The one question that keeps getting me...

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I understand most of the other religious arguments for/against God and all that, but someone posited this to me, and I was stumped.

"If God is all knowing [past, present, future], why would he create a person who he knows is not going to follow his will, and as a result go to hell? Thus, why would he create people that he knows will go to hell?"

The concept of "free will" comes into play here I supppose, but doesn't that go against the idea that God knows everything?

I'm stumped.

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Rule #1- Never attempt to understand something that is totally illogical by the use of logic and reason. It won't work, and it will drive you batty.

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Re: The one question that keeps getting me...

JustanObserver wrote:

I understand most of the other religious arguments for/against God and all that, but someone posited this to me, and I was stumped.

"If God is all knowing [past, present, future], why would he create a person who he knows is not going to follow his will, and as a result go to hell? Thus, why would he create people that he knows will go to hell?"

The concept of "free will" comes into play here I supppose, but doesn't that go against the idea that God knows everything?

I'm stumped.

You are not alone my friend. It is possible that our entire purpose is to be cannon fodder in some sort of war game between God and his opposite number and that God loves us as we would love a prized possession but is not sentimental about us. It's as good a theory as any maybe.

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The belief that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omni-benevolent is completely unsubstantiated and illogical, as are most religious tenets.

The belief that we have an immortal soul which will be rewarded or punished after death is necessary because there is obviously no divine justice in this life.

God may create some souls purely for the sake of torturing them. Who is there to tell him it is wrong? How would the sole ruler of the universe develop a system of ethics without any social interaction?

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The silence from all the religious people here is deafening. Confused

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I'll try to explain this from an Islamic perspective.

In Islam, You are doing whatever you like by choice. When you get married, that means you got the lady whom you liked to marry. After you get married, you will discover that God (Allah in Arabic) Knew about that and helped the two of you to be together. Sometimes you can feel that when you look at the events in which you discovered that girl is the best one for you.

Even further, maybe you think that you met her by accident, by your opinion. However, this was not accident. When you look at how that happened, you will find a lot of things that you can't interpret without including preparation of God (Allah) almighty to those things. This means that we are free to do whatever we like and we are responsible for those choices that we make. God (Allah) almighty doesn't force us to do things.

Another example: Suppose a meal contains deadly poison, if a person knows this and eats it and dies, he will be punished by God (Allah)almighty for committing suicide. Now, if he has no idea about the components of the meal, if he dies he will not be punished by God (Allah)almighty because the presence of the poison is beyond the knowledge of this person.

In the day of judgement, God (Allah) almighty will only ask us about those things we could have done. We will not be responsible for the things that are beyond our reach and capacity.

Best Regards.

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Re: The one question that keeps getting me...

JustanObserver wrote:

I understand most of the other religious arguments for/against God and all that, but someone posited this to me, and I was stumped.

"If God is all knowing [past, present, future], why would he create a person who he knows is not going to follow his will, and as a result go to hell? Thus, why would he create people that he knows will go to hell?"

The concept of "free will" comes into play here I supppose, but doesn't that go against the idea that God knows everything?

I'm stumped.

One way I see it is that we are all destined to end at a certain place. How we get there is up to us. We are given a choice of paths but the nature of us all is already there. I sometimes wonder if mankind was sort of an experiment gone awry. If you read the bible, you know that God had to even cast out some angels from heaven. Seems a little silly to have to clean house when all you should have in the house is good.

Basically, I don't know the answer to this question.
Smile

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Re: The one question that keeps getting me...

JustanObserver wrote:

I understand most of the other religious arguments for/against God and all that, but someone posited this to me, and I was stumped.

"If God is all knowing [past, present, future], why would he create a person who he knows is not going to follow his will, and as a result go to hell? Thus, why would he create people that he knows will go to hell?"

The concept of "free will" comes into play here I supppose, but doesn't that go against the idea that God knows everything?

I'm stumped.

Weelll, what the hell...
Think of dimensions:
Point = zero dimension
Square the point; Or move the point 90 degrees to itself = line = 1 dimension.
Square the line; Or move the line 90 degrees to itself = plane = 2 dimension.
Square the plane; Or move the plane 90 degrees to itself = cube, an object = 3 dimensions
Square the object; Or move the object 90 degrees to itself = time = 4 dimensions
Square time; Or move time 90 degrees to itself = All possibilities in time = 5 dimensions
Square all possibilities; Or move all possiblities 90 degrees to itself = All and Everything in the universe = 6 dimensions
Square the universe; Or move the universe 90 degrees to itself = Beats the Hell out of me = 7 dimensions
Square Beats the Hell Out of Me; Or move Beats the Hell Out of Me 90 degrees to itself = G-d = 8 dimensions

Every dimension could perceive the dimension below it, but cannot percieve the dimension above it.

