Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-9801519-20130614044126/@comment-9801519-20130614172053

Javer: Have you ever read God's Debris: A Thought Experiment? It's written by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, but there is no humor in it. I began reading it last night, and I just finished the sections on the free will of God and man. The basic premise is, regardless of what method is used to see into the future, your future has been predetermined if God is omniscient. Theists do not hold that anything is an "accident." We are here because God intended for us to be.

According to religions like Islam and Christianity, God is all-knowing, so he already has knowledge of who will go to heaven and who will be condemned to hell. If this is true, then God knew our fate before we were even born. This means that everything we will do has already been predetermined, rendering our efforts to seek the ultimate truth meaningless. No matter how hard we try, the outcome is set in stone.

Some may argue "God knows the future, but our decision to follow him is entirely our own." If this is true, then by your own admittance, God does not know what your future holds, which means he is not omniscient. If God is not omniscient, then what is told in the Bible and Quran is nothing more than a lie. Considering this is the infallible word of God we're talking about, a lie is a serious problem.

As for comparing God to humans, I understand that the full nature of God is incomprehensible, and to liken him to one of his creations on a tiny speck in a Universe containing billions of galaxies is nothing short of arrogance. However, it is necessary to attribute anthropomorphic values to God to make the concept less difficult to discuss.

LOLSKELETONS: Well said. This is where many theists would argue "Science is the how and religion is the why." However, a purpose isn't entirely necessary for everything. Where is the purpose in accidentally dropping a glass of water, or falling asleep when you should be writing a paper for a project?

We can describe how these things happened. The glass falling may have been nothing more than a slip of the fingers, and drifting to sleep was because you had less than three hours of rest the night before. Although it can be argued the "how" and "why" are identical in these situations, there is no good reason to ask "why."