In the Omniscience draft, players can cast all spells without paying their mana costs, allowing them to play without playing any lands in their deck. This means that players do not have to pay for alternative costs, such as kicker costs. However, they can pay additional costs, such as kicker costs, if the card has any mandatory additional costs, such as Tormenting Voice.
In the Omniscience Phantom Draft event, players can cast all spells for free in MTG Arena. The biggest change in the draft is that players can play all spells without paying their mana costs, meaning they do not play any lands in their deck. Removal spells and counterspells can be used in the event, but they do not offer significant tempo advantages.
Kicking the card like normal, however, requires payment. If a card says “cast without paying mana cost”, players can only play it once. Additionally, if a card has any mandatory additional costs, such as Tormenting Voice, those must be paid separately.
The oracle on Omniscience states that players may cast nonland cards from their hand without paying their mana costs. However, if a card says “cast without paying mana cost”, players only need to pay for the kicker cost with actual mana.
Omniscience plays a card you select from your Draw Pile two times and then exhausts it from your deck. The energy cost of the targeted card is disregarded, and you can cast another spell before any player can attempt to remove Omniscience with spells or abilities.
In summary, the Omniscience draft allows players to cast all spells without paying their mana costs, allowing them to play without playing lands or paying additional costs. However, the free mana each turn will suffice for the kicker cost.
📹 The Problems With Omniscience: Dilemmas Of An All-Knowing God
In this episode, I dive into the problems of god’s omniscience, examining the concept of an all-knowing deity and its implications …
Can Omniscience pay for kicker?
Any additional costs, such as those associated with the “kicker,” as well as mandatory costs, including those related to the “Tormenting Voice,” must be satisfied in order to successfully cast the spell.
Can you cast creatures with Omniscience?
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How does Omniscience work?
Dexterity modifiers will no longer reward Accuracy or Evasion Rating in Omniscience, but will give bonuses to Elemental Resistance and Elemental Penetration. Modifiers to Attributes include effects that change a character’s Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, or a combination of the three. Each class has 60 Attribute points, so calculating the overall modifier value is simple. The effectiveness of the amulet depends on the roll of each effect.
Crystallised Omniscience is not suitable for builds relying on Attribute bonuses, but can benefit from builds using multiple elements. It also has synergies with items that negate Attribute benefits. Once the new item appears in the new league, players can buy POE Currency for a better gaming experience.
How does Omniscience work in Poe?
Dexterity modifiers will no longer reward Accuracy or Evasion Rating in Omniscience, but will give bonuses to Elemental Resistance and Elemental Penetration. Modifiers to Attributes include effects that change a character’s Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, or a combination of the three. Each class has 60 Attribute points, so calculating the overall modifier value is simple. The effectiveness of the amulet depends on the roll of each effect.
Crystallised Omniscience is not suitable for builds relying on Attribute bonuses, but can benefit from builds using multiple elements. It also has synergies with items that negate Attribute benefits. Once the new item appears in the new league, players can buy POE Currency for a better gaming experience.
Can you kick a spell multiple times?
The cost of a kicker does not affect the mana cost or the converted mana cost of a spell. Such payments can only be made on a single occasion, unless the card in question features a “multikicker” feature, in which case the payment may be repeated. In some cases, spells possess supplementary effects when they are “kicked.”
Can you overload spells with Omniscience?
In the context of Omniscience, it is not possible to pay additional costs such as overload, bestow, or kicker. In the event that a spell permits the caster to cast it without paying its mana cost, it is to be treated as though it were being cast in the normal manner.
What is the kick rule in Magic The Gathering?
Kicking a spell is an optional action that can be done at the same time as choosing a spell’s mode and mana cost. It is important to note that you can only pay a specific kicker cost once unless the card says “multikicker” instead of kicker. Some instant and sorcery spells have additional effects if they were kicked, while others have different effects.
Some permanents with kicker enter the battlefield with counters on them or have “enters the battlefield” triggered abilities that check whether they were kicked when cast as a spell. If such a permanent is put onto the battlefield as a result of a spell or ability, there is no opportunity to kick them. If a permanent has a targeted “enters the battlefield” ability that triggers if it was kicked, the target isn’t chosen until the permanent enters the battlefield and the ability triggers (as opposed to when that permanent was cast).
Kicker costs don’t change a spell’s mana cost or mana value. If a kicked spell is copied, the copy is also kicked. Older cards with kicker abilities had the text “if you paid the kicker cost” or “if its kicker cost was paid”. Cards now say “if it was kicked”.
Assist kicker is a variant of the kicker ability, and only the assist kicker cost (or part of that cost) can be paid by another player. Any other costs must be paid by the spell’s controller.
In some games, players may not be allowed to pass the ball if there are no other players on their team. However, if All-Star Kicker was kicked, its last ability will still give creatures you control +1/+1 and haste until the end of the turn.
Can you kick a spell from the Isochron scepter?
In Oram’s chant, it is stated that a player is unable to cast spells during this turn and that their creatures are similarly prevented from attacking if they are kicked.
What is the kicker rule in Magic The Gathering?
When casting a spell with kicker, players can cast the spell for its mana cost or pay the kicker cost in addition to the spell’s mana cost. Paying the kicker cost gives an additional effect printed on the card, such as casting Jace, Mirror Mage or obtaining a Jace and a token copy. Multikicker is an ability introduced in Worldwake, Magic, allowing players to pay a kicker cost multiple times and receive an effect for each time.
The Everflowing Chalice in Commander can create varying amounts of mana based on how many times the card can be kicked. Some cards have multiple or alternate kicker costs, and not all costs necessarily cost mana. Goblin Barrage from Dominaria allows players to sacrifice an artifact or goblin to kick it.
How much Omniscience is needed?
The elemental resistance and penetration rate on missions are 1% per ten, resulting in a considerable degree of penetration. This is evidenced by the fact that a hundred missions result in ten percent penetration and ten percent all ellie res.
Can you kick a spell if you cast it for free?
You can pay for kicker on a free spell, but it is not free. A “kicked” spell is a spell where the kicker cost is paid, and all cards with kicker state that “if the card was kicked, then do this”. Some cards like Roost of Drakes and Verazol, the Split Current reference kicked cards for extra benefits. Kicker does not increase the mana value of a kicked spell, as it is equal to the printed card’s mana value. Despite spending more mana to cast the spell, kicker does not change the card’s mana value.
📹 The 4 Ways to Write 3rd Person Omniscient
3rd Person Omniscient is historically one of the most used POVs, but these days you don’t see it as much. How do you write third …
When I was 15 years old, I started having a medical condition called hemiplegic migraine attacks. My doctors frequently misdiagnosed and mistreated it. I can’t tell you the amount of excruciating physical and emotional pain that I suffered year after year because of it and the multitude of losses I incurred. It bankrupted me because I could no longer work after I worked my butt off to get a Master’s degree. Took away my driver’s license thereby ending my frèedom. I frequently went unconscious for days sometimes because the pain was too great for my brain to handle. I lost friends and family members because I became unreliable and a burden on everyone. When I was still 15 years old, I was told that it was an extremely rare autosomal dominant condition that had no known cure. Meaning that there was a 50/50 chance my kid would have it. I was also told it was atleast partially hormonal and any pregnancy would be extreme high risk. And that taking birth control pills would put me at an extreme risk for a stroke. Knowing full well that if my kid had this disease, it would be my fault for being so selfish as to risk it. And, knowing there is absolutely no way I could watch my child go through the intense agony I have repeatedly gone through, I made the most responsible decision I think I could have made in never having children. I don’t understand how a loving god could make me…knowingly perusal me suffer and do NOTHING as I writhed in pain begging it for help to make these things go away.
