Questions about God

[JustAlex]

alex, all i can do is smile.

the christian answer is based on who and what? that is not my answer.

Yes, I know it's not your answer, I said it was MY answer when I used to be a christian.

if we look at archaeology we see numerous sites found talked about in the bible, no jesus' tomb has not been found, but neither has genghis khan's.

That's fine....I personally DO believe Jesus was real and existed and he was probably even crucified.....I just don't believe he was the son of god or that he did miracles.

the idea of multiple lifestyles, cultures, languages, religions, and beliefs, are do to two main factors, one is the enviroment, and second, and most important, is free will.

Can you please explain the Christian interpretation of Free will?

Because I don't understand it.

Premise #1 God gave humans Free will.

Premise #2 God knows EVERYTHING in advance.

Premise #3 God knows your entire life before you actually live it.

Premise #4 Humans have free will to do as they please

However Premise #3 states that God already knows what you're going to do in advance, so he already knows if you are going to hell or heaven.

Where is the Free will?!?!?

Also, how exactly is free will free if we have no choice?


Choice #1.....Accept Jesus and be "saved"

Choice #2.....don't do anything and be damned.

LOL WHAT?

How is this free will?

[shrewsbury]

habs,

sure, what i have ever said related to the bible that wasn't common sense?

decieve is not the word i would use, my mentor is a buddhist, and is the greatest person i know.

[habsheaven]

I've never met a Christian who denied the existence of free will and I've never known a Christian who though free will was a tool of the devil.

As for veggieman, I have no idea what he believes. As I said, there's a lot of generalizations in there and in my experience, the people who ask, "Why would a God allow this" tend to be non-believers.

You have conversed with a few of them on this forum. There was a rather long thread about the very subject a couple of weeks ago.

That's one of the things I like about veggieman; he likes to ask questions that challenge his own beliefs.

[JustAlex]

More on "free will".

If I have a gun to your head and there are two boxes in front of you, and I say you have "free will" to choose either box.

However, If you choose box #2 I will pull the trigger, if you choose box #1 I will not pull the trigger.

Again....How is this Free will???

[habsheaven]

habs,

sure, what i have ever said related to the bible that wasn't common sense?

decieve is not the word i would use, my mentor is a buddhist, and is the greatest person i know.

Jay, you are an exception.

I wasn't really referring to any modern day Buddhists. I was talking about the people who established the religion in the beginning.

[shrewsbury]

alex, fair response and questions

free will is simply we can choose to do whatever we want. god knowing everything in advance is simply do to the idea (give me this one i said idea) that god is everything, so being the future makes him "know" our choices, not dictate them. also being the past and the future, he knows your life before you lived it, but again it does not mean he dictates it.

i know you don't believe in the christian god as the God, but for me, this is part of how i understand the little that i do know.

[Wickabee]

You have conversed with a few of them on this forum. There was a rather long thread about the very subject a couple of weeks ago.

That's one of the things I like about veggieman; he likes to ask questions that challenge his own beliefs.

Well, I'm completely unaware of said thread, haven't been in this section for awhile.

My question would be, if God didn't give us free will, where did it come from? Or are we all under the iron fist of God and murderers aren't evil because they have no choice?

[JustAlex]

alex, fair response and questions

free will is simply we can choose to do whatever we want. god knowing everything in advance is simply do to the idea (give me this one i said idea) that god is everything, so being the future makes him "know" our choices, not dictate them. also being the past and the future, he knows your life before you lived it, but again it does not mean he dictates it.

i know you don't believe in the christian god as the God, but for me, this is part of how i understand the little that i do know.

Ok that's fine, and I accept your answer.

I just don't understand how we can have "free will" if God already knows our decision.

If god did not know our decision then I would say that we really did have free will, but then a bigger contradiction arises, If god doesn't know our decision ahead of time then he is not omniscient.

And if god is not omniscient then he is not god.

Do you see the huge paradox?

This is what I mean, this is why I can't believe, because eventually the more I question things, I will come up to an inevitable paradox.

[shrewsbury]

habs, fair enough.

if i said i had the "right" answer, it would just show how foolish i am. when it comes to good people of other faiths or no faith does that mean they go to hell? my morals tell me no, and most christians would say yes they would have to, but i am unsure. i know what i believe, but can this really be true.

the facts i know, and believe is the actual saying of jesus, and he says you can only come to the father by Me. but he was speaking to some jews, some greeks, and maybe a few romans, but his message was for the world.

then we would have to look at the act of being doomed to burn in hell. we really only know that there will be a day of judgement, so here maybe someone could get by. and also we see jesus going to hell to grab some people and save them, so we have this loop hole, then there are other sayings that seem to speak of other ways.

[drtom2005]

In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.
Persinger thus argues that religious experience and belief in God are merely the results of electrical anomalies in the human brain. He opines that the religious bents of even the most exalted figures—for instance, Saint Paul, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha—stem from such neural quirks. The popular notion that such experiences are good, argues Persinger in his book Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (Praeger Publishers, 1987), is an outgrowth of psychological conditioning in which religious rituals are paired with enjoyable experiences. Praying before a meal, for example, links prayer with the pleasures of eating. God, he claims, is nothing more mystical than that.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...e-brain&page=2

I've gone back and forth on this question in my life. I will likely continue. I wonder if the god experience is just like a smile. Pre-programming of our brain. Smiles are good and this experience should be too. I just wish people wouldn't allow their personal beliefs to interfere with others. You do not have to smile at someone who smiles at you. :))))