Heaven and Hell role reversal

[UndercoverElephant]

I am incapable of understanding quantum physics.

Einstein didn't like it much either.

Well, that's really the end of the "argument" isn't it? A deist universe looks just like an atheistic one.

Obviously you never met Franko.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62

 

[This Guy]

But that cannot possibly make sense. If He already knows what you are going to do, how can you possibly do anything else? For Hell to be a just punishment for something you have done, surely there had to some remote chance of you not doing whatever bad thing you did?

Not sure how else to describe it.

But before I try, keep in mind that that opinion was one I held when I believed there was a God. Now that I don't believe there is a god, that opinion doesn't exist in me any longer, so I'm not defending the opinion, just trying to explain the way it made sense to me before

Knowing does not equal controlling. Just because god knows what we are going to do, doesn't mean he is in control of what we do. The choices are still ours. He just knows beforehand what those choices will be.

Parents can often predict what our children will do under given conditions. Knowing your child will take the chocolate over the cookie isn't a matter of control, just understanding.

God's knowledge of what we are going to do doesn't make what we do right or wrong. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. The choices are still ours, and a final judgment still valid.

If you believe such things

 

[KingMerv00]

That's a pretty strong statement coming from the person who said "[t]he point I'm making is that you can know nothing about God."

Well for the purposes of this argument I have accepted the existance of God. God is defined as the omnipotent creator of all existance. It is just a starting premise.

Feel free to educate me.

I didn't mean to imply that I had answers. I am also mortal. I just don't think anyone can rationally make the statement "God can't do x" because there is no way assign qualities to God with any certainty. There is no way to conclude anything useful about God really.

 

[Beleth]

Well for the purposes of this argument I have accepted the existance of God. God is defined as the omnipotent creator of all existance. It is just a starting premise.

Okay then.

It's a longstanding argument, both here and in theologic circles, about just what "omnipotent" means. Most "authorities" (whatever that means in the study of theology) agree that it doesn't mean "absurdly, illogically, powerful"; it just means "more powerful than anything else".

It's not a very satisfying definition, but all other definitions eventually lead to the conclusion that God is absolutely indescribable... which of course theologians are loathe to conclude...