Concerning Pain, Evil and Suffering

[Mark Quayle]

Do you admit, however, that this response looks to take a fairly large dip in the fallacious reasoning pool? (i.e.) Special pleading with a decently healthy dose of possible rogue assertion?

Sure, since I posted nothing to back it up. That doesn't mean there is nothing, but perhaps that I just didn't take the time.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

I believe that God uses time, He could not be outside it for He could not be shocked by man's sins, if He was outside of time He would just know they were going to happen:

Gen 6:5-7 And the Lord saw that the sin of man was great on the earth, and that all the thoughts of his heart were evil. And the Lord had sorrow because he had made man on the earth, and grief was in his heart. And the Lord said, I will take away man, whom I have made, from the face of the earth, even man and beast and that which goes on the earth and every bird of the air; for I have sorrow for having made them.

I do believe that God knows everything that can happen, He can foreknow events. In Artificial Intelligence there is a branch of knowledge called a Decision Tree, it can predict all possible outcomes in a game based upon free will or random choices of players. If we take this concept to God, we can say within creation God can know ahead of time, every possible outcome of free will choices. The level to which He constrains these outcomes is unknown. But some constraints, in the form of stories, may be necessary to reduce, even God's, computational abilities. In reality, God probably uses something other than a Decision Tree to know the future, but a Decision Tree shows we can know all outcomes in advance, yet still, be bound by time.

Do you think that time, as we experience it, had a beginning? And if so, how did time come into being? And if not, how are we where we are if all of infinity has to occur before we get to where we are now?

 

[FutureAndAHope]

Do you think that time, as we experience it, had a beginning? And if so, how did time come into being? And if not, how are we where we are if all of infinity has to occur before we get to where we are now?

Hmmmm. The only thought that I have is that of dimensions, we live in a 3D world, x,y, z. If we tried to explain our world in a 2D space, x, y, we could get a picture of what a 3D world looked like, but we would lose some of the vividness of our experiences. God may live in a dimension x,z,y,i,j a world that is unexplainable to our 3-dimensional time-based world. Basically what I am saying is God may be outside of the natural constraints of our reality, we may be bound by time He may not. As for beginnings, technically there is no such thing as a beginning. We exist. Our time-constrained dimension can not explain it, our rational mind hurts to express it. Time had a beginning in our world, hence "God created" time. Time may be self-binding, although created, it may put boundaries on God's abilities, which in reality are far above our own. The rules He created for our world may bind His experiences.