A few questions for Christians...

[Simon Moon]

I guess these could apply to Muslims, too.


1. Did god have a choice in the universe he created? Or is this the only one he could have created?

2. Does everything happen according to god's plan?

That's it.

[Catholic_Lady]

As far as my own beliefs go, yes and *yes.

* "According to God's plan" in the big picture/grand scheme sort of way, yes. This does not mean that every time a person chooses to hurt someone else, for example, it was done so "according to God's plan." This simply means that, being God, He is outside of time and so He has seen how in the end everything will be made right. Knowing the big picture, He has chosen to make the universe as it is, which includes things like letting us humans have free will and allowing nature to work as it does. In that sense, everything is all in God's plan.

[Arkilogue]

I guess these could apply to Muslims, too.


1. Did god have a choice in the universe he created? Or is this the only one he could have created?

2. Does everything happen according to god's plan?

That's it.

This is from my own works of faith and parallels much claimed by Christian source material.

1. No. All the universes, infinite in number and growing in number are all the same finite quantum wave-form expression of the infinite "particle" (with no boundary) God. They are identical in architecture yet develop in different spaces at different times. They will have differing developments but their fates are all the same and the forces within and around them do not differ. But they do mature. This view is more fundamental than "intelligent design" it is a quantum biological design and there is no other way a stable universe can exist within the Infinite and overwhelming God.

2. Essentially yes and mostly no. Teleologically God is like a bathtub and drain to the phenomenal waters of creation. It is the border and flow conditions imposed on the water but it does not directly shape all the temporary rising waves on the water. They largely do not matter to the fate of all water draining out the tub.

But as the universe is the embryonic expression of a living being, there is a maturation/development phase, and then a birth event. We are still being developed.

[Minimalist]

Writers of fiction can make their characters do what ever they want them to do.

https://youtu.be/Q2l4bz1FT8U

[Arkilogue]

Writers of fiction can make their characters do what ever they want them to do.

https://youtu.be/Q2l4bz1FT8U

Yeah but you gotta stick to your rules or else the film critics are going to crap all over it...and rightfully so!

[robvalue]

Free will and precognition are contradictory.

I understand many religious people need both sides of the contradiction in order to continue to simultaneously pimp up their God, and excuse it from all accountability. I'd recommend dropping the pimping part, personally. A less than all powerful God can have valid excuses made on its behalf.

If our time is irrelevant to God, he knows everything we will do at the very instant he creates our reality. It has been pretermined, by him. He could have made things differently, to make us act any way he wants. Why he is creating this theatre to which he knows all the endings is another question, very rarely asked. Boredom, I guess. An experiment? Sadism. Ah yes.

If god doesn't have his own time, or some sort of equivalent, he can't act. He can't change anything. He certainly can't create anything, because there must have been some state beforehand in which the thing did not exist in that form.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I don't know about number 1. That God created anything at all is a bit of a mystery to me. Since God is Love he could only express that love toward something apart from himself. That seems to undermine the notion of God's self-sufficiency. Otherwise it is a problem to which I haven't devoted much thought.

However you seem to be asking something else. Is this the only possible universe God could have created? I do not know for sure although that would seem to be the case. The forces and constants of the physical universe appear to be quite arbitrary, as if contingent. It is easy to imagine them being otherwise. And there could be more worlds than the the one in which we live. Whatever the case, God could not create a world contrary to His own rational nature. As such, some eternal truths, like those of mathematics, that follow from Divine Truth would circumscribe all possible worlds.

That addresses the literal meaning of your question. Now I shall address its sense. Based on the second question, i suspect that you are trying to setup some kind of apparent contradiction based on the idea that all things are foreordained to happen just as they do and no other way. That conclusion requires the support of several presuppositions like atomism and mechanistic causal closure. Based on those dubious presuppositions, which on AF are impossible to dispel, I predict it will not take too long for people to start arguing over the definition of free will to both support and defend their positions and I would rather not engage in semantic disputes this morning.

[Drich]

I guess these could apply to Muslims, too.


1. Did god have a choice in the universe he created? Or is this the only one he could have created?

2. Does everything happen according to god's plan?

That's it.

1)what makes you think your reality is the only one created?

2)yes