Does God know everything that we will do for the rest of our lives? If we have free choice, wouldn't that keep him from knowing that. I believe he knows everything there is to know. I don't believe God would have created Satan if he knew he would fall. I don't believe that God would have made Saul King if he had known that Saul wouldn't obey him. Discuss...
http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29156&perpage=20&highlight=omniscience&pagenumber=2 As you may or may not see, a God who is omniscient and eternal is a dead God, at least to us. He could never interact or make decisions. Now, there is the notion of an extra-dimensional God. A God who is omniscient in our 4 dimensional stage, but gifted with a 5 dimensional awareness. . . . but that is rather a flawed explanation in my opinion. It essentially limits God's omniscience to strictly our plane. There is a thread, a discussion of this topic, started by Flores. However, it is, by and large, a gaggle of excuses, though I must admit that Raithere's particular excuses are quite eloquent. There really is no getting around the fact that if God is eternal and omniscient, He must know what one will do. . . . and please don't try to use quantum uncertainty to beef up the idea of free-will. 1) There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that quatum events are of any importance to a human's synapses. 2) Also, the universe is probabilistic, and even God may not be able to know the exact position and velocity of any given particle, but He would still immediately recognize and evaluate any one of the possibilities; if He's seen it all before, there can't be anything new to Him. http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28236&highlight=omniscience
Jan I'm not describing the God of scripture. I'm just describing a God that is both omniscient and eternal. I don't want to bandy words with you or argue scripture, and, truthfully, I think that, if you really read all I wrote, you'd understand. I'm sorry if you expected a fight, but I'm exasperated with Gendanken right now and don't have much to offer.
God supposedly gave us free will as a gift which makes us a part of Him, so God knows everything since we are a part of him and so our free will (and our "calculations" on what it will lead to) perfectly fits into God's being which mean that he still knows everything (in a whole). It can also be that if life is a test and everything and we choose not to follow his way, but follow our own way, then we cut ourselves away from the one that created us, and therefor is cut off from creation. So if God doesn't know us, we won't exist, therefor God knows everything. Just speculations...
Then you are describing the god of the scripture. Then your point is moot and baseless. I wasn't expecting a fight, a discussion would have sufficed, but no problem anyway. Love Jan Ardena.
Ok, Jan. Let us say we have a time line of events in a very simple and completey isolated place. When I write isolated, I mean that any and all events which may exist outside of this place are irrelevant. It's a closed system. In this insular and simple little place, a number of events are possible. They are . . . A, causing B or C B, causing C or A C, causing A or B Naturally, this is a probabilistic system, in which randomness plays a vital role. Randomness in the form of quantum uncertainty is, in fact, a vital part of our universe as well. Let us say that an Omniscient and Eternal being, God, created this probabilistic system, and started it off with one of the events, say A. A couple problems arise: Randomness cannot exist unless it does so in defiance of God's Omniscience. If he is all-knowing, he should know what is going to happen. One could counter this by claiming that God's Omniscience is limited to a present. There are two problems with that though. 1 - It's a limit imposed on an illimitable quality. 2 - God is also eternal. Therefore, His present must be the entire history of the Universe: there is no future, no unknown, to Him. He's always been, even in the future, so there can't be something He doesn't already know. In fact, he already knows what He is going to do. There was never a time that he didn't know it or hadn't done it though, since He's eternal, that is. Randomness is the root of free-will, and without the root not even He can have the tree. There is another problem. If He is eternal, why did he wait forever before he made the closed system? He waited forever . . . how and why? There is very little room for logic in this idea . . .
God created one man, Adam, who had free will. God did not know for sure how this first man would exercise his free will but I am sure God hoped and expected that Adam would remain loyal to him. But God did not know, in advance, that Adam would disobey him. I think God is something of an optimist. He prefers to expect the best of people rather than the worst. He gave Adam so much, including life itself, he hoped and expected that Adam would remain faithful. God allowed Adam to be tested. He chose not to see the result of the test before it happened. There are indications in the Bible that God chooses not to look at the specific choices that individuals will make, not because he can't, but because he wants us to feel the full power of free will. That way there can be no suggestion that our futures are predestined. We truly write our own future with the decisions we make. Nobody, including God, knows what we will do. Many scriptures say that God is omniscient and knows all things. But there are other scriptures which indicate that he does not know (on an individual level) how we will exercise our free will. The only conclusion we can come to is that God chooses not to know certain things. It's not hard to figure out why he does this. If God has foreseen our future then we would not feel in control of our destiny. If our future was already written then our life would seem pointless. God wants us to know and feel that we have the power to decide our own futures and have real free will, not some sham version. By choosing not to know what specific choices we will make there can never be any suggestion that our futures are predestined. No-one, including God, knows how we will exercise our free will. Here is the Biblical proof of what I say: "Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham .... Then he said, 'Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.' .... Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, 'Abraham, Abraham!' So he said, 'Here I am' And He said, 'Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.'" - Genesis 22:1-12 (my emphasis) The statement "for now I know" is not consistent with God knowing in advance whether Abraham would obey him. Also if God had known what Abraham would do it would not have been a real and honest test. "Now the Lord had told Samuel in his ear the day before Saul came, saying, 'Tomorrow about this time I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him commander over My people Israel .... So when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said to him, 'There he is, the man of whom I spoke to you. This one shall reign over My peoople.'" - 1 Samuel 9:15-17 "Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, 'I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.' .... And the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel." - 1 Samuel 15:10-11,35 Since God is perfect we can't interpret his "regret" as showing he made a mistake in selecting Saul as king. It shows that God was disappointed at the way Saul turned out. If God had foreknown what Saul would do it would be a nonsense to speak of feeling regret. "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.' .... And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, 'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!' .... So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, .... let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. .... Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it." - Jonah 1:1-2; 3:4-10 If God had foreknown that he would not destroy the people of Nineveh then it was a pointless exercise to send Jonah to them with a warning. It is just nonsensical to think that God would plan the destruction of Nineveh and send a messenger to warn them that they were to be destroyed if he had known that he would not destroy them. "'I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.'" - Deuteronomy 30:19 Far from indicating that our futures are known in advance the Bible emphasises the existence of two possible futures, life or death. Which one results is up to each of us. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9 The statement that God desires all to repent is hardly consistent with foreknowledge of who will repent and who won't.
I believe that God is all knowing. On your 2nd note, Satan had to be created. Without Satan there is no point to being, there would be no need to have freedom of choice. Without Satan there would only be 'right' to choose, which would defeat the plan of God.
No, there were other angels who fell. These angels are called demons and are weaker than Satan. In the bible they are loosely classified into locust, scorpians, serpents etc.
The fall of the angels probably happened instantanous. There's really know other way because is usually accepted that they were created completely rational knowing the consequence of their action. In any case, Satan could not provide any new information to the fallen angels that they didn't already have.
Some theorists say that the archangels were Satan's crew. Therefore, humans were confused by their encounters i.e. Gabriel and Mary at the Annunciation.
