.

im sure "beleivers" will argue via concious

What do you mean by interfere with free will?

Suppose Napolean excercises his freewill and decides to take over all of europe. God doesn't like that so he "inspires" a south american yakt to fart which thru a butterfly effect causes poor weather in Napoleans vacinity. Napolean catches a sniffle, sneezes and loses his train of thought just at a critical strategizing moment in the battle....as a consequence he loses a battle he would have otherwise won. Did God interfere with Napoleans free will?

How about if God causes some evil person somewhere to have a heat attack and die just before they were to have murdered someone? Is that interfereing with free will?

Whenever He wants, but that doesn't mean it ever has or will happen.

And my answer to Stu's scenarios is that neither constitutes interfering with free will.

Directly? Never. He cannot revoke our free will to the extent that he has given it to us.

Interesting.

Some people think God intervened when the British beat the Spanish Armada. Without the weather conditions prevailing Philip of Spain might have been ruling larger parts of the world than he did and we'd be speaking Spanish.

The Japanese credit a kami kaze or "divine wind" for stopping the descendants of Genghis Khan from invading Japan...iirc Kublai Khan was the descendant...

Then there's a crazy book I scanned recently...wish I had bought it now where the author claimed God used a hurricane to knock out the Nazi Bund that was up in New Jersey and Upstate New York...Yapahank was the name of the area: Camp Siegfried....The eye of the hurricane passed right over Adolph Hitler Street. Needless to say the Nazis never gained the steam in the U.S. that they did in Germany.

When you wont let his people go?

Maybe.

I found McTernan's book online "As America Has Done to Israel".

Pages 46-52 give the street diagram of Camp Siegfried in Yaphank and explain about how Adolph Hitler Street is still an official name of a street in the U.S. and how the eye of the hurricane passed over it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=I7B...page&q&f=false

What does this even mean? God is omniscient and would be operating with intent. If God intends his action to alter what someone would or would not do, then it's ALWAYS direct interference. The path it takes to get there is meaningless.

I disagree. It depends on God's intentions.

Any time he wants to.

Never..........

One thing that I am positive of is coercion from God. I will define this coercion but first it must not be assumed that my reference to God parallels Christianity. I say this because the Bible does not bind my definition of God. However, God is seen and can be understood from the Bible.

There are many times, but I will stick to one in particular. Due to the personal nature of this I can’t go into specific detail only an overview, but you will understand what is needed. A couple years ago I went out with an old friend whom I used to party with, and we did coke that night. The night wasn’t planned and it happened because of a simple phone call from my friend. During the conversation I felt the devil inside of me. I have known this feeling all too well from my past but have had exceptional control, up until this night.

I knew what I was going to do and I remember asking for Gods forgiveness before I even left the house. It’s a funny thing when you have to ask for Gods forgiveness when you are about to go and do something that you know is wrong. Especially when you are in control to stop it. I did have the control I guess seeing as there was nobody but me who got into the car that night and drove to my friends house. Although, there was someone else who tagged along inside my thoughts guiding them to fulfil the night that I convinced myself I wanted to experience.

- (the paragraph below is what will lack the detail mentioned above)

At this same time in my life I needed something to be understood by my father because this understanding led to a particular action. But I could not find the courage, words, or situation that was ever right to make this conversation happen. And it was growing importance each day that went by.

-

The night ended and as usual the result was me lying awake in bed hating myself for what transpired the last ~12 hours. For some reason though I remember being able to meditate to the thought of God and this was comforting. If you’ve never done coke you should know that the comedown is the worst because there is an eerily realistic evaluation that takes place of the faults in your life. And these can wreck a person who cannot control them.

Anyway, the phone rings and it’s my dad. He’s on his way over. OMG HE’S ON HIS WAY OVER! That is NOT good. Or is it? If you’ve never done coke one thing you should also know is that the drug gives you balls of steel; fearlessness. And it ended up that I still had a little of that left in me. The conversation that my father and I needed to have took place that morning as a result of him coming over on that rare occasion I did coke. And the conversation pretty much started with, “Dad, just to let you know, I’m ****ed up.” And the explanation led to other explanations that finally led to what it did.

I mentioned earlier in this post that I felt the devil inside me during that phone call with my friend. Well after my dad left I felt God inside of me. But this was different because along with God was the realization of what just happened. God presented himself to me as the reason for why things happened the way they did and he allowed me the knowledge that the devil was how it started. For some reason I understood the connection. But what’s stranger is that I feel as though God wanted me to understand the connection because he made it apparent in my thoughts.

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.....

God creates darkness, means that because he makes known the right way, by freewill people can go the opposite, therefore lighting the correct way also makes a way for darkness to come to pass if someone chooses to stand in the way of the light and cast a shadow of darkness.

Without the light of Gods word, darkness would not be revealed.

Jesus Christ made known the light of Gods word and exposed the dark practices of all those who opposed God and His word.

No, direct interference would be God stopping something. Me wanting to do X and God hindering me from doing X. God influencing an angel to influence me but me still being able not do X, would not be directly influencing me. Or God even influencing me to not do X while maintaining my ability to do X would not be directly interfering.

Regardless of how many creative ways people use to explain why no consequence was without action, they will still fail at the one crucial point; creation.

So obviously anyone saying "never" must be wrong - Atleast if they claim God came "before" creation...which is pretty much the most common statement Christians make on this forum.

Are you saying that we did not have free will to be created? If so that really doesn't change anything, just like I do not have free will to fly. God would only be prohibiting my free will insofar as he has given it to me.

what? how can god not have the power to revoke our free will? he is god. he can do whatever the hell he pleases.

No He can't. Even God has his limits. We've crushed any argument to the contrary many...many times.

Think about a rat running a maze and you know in a few moments the rat is going to come upon a "T" in his path. The rat can choose to go left or right. Suppose you know the rat is going to choose left but you do not want him to go left so you put up a wall blocking the path to the left. Now when the rat comes upon the "T" it can only go right.

If you did that at every junction the rat would no longer be running a maze but rather a predetermined course. If our lives are like running a maze, the more God blocks paths for us the less free will have.

WWJD?

I believe 99%+ of Christians would say it is immoral to watch someone get their ass kicked and not get involved.

Assume someone was beating on another person next to Jesus. We all know that Jesus cannot do something immoral. He also can't interfere with free will.

Does Jesus stop the assailant?

you know god so well... interesting...

I had this thought after reading that post but dismissed it as probably being a trait common to all believers. But if you noticed it too..

Stu you do claim to know an awful lot about exactly what your god is capable of.

I think the consensus is that Jesus can physically intervene, but cant jedi mind trick the attacker.

I'm not sure if it would be ok to give himself super strength to try to stop the attack, thats one for the heavenly lawyers to sort out.

This is complete nonsense. You are hanging your hat on a word, "direct," which you have ensured does absolutely zero work. Its like saying "I didnt DIRECTLY attack the man, I used a bat."

The reason that "direct" and "indirect" have meaning when referring to human beings is because we have imperfect information. There isnt really a dividing line between the two, its just that as we get closer to direct we get closer to certainty about the outcome. When I directly punch you in the face, I can be pretty sure you are getting punched. When I incite a bar brawl, and you "indirectly" get hit in the face by some drunk, I couldnt be sure you'd actually get hit.

If I have intent and perfect knowledge, then every atom in the universe is merely a tool.




Your point is even more ridiculous when there are documented, historical examples of clear-cut, direct tampering, sometimes referred to as "heart-hardening."