Magus55

Omniscience and Free will don't coincide. God's foreknowledge of what you will choose, doesn't prevent you from making that choice. He knows the outcome, you don't - therefore you always have the choice. Omiscience is probably the most confusing characteristic of God. Being all knowing is hard for the human mind to fathom. But God knowing ahead of time, does not negate choice. Think of it as you and God on two separate planes. On one plane, you have the concious choice to do something. Nothing prevents or interfere's with your choice, accept maybe environment or other people influencing what choice you may make. On the other plane is God, who knows what choice you will make. The planes intersect, but are independent of each other. Say you choose to each chocolate cake, but then you change your mind and pick vanilla instead. Did you not make the concious choice to change your mind on what flavor you wanted? Yes you did, and yes God knew you would pick chocolate and change to vanilla. Omniscience and free will work independently.

God exists outside time and space. Therefore His existence, doesn't interfere with whats in time and space unless he chooses to intervene. God gave us free will so we could love Him because we wanted to, not because we have no other choice. He values that, and doesn't interfere with that free will. Which is one reason why evil exists. If a human chooses to do an evil act, they used that free will to go against God and commit evil. While God is upset they chose to do that, He values the free will He gave them and doesn't prevent them from using it.

Philosoft

It doesn't matter what I would have done; I'm not omnipotent. The set of all logically possible ways to teach something is large - large enough that God wouldn't have had to think very hard at all to come up with a morally better way.

Magus55

Exactly, you aren't omnipotent, and God is - so how do you know He didn't choose the best way possible? Just because you don't agree with it, it must be wrong? God chose that way for a reason. Us being human, can't fully understand God's ways and why He chose that, but He is omnipotent, and perfect - so I'm quite sure He knows what He's doing.

keyser_soze

But what is your evidence that your god even exists at all? I mean, obviously you have a WHOLE lot riding on this g-d thing...So surely you wouldn't just let the bet ride on.....nothing. Would you?

Philosoft

Okay. So, does God value individuals or states-of-affairs? Your argument implies that God values the state-of-affairs, "God shows Satan what's what" more that he values the happiness, and free will for that matter, of Job. Obviously, being a faithful servant isn't always enough for God. How do you know God isn't going to make your life miserable to prove a point?

Philosoft

Because if there exists a morally better way to stick it to Satan, I am justified in judging God's treatment of Job as morally wrong. And God's omnipotence makes it extremely likely that there is a morally better way to stick it to Satan than to torture Job.

Magus55

Apparently there wasn't if God chose that way. God doesn't put us through trials and tribulations just for the heck of it. If He does something, He has a very good reason for doing it - whether we know that reason and agree with it or not.

hezekiah jones

There is no god.

7thangel

For God it is not a test for He is omniscient, but for us, humans, it is a test because we are not omniscient.

Acts 17:24-27
24. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25. Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
26. And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
27. That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

Examine verses 26 and 27; if God had "determined" things concerning men, how come, in verse 27, as if, Paul is describing a God that is not aware of who would be saved, seemly depending of who would believe?

The answer is simple: because we, who lacks omniscience does not understand things the way God understand things. We remain in constant hope of the future because we do not have enough knowledge. But to God, HE does not just know the future, HE even, in fact, predetermine them. The test is for men, not for God.

Farren

Magus:

For God to know ahead of the event what the choice will be, automatically implies that the choice is deterministic - i.e. no other choice can be made - it is preset and predetermined.

Conversely, if the individual truly has choice, God cannot know the outcome in advance, as it only becomes apparent once the choice is made.

This appears to be an attempt to slide out of this conundrum, but you fail to qualify it in any way. To elaborate, for words to have any utility, they must have a clear and similar meaning to both the speaker and the listener. So you'll need to qualify what you mean by "outside of time and space".

Taking the phrase at its most literal, I must assume that the God you speak of is outside of the universe, which is entirely and observably spacial and timelike. So the universe by implication is God-free, which I doubt you believe.

If I assume, for the sake of argument, that you mean that God sees the whole of history, into the distant future of which we have no knowledge, then an instant implication is that a predetermined future already exists, in which case we're back to the problem of having no choice at all.

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