(February 20, 2017 at 6:39 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote: I've never understood how people can justify, in their own minds, that an all powerful, all knowing deity, somehow needs to test its creations.[1]
It KNOWS what the people are thinking, supposedly, and what their actions will be.
Testing us for our own benefit, is another argument I've encountered. Same points: it would know how the humans would respond, making any tests a complete waste of time.
I believe God knows everything that is possible to know.
I don't believe decisions made from free-will can always be known before they are made.
[2]
If the future was known to God, it would be the result of the future already happening in his eyes.
This still needs for the free-will decision to be made in that future, it would just be that God knows the future before it occurs.
This would mean we exist in past, present, future, all at once.
This test would still need to occur and creation still needs to be created and test.
I believe in scenario 1, there are problems with scenario two, philosophically and theologically, that you are aware of some of it's difficulties, and there other difficulties with it, that I find highly problematic as well.
