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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • This is at best a sophomoric argument.

    It’s like a new postgraduate physics student trying to apply Newton’s Laws to quarks. While Newton’s laws provide a framework for understanding motion in everyday contexts, the behavior of quarks requires a different set of principles that are part of quantum mechanics. Newton’s laws are still valid for macroscopic objects, but do not apply to the quantum realm, where quarks operate.

    The laws of reason and logic are dependent on the order God imposed on the universe. God is metaphysical. He is not subject to His creation, BUT, the fact that there IS order and understandable systems tell us that God IS understandable, to a degree. His creation reflects His self. But if you think you’ll crush Him in his own vise, you are quite mistaken. There is no epistemological dilemma you’ll spear God with

    God is a God of order. (1 Cor. 14:33)



  • Certainly? You have a better candidate? Baal? Molech? Satan, perhaps?

    You do you; pick a side, deny the battle, anything you choose.

    I’m quite seriously suggesting that the God of the Bible, and specifically the Christian God, is is the most perfect God that could be imagined, and yet wholly unexpected as He is revealed. The God of the Bible soothes no one. He ruffles everyone’s feathers. He is pure perfect and exacting. Yet there is love and mercy there.

    Now, His followers have done a lot to screw up that presentation. But that’s as it always has been. In the Old Testament, in Jesus’s day, and now, the people of God - even those with direct divine revelation - have been misrepresenting Him.

    Joshua 24:15 NIV

    But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. [Or the gods of reason, science, and unbelief?] But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”



  • Well, Christianity presents us with many things with seemingly contradictory qualities that are nonetheless to be held in tension, and not resolved.

    For instance, Jesus Himself is fully man, and fully God. Not half and half. No division, no partiality. Completely 100% a man. And completely 100% God.

    Same with the Bible. Who wrote it? Humans, of course. Every word. AND…

    2 Timothy 3:16

    All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness

    There are earthly parallels as well. Light is both a wave and a particle (we’re still sorting that out). Schrödinger’s cat. There are lots of examples.

    There’s nothing unusual about a situation where God is fully in control of everything and humans have free will. It’s just hard to wrap your head around.

    The answer isn’t to say, “God can’t (or won’t) do anything about that.” That denies God’s power and goodness.

    The answer is also not to say, “Since I’m God’s puppet I have no will or blame.” That denies our responsibility and sin.

    The Bible is quite clear that both are true. God is powerful, good, and in control. And humans are capable, sinful, and responsible for their actions.


  • Yes, we agree completely. I just meant the word “wanted” is pejorative. You can intend something without necessarily wanting it.

    When he was little my son broke the growth plate off of his arm at the wrist. It was essential that it be pushed back into place. The doctor needed me to hold him still, to hold his arm still as he pushed that bone back on top where it belonged.

    My son had a lot of pain. I didn’t want to hold him still while he endured that pain. But I intended to. I did it.



  • “Wanted” is a funny word. The idea that there’s something difficult to understand about a supreme being who is so far above us that he created not only us but the entire universe according to what’s revealed about him? That shouldn’t seem a strange idea.

    Imagine if we met an advanced alien who had technology far beyond ours. We might not be able to understand a lot of the way they thought, spoke, or acted.

    The thing is, it actually says that in the Bible.

    Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

    Yet we keep wanting to subject Him not only to our reasoning, but to our language.



  • Well, since this is a religious discussion, I’m a Christian. It’s always God.

    Job 1:6-12 very clearly shows God granting permission for Satan to test Job.

    1 Kings 22:19-22 shows the “court in heaven” and God soliciting ideas from spirits for enticing Ahab to attack Ramoth Gilead, where he will die. When a good suggestion is made, God grants permission.

    Exodus 10:1-2 states clearly that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to not let the slaves go, so that God could display his “signs” (plagues).

    Satan is a liar, and the father of lies.

    Romans 9:19-21 NIV

    One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?