I think this is factually wrong. The Bible is not clear that God can predict the future to absolute perfection. This is where Christian theology has generally ended up, but mostly on the basis of philosophical or mystical theology rather than direct Scriptural support.

Anyway, evidently you disagree with me, so I am curious what specific passages and teachings in the Bible clearly indicate that God can predict the future to absolute perfection (I'm assuming by "absolute perfection" you mean that God knows everything that happens in the future).

Yeah, if this is what is meant by faith, then I'll argue that having faith like Abraham is a weakness of character--directly leading Abraham to contemplate and come a hair's breath away from murdering his own son. We should not have this much trust in anything, where we are willing to kill even those we are closest to merely because we are told to.

The reason that I ignored his claim and asked about Free will is that if he agrees that god gave us free will then god must live in an eternal now right? It's the only way to resolve the contradiction that arises from god knowing the future AND us having free will, that I'm aware of.

So if god lives in an eternal now, then there is no future for him, it's all 'now' so how can he predict the future? He just knows everything already. If by predict the future, we mean that he appears to us mere mortals to be giving us information that he could only know by prediction because it hasn't yet occurred in our time line, then that's simply not true, he's giving us information about something that has already happened from his perspective.

I think this is false. There are logically coherent theisms in which God creates a universe in which libertarian-ish free will exists and the future is undetermined and unknowable even in principle.

Some Christian theology posits that libertarian free will exists and that God knows the future, but there is a natural tension between the two ideas, rather than the one leading logically to the other. The tension being that metaphysical free will seems logically to require that the "future" doesn't exist yet, or else choices would not be metaphysically free, and so how could the future be knowable?

I think your "in an eternal now" maps to the "outside of the time of the universe" (I think it's the "outside" which is operative) which is posited to try to relativize the notion of freedom such that the decisions are free and undetermined from the perspective of those in the universe but knowable by God outside. But this doesn't follow from the concept of free will, whether libertarian or not. It's an attempt at reconciling two theological conceptions that would otherwise seem to be at odds.

Yeah, I agree with this

But I think the story of Abraham and its importance in Judaism and Christianity can be nuanced at least somewhat.

In the ancient world ritual sacrifice was a norm, and even human sacrifice is not unknown. Authority is absolute, whether in terms of absolute monarchies (where rulers are often divinized), or Jewish monotheism and its implicit answer to the (modern) problem of evil, which is essentially "who are you to question God?". Because God is absolute. Or in the normalcy of slavery, or holy war, or any similar things. I think they firmly grasped the second horn of Euthyphro. The Good is Good because it is loved (might be more accurate to say commanded) by God. That is the world in which Abraham was faithful and it was accounted to him as righteousness.

I think we rightly recognize the deficiencies of that view of the world, and I think Christians can do so and remain Christians. A modern Christian would be acting wrongly to act the same as Abraham did. This may be a somewhat more relativistic account of the morality of the situation, but I think that is necessary. The point is not that to offer to murder your own son for God is the highest or noblest expression of faith or faithfulness, or to generalize that faith entails doing something that you believe to be absolutely immoral if it is demanded by God. Faithfulness is related to obedience but both can be and should be nuanced.

Considering the sacrifice of Abraham the paradigm of "sacrifice" is important.

In the case of Issac the rejection of the sacrifice precipitates a feeling of "longing" within Abraham and his progeny as this is the refusal which also becomes an incitement to "make up" the loss anticipated. The Tribe of Abraham now had to work the earth and with this the future is indicated with its concomitant development of the Hebrew people.

If the 'sacrifice" of Issac were accepted the entire Hebrew people (s) would have been gathered within the heavenly host as the children of God. the Hebrew people would not have continued within the earthly domain but the dark side of this "acceptance" is that the development of mankind, from life to life, would not be available to the Hebrew tribe, thus precipitating a backward or undeveloped spiritual peoples, which is in effect a spiritual entity without "Ego" of "I".

The "I" or "Ego" is brought to fruition during the earthly state of being and yes, there were previous states of being and there will be future states of being with respect to mankind. The "I" is added to the bodies of man during his earthly existence. This will mean nothing to most of you but the human being has four bodies (4) known as physical body, etheric body, astral body and the Ego which is the most undeveloped in the progression of Man. Of course, the higher three bodies are not sense bound and would be considered to originate from different aspects of the heavenly realm.