One of my biggest problems I have never gotten a good answer from Christians is “why did God create Lucifer knowing he would fall”. Many Christians argue the suffering/pain of the world is a result of sin/evil/the fall and that the devil is at the pinnacle of all of that. The problem then to me is if God knew lucifer would cause all that evil/suffering etc, why create him knowing full well what would happen.
The problem isn’t omniscience. It’s not even omnipotence and omnipresents (they have some paradoxes, but you could work with that), but the real problem is if you mix in omnibenevolence. That implies that all good come from him. However what to do with all the evil in the world (or just things that are not good)? Yeah you could just blame a devil figure, but who created the devil figure with the knowledge that he would do such a thing. Not to mentioned that what someones finds good is evil in the eyes of others. Someone can claim he is 100% good, but someone else could say he is 100% evil. Is god good because he knows what good is (which implies goodnes came somewhere else) or is good good because god says so (which implies he can say anything and it would be considered good). If a higher being exist that created the universe, it probably doesn’t really care that much about us (100%) or is asleep/passive for alot of time
Excellent points. It’s this concept that always gave me pause, even back when I was a devout little Southern Baptist boy. Why would you undertake an enterprise if you knew how disastrously wrong it would all go beforehand? And once it did, why not just erase it all and start over and spare everyone the turmoil? What even is the purpose of any of this; why did any of it need to be? You created a being to acknowledge and worship you, yet 95% of those beings you’re going to send to Hell. I don’t think there are really any sound arguments to defend this. They usually just end up being, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” or, “You don’t have a right to judge God.” Which I think is ridiculous. If I’m caught in the middle of this mess, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to pass judgment on something I cannot justify or even comprehend.
Another nail in the coffin for god’s omniscience is that if he is all knowing, he can forsee the future. If he can forsee the future, he cannot change his mind. If he cannot change his mind, then his mind seems robotic and not conscious. If his mind is robotic, then all our actions are predetermined and we don’t have free will
Once again, spot on! I often think back to questions I used to ask about god when I was a kid (like why pray if god already knows the outcome; I was told that he likes to be asked) I think my b.s. meter was going off loud and clear then, but the longer I was indoctrinated, the quieter it got. Why would I ever want to serve a god that would make throw away people as part of his “perfect” plan? “Because God’s ways are higher than our ways and it will all make sense when we get to heaven” 😂 Can’t wait to see the other article coming up!
I always struggled with this one. The version I settled on was basically thinking that instead of knowing all my choices He knew the outcomes for each and every possible choice and that each time we went down a different branch. Kinda like a super complicated tree branch thing. That way I could have my free will by making the choice and he’d have omniscience by knowing my actual choice and every possible alternative web. The only thing with that was that it created mental gaps with him having a plan which I squared by thinking he pretty much just set everything into motion and mostly left it all alone as long as the sum total was everything ending at his plan. Occasionally he’d have to intervene with a small nudge pushing someone in the right direction so we all get there. That then created mental gaps on prayer then. Does it work which i then squared with saying I’m so small and insignificant and the plan so complicated that whatever small nudge he made for me wouldn’t be enough to throw off the whole plan anyway. The mental gymnastics you’ve got to use to keep your faith once you take a few seconds to think about it is astounding.
Really well said. I started making a list of things I would have done differently had I been god and it quickly got so long I abandoned it. Just practical things about the world and life – we don’t have to be a god to recognize what could be improved to reduce suffering. A little compassion goes a long way.
Like Michael said in an earlier comment, you have a great gift in articulating the very things I have pondered for so many years. My ADHD mind often has a difficult time putting thoughts and ideas into a coherent dispute, so thank you for sharing your words. I look forward to every article you put out.
My son was born 36 years ago with a genetic disorder that has prevented him from growing up mentally. In many ways he is still a toddler, but a toddler with 36 years of experiencing this world. It seems at times that his mind is superior to anyone I know, in that he has no vision of the future, no thoughts of what he will be doing next year, or next month. He lives entirely in the present. His concept of God is pure and untarnished by emotion. He sees God as just another fictional character on the same level as Poke’ Mon. Through him I have come to understand more about the human mind than most will ever see. He taught me that every day is a new chance to get closer to my goal of a perfect knowledge of reality, without any of the false ideas of yesterday. Every morning I can see far more clearly than I did the night before. Every day, my mind is new.
As an (ex) catholic, I do remember oftentimes the question of unjust suffering being a hot topic in a few groups I was active in (I was fairly involved in a catholic discord for a while that had a very active debate/apologetics website.) From what I can gather, the most reported conclusion/excuse for things like animal suffering in particular was this: “Suffering only came into the world when the sin was committed and the trust between god and his creation was broken. By sinning against their creator, Adam and Eve brought death and pain into the world, not only for humanity, but for all creatures.” They would often point to descriptions in the bible about the serenity of the garden of Eden, and symbolism about lions and lambs resting together peacefully after the second coming of christ created the new perfect earth. This of course cycles back into questions of **why”” exactly an all-loving, all-knowing and “merciful” god would cause such a domino effect to affect arguably completely innocent animals due to the mistakes of two humans, but also notice that it plays directly into the guilt narrative that perpetuates almost every aspect of christian/catholic philosophy. Because humans are so despicable, all the innocent pure animals of the world were thrust into chaos and violence– we bear the guilt of quite literally every instance of pain on the planet on our shoulders simply by being born–something we did not even ask for in the first place. It’s all so tiresome, and so very mind numbing to wrap your head around.
I have additional problems with the “All Knowing” concept. 1) Being all knowing is a prison from which there is no escape. If you have absolute knowledge to the smallest detail as to what you are going to do in the next minute, hour, day, and decade… what choice do you have? Nothing happens, inside or outside of time, that you can control. You are trapped in a movie. A terrible fate even for a god. 2) Where does god get all this knowledge? How does he come by it? Why is it assumed that he can just get it… like something that is a trivial exercise? How does one start from nothing and then suddenly have all this knowledge. I am aware of the “begotten not made” excuse, but being “begotten” does not mean you have all knowledge. Anyway, two more point that bug me about omniscience.
I remember when I was a kid asking a question about the effects of one choice or another, and someone said something along the lines of “God can see all different possibilities of people.” He knows when someone makes one choice, but then he can see that person making the opposite/alternative choice. With that logic, God sees people make a good choices or better choices, good choices or bad choices, and/or bad choices or worse choices. If he can see all these possibilities then this makes God even worse than you think. If God is omnipotent and omniscient (of all possibilities), then he can witness a world where people aren’t discriminatory, prejudice, murderous, pedophiliac, sexist, or evil and can change that. He can see a world where “his children” are making good decisions. One the flip side he sees and knows the worse possibilities that someone can be in. He sees a woman about to be rapped, a man committing suicide, a kid being bullied. He witnesses a holocaust, a war, slavery, a wave of societal violence. Whether or not it happens he sees it happening. God is either: – omnipotent and omniscient AND cruel, – or he’s omniscient but NOT omnipotent, – or NEITHER omniscient or omnipotent, – or he doesn’t exist. And if someone says “god’s ways are mysterious and beyond our understanding,” if that were true then we wouldn’t have an entire book about him. And God giving people free will to make decisions is pointless because if an all powerful being meddles with mortal beings then there’s interference.
