and scheduled the inspection and I've agreed to do it today. I am not remotely as powerful as God and don't have access to .01% of the information He has acccess to, nor am I able to prevent all possible obstacles to the extent that God is able but even so, I can say with a great deal of accuracy and assurance that I will, in fact, be doing that inspection today and I have known it for almost a week! What's more is that I didn't need to step outside of time or by whatever means peak into the future at all!
That's precisely - explciitly - what the bible says God does. He, of course, is Himself involved in what happens as well but the bible flat out states in almost those exact terms that God exactly what you recoil at! I've already quoted the passage! Have you forgotten this quickly?
Genesis 2:19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
Genesis is really just not a good book for your doctrine!
This was a stupid thing to say.
Besides, if you watch the news, you know almost nothing about what's going on. You need to listen to Rush for that! (That's a joke!)
Neither of these ideas are biblical. They are born out of the minds of a Greek philosophers (e.g. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.)
Biblically, God is everywhere He wants to be and nowhere He doesn't wish to be, and He knows what He wants to know of that which is knowable and nothing else.
As for being "every-when" He wants to be, that is not only a Greek idea, it is also quite meaningless. The notion is a contradiction. More specifically, it commits what is known as a stolen concept fallacy because there can be no existence outside of time because the concept of existence presupposes the concept of time. In other words, the concept of existence is logically dependent upon the concept of time. If you deny the existence of time then you don't get to use the concept of existence anymore and if you do so, you've "stolen" the concept of time, thus the name "stolen concept fallacy".
Time is not a substance, it is not an ontological thing, it's just an idea. Time is a convention of language used to communicate the duration and sequence of events relative to other events. If an event occurs and it can be spoken of relative to the occurrence of another event (i.e. before, after, during, etc) then the act doing so employs the concept of time, even if you don't call it that or use those terms. The concept of existence implies duration, thus to suggest timeless duration is to suggest existence without duration which is non-existence. A thing cannot be its negation, thus timeless existence is an oxymoron and meaningless.
No, that's how your doctrine has redefined the term. Eternity is not timelessness, it's the opposite of that! It is infinite duration.
This is the Arminian position. But this also is fallacious. It is a contradiction. You cannot choose if your action is known in advance because a choice requires the ability to do otherwise.
Here's the proof in formal terms. You kind of have to read this slowly and make sure you're following it (that goes for everyone not just you)...
T = You answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am
- Yesterday God infallibly believed T. [Supposition of infallible foreknowledge]
- If E occurred in the past, it is now-necessary that E occurred then. [Principle of the Necessity of the Past]
- It is now-necessary that yesterday God believed T. [1, 2]
- Necessarily, if yesterday God believed T, then T. [Definition of “infallibility”]
- If p is now-necessary, and necessarily (p → q), then q is now-necessary. [Transfer of Necessity Principle]
- So it is now-necessary that T. [3,4,5]
- If it is now-necessary that T, then you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [Definition of “necessary”]
- Therefore, you cannot do otherwise than answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am. [6, 7]
- If you cannot do otherwise when you do an act, you do not act freely. [Principle of Alternate Possibilities]
- Therefore, when you answer the telephone tomorrow at 9 am, you will not do it freely. [8, 9]
Omniscience is a Greek concept, not a biblical one! God knows what He wishes to know of the which is knowable, nothing more! If you try to biblically prove otherwise you will fail.
I didn't write Genesis nor any other portion of the bible. I have quoted you scripture and you have quoted scripture yourself! It's really too bad that you don't permit the bible to inform your theology proper (i.e. your theology of God).
That verse doesn't exist, as your own posts have proven!
It is just astounding to me that people can directly testify against their own position with text from God's own word and remain steadfastly unmoved off that position! How is that even possible?
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
Clete