The "oldest" and in its own way the most perfect of the bodies is the physical body which began from a state of being prior to the earth, or about three existences prior, Traveling up the scale the other bodies also have development through other states up to our earthly state in which mankind obtains his individual "I" or "Ego".

The heavenly currency is the "spirit of sacrifice".

OK, I'm working on an understanding of this but in the mean time does this change that God would have known that Abraham was going to obey his command? Under what conditions could god not have known?

I'm skeptical that God living in timeless eternity actually solves the problem of God's foreknowledge, or that it is consistent with the view of God held by most Christians.

Anyway, I was focusing more on his claim that God is described as having perfect and complete foreknowledge in the Bible. I am aware that this is the view settled on by later Christian orthodoxy, but I don't see it clearly taught in the Bible. I could be wrong though, I'm no expert...

No, we do understand light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. Please never make this analogy again.

I think you can find biblical passages which suggest foreknowledge of the future, and you can find others where it seems a lot less comfortable. There are not clearly doctrinal statements about the subject though, it's more a question of trying to draw inferences.

A good example of suggesting foreknowledge would be the way that jews in the second temple period understood prophecies about the return from exile. So in the book of Daniel, Daniel reads Jeremiah and believes that Jeremiah prophesied the return of Israel from exile in 70 years. But then Daniel is confused because that has elapsed, and has a vision wherein it is explained to him that it's actually 70 weeks of years (70*7). And there is evidence within the late second temple period that some Jews were very concerned with understanding when that period would end. Both the author of Daniel and the Jews in that time understood the prophecy in a way that would require God to have foreknowledge of the future (although perhaps technically not perfect foreknowledge). Apocalyptic pronouncements suggesting foreknowledge is something that could also be said of plenty of Christian writing on prophecy as well. There are also many passages that seem to strongly imply that God knows everything that has happened or is happening, without being clear about extrapolating to the future. I would describe most of the verses given here in that way.

On the other hand, throughout the Bible and in Jewish and Christian understanding, prayers are addressed to God, and calls to repentance are made by God, which suggest an openness to the future. Or at least it raises the question of what the point would be if God already knows everything that is going to happen. If there is more rejoicing in heaven over one lost who repents than over 99 righteous who did not fall, it would seem odd in the case where it is well known in advance. But in any case, the distinction between foreknowledge and predestination (in whatever forms) in some theology arises from that problematic.

Yes I do.

A very tentative yes. If we can just isolate this to creation, purpose etc then a definite yes. In Romans chapter 9 Paul compares us to moulded clay and God to the potter. Should we be questioning how we were made, what our purpose should be? I don't think we should. It's up to the potter how he wants to create his vase, what he wants to do with his vase, what he wants his vase to do etc


Maybe both the options had the same EV over the long run. God eventually took the covenant from the Jews anyway

I thought the whole particle aspect of light contradicted relativity, speed of light.

If you need me to paint you another picture because you don't understand the point i'm making, please let me know.

I always read Luke 15:7 as the angels rejoicing and they do not know the future. Still doesn't the foreknowledge issue but I put it down to trying to look and understand god through the lens of a human.

Not at all. In general the tension between "particle" and "wave" in quantum electrodynamics is purely between the naive conceptions that we attach to those words, it doesn't create any problems with the actual mathematical models or their use. Light is neither "waves" nor "particles", but some other stuff with some properties that remind us of our naive physical conceptions of both, but which doesn't properly have an analogue from classical physics.

As far as I'm aware, QED is arguably the most complete and well understood areas of physics. Or at least in terms of the accuracy and precision of the kinds of predictions that can be made.

If God gave us free will but is also omniscient and knows the future, then he knows exactly what's going to happen to you. If that's the case, then you don't really have a choice about it. Where then is your free will? There appears to be a contradiction between omniscience and freewill, do you have a way to reconcile it?

So curiosity is ok as long as we don't wonder about how and why we're here? I'm not sure how you got from the potter analogy to your view that you 'don't think we should'. How do you know that this is god's will?

I'm not sure I understand. Are you agreeing that god could never change his mind?