RE: Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?
December 15, 2016 at 11:51 am
(This post was last modified: December 15, 2016 at 11:54 am by Homeless Nutter.)
(December 15, 2016 at 10:54 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I'm sorry. I fail to see how Him having already seen what I choose to do = Him controlling what I do.
That's because you can't comprehend what omniscience is. In your mind god is just an imperfect being - like a human, who's smart enough to build a robot, that plays chess, but whose brain lacks the computing power to predict which of the countless possible moves the machine's algorithm will chose.
Your god is a tinkerer. A mad scientist. A bumbling fool, who - while infinitely more powerful and informed than you - still has to leave some things to chance, when running his "experiments." You think your god has the need to "test" his creation, because you think of him as a human. But humans have to test things, in order to find out the outcomes - because we're not omniscient. God is not supposed to have the need for tests.
God is supposed to be perfect and all-knowing. Meaning, that if he creates a "machine" - and by that I mean either a mechanical, a biological, or even a "spiritual" system, which operates on a set of principles chosen by the creator - he understands it precisely, so there is no question in his mind, as to what the machine will do at any given moment, regardless of the complexity. A "machine" built by god makes exactly the "choices" he designed. He can't blame his creation for any shortcomings and can't use ignorance of the outcome as an excuse. Because he's supposed to have known what he was doing, when creating the world and humans.
Of course - I don't expect you to comprehend this. Years of indoctrination and empty promises made by people you regard as authority will probably not let you see beyond the naive self-serving fantasy.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw