I'm feeling pretty... Blackpilled, at the moment. Maybe even worse than that. Things are bad. Things keep getting worse. Not just politically, but... As a human being. All the failed relationships, all the lost friendships, all the... Shit, that has happened in my life, is sort of getting to me pretty bad.
But more than that, it feels like we're losing. Like things... Are spiralling out of control (in Aus, but also outside it). I literally can't look at ANY popular media, or any sort of news, without being utterly bombarded by it.
So... If you've got a good "whitepill", or just... Something that counteracts all this... Existential angst, and feelings of sheer... Doom, I would appreciate hearing it, I guess. Thanks. While it lasts, and while I last.
So which are you conceding, omniscience or omnipotence?
Edit: I breezed past this on my first read - what other "created beings" besides humans are you ascribing the ability to "make decisions" to? Is this a veiled reference to The Devil?
There is no conflict between free will and omniscience. There's even a story in the Bible where David asks if he should stay in camp and God tells him he will surely be slain by his enemies. So David leaves and what God told him didn't come to pass.
There's also no conflict between evil and omnipotence. Simply because God can do something doesn't mean He is obligated to. He's choosing to play the game with us, seeing how we'll handle things. He'd rather guide us to a win than simply flip the board, even though He could.
The devil isn't omniscient nor omnipresent. Do you think all supernatural evil is carried out by old scratch all on his own?
So did God know at the beginning of the world what choice David would eventually make? If He did, where exactly is the "choice" or "free will" afforded to David? If He didn't, He's not omniscient.
1 Kings 22:19-22 seems to indicate that God is aware of all possible outcomes and holds His tongue about them.
This is a serious question, I'm not trying to derail our conversation: if God is a "perfect observer" (in a scientific sense) how does His omniscience deny free will? If you stand over the maze and can see every outcome from the beginning, how are you robbing the mouse of its will?
Thank you for taking me seriously (I think...one can never rule out trolls here on the internet)
To put it bluntly, it would be a fair scientific experiment if you only designed the maze and were trying to understand the behavior of the mouse in that environment.
My trouble is that God (purportedly) designed both the maze and the mouse. Exactly what are you trying to learn about the mouse by subjecting it to suffering if you already know everything about it?
My optimistic answer to these riddles is that God had no choice but to introduce suffering into the world in order to come to know more about Himself.