Could God's creation be like His omniscience?

[The Grand Nudger]

-there we have god diddling from the sides, to constrain your actions.  

Case in point.

If someone did manage to step outside of the lines of gods coloring book, what would that tell us about god? Is it even hypothetically possible in a universe with a god, in your opinion, Neo?

[Whateverist]

That's the beauty of my new theory.  He has no need to do anything with anything because to Him the world is at one with its inherent coolitude.  

Again, useless to the faithful.  If everything is "at one" with gods inherent coolitude than what impetus is there to adhere to "god's" strictures, what need of strictures is there at all?

But the faithful are sheep. They just need new strictures or maybe a good caning from the shepherd? If God just tells them to chill and enjoy the show with Him, don't they like have to salute sharply and do it? I think so. They're sheep for fucksake.

Maybe we make weed the new sacrament. Get rid of the cross and replace it with a hammock. New rules: from now on every image of God must depict Him wearing stunners and smoking a fat one. Put a blissed out smile on him too. Everyone will want to have what he's having. Try it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Church of the Subgenius, Whatevs.   I've already got quality slack, have you heard the good news?

[Angrboda]

[Whateverist]

I wonder if this gets the ladies hot.  I'm not really feeling it myself though.  She looks like the dentist really missed wildly with the numbing agent.  Okay, she just needs to stop that now.  Ahhhhhhh

[brewer]

And they say putting make up on a pig does nothing. Sheeesh.

[SteveII]

Recently some theist -Steve maybe?- suggested that god's knowing what will be didn't mean he'd been to the future and had witnessed how it turns out.  Rather, He just knows everyone so well that all their choices are transparent for him.  I probably am butchering this so please correct me if you recall better than I how this worked. [1]

So it occurred to me that the natural world wasn't made to be the way it is by God.  Maybe He just looked around, saw that it was good to go and understood how it would all turn out.  He didn't decide to set physical laws a certain way, He just knew how they'd work out.  Create life?  Pfft.  Homo sapiens, please.  He just grokked the inorganic/organic threshold and saw it how it would go down.  He didn't stir any pots, He just watched them. [2]

So God might be a whole lot more passive than sometimes imagined.  Maybe He wasn't so much a cosmic watchmaker as He was a cosmic voyeur?

1. No, that was pretty good. It is based on a doctrine called Molinism named after 16th Century Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina 

2. That is called theistic evolution and is a reasonable position that many people believe in. In that view, eventually God has to intervene somehow to endow a human with an immaterial soul. There are also views in between. God directed cosmic and natural evolution wherever it need to go to get what he eventually wanted to develop (stirred the pot).

---

I think SteveII takes a more Arminian position (see Wesley's position in the above graphic) but he can correct me if I'm wrong. I have some thoughts about it based on my own philosophical speculations about the nature of time (still very rough); however, I think it is bad practice to read Scripture through a philosophical position rather than allowing the text to speak for itself. In this case Scripture seems to be indeterminate on the matter. There may be a way to resolve the dilemma of God's Sovereignty with Man's responsibility, but I really haven't had much luck cracking that nut. On the one hand, it seems to me that an omniscient being could only know that which it is possible to know. If the future does not yet exist then it is impossible to have knowledge of it. On the other hand, couldn't God extrapolate from current conditions? Only if the physical universe is causally closed. I would not be willing to concede that. There is an intermediate position along the lines that God's purposes are fore-ordained but the paths to achieving those purposes are not. It would be like a captain constantly adjusting the sails in response to changes in the wind. As such people enjoy freedom within certain parameters, but not to the extent that it could thwart God's ultimate goal.

I am Arminian in doctrine and that column does describe my views on TULIP which, among other things, affirms libertarian free will. I think middle knowledge (molinism) is the best answer to all the "future can't be changed so no free will objections". I don't think the captain of the ship metaphor is incompatible with the middle knowledge view. I believe God constantly intervenes to effect his will.

[Whateverist]

Recently some theist -Steve maybe?- suggested that god's knowing what will be didn't mean he'd been to the future and had witnessed how it turns out.  Rather, He just knows everyone so well that all their choices are transparent for him.  I probably am butchering this so please correct me if you recall better than I how this worked. [1]

So it occurred to me that the natural world wasn't made to be the way it is by God.  Maybe He just looked around, saw that it was good to go and understood how it would all turn out.  He didn't decide to set physical laws a certain way, He just knew how they'd work out.  Create life?  Pfft.  Homo sapiens, please.  He just grokked the inorganic/organic threshold and saw it how it would go down.  He didn't stir any pots, He just watched them. [2]

So God might be a whole lot more passive than sometimes imagined.  Maybe He wasn't so much a cosmic watchmaker as He was a cosmic voyeur?

1. No, that was pretty good. It is based on a doctrine called Molinism named after 16th Century Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina 

2. That is called theistic evolution and is a reasonable position that many people believe in. In that view, eventually maybe God has to intervene somehow to endow a human with an immaterial soul. There are also views in between.

Fixed the only part I thought needed it up to here.

God directed cosmic and natural evolution wherever it need to go to get what he eventually wanted to develop (stirred the pot).

Do you happen to know if anyone who identifies as Christian believes that cosmic evolution preceded God?  Perhaps God evolved prior to man but had some role in man becoming what we are today.  I can spin a fairly decent tale in this direction but it obviously falls short of the whopper you have chosen.  

[Ravenshire]

For gawd's to be like it's omniscience, wouldn't have to be non-existent?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Do you happen to know if anyone who identifies as Christian believes that cosmic evolution preceded God?

There are those who promote "Process Theology." I think some of them might sympathize with that prospect. It is obviously a minority viewpoint, but it does have its adherents.