OCKHAMSRAZOR POSTS:



If I understand you correctly, you are describing predestination to Hell. The Catholic Chruch has condemned as straight out heresy that God has predestined any soul to eternal suffering. The only destiny human souls are meant by God to attain is a destiny of eternal happiness and every single soul is able to attain everlasting life.

To every one, God gives sufficient grace and every man can be saved by corresponding with it. He warns us all by conscience and by His Commandments against the very things that could destroy our eternal happiness. He wouldn't warn us against these things that take us Hell if He wanted us to go there.

Man's destiny is in his own keeping. If any soul is lost--forever---it will be due to his own his own fault and the result of his own choice of evil which he is not compelled to make, for which he is fully responsible, which God forbids, and of which he does not repent before death.

Man is capable of resisting that grace and losing his soul. If he does, he will justly reap the fruit of his own evil choice by eternal suffering. It's up to each one of us to avoid choosing evil, repent of past sins, and live our life in virtue.

Mason, Reply #13


I think Mason's whole response is very close to how I believe as well. I will add to that my thought that God cannot know what is not reality. The future has not happened (or if you believe in the quantum theory - every possible future will happen in a different reality).

He knows all, but cannot know what has not happened. Today I decide to kill someone. At the moment of pulling the trigger, I stop and decide not to. He knows of my intent, but not my last minute misgivings until that moment, so he does not know if my victim is going to die or not. Only that I intended to kill the victim. If he does know of my last minute decision, then as Mason indicated, I really had no choice in the matter. from the moment of my conception, I was destined to commit or not commit murder. Thus I really had no choice in the matter.

When we talk about god being omniscience, we talk about him knowing all that is knowable. What I will do tomorrow is not knowable since - with the concept of free will - I do not know today what I will do at that time.

Not knowing the future is not contradictory to omniscience.

Dr. Guy:

How can you say you have no choice when you just made 2? You decide to kill someone, and then you decide not to. Two decisions. In movies (not the best source, I know) all the time they have people pointing guns at other people, who say "I know you don't have it in you to kill me." Why wouldn't God have that knowledge beforehand? His knowledge is so boundless that he knows everything that is going to happen as well as what has happened and what is happening currently. Again, he doesn't force us to make those choices. He just knows what you will choose. YOU have the choice.

I did make 2 choices. That until those choices were made, were unknown. That is my point. Until we make the choice, God cannot know. He knows we are at a juncture and a choice is about to be made, but since the choice has not been made, he cannot know the outcome. No one can, since the outcome does not exist at this point in time. Omniscience is often mistaken for many things. But it simply is all knowledge of facts. Something that has not happened is therefore not a fact, and not part of omniscience.

Free will means that God does not know how we will decide. Only that we must. He hopes that we decide correctly, but then he did give Satan/Evil equal dominion over the world so that man could chose between the 2. But if he already knows the outcome of the game, the game is a sham and not being played, but rather staged.

If I understand you correctly, you are describing predestination to Hell.

Actually, that was Jythier that described that.

So, yeah, your fate is sealed.

To every one, God gives sufficient grace and every man can be saved by corresponding with it. He warns us all by conscience and by His Commandments against the very things that could destroy our eternal happiness. He wouldn't warn us against these things that take us Hell if He wanted us to go there.

This "he" has never said 'boo' to me. I do not count books that part of wound up on the cutting room floor according to the choices of Constantine.

And let's go there. Most folks then claim "Oh, well it was divinely inspired...the parts in the Bible are meant to be there, and the stuff that was cut out were meant NOT to be there. It was God's will...he inspired Constantine what to keep and what to throw out."

Then he tampered. Then our will is not free...it's a stacked deck of cards.

Why do I bother with logic? God is perfect, and he gave me this brain, and I'm using it to think with...not parroting something that was told to me. I do that because the question arose in me "What if there were a person that grew up somewhere that had absolutely no access to Jesus Christ. What happens to them? And my inner response was "You must be able to come up with an answer that saves you regardless of your level of exposure - otherwise God is the biggest asshole ever known."

Again, your analogy of a game falls down. In a game, you often are able to play better and win by predicting the moves of the opposing players. As humans, we often get it wrong. But God is perfect - he doesn't get it wrong. His predictions always come true, not because he predicted them, but because he knows YOU, Dr. Guy, so well that He knows which path you'll choose.

God's foreknowledge doesn't interfere with man's use of his free will. Our actions don't take place becasue God has foreknowledge of them, and so foresees that they will take place.

So he foresees actions that will be bad, but creates us to take those actions anyway? Smoking gun. Let me explain something. I did NOT create myself. If I had, I'd be able to fly and do lots of other cool things. And if some other entity did create me, then my actions/responses are his responsibility. They are a direct result of the quality of his creation. This entire universe is God's creation, and he's the one that needs to answer for how it turns out. Period. Who in the world would throw a piece of paper into a fire and then get really really mad that the paper burned away? Only a complete and utter moron, and if there's a God, I just can't imagine him/her being a moron. Like I said - I give far more credit than you do.

Sorry. I don't buy any of this stuff. It makes no sense.

He foresees actions that will be bad, but He also foresees actions that will be good. It was worth it for Him to create the bad along with the good. And, while God does not have anybody to answer to, you have a creator that you answer to. He created you and knew, as He did, that you would of your own free will reject him (at least to this point, I don't know what is going to happen beyond now - He does). Not only that, but He knew that you were worth creating for some reason completely unknown to me. You have value to Him, Ock, that's why he created you. Because you are there, something happened that would not have happened without you, and people were saved because of it.

