I’ve covered this ground here before, but I’m not sure I got anything like a satisfactory answer. Then again, better thinkers than us have been covering this ground for centuries, I guess. Anyway, I was responding to a post suggesting what a great deal Christianity was because “your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don’t deserve it.”
I responded:
See, the way I read it, you start with the premise that the universe was created by God, an omniscient/omnipotent being. With those assumptions, any sins are his fault. He knows everything and has the power to change everything. We cannot make a choice that he did not know about in advance. Therefore, it wasn’t a choice. By definition, He can’t be omniscient if he doesn’t know how we will choose. And, if he is omnipotent, he could have caused it to be otherwise, he simply chose not to. Even more, he has created a hell to torment us for all eternity about these “choices”? That’s insane.
Having his boy killed to “save” us from these sins, keeping in mind he is saving us from the hell he created, doesn’t really make me think any better of him.
If he had limited knowledge and/or limited power, the whole thing might make some logical, ethical sense; but not otherwise.
Choice requires the presence of uncertainty. Omniscience is the absence of uncertainty. The two cannot co-exist.
This thread has been a fascinating one, and only God knows where it’s going from here. Which likely prompts Doug to moan: “To type or not to type, that is the question”, in perhaps complete confusion and dispair over whether or not he has the free will (or common sense) to pull the plug!