Sufferening

[Ravenstorm]

If God is so loving and compassionate why does he let suffering happen.

is it:

he is incapable of stopping it, but wants to.
he is capable of stopping it but doesn't want to
he is neither willing to, or capable of stopping it

also please site where in the bible you got your answer from. (which part of the bible)

[KillerOfTheSun]

...God chooses to not know the future of humans? How can god choose not to know.Wouldn't it know regardless...

God could have chosen to create a world in which he would know the future. In that sort of world, free will could not exist. But according to the Bible, God did not create this kind of world. Instead, God chose to create a world in which humans would be given the time and space to freely choose, and God's knowledge of those future choices would necessarily be curtailed.

...are you claiming god has abaolutely zero idea of the future of human beings.Interesting statement made by you couple of lines later where as you state " god should be able to predict some outcomes and behaviors.If this is the case you are here claiming you don't actually know if god is truly omnicinet...

Again, you seem to be operating with an unbiblical understanding of "omniscience." God knows all that can be known. But the future choices of free agents do not fall into the category of things that can be known. Knowledge is not the same thing as prediction. I can predict that my cat will run down the stairs with me tomorrow morning and go straight to her food dish, but I don't know that she will do so.

...Please explain.Thus also i have a problem with this statement. " ..that means god can't in at specific times and overrule our choices".If this is true god interfers with the notion of free will here.Please Explain.Thank you.

My cat may decide not to run down to her food dish tomorrow morning, but if I want her to eat, I can either carry her to her food, or I can carry the food to her. In neither case does the matter of omniscience arise. God is an absolutely free agent who can choose when and how to interact with the (relatively) free agents whom God has created. Our human freedom, while real, is necessarily limited and derivative. We cannot freely choose to ignore the laws of physics, for example.

[KillerOfTheSun]

...God chooses to not know the future of humans? How can god choose not to know.Wouldn't it know regardless...

God could have chosen to create a world in which he would know the future. In that sort of world, free will could not exist. But according to the Bible, God did not create this kind of world. Instead, God chose to create a world in which humans would be given the time and space to freely choose, and God's knowledge of those future choices would necessarily be curtailed.

...are you claiming god has abaolutely zero idea of the future of human beings.Interesting statement made by you couple of lines later where as you state " god should be able to predict some outcomes and behaviors.If this is the case you are here claiming you don't actually know if god is truly omnicinet...

Again, you seem to be operating with an unbiblical understanding of "omniscience." God knows all that can be known. But the future choices of free agents do not fall into the category of things that can be known. Knowledge is not the same thing as prediction. I can predict that my cat will run down the stairs with me tomorrow morning and go straight to her food dish, but I don't know that she will do so.

...Please explain.Thus also i have a problem with this statement. " ..that means god can't in at specific times and overrule our choices".If this is true god interfers with the notion of free will here.Please Explain.Thank you.

My cat may decide not to run down to her food dish tomorrow morning, but if I want her to eat, I can either carry her to her food, or I can carry the food to her. In neither case does the matter of omniscience arise. God is an absolutely free agent who can choose when and how to interact with the (relatively) free agents whom God has created. Our human freedom, while real, is necessarily limited and derivative. We cannot freely choose to ignore the laws of physics, for example.[/quote]

[KillerOfTheSun]

[qoute]Again, you seem to be operating with an unbiblical understanding of "omniscience." God knows all that can be known. But the future choices of free agents do not fall into the category of things that can be known. Knowledge is not the same thing as prediction. I can predict that my cat will run down the stairs with me tomorrow morning and go straight to her food dish, but I don't know that she will do so.[quote]


Your claiming god doesn't know the future choices of mankind.Yet here in this passage. Isaiah 46:9 "For I am God, and there is none else; I am God and there is none like me, 10 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: 11 Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country; yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it."

He created this event and it shall come to pass.Even for the man whom attends his council.This is stating god will know what he will do before he will do it.


My cat may decide not to run down to her food dish tomorrow morningg, but if I want her to eat, I can either carry her to her food, or I can carry the food to her. In neither case does the matter of omniscience arise. God is an absolutely free agent who can choose when and how to interact with the (relatively) free agents whom God has created. Our human freedom, while real, is necessarily limited and derivative. We cannot freely choose to ignore the laws of physics, for example.

Its an erronous analogy since you are:
A. Not god and didnt create the cat and her food and anything else.
B. Not all knowing.

[KillerOfTheSun]

Can a moderator help me with deleting the two posts of mine the former 2 of my last post please.

[EduChris]

...Your claiming god doesn't know the future choices of mankind.Yet here in this passage. Isaiah 46:9 "For I am God, and there is none else; I am God and there is none like me, 10 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: 11 Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country; yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it."

He created this event and it shall come to pass.Even for the man whom attends his council.This is stating god will know what he will do before he will do it.

Certainly I can say that I will walk downstairs with my cat and eat my breakfast tomorrow morning. But when tomorrow comes and I actually do what I said I would do, that doesn't mean that I am omniscient; instead, it simply means that I meant what I said and that I keep my word.

...Its an erronous analogy since you are:
A. Not god and didnt create the cat and her food and anything else.
B. Not all knowing.

I'm not understanding how these objections are relevant to any of my claims.

[McCulloch]

...The God of the Bible is presented as knowing, in advance, that the soldiers at the cross would cast lots for Jesus' tunic and divide his outer clothes, clearly a free choice.