Again, your analogy of a game falls down. In a game, you often are able to play better and win by predicting the moves of the opposing players. As humans, we often get it wrong. But God is perfect - he doesn't get it wrong. His predictions always come true, not because he predicted them, but because he knows YOU, Dr. Guy, so well that He knows which path you'll choose.

Actually the analogy of the game is dead on.  For if he KNOWS me perfectly, then I am predestined (or programmed) from conception.  I have no free will.  But if I can surprise him - as I think Mason pointed out, many in the bible did surprise him - then he cannot know with certainty what I will decide.  Can he know me better than anyone else?  Assuredly, for that is intuition.  But he cannot know what I have not done since I have not done it.

It is a sticky wicket that you create once you give to God the absolute assurity of Precognition.  In some cases it is easy for God and man to guess the outcome.  We rely on tell tale signs of current or past practices.  But then there is that instance when your opponent goes against all that he is and has done, and fools all people.  Because it was not predictable.  Again, until a deed is done, it is not a fact, and there is nothing to "know".

Some beleive in God's ability to know all about the future, and in some instances he does - that of the destination of mankind.  But as the study of mobs has shown, if you get a large enough sample size, then you can predict mobs based upon human psychology.  However, predicting the actions of A man is impossible since free will means he can change his mind on a dime.  And often does.  God does not tamper with free will - it is probably the most important precept of the Christian God (just as Paul said the most important commandment was Love they neighbor as thyself).  Since from Free will, he is able to test us to see if we are worthy.  If he already knows, then there is no need for tests - why test Job?  He already knew?  yet he did not.  He does not.  He knows all that is knowable. 

 

You have value to Him, Ock, that's why he created you. Because you are there, something happened that would not have happened without you, and people were saved because of it.

So I'm an unknowing slave to his will, but my reward is hell anyway? Nice guy.

YOU are not all knowing. Maybe what I'm here to do is scrape the crust off of your third eye and it will be a sin if you don't listen....can you say with surety this is NOT the case?

DRGUY POSTS:


MasonM POSTS: #13

DrGuy, I too found what this part of what MasonM wrote close to what I understand. You do a good job framing it as well.

Here's something I found from Archbishop M. Sheehan of Sydney, New South Wales that helps explain it further.

We see things in a mist, says Holy Scripture. Hence, when we are considering a good God and a wicked man, we must hold continually in mind the fact that we humans are finite beings whose intelligence is infinitesimally small when compared with the intelligence of the infinite mind of God.

The real vital knowledge that we have comes is revealed knowledge. From this we learn that it is a mistake to speak of God knowing things "beforehand", for God is the Eternal Present, the I Am who Am. Hence, there is no time, no succession as past, present and future in God. He knows all things that have happened, are happening, and will happen, 'simultaneously' say the great theologians, whereas knowledge of events that have been and are happening comes to us in successive order.

With this understanding, you can realize that God does not know of a murder before the man committed the murder. While this gives us a basis for understanding that God's foreknowledge does not warrant the charge of His being the forecause of the murder, it remains most difficult to get more than a shadow of the "oneness of Divine knowledge; God knowing all things through one glance, one single thought, and that thought being identical with Himself."

You'd still have a purpose, Ock!   

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Dr. Guy:

If I recall correctly, it was Satan who tested Job, not God.

I will start looking through the scriptures for people suprising God. I can't recall that ever happening, but that certainly doesn't mean it didn't.

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Also, as for the whole thing of living being moot, you could say the same thing with relationships - if I know my wife, why should I spend any time with her? Why do we do things together? Because, I want to be with her. Just the same, God wants to go through experiences with us, not just know what we would have done.

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KFC, could you please refer me to some scriptures that show predestination? I am interested to see what this Bible of mine says about it. I looked at John 1, but it was in the Message Remix which isn't really great for scripture study...

OCKHAMSRAZOR POSTS:

The Bible came from the Church, not from Constantine. The Books that ended up being part of the collection (Old and New Testament Canon) we call Sacred Scripture has everything to do with Catholic Church Councils and not much at all to do with Emperor COnstantine. All he did was order all of the bishops to gather (the Nicea Council) and decide once and for all which books and writings (from hundreds) should be accepted and which would not.

OCKHAMSRAZOR POSTS:


Yes, we have free will. Ever heard of will power?

That's the ability to be satisfied with one peanut when you have a bagful.

Or the determination to be content with one glass of wine when you know that 2 glasses will make you drunk.

How about the capablity to keep your lips and teeth closed when angry, so as not to curse or make statements that inflict wounds which may never heal?

How about the energy of character that turns your eyes and thoughts away from persons and things that stimulate lustful desires?

How about the faculty of being able to choose and refuse which has been given us by Almighty GOd?

How about the conquering power of man by which he directs himself away from willfullness?




Here's what happens, what we are made of...

Man is a creature created by God. He has a body and a soul, the latter is made in God's image and likeness, in that it is a spirit is immortal, and is endowed with intelligence and free will. He also gave each one of us a guardian angel.

God also wrote the Natural law on our hearts which some call conscience. From this we have the sense of good and evil; right and wrong. We know interiorily when we are doing wrong. Something inside rebukes our conduct that we are going against an inward voice. It's the voice of conscience dictating to us a law that we did not make, and which no man could have made.

The voice is quite often against what we wish to do, warning us beforehand, condemning us after its violation. The law dictated by this voice of conscience supposses a lawgiver who has written His Law on our hearts. This is one of the proofs that God exists for He alone could do this.

OCKHAMSRAZOR POSTS:

Ah, stop your sniveling and step up to the plate and take responsbility for your own choosing or not choosing.

When our choices are bad or wrong, own up, be sorry, reform and don't do them again. Reforming our lives can start just by getting on our knees and asking GOd for help and forgiveness..this takes dropping foolish pride and humbling ourself to Someone who is Greater than you.