The only thing I would have added was the interaction between omniscience and omnipotence and furthermore omnibenevolence: you cannot be both omniscient AND omnipotent, and arguably you cannot possess more than one of these three traits as they all necessarily cancel each other out. If you are all knowing then you know every action you will ever take and when you’ll make them. If you know every action you will ever take and when you’ll make them then you are subject to determinism and thus have no power to make any decisions. Free will is the power to make decisions(there are many definitions of free will and I would argue most of not all fit this syllogism’s purpose) Therefore omniscience is incompatible with free will. Conclusion A: If you lack free will you cannot be all powerful. Omniscience is incompatible with free will. Therefore omniscience is incompatible with omnipotence. Conclusion B: If you lack free will your actions cannot be motivated by morality even if they are congruent to what is to be considered moral. Omniscience is incompatible with free will. Therefore omniscience is incompatible with omnibenevolence. And just round things off it’s not hard to understand why being all good means you powerless to perform evil and therefore prevents an all good being from being all powerful. I’m sure there is a shorter, simpler, and more elegant version of this argument but this is generally how I tend to present it.
I think a better way to put the conflict between omniscience and free will is this : Omniscience is only possible if everything is already determined. It’s not that knowing what we will do forces us to do it, it’s that if what we will do is not already decided, there is no way to know, because we could decide either way at any point. You can’t know what i’ll do if i’m able to change my decision on the fly. The only “omniscience” compatible with free will is a probabilistic omniscience, meaning knowing that i have XX% chances of choosing something. But then, you just know the odds, so your plans can go awry.
Just thought of the hymn where we’d sing the quiet part out loud: “trust and obey, *for there’s no other way*, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey”. Willful ignorance and blind obedience is what kept me (relatively) happy in Jesus for 35 years. Then “I did some research, some thinking” the famous last words if anyone as a christian😅.
The Christian ‘god’ is said to be all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving (omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent) *an all-knowing ‘god would know what it would take for me to believe *an all-powerful ‘god’ could set in motion my belief without violating any ‘free will’ I allegedly have *an all-loving ‘god’ would want to do it, want me to believe and yet I still do not believe.
This is 4 months late, but I’d certainly like to give an opinion on 3 parts, (though I think I may be repeating myself from your other articles): the property of omniscience and how it relates to free will (I have not watched your Thursday article on free will yet), the problem of evil, and the mentality of Christian apologetic reasoning. I think for theists and atheists, we tend to focus a lot on how God’s omniscience affects us, but I don’t think we stop to think how it affects God himself. We can apply a very similar situation to God and we can sort of show that God doesn’t have free will as well: 1. God knows all 2. God has choices available to him 3. God has a range of actions available to him in regards to those choices 4. God knows what consequence will come out of all action in regards to all choices 5. HOWEVER, God knows what choice and action he will ultimately make While this won’t invalidate omniscience, it would invalidate his free will. If you know all, then even though you know have choices laid in front of you, you already know what choice you are going to make ultimately, forevermore. You become a puppet who can see the strings. We can also do a thought experiment with omniscience. Let’s say human beings evolve enough over the next few billion years that we are able to know and demonstrate literally everything in the universe instantaneously. Everything that can be known about the known universe is somehow able to be achieved. Not only that, but let’s say somehow, since we are able to model what human behavior in a group setting now, we are now able to model it down to an individual level due to new technologies.
Totally true on all the points. Suppose humans had to suffer to know good from bad. But what about animals? They do not choose, they live totally natural lives — no painkillers, no wound treatment, the worst meaning of the “natural” nightmare. Why? For what purpose? Why not creating them without pain receptors, or without a chance to suffer for days before they die? Because of what happens to them, I’ve struggled through depressive episodes since my childhood. I would never understand (or forgive) such a god =(
I love the way you summed up your article, it beautifully encapsulates the obvious glaring issue with trying to circumvent objection by side stepping to some concept of a challenger having no basis, right, or understanding of some supposed divine being. You brought it back to the actual issue, which is as it is claimed, in using all the concepts and language of humans, by humans, to argue a concept as we understand it – it fails. Any one of us could do better. To me there is simply no outcome that justifies a world where children are literally tortured, starving, or infected with horrifying parasitic organisms, unless the justification, the actual reason to proceed is for the cruelty. I find it sickening, but there could not be any other reason to proceed. My soul, yours, anyone’s is not worth that horror. Nobody should be Ok with the idea their eternal happiness is worth that.
Awesome content. Early off you touch on the Jesus never list. This is where I’m at. Abused in childhood, scapegoated and abused in marriage, alienated in divorce and I have to have Christian guilt because I escaped and omit these ppl? This guilt and shame kept me Married 15 yrs longer than needed. If there was a god that wanted me to follow him, then take away my molester(s) and the stain they left me with- but Jesus couldn’t know that and didn’t. Thank you. Helps.
To be fair, it’s not an atheistic argument, it’s a logical problem. There really is no middle-ground in the determinism vs free will debate. Either I have the free will to choose A or B or God already knows I’m going to choose A and my “free will” is just a deterministic illusion. You can’t be all-knowing and not know the future, that’s a contradiction. And if you know the future, then you already know I’m going to choose A. There was never an option of choosing B. It’s been predetermined. If we were to imagine a situation in which God does know the future and he knows I’m going to choose A, then I choose B instead, that means God isn’t all-knowing. It’s a logic problem. Altho I will check out that other article you mentioned. You have a very rub-able head. I like looking at it.
Thank you very much for making this really important article. There are many Bible verses that indicate predestination by God e.g. “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: God chose us before he created the world. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,” – Ephesians 1:4,5. (KJV). If the Bible is true, then the Biblical God is real and evil. If the Bible is false, then the Biblical God is imaginary and evil. What the Bible says does not match what we know from astronomy, physics, geology, biology, medicine and neuroscience. That’s why I think that the Bible is false and unethical.
I was told angels didn’t have free will, yet Lucifer and those 1/3 of all angels had enough free will to defy god. If angels have no free will, then god created Lucifer and 1/3 of the angels specifically to rebel and be kicked out and to later torment and tempt humans that he created to live on earth where he hurled Lucifer and 1/3 of the angels. He set us up to fail and then created us to follow a path that we have no choice over and then sends a majority of us to hell for not choosing him. That sounds beyond evil to me.
Hey Brandon Your articles are clear cut and well organized. Great content. Way to walk the viewer through the faulty mindsets of Christian dogma step by step. I do have one request.can you highlight how the Christian religion sets up people to be placed in a victim mentality. Thank you for the content!
