What part of "could have done otherwise" do you not understand?

This has got to be the single most lost cause, I have ever seen the Christians of this forum try and defend.

Apparently you didn't get the memo that no-content declarations of "my side wins" are known to translate to: "I have no content, so I'm just going to declare that my side wins."

Fair enough, but the problem of God being able to predict the precise outcome of billions of interactions, each with a high randomness factor, without controlling them directly is just unsolvable.

Randomness is no obstacle to foreknowledge by a Being with access to frames of reference in which past and future are interchanged.

Well that is the other half of the problem; if the decision has already been made, there is no free will.
When you combine that with the impossibility of predicting the outcome of a long string of events, with a high randomness factor,
which I described in my previous post, you get problems.
If you could give up either human free will or Gods perfect foreknowledge, it could work.
When you demand both you create an unsolvable problem.

Reading people discuss the implications of some eternal spirit's omniscience on the fall of mankind due to the temptations of a talking snake to get a woman made of a man's rib to eat a forbidden apple is like listening to 5 year olds discuss their theories of Santa Claus. Except not really, because the latter is kind of cute, and the former just isn't cute anymore.

The decision to sin had already been made in certain time-reversed frames of reference to which God has access. The decision had not already been made in Adam and Eve's frame of reference until after they made it.

Still want to know how i ever had the freewill not to sin against God when im inherently an evil sinner because of Adam and Eves choice. Its a trap i say.

And Santa's sleigh can go faster than the speed of light, so there!

I am sorry but this makes absolutely no sense.
When you have you resort to gibberish, to deflect from the fact that you cannot create a coherent defense, it is a pretty strong indicator that you are fighting a losing battle.

Again, a no-content post.

What I posted makes clear and simple sense, which is why you have nothing of substance to offer in refutation of it, just vague negatives.

This was the post I critiqued.

Do you really not see what is wrong with it? The bolded part makes no sense, no matter how much you try to call that a personal attack.
It is very hard to figure out what you are saying, and I still claim that this is because you are trying to defend a position you know to be iffy.

The gist of your post seems to be the claim that God can know exactly what will happen, without taking away free will.
It has already been demonstrated by several posters that this does not make sense.
If you want to make the paradox go away, you have to offer an explanation, just claiming there is no paradox in flowery language, is not enough.

The real question to be addressed is whether if Santa's sleigh goes faster than the speed of light to deliver all the presents around the world, does he travel back in time or is he operating in another dimension? Seems clear as day that he's operating in time-reversal frame of reference, but I'm at least willing to consider the arguments for those that think he's operating in a higher dimension. And if he kills all the first born sons on his trip, he's still pure love, we just can't understand his love as sinful beings, but that's subject of another thread. This is about Santa's faster than light sleigh, not about his perfect love.

OIC. You don't know what a time-reversed frame of reference is.

Well, either you can find that out on your own and get back to me, or we can just let this exchange go, because the explanation is too lengthy and off-topic for this thread.

So God knew through whatever method was available to him that Eve would eat the apple of her own free will. Yet God still put the apple there -- why?

The explanation that perhaps this was the best way that God saw to cause salvation of the entire human race doesn't make sense; because without the original sin caused by God's placement of the tree in the garden of eden there would be no original sin and thus no need for salvation.

And I say that God is the reason for the original sin in that he knew his placement of the tree in the garden would lead to Eve's action -- it wasn't a possibility he knew his act would cause her act.

Okay, so God cannot be wrong and Eve can make a different decision. What happens if she does?

Found this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox

Sums it up, really.

This is good. To elaborate more:

It is a sad sight to see true religious insight, which might come out of Christianity, being utterly defeated by theological acrobatics coming out of religious zealotry of Christians themselves. My advice to you Christians, try to be more Christians and less "pseudo-philosophers".

If I were a Christian (and I am not), I would have come here and explain to the skeptics that the story of Adam and Eve and snake and all that is a "metaphorical story" and that trying to apply "logic" of time and space to a metaphorical story is the pinnacle of insanity. Think about it. Isn't it completely ridiculous to demand philosophically and logically accurate explanations for a metaphor (which by definition transcends logic)?

I would also criticize all those meaningless questions about "before" and "after" and "free will" and what not. Can you Christians with a straight-face tell me what Jesus Christ's theory on free will was? Let me tell you right away: He did not have any. Yet, you Christians, always being less "followers of Christ" and more "slave to the metaphysics of the hangmen" (by hangmen, I mean the early founders of official Christianity and not Jesus Christ himself), sure seem to have an elaborate system of free will. How pathetic...How sad...

Here is the truth as I see it: Instead of trying to understand the meaning of the metaphor (I mean the story of Adam and Eve), you, following your blind masters, and not Jesus Christ it seems to me, created an idol out of the metaphor (that is, you imprisoned the metaphor into the walls of rigid philosophical concepts), and now you are worshiping it.

Here is an image for you: Monkeys worshiping the banana. It is no wonder that people are laughing at you. Be more "Christians" and less "philosophers".

Cheers

Except it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Really? I thought it was the central argument. OK.

It doesnt mention free will even once. Same for omniscience.

I dont think sacrificing 100% innocent person, his son that has no sinful nature, is going popcorn.gif.

He meant "give them the option to bite the apple"

Different than what, itself? The decision is a unique event. That event is what God found out about, before and after it happened all at once. God can see the entire world line of an object simultaneously.