Therefore, just because the higher dimension (in this case G-d) can see and understand the lower dimension, in this case man - the third dimensional being traveling through the fourth dimension, and G-d can see all of the possibilities in the 5th dimension, and can see All and Everything possible or impossible in this man's life, does not mean that you, the man, do not have free will.
It simply means that sometimes, your free will is going to cause you problems.
That's Life.
Very Happy

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Im going to tell you the Truth about why God created people that may turn out to be very bad people.
Please do not accuse me of trying to preach anything, because i am preaching nothing.
I am giving the True answer to your question.
I respect anyones choice not to accept it, and i have no way to prove that God exists.
You have to figure that out on your own.

God created people to be his babies.
He created us as His children to rule over His creation of everything in the physical universe.
God feels emotions the same way we do, and he only wants love from us if we love him too.

How would any of you feel if you forced all of your loved ones to love you?
Do you admit that you only want the love of someone who wants to love you?

Well God only wants love that is given to him freely. He gave the first man he created the option of free will.
That very first man had been given an important choice to make.....Obey Gods rules, or do whatever he wanted to do.
He decided to make his own choices and live for himself, so he ate from the tree....which was a rule God told him not to do.

Ever since that first man, we have allways made our own choices and have been following only the laws that we create for ourselves.
God does not ignore us or let all the bad things happen.
God is letting us do exactly what we insist on......ruling over ourselves.

God is waiting for us to realize that all the terrible and sad things in our world are a result of our own decision to rule ourselves.
God is letting a certain amount of time go by, and then God is going to decide who all is worthy to the inheritance of ruling his creation.

God will only accept people into this "heaven" who love Him, and accept Him as the only one that understands how to rule over us........ to have lives of perfect love, equality, happiness, joy, etc. forever and ever without a single negative experience.

After God has given his creation an existence with only people who accept him as our Creating Father, and acknowledging that only He allways knows the best form of government..........we will have NO murder, rape, pain, poverty, sickness, death, etc.

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Four thousand years ago, when a Judaic tribesman bragged to a wandering celt that,

"Oh yeah, well my deity is everywhere at once and he can do anything and he knows everything too. So there!"

He didn't realise that the people of today would be utilising advanced methods of logic to scan through the claim with a fine toothed comb.

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JustanObserver - your question is impossible to answer but isn't it interesting? Those who believe in God can't possibly know the mind of God, those who don't believe in God don't care. But as Einstein said, "Curiousity has its own reason for existence."

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God created us as his children, not as puppets. Do you have children? They will do as they please even if it doesn't please you. You can't control people, yet you love them and try to raise them as best as you can knowing that they have a mind of their own and a will of their own. One starts a family (hopefully) to raise and nurture them and love them and have them love you back, but they WILL stumble and fall. You still love them and when they do wrong you punish them with a loving heart. This is what God does. You WARN them of the dangers out there and the consequences of their wrong decisions. God does this with us. Unfortunately the consequences of our wrong decisions concerning God and His ways is death and if we don't accept Jesus as the redemption for our sins then we get the one way ticket in the smoking section if you know what I mean. God does not send us to Hell, that is our decision which way we want to go when we put on the pine pajamas.

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Quote:

How we get there is up to us. We are given a choice of paths but the nature of us all is already there.

Not possible if you Have an omniscient god. This means god knows EVERYTHING. Not most things but EVERYTHING. Fathom that. Imagine you approach a fork in the road. You don't know which one you will "choose" but God does because he inevitably knows which one will be chosen as he has to know everything about the future. AS your choice has already be decided since the beginning you really have no choice. It is fate for you to choose the one path. You only have the ILLUSION of free will but no free will itself. Such is the case with an omniscient god.

Quote:

If you read the bible, you know that God had to even cast out some angels from heaven. Seems a little silly to have to clean house when all you should have in the house is good.

But if God is omniscient then in the blink of an eye those angels are gone. Satan is gone in a blink of an eye. There should be no ending war. God's power should never be challenged because he knows what is too happen.

Then one concludes that God must make the perfect decisions every time based on he knows the outcome of every decision. However it is quite obvious he does not in the Bible as Adam falls from Eden. Obviously it would have been fruitless to even create Eden if God knew he would remove man from it. Obviously he knew Adam would eat the fruit and that Satan would coerce him to do so. Why not, if God wanted paradise for man, just remove Satan? If he did not want paradise for man why have Eden to begin with? Why have other people born into other religions supposedly damning them to hell? Why is there even a hell to challenge God? Does God want a challenge? Can God create a boulder he himself cannot lift?

quote about omniscience and omnipotence of God

Quote:

These situation imply that God is not "all powerful", or omnipotent. If he was all powerful, then nothing-- nothing at all-- would be impossible for him, including changing his own mind. But clearly, He cannot change his mind if He knows the future. Thus He is robbed of his omnipotence by his own omniscience. In other words, the terms "all-knowing" and "all-powerful" are contradictory terms. They both can't be true at the same time.

Food for thought...

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The one question that keeps getting me...

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