The problem with omniscience is that it’s logically impossible! It’s a consequence of set theory and a lot of difficult logic. There are many technical terms involved, but I’ll try to explain while keeping it brief. First is the notion of Cardinality, which essentially captures the “size” of a set. Cardinalities are a way of putting each set into different buckets, where each item in a bucket has the same cardinality as any other item. Finite sets are easy: A set with three elements has a cardinality of three, as you would expect. So we’d put this set into the bucket labelled “three”. All other sets with three elements would also go into this bucket. And it’s clear to see that a set with four elements is fundamentally different to any of these sets, so that thing goes in the bucket labelled “four”. Infinite sets also have cardinalities, but it’s a lot more counterintuitive. Different infinite sets can have different cardinalities. (In terms of buckets, then different infinite sets go in different buckets. This is one situation in which the infinite behaves similarly to the finite – you can put the finite into different buckets, and you can put the infinite into different buckets.) The set of Natural numbers (1, 2, 3,…) has a cardinality labelled aleph 0. On the other hand, the set of Real numbers (put simply, the set of all decimals) has a cardinality called aleph 1. This is a larger cardinality than the Naturals. If you’ve ever heard the expression “some infinities are bigger than others”, this is where it comes from.
Great presentation. It remains problematic how & why God foresaw every suffering creature’s agony – the experience of every tortured prisoner, the despair of every slave, the tears of the abused, psychological and physical pain in man and beast, the torment of animals in the animal industrial complex and in vivisection labs – and yet went ahead with his creation project anyway. We seem not to have the capacity to really grasp the catastrophic depth and breadth of creaturely suffering. The current agony of the Jews and Palestinians is but one example of the nightmare God signed off on. Of course we assume God – if there is one – is good. The heretic Marcion believed the creator was evil: this goes a long way to answering a lot of the questions.
For me, all the philosophical arguments about the possibility or coherence of omniscience are irrelevant for one simple reason: Even presuming there exists an omniscient being, that being cannot prove it to non-omniscient beings. It’s completely unverifiable; even if the omniscient being is willing to offer any explanations or answers that are asked of it, there is no way to determine that it actually isn’t just finitely smarter than us by some indeterminate order of magnitude. Anyone who knows more than someone else can CLAIM they know everything, but that doesn’t make it true. This is fatal to tri-omni monotheism because it leaves inescapable doubt: It’s always possible that this supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing being is just QUITE powerful and REASONABLY intelligent, and thus that it could fail or be wrong in a way that might be extremely difficult for us to find out about until it’s too late. I wouldn’t trust advanced aliens who showed up out of the blue and claimed they’d learned all knowledge and that their technology could accomplish all things, even if they could in fact answer any questions I had and produce any outcomes I could imagine. Some doubt would always linger, and in some sense, the very fact they’re making the claim at all casts doubt on their motives and intentions. Does an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving being need to announce this about itself? Is God somehow more trustworthy for making maximally expansive claims over more reasonable ones, even if he truthfully is maximal, or is God less trustworthy because he insists upon that?
Firstly let me say that I have never been religious. When I was 5 years old in 1965 I was involved in a head on collision just after sunset as a drunk was driving at us on the wrong side of the road. I was in a utility type car which in Australia is like a pickup truck so the front seat only no seatbelts or restraints at this time. As a result I was catapulted at the dashboard and knocked unconscious and also had a the wind knocked out which collapsed my lungs. Within a few minutes I rose out of my body which was twisted under my father’s feet in the driver’s floor well amongst the foot pedals. At first I thought I was ok as I rose up to the seat but I kept going and thought this is impossible I can’t go through the roof but I did and as I came out of the roof and rose above the car I looked down at the wrecks below me and as I rose higher I thought that if there is a fire engine in town they may be able to get me down with their ladder or even a circus with a rope. I continued to rise higher and soon I was amongst the clouds and as I was so high daylight was still apparent I now felt cold looked down at myself and thought how we could still in my school clothes and thinking how did I get here and what am I going to do as I am tired and just wanted to go to bed I can’t stay here forever what am I going to do! The few minutes is hazy in my memory but I continued to rise and found myself in space with the setting sun at my back and looking down I was as a baby and completely naked now I looked to the east and saw what I thought was a bright star but it grew in size and then surrounded me it is hard for me to describe but was like a warm infinitely loving embrace as a babe in mother’s arms and this is what she said to me seemed to be telepathic, “I am sorry I took so long I have been busy we did not expect that, you have been very brave I am going to take you back now.
wow another fascinating expose and major Mindshift !!! I have been checking out a few articles on your website and plan to check them all out as time permits. you do a wonderful job of bringing clarity to so many issues that have plagued me since I was a child but could never quite come to terms with. I hope this content reaches many people . this website of yours seems to really get to the heart of the matter. tks Brandon I thoroughly enjoy listening to you!!
7:29 While predestination explanation is a good reply, you do not need to even go there. If by omniscience you also mean, ‘has the discernment to determine the truth or falsehood of all propositions’, it is not merely that God know a possible outcome, but he knows the exact outcome this is true. Meaning he knows what you will do, not just the choices that you have.
Paradoxes are quite weak arguments, correct – they don’t undermine the claim, but the label. The heavy boulder example can be dismissed with just a Christian saying “no he cannot”, and their position did not change at all, because they have never believed in true omnipotence in the first place. If they did however, I guess this might stump them. And a response “God can do everything logically possible” doesn’t work, because I can make a boulder so heavy I can’t lift it. Well, yeah, semantics. God not being allpowerful doesn’t undermine faith, it just means that there is one less thing a God can do, and infinity – 1 is still infinity.
If you know all things, literally all things, why would you ever need to create anything? You could just live in your head. There’d be no difference between the real and the imagined. Maybe that explains gods “powers” Maybe if he does exist, all we are is just his weird little daydream where he gets to play god and we are his puppets. But simplest explanation… There’s no god.
“Suffering defines this world”, that reminds me of the Matrix. Originally, the machines had created a the matrix so as to be exempt of suffering but people rejected it, on some level being unable to internalize it as reality precisely because suffering defines the real world of lived experience. So the machines added suffering.
I think of it as a computer science/ programming and engineering perspective and I take out more of the spiritual side of things. Evil is an action not an object so that takes away the claim “evil is the opposite side of the coin to good or the absence of good.” A robot cannot do something without being programmed to do something so if I programmed a robot to punch holes in the walls and a human I get in the way of the robot/ stand by the wall and the robot hits me, it’s not the robots fault it’s mine. If I programmed a robot to bomb things the cops would come after ME not just grab the robot and forget the person who programmed that robot, if society works this way then why does God get away with programming his robots to do evil is pretty much what I am asking, nothing can exist before or without God and we already disproved the claim that evil is the opposite coin of good. If God is omnipotent and he never put a capsule onto Lucifers jealousy then that in of itself proves that he’s evil if he actually existed. To answer disprove the claim for his omnipotence you must first go back to the very beginning/ the christian perspective of the “before the big bang” so to say and show them how God can’t get away with lying and saying that he didn’t create evil if he actually existed, then you go onto the free will vs. omnipotent argument, ect.
Do you know Pinecreek? I ask because you have the same take on the problem of evil, and it’s not a common one. According to him the actual problem of evil is “why did god create in the first place if he knew all the suffering that was going to happen?”. As an example he asks a question like “if you knew for certain that your child would be born with a terrible disease that would make their life short and painful would you still choose to conceive that child?”