I'm not sure that you are correct with this statement. To me, the gospel writer is using elevated language to highlight certain correspondences that he sees between the life of Jesus and various themes or phrases from the Jewish scriptures. If the soldiers hadn't cast lots for Jesus' clothes, the writer would have simply found some other "connection" that seemed suggestive or important to him.

So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be"; this was to fulfill the Scripture: "THEY DIVIDED MY OUTER GARMENTS AMONG THEM, AND FOR MY CLOTHING THEY CAST LOTS."

It looks a lot like John is stating that the whole garments and lots thing was to fulfill scriptural prophesy. You might read something else in there, but it is not in the text.

But on the other hand, just because God has chosen to create a world in which God refrains from imposing his "omniscience" on all of the future choices of free agents, that doesn't mean that God can't step in at specific times and overrule our choices.

Omniscience is not something to be imposed. That would be omnipotence. Omniscience is knowing everything. Either God knows a thing or he does not. If he does not know, then it is either because he cannot know (nullifying his omnipotence) or it cannot be known. I don't see any room in the concept of omniscience for selectively knowing.

And in any event God should be able to predict some outcomes and behaviors at least as well as our current-day market analysts and prognosticators.

Presumably better.

God could have chosen to create a world in which he would know the future. In that sort of world, free will could not exist. But according to the Bible, God did not create this kind of world. Instead, God chose to create a world in which humans would be given the time and space to freely choose, and God's knowledge of those future choices would necessarily be curtailed.

I missed the part in the Bible where this is explicitly stated. Kindly provide a reference.

[KillerOfTheSun]

Certainly I can say that I will walk downstairs with my cat and eat my breakfast tomorrow morning. But when tomorrow comes and I actually do what I said I would do, that doesn't mean that I am omniscient; instead, it simply means that I meant what I said and that I keep my word.

You are not god.God is written in the bible as " omniscient ".

Websters Dictionary: Omniscient :having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight.

...Its an erronous analogy since you are:
A. Not god and didnt create the cat and her food and anything else.
B. Not all knowing.

I'm not understanding how these objections are relevant to any of my claims.[/quote]

I must apologize if im not making myself clear.You cannot claim to know your cat's future events.You are not god nor are you omniscient.The god of the bible is claimed to be just that.Omniscient.The cat anlogy cannot work.

The bible has prophecy of supposed future events from certain men.Are these prophecies not form god but from another source?

Act 15:18 "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world."

If all is known,which it states here.Than god cannot not know mnakind's future.

[EduChris]

...It looks a lot like John is stating that the whole garments and lots thing was to fulfill scriptural prophesy. You might read something else in there, but it is not in the text.

There are many things that are not "in the text." Yet, we are creatures who seek meaning, and so we fill in the gaps where necessary and as best we can. This applies not just in the matter of interpreting texts, but in everything we do.

...I don't see any room in the concept of omniscience for selectively knowing.

Omniscience is best understood as having knowledge of everything that falls into the category of things that can be known. If something does not fall into the category of "things that can be known," then omniscience cannot apply. This is the old, "Can God make a rock that's too heavy for him to lift?" question. At some point, we have to recognize that there are some things we don't understand and can't understand--and yet we apply ourselves as best we can given our limited knowledge and given all the weight of our presuppositional baggage.

...I missed the part in the Bible where this is explicitly stated. Kindly provide a reference.

How about Jeremiah 32:35?

They built high places for Baal in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech, though I never commanded, nor did it enter my mind, that they should do such a detestable thing and so make Judah sin

or Genesis 6:5-6:

The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

[EduChris]

...You cannot claim to know your cat's future events.You are not god nor are you omniscient.The god of the bible is claimed to be just that.Omniscient.The cat anlogy cannot work.

I am not claiming to be omniscient. I am claiming that even we who are not omniscient can accurately predict future events, and we can act as agents to bring promised or intended events about.

...The bible has prophecy of supposed future events from certain men.Are these prophecies not form god but from another source?

I think you are misunderstanding the nature of Biblical prophecy here. Biblical prophecy is more concerned about bring a change of heart than about predicting the future. The best book on Biblical prophecy is The Prophets by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Another good author is Walter Brueggemann.

...Act 15:18 "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world."...

God knows what God will do. I don't see anything in the Bible that claims that God knows specifically which choices I will freely make in the future--although of course God knows a pretty fair range of options from which I might choose.

[KillerOfTheSun]

I am not claiming to be omniscient. I am claiming that even we who are not omniscient can accurately predict future events, and we can act as agents to bring promised or intended events about.


We cannot even come close to accurately predict future events in any consistent manner.We CAN thou make predictable things happen.But as for blindly calling predictions and be accurate in even LESS than one quarter of the time no we cannot.


I think you are misunderstanding the nature of Biblical prophecy here. Biblical prophecy is more concerned about bring a change of heart than about predicting the future. The best book on Biblical prophecy is The Prophets by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Another good author is Walter Brueggemann.


J. Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy lists 1,239 prophecies in the Old Testament and 578 prophecies in the New Testament, for a total of 1,817. These encompass 8,352 verses.Are you stating that all of these prophecies are for " a change of heart" ?


God knows what God will do. I don't see anything in the Bible that claims that God knows specifically which choices I will freely make in the future--although of course God knows a pretty fair range of options from which I might choose.[/quote]

God should know what it will do.Did god not know about the messiah's future events? If im correct in your assertions here you state god knows what god will do but not man's.Please elaborate on how an eternal perfect omniscient being can know everything but a the future events of a finite creation it made.Because that is an impossibility.