Questions for theists.

[ElDinero]

Apparently I had to dump my cache to see the posts, sorry for the delay.

1) It doesn't make him accountable for the decisions, period. That's assinine and in that world, you're righ,t all Christians would just blame everything on God and have no personal accountability. Perhaps you meant the consequences, which I'll conceed makes sense, while not entirely at least partially culpable. Perhaps the sum of the consequences will balance out?

2) In that example, my bosses intent is irrelevant. God may have presented him the opportunity to reward me with such timing as to concide with the answering of my prayer. God could have also answered by winning the lottery, or a check from the govt. or a donation from a friend or church. It's the frequenc of prayers being answered and the timing of the answers along with the uniqueness of the causal chain for the event that makes the prayer an answer rather than a circumstance. This is off topic though. God didn't force him to give me a bonus, he presented the opportunity and Mike took it at that time and place for his own reasons. You implied earlier that my free will was affected by the prayer was being answered. I've shown where neither of our free wills were violated, but certain opportunities were encouraged.

3) I'll go there and check it out immediately as I seem to have lots of time available tonight. I tried but the page is unavailable.

1. Perhaps the sum of the consequences will balance out? Oh dear, tack. Oh dear, oh dear. You're walking a tightrope. If you can look someone who has suffered a severe tragedy or injustice in the eye and say 'It'll all work out in the end, God has a plan', then you're going to plummet in my estimations. Could you honestly feel you were being anything other than morally bankrupt if you were to say to or about a rape victim 'Sure, things were bad for her, but it will balance out'? What could possibly happen to balance that out? It's a really vile notion to suggest that God is playing good cop, bad cop with people.

2. More gymnastics. The fact that you credit your boss recognising your ability to God is fairly insulting to your boss. I didn't imply that it interfered with YOUR free will, but that of your boss. Like I said, you claimed that the event of getting a bonus was a response to a prayer. In which case if you had not prayed, it would not have happened. Yes or no? If yes, then your boss had his free will interfered with, because had you not prayed he would not have given you the bonus. If no, then your prayer was useless and had no effect because it was coming anyway.

Mike gave you the bonus at that time because that was when he got cleared to approve it having made the request months ago. So it wasn't anything to do with his own reasons. What else was he going to do having got the approval? Sit on it for a few weeks and wait?

3. Apologies, the link is http://atheistforums.org/thread-3113-pos...#pid183442