That bible writers’ claim their god knows everything contradicts other verses. Many verses show their god’s ability is limited. A lot of their god’s trials and errors are abundant in the bible. If someone here tries to refute what i’m saying, do it based on your bible—not by speculating or using reasoning outside the contents of your bible
In church circles, God always gets the credit for our righteous behavior, but not for our unrighteous behavior. But Natures don’t just pop out of thin air, and as I see it, choices can’t be made without a nature. Even if God came to us individually and let us choose our own nature, the person choosing their nature would already have to have a nature to weigh pros and cons, desires, etc. Choosing a nature presupposes a nature. And where did that come from in this hypothetical? They just don’t want to say it, “God created sinners.” As I said in a previous comment, Adam and Eve couldn’t have desired evil, unless they already were evil. The evil in this case being something that is a disobedience towards God.
If God was all knowing and new what would happen in the future, then why did he create Satan Lucifer or the devil knowing that he would have rebelled and tempt the humans of his creation? That story of that alone made absolutely no sense to me at all growing up. However, I was assured with phrases such as God’s ways are beyond man’s reasoning or that God’s ways are better than ours. what a cop out.
“From a philosophical standpoint this is something that, as one tries to construct the nature of what a God would have to be, this is one of those things. He has to be outside space and time, he has to be all-knowing, he has to be able to do anything, etc.” Ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers: Am I a joke to you?
Brandon, you just say it so well! Don’t get the big head because I like that sexy, bald head the way it is! When I was a professor one of the most difficult things I had to do was get doctoral candidates to write clinically; drove me crazy when I was trying to do it years before as a candidate. That is, no fluff; only crisp prose which nobody could argue; no chance for redundancy or holes in the information. You do that beautifully. You said on a article that you were always an avid reader. That explains some of it. But, it is more than that. Your brain is simply geared to it. Thanks!
The only reason I could come up with, that god would need to sacrifice his son in order to forgive his creation, is because there was a bigger god that him that he needed to tithe to. Add to that the bible mentions other gods, and also that the abrahamic religion was polytheistic and Yahweh was supposed to be a war god (anyone for blood?) Which tend to be all about glory and sagas and conquest, and praising the victor for eternity……. Now I think about it, there is a lot of parallels with norse and greek mythos.
God never claimed Omiscience. God never claimed ANYTHING. All claims about God were made by fallible humans. Few humans then or now think thru the implications of Omniscience. You can bet the folks who bigged up their local deity by claiming he ran the entire universe didn’t. For starters, the universe to them was just a flat Earth with a dome over it thru which the rain fell. Then as we learned the staggering dimensions and age of the universe, this puny local deity was progressively promoted to be running the whole universe and yet having a strangely curious interest in a species of mammalian biped (and how they use their genitals) on the 3rd rock of an arbitrary star among hundreds of billions in an arbitrary location in an arbitrary galaxy in a universe of trillions of galaxies. This is why the whole thing is complete nonsense, yet much of the human species wants to cling onto the ancient stories no matter how completely full of holes they are, as if anything written by ancient ignorant people with no clue about science or the true nature of the world around them somehow had more profound things to say about it than our best scientists and philosophers today.
I find the concept that someone is self-sacrificing out of expectant pleasure… iffy; it devalues, I think, the full extent of the human experience. We are fully capable of sacrificing up to our lives without the expectation of pleasure, or reward, and indeed even with the expectation of the opposite. There’s some greater, outside and perceived within us (I’m getting very Platonic here), that moves us to act in such ways without any consideration of costs and benefits in the long or short term (or at least, as they apply to us). The same may be applied to religion and belief–in it’s purest form, it exists and is acted upon without a materialist, ‘grounded’ desire for pleasure and reward. It’s the sort of “right is right because it is right, no other reason”. Also, while I know this is more of a summary article, the idea that “God could have — somehow, someway — made a version of free will that avoids the problems of it” seems rhetorically identical to saying “Can God make a rock that he is not strong enough to lift?”. It just feels like begging the question in reverse.
If I had the power to create sentient beings, and I knew that doing so would lead a single one of them to suffer for eternity, then I would not create because an eternity of suffering is not a price anyone should pay or a cost any creator should accept. Further, no one would miss out on the glory if they never existed in the first place.
Everything you have said here perfectly explains why I feel that if there was a God, he doesn’t deserve to be worshipped and he should be begging us for forgiveness, not the other way around. Any god worthy of worship would certainly do better than this world. I have a lot of other reasons why I don’t believe but this is the big one.
3:17 I think the boulder argument can be reframed for omniscience by saying “Could God think of a solvable puzzle so hard, even he couldn’t think of a solution?” It would still probably be dismissed as quaint wordplay, but I think that’s a more accurate analogy to the boulder argument. 7:09 I agree with your counter rebuttal, but I would just say: it doesn’t matter if God doesn’t determine your actions. The fact that he can know what our actions will be shows that something determines our actions, otherwise God couldn’t know it. Thus, we wouldn’t have free will. 18:30 I would have tied it in to The Problem of Evil differently. Basically, even if we assume human levels of potency rather than omnipotence, and even if we assume human levels of benevolence rather than omnibenevolence, we still aren’t seeing a world that reflects omniscience because of all the evil and suffering. I think that’s the point you were making, but just rephrased a little.
While I personally think it’s a silly argument, as it’s obvious to me that animals can suffer, I imagine the Christian response to the baby deer scenario would be that animals are more like robots than they are like people and can’t truly suffer in any meaningful way, but rather exist solely for our use.
I turned away from the abrahamic god as a teenager and became an atheist for a few years. Then I became agnostic because I couldn’t reason how the universe couldve started, as in what was before the big bang, or how is anything gere to begin with? These were questions that not even science could answer (not that I think that’s a problem, it’s just the limitations of observability). So that made me think that there could be something, but what that is, nobody knows.
15:50 Someone does not believe what you said then they can’t believe we have free will in Heaven. If one holds the belief that we don’t possess free will in heaven, then this is consistent with the idea that heaven is a place of unerring goodness, where the choice to commit evil doesn’t exist. However, if one believes that free will does exist in heaven, this implies that a realm where individuals freely and consistently choose good over evil is possible. Therefore, if such a state of affairs is possible, it suggests that God could have created such a scenario from the very beginning.
RE: The deer analogy — Believers will excuse god at that point by pointing to The Fall and that Adam and Eve’s sin not only impacted them but destroyed the creation too. How just is a god that allows the decision of two people to destroy a creation too that he had proclaimed “good”. How fair is that to the creation? The plants and animals had nothing to do with the choice to eat of the tree of good and evil. We see injustice in punishing someone for something they had nothing to do with. But there is god punishing all of creation for a mistake two people made. Not justice. Not loving. Just messed up.
It’d be easier to believe in God’s omniscience had the Bible revealed some previously unknown truth like germ theory, or even like, “hey, ya’ll may get to the point where you might wanna split an atom, so here are some warnings about that.” The lack of any new knowledge in the Bible is one of the greatest literary disappointments of my life. I expected to have epiphanies while reading the Bible, and the seemingly most important thing is not boiling a baby goat in its mother’s milk. WTAF?? “He couldn’t warn us about atomic reactions because free will…” If he can tell us women to marry our rapists, and that we gotta toss gay people off rooftops, and not to eat pork, then couldn’t he have warned mankind about nuclear disasters? As for “free will,” that concept went out the window the moment God removed Pharaoh’s free will by hardening his heart when he was about to allow the Hebrews to go free. I’m fairly certain that he gave ADAM free will, not necessarily everyone else. Anyway, all “free will” arguments ended with Pharaoh’s hardened heart.
