Honest struggles on God’s omniscience.

[Idolater]

This is true of most of the biblical passages when you apply the open theism paradigm.

Most aren't that comfortable with such shifts.

Whose consistency and coherence? Jesus'? Or the disciples'

As I said, maybe. He knew the apostles fairly well. He had certainly been teaching them more things than those others that walked away, it seems. Remember that He spoke to others in parables, but He gave direct truth to the 12 (and others that stayed close).

Pathetic whimpering?? Why?

And other discourses. It was a package deal.

But are you saying Jesus would not have been able to deal with His disciples leaving Him? It happened later, so I don't see why it would have been that big a deal in this earlier occasion. A big deal, yes, but so big that it would turn the Word into a pathetic whimperer? You don't have much confidence in Jesus, do you?

Ok. I'm not sure what you mean by that, but ok. Can't we say that about all of the scenes of Jesus' life?

Yes we can. My point is that while I am unusual in being able to shift my theology qualitatively, categorically, and in step changes, that my prima facie lived experience of your theology is that it makes God look pathetic to me. You're right to push back and ask whether it's justified that it's my knee jerk reaction. But that's why a lot of people aren't persuaded by your theology, it's because it fails the sniff test. They take a whiff of it, and it makes God look like a loser and pathetic, and reminds us all of that gay song, "What If God Was One of Us?" which was so gay.

It's not a valid argument, I agree. I admit it. But that is what you're up against re your theology, just honestly. It just rubs a lot of people the wrong way, about God. Right away. It's like, "Nah, that makes God seem like a loser, and that's just not how I see God, that's incompatible with how I see God." Not many people have the ability to say, "Well maybe my intuition here is wrong." That does take an unusual person to be able to do that. Especially since we have no interest in your theology being right. It doesn't solve any problems that we have, and it does seem like Open Theists find a solution in Open Theism to a problem that they do have. We all non-Open Theists just don't have any problem that Open Theism solves, we're just not in the market for a solution to a problem that we don't have.

It means that it's strictly a Biblical and logical argument that we are evaluating, it isn't motivated by anything other than care and concern and respect for the truth. If it is true, then we will accede to it and approbate it. Once we work it out with it failing our sniff test, which forces us to evaluate our sniff test, to make sure that it's not a false negative, then we are dealing with the argument on its merits.

 

[Idolater]

Are you AI? Your text flags as AI generated

I've prompted AI with original content and had it rewrite it. It came out as distinctively AI even though the content was mine and original, the way AI words things is distinctive and identifiable. Like when a content creator says that she's going to articulate the contours of something, I know that's AI slop. But it doesn't mean that it wasn't the sister's original thoughts that were prompted to the AI, that then rewrote them in a distinctive AI "register" (which is another distinctive/favorite AI term; there are tons of them). How do you capitalize this new tech while retaining our individuality? If you are learning, getting smarter, getting more literal, is it OK that you sound more and more like AI? AI is a language creature, a model of our language. It takes our ham-fisted attempts and teaches us better terminology for what we're trying to express, what is wrong with sounding more like AI? And apparently, a lot. My guess is because we sacrifice our individuality and become more like sheep and robots. How do we learn and retain our individuality, that is the question.