I’ve heard many people describe the relationship between omniscience and free will in a way similar to what you do here, but I think it is logically possible to envision a reality where you can retain both things. Imagine the flow of events as a single, if textured, line on a page. The way you describe things, it seems that you are picturing just a single line that god observes, and so we don’t really have free will in an ultimate sense. But if instead, you imagine that line forking each time someone makes a choice, splitting off into the infinite combinations of interactions and outcomes, making an extremely complex tapestry that is now the thing that is observed and known. In this way, god would know what would happen both if you chose A or B, rather than knowing that you will choose A (though god would obviously know if you were more likely to choose one over the other, and to what extent). Then you can imagine adjusting starting conditions to try to, overall, have a better tapestry. Now, god would still know that assuming I was even born, I’d be more likely than not to be an atheist, but none of it would be a sure thing, at least assuming I at some point made choices that brought about my atheism. Presumably there would be plenty of people who would have had no free will regarding knowledge of god’s existence, but they would have still had free will. Where the Christian argument about all that falls apart is, in my opinion, the purported benevolence, and how that interacts with direct intervention in the world.
I think you should slow down a bit. You have a good personality, a fine and well-placed voice and you are not obnoxious as Dillahunty is. It is pleasant to listen to you; a beer would be fun with you. Because you are the best I have heard and seen I hope you consider an easier, less frantic delivery. You really are the best at this.
Years ago while working at a pediatric ward where there were several children who were dying of various diseases. God didn’t show mercy no matter how devoted the family was or how sincere the prayers. Any ministers who came were worthless and the so called faith healers avoid hospitals like the plague. Nothing bugs me more than the lines “god works in mysterious ways” or “god had a plan for the child in heaven.
The bible doesn’t say: All “scientifically consistent” things are possible through god. It says that all things are possible. It tells its adherents that their prayers can move mountains. Amongst numerous other insane or ludicrous pronouncements. I don’t think it’s fair to treat god like a human, subject to the laws of nature we NOW understand in 2023 because that is not how Christians want him to be treated. For those reasons I think it’s more than reasonable to put the Heavy Rock dilemma to the religious. It’s not our fault they lacked knowledge in 300BC, and it’s not our fault they didn’t know we’d gain so much knowledge over the next 2000 years… They should be held accountable for their INERRANT doctrines, which lack specificity or context. I think I understand why you might bend over backwards to have these conversations with christians but usually being overly fair or even patronizing to one side equates to an Injustice to the other. I agree that not knowing how strawberry ice cream tastes does not invalidate god’s existence…but then again how does one prove that or even know that? BUT I’ve never heard an atheist make that type of argument. I would hope that most atheists are agnostic. We can say that the god one describes is self-contradictory or lacks evidence, without having to assert it doesn’t exist. But MY brand of atheism does not give quarter to theists….I don’t grant them any leeway in our discussions because I believe making them comfortable and not holding their doctrines to the highest standards, gives them space to feel vindicated and useful.
It really sounds like “God” is human. That he was lonely and he made everything around so he wouldn’t be anymore. He made angels but it wasn’t really filling because they didn’t get a choice and when they did some of them left. He made animals and plants but they were “there” mentally to really chose and so he made humans. And now everything is a shit show just so a few humans can worship God so he isn’t lonely…
Wow I just felt my mind shift the bed when you said that bit about Jesus not having to deal with the problems of being a woman during that time. Imagine Jesus having to get gang raped by a tribe of Israelites’ and then chopped into 12 pieces and mailed around the world to show God’s tender mercies and grace for all nations.
Omniscience is certainly a concept that we have a hard time wrapping our heads around. How does that work with a God that is also love? That is also good? Of course, scholars have come up with other possibilities than the standard linear model of Godly knowing, such as Molina’s Middle Knowledge and the later Open Theism. Even analogizing modern scientific theories, in which a God might know all possible universes of all possible A and B choices, like an infinitude of Schrodinger’s cats, comes to mind. God doesn’t tell us how it works. He reveals his character and insists that we must trust. That is why it’s called faith, and not knowing (though knowing is promised at a future time). Whether we trust or not will, in the end, come down to personal experience of living in this version of reality. It will be a choice.
4:00 – hmm, well the only real way for god to know what the experience is like of me, or you, or of an animal, or a plant, is if god is part of the experience of all of these beings. Is this what people call Spinoza’s god? It’s basically the idea that we and everything are all good. The Dao or the Brahman are close to this idea, and that would need to be the setup for god to know what’s in all of our hearts, and to know everything, at least from an experiential point of view. God lives vicariously through every living being. He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…
Tornadoes. If God is omniscient that means he knows what supercells will spawn them and where, how violent they will be, what paths they will take, who and what they will spare and who and what they will hit. It means that if a twister slams into a school and kills a bunch of kids, God knew it would happen. It means that if that same twister changes course at the last minute and misses the school, he also knows that will happen as well. He knew that the 2011 Joplin tornado would directly hit a hospital and damage it so severely that it had to be torn down. (I do not even want to think of what it was like in that hospital when they realized what was bearing down on them.) He knows that people who live in mobile homes and in mobile home parks are particularly vulnerable, yet even though the National Weather Service continues to insist that it is a myth that these places are specially targeted by twisters, we all know that whenever you hear that a tornado has struck somewhere, odds are a trailer park is going to be among the casualties. He knows that yet he continues to allow this. He also knew that Hurricane Otis was going to strengthen to Category 5 status without warning in a matter of hours, striking a major city. He knew that the forecasters with all their tools would miss the subtle signs that this would happen. So, given God’s omniscience, does that mean that these things are not random, that he is actively putting into motion the necessary elements to create these monster storms and actively steering them?
If what you’re saying is true then he made Satan on purpose and the demons and they did everything he designed them to do and this is all his doing intentionally being that we are all his stuff. Technically, it’s not wrong because you can do whatever you want with your things, it’s other life forms things you can’t do things too.
Just the story of Adam and Eve doesn’t work with an all-knowing god. He created the tree knowing Eve would be tempted and fail. He created the snake knowing he would succeed to tempt Eve. He created Adam knowing he will fall along with Eve. He created Eve knowing she’ll make the first sin. To make it all worse: he TOLD them that out of all things in the Garden, they shouldn’t approach that tree over there. They’re basically children! Even human parents know what kids will do when you say what they shouldn’t do.
{! Disclaimer (2.S): I am a hobbyist hypothetical physicist, an amateur conjectural theologian, and an aspiring philosophical sci-fi/fantasy author. The ideas posited and owned by the author of this comment are entirely fantasy fictional or science fictional, and are not representations of actual reality or existence, but are only and exclusively abstract philosophical nonsense known as Beginnlessnessism for the purpose of curiosity and entertainment, only. Beginlessnessism is not a religion, but is a philosophy, also known as a meta-religion. Being a meta-religion does not make Beginlessnessium a religion but a philosophy about religion in general. !} Omni-Possession Omniscience is not sufficient to describe the mind of God. God is more than omniscient. God has everything in his mind. Now right now you are calling me stupid. But having everything in your mind is not omniscience it is omni-possession, or in other words, God possesses everything in his mind. Now, Internet, try to stop ignoring me like you have for the past 10 years. So how does this fix your problem when you say God is omniscient and I say God is omni-possessive? If God is omni-possessive instead of omniscient, then everyone is with God all the time and we don’t leave his presence at all because we are in his mind. Take that Internet.
It’s interesting hearing you bring up Lucifer so much in all of your articles as if it’s clearly written there as a fundamental story of the devil. (I assume this is somewhat ingrained from your fundamentalist background). The bible doesn’t even mention Satan in this way as Satan is just the oppposer (there are many satans). And Lucifer just means Morning Star (Venus). These Lucifer as the devil ideas are mostly post biblical and comes from later neo-platonic authors and then authors such as Dante etc. Although I imagine most Christians have this view of Satan from being taught extra biblically from dante/paradise lost etc
If a god exists and if god knows the future then god is forced to only be able to think and do the types of things that god already knows that god is going to think and do. And if god is so evil that god forced people and other life forms onto the type of existence where they will suffer against their will even though they don’t want to suffer against their will, then that is not gods fault that god exists and unfortunately happens to be that way. If a god exists and if god has always existed then god didn’t get to choose what way god would be. God is just forced to be whatever way that god happens to be no matter if god wants to be that way or not. And if god was created then god is a victim of being the way that god was created no matter if god wants to be that way or not. If a god exists then the only way the way god is would be gods fault is if god willingly chose to come into existence and if god created itself and made itself be exactly the way that god wants to be, but that’s not possible. And so if a god exists then god doesn’t deserve anything good or bad to happen to god because the only way god would deserve something is if the way god is would be gods fault. But just like it’s not a horrible criminals fault that they happen to exist and unfortunately happen to be a horrible way, they should be stopped just like a horrible god should be stopped even though the way god is isn’t gods fault.
I really don’t take the philosophical path but the scientific path rather. The problem is the natural laws do not take a break to allow any of these miraculous tales to occur and even if any of it is true, it would have a reasonable explanation rooted in the law of nature that were wrongly interpreted by any of these witnesses.
Any god worthy of being worshipped wouldn’t want to be. Wanting to be worshipped smacks of self-centeredness, narcissism, pride, excessive ego, etc. These are not positive attributes. A truly good god would be exceedingly humble. They would not seek out worship, and would be utterly uncomfortable with it should it occur. They would discourage it, not encourage and expect it. That the god of the bible starts his commandments with “you shall have no other gods before me” is telling. It is telling anyone with a modicum of understanding that he is flawed and imperfect. He has to threaten and blackmail to get attention. If he was truly that wonderful, that wouldn’t be needed.
A few issues but not detrimental to the overall points made. Fair? About what? To whom should we be fair? The arguement? A god? The theist? Your feelings? Weak? In whose eyes? Weak or uninteresting? If an all-powerful and all-knowing god actually existed I would expect it could reconcile human constructed paradoxes and semantics. I’d argue most christians don’t analyze scripture. Logically anyway. So I think it falls on deaf ears mostly when you use it as a counter or definitionally. But trying to reconcile logic with the supernatural is always the rub. You either believe in magic or you don’t. I had more issues with the first third of the article but hope are addressed in later articles. The last two thirds of the article about the problem of evil, was rock solid and very similar to many arguments out there. Keep up the good work. Sunday vids are always fun.
But there are also thoughts that even in the Bible God is not omnipotent or omniscient. At least not in the way we define it. Take a look at this part: Genesis 6:6-7 ” 6 And Yahweh regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved (a)in His heart. 7 And Yahweh said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the (b)sky; for I regret that I have made them.” ” regret (verb): “feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that one has done or failed to do).” regret (noun): “a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over an occurrence or something that one has done or failed to do.” How is it possible to regret something if you know the outcome perfectly before hand and have the power to change it? You would know that in that moment you will regret it. But the problem with regret is that it implies an action you would have done better if you had known better.
I have always thought that Gods Omniscience must be the knowledge of every possible choice, action and outcome but not knowledge of which choice action or outcome any individual free will will take. Its the only way for his behaviour in the bible to begin to make sense while still making those versus stand true. For example you have a choice to take the left road or the right road. God always knew you would come to this choice, and God knows what will occur to the end of all things after you have made either choice. But God does not know which way you will choose until you reach the fork in the road and make the choice to go left or right. Because he knows both choices and everything that comes after both, not knowing which you will choose does not prevent him from creating a reality that reaches his goal in the end. Otherwise how can God be disappointed or angry at choices humans make? His disappointment at you taking the left road, or his anger at you taking the right road only make sense if he doesn’t know the choice itself. Otherwise his disappointment or anger would have occurred at creation when he first knew of the choice. Not at the time you make said choice and just FYI – I am an Atheist
Believers want to criticize the unfeeling, sociopathic, without pity, without empathy behavior of certain criminals – BUT, many of THEM are the most hateful, cruel, sociopathic, uncaring beings in existence. HUMAN SUFFERING MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THEM – they’ll dance in DELIGHT at the prospect of people being tortured for eternity Some will pound their chests and make stentorian declarations about ‘Suffering Is Redemptive’ Oh, they’ll have plenty to say about an abusive, neglectful parent, but God gets a pass
I’m talking from a Muslim perspective here. We are taught that God is All Knowing. And in His infinite wisdom He knows what’s better for us even though we make our own choices and go thru many tests. The next life will be better than this one. We find this belief consistent as it applies to our daily lives as everything essentially is a test. Our work, family, health etc. We don’t blame God for our conditions because we realise thru patience and steadfastness the reward will be great in this life and the next. Look at our bodies, our brain. Our ability to even make this article, that are God given talents. It’s not a random occurrence. So yes we shud question everything, this is encouraged and is normal behavior but ultimately we are created to worship God as he has given us many blessings. This is how we find peace. One cannot blame the car maker for creating cars when accidents happen. No we need to value the vehicle and live according to the rules of the road. In the same way we have to live according to God’s rules and respect our minds and bodies. Be aware of our choices but always keep asking questions. God is Just and All knowing and we are limited. He set a plan in motion having infinite wisdom but we make our own choices and ultimately we are going to be responsible for them unless events happen that are out of our control but God will understand and reward accordingly.
I hope you see this comment because I’m sure there’s a response or error in my logic that I’m missing. When I see the question, “Can god make a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it?” Generally speaking, Christians say god can only do things that are logically possible. So, he also can’t make a square circle or a married bachelor. There are two problems I see with this. The first is that it makes it so I am able to do something that God can not. After all, I can make a rock so big that I can’t lift it. The second and most important to me is if god can’t do things that aren’t logically possible, why does that train of thought not equally apply to him walking on water, turning water into wine, or being raised from the dead??? I’m assuming that this might be a property error of some sort, perhaps?? Anyways, any answers would be much appreciated! I love your show, and on a number of occasions, I’ve recommended your website to atheists of all types: Those who are struggling or were looking for answers about various books of the Bible, etc.
iv haven’t gotten around to reading the bible. all i know is what others people say and i look it up. but from what others say it’s more of people saying all these things about how great and powerful god is. it’s rare i ever hear someone say god himself said something about himself. you mentioned Isaiah46. he makes know the end from the beginning, ok but what does that mean? what beginning? even if he knew before he started creating how things will go, was that absolute? what if he created in hopes he was wrong and things went the other way.
4:08 I think your wording leads to bad understanding. I think a better wording is “God possesses knowledge of all propositions and has the discernment to determine the truth or falsehood of each one.” Here is a syllogism: Premise 1: Omniscience is characterized by the comprehensive knowledge of all propositions, along with an understanding of their truth or falsehood. Premise 2: God possesses this comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all propositions. Conclusion: Therefore, by definition, God is omniscient.
From the beginning it seems that you want a God who is not the God that is You say how God should be and should think and do things and, you want Him to create a universe and everything the way you want it to be . Well, bad news … God is God and He is Who He is and thinks the way He thinks already . And He doesn’t change, nor wil He change and conform to what you nor I nor any other human being would want Him to be . So the best would be that one fall in line with Him . Get to know what is His wil and just do it, otherwise …well everyone knows what wil happen to the rebellious that don’t want Him or wants be with Him ; He wil give that to you. If one put a small toy boat in a stream, that boat wil go with the flow away from you until it dissappears from your sight. It can’t change its course by itself nor can it turn around and go up in the stream . But if one put a battery and rudder inside it, it can now go up the stream and nature can’t control it anymore . We as human beings the same . If you don’t have Jesus in your heart and life, you wil succumb to your natural human instincts and follow and do them, but when you meet Christ, He wil change yiu and give you the power to overcome . As God beforehand saw all the things you would do as a human being, He also knew that once you become born again, you wil then have the power to not do those things anymore, but He wil help you overcome the things you would’ve done,as He makes you a new creation. But this can only happen when you accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour, otherwise you wil just keep on doing the things your struggling with and are sinfull.
You seem to disregard the view of a significant number of believers that believe that for events that MIGHT obtain, there is no fact now of what will definitely obtain. Basically, for these believers, possibilities actually exist and therefore for god to have a belief of how the possibilities WILL obtain would mean that God has a false belief. This isn’t just something some believers hold to, even atheists do. For anyone that believe that possibilities actually exist then there is no fact of what WILL obtain.
all knowing means and conveys exactly that.. why complicate it by intellectuallizing it ?.. omniscience makes a mockery of prayer..period… god knows the future so why pray for him/her/it to change the plan/future?… not a believer and would luv religion to disappear so there would be no need for any clergy ( they would have to get proper jobs) or YT’s like this….or apologists or myriads of authors/books on a myth….
What if the omniscience of God consists of him knowing the consequences of all possible outcomes of every decision ever made by anyone? In that sense God is all knowing without dictating to any of us what we must choose. Romans 9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. To my mind the proper question is not why would God make anyone fitted to destruction, it is rather who makes us (aka the vessels of wrath) fitted to destruction? Is it not we ourselves who do that?
I do not think i will ever understand how i could be a believer in God and Jesus for so many years(over 25 years) then end up being a non believer? IF God is real how can this happen? What would be the purpose of this? I did not just wake up one day and say “i do not believe in God and what is in this bible anymore” It was from actually looking outside of the bible and questioning what is in it that made me a Non believer.
For God so loved us all. Wanting nothing created everything. With all his power and might he still needed to rest for a day. Seeing all that he created forgot to prune the Tree of Life and Knowledge. So He bore men so that they may tend to the gardens. God being pleased with his final task went back to sleep for the sabbath is sacred. Upon waking God found the garden yet not tended to. Calling unto men in anger. Not knowing what has happened. Not seeing any of his men, God enters the main garden where to his surprise sees men eating the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge….. This is the Gospel of The Unknowing. Praise be to the All Knowning All Powerful. For the Light sees All. “Alpha Sanctum Ch01”.
It seems to me that your argument against the perceptualist view is similar to the debate around Mary in the black and white room (ironically an argument against physicalism). You can know how an experience might affect someone (especially if you know everything about them), so you don’t need to experience it yourself or experience it from everyone’s point of view. I’ll check out the free will article, but just to note, most freewill arguments are bedevilled (lol) with the problem of definition. Namely, that depending on how you define ‘I,’ the fact that your reactions are your body “deciding” before your mind/soul does is not a problem for monists, only dualists (though too many dualists think it’s also a problem for them because monists say so), but if you are your body (in its entirety) then things that you do that are not conscious are still done by you.
If God wants us to turn the other cheek and forgive our enemies 77 times. Why didn’t God forgive Adam and Eve since they ate the fruit out of curiosity not rebellion, they didn’t know good and bad,the snake said,,you can become just like your dear old daddy knowing good and bad,, What child doesn’t want to grow up to be like their father. Why not just smack their bottoms, no need for 6000 years of human suffering, no need to torture your dear son as a blood sacrifice just very,very very saw bottoms . JUSTIN PORTER EX JW ❤
Hello, I found your website when you exposed Christians who may be taking advantage of one another. I agree that Christians should never use the Lord for profit. However, I don’t agree with God being an immoral monster for not just fixing the world and grant everyone their own desires. How could we have free-will if God just becomes a fix-it-felix?
Jesus actually was not sinless if we are being real… (healing on the sabbath.. maybe even that time he got all worked up at the market place 😂) … to be sinless, the only premise for that at the time was to be sinless following Jewish law – and lol at honoring mother and father and then blows his mother and brother off when they come to see him. Lol not that i care for that, he was doing his mission but Christian parents today would absolutely call that behaviour dishonouring if their own child did that.
I think omniscience is far simpler and actually not as nuanced as it is made to seem here. I know (😊) that knowledge isn’t an action, but our common definition of knowledge is “justified, true belief”. If God has knowledge that I’ll do X next week, then he MUST be justified in believing this based on something and it must be true, meaning that it cannot be otherwise. If God’s knowledge of all things cannot be otherwise, then things can only be the way that God knows them to be, hence – predetermined
The basic problem is, you can’t adequately judge some theory that’s a way higher level than you. So a first grader just learning simple arithmetic, can’t judge Ramanujan’s algorithms for pi (for example) because such mathematics is way beyond his ability to even approach. So you might judge Ramanujan wrong because he has 2 + 2 = 5 somewhere in his equation until later on you notice that he doesn’t have 2 + 2 = 5 but instead has 2 + n + 2 = 5 but because your level of math is at a first grade level, you don’t notice the “n” and it might not even register to you. So concerning omniscience, you are nowhere near omniscient so you don’t know what the long term consequences of not having a hell are. You don’t even know what hell is actually like, or indeed, whether an atheist would end up there. I’m sure you agree that if there is an afterlife, someone like Stalin, or Jeffery Dahmer, probably deserves some form of punishment. You don’t even know what “serving God” actually means. For example, what if “God” simply means that which is good. You know what the good thing to do is, and because you want to be a decent person, you do something good. You are afraid of the consequences of doing something bad are, so you don’t do it. Even if that consequence is simply, you know you did something bad so you don’t like yourself because of it. Could all of that entail “serving God”? I don’t know. Maybe it does!
I realized God Himself has NO FREE WILL: He absolutely knows everything He will ever think, do, react to, knows any change of mind He will ever have. Nothing could ever surprise him. Anything we could do and any effect on any decision is already known by Him. He simply goes along knowing what He must say, do, believe, change, etc. for eternity, down to the atom, with perfect knowledge, – just like a robot! Sounds like God is in Hell (He is after all, everywhere)…such a pity.