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Question- how did God decide to put together the human body if he did not know in great detail how it would work beforehand?

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You're confusing mechanical with moral. God designed the human body with comprehesive fore-knowledge of how it would mechanically work. Morally, He knew all possible ways we could choose. The actual decisions, well, we create those ourselves. If we didn't, why wouldn't He just run the entire creation scenario through His mind, why bother creating it in actuality?




Even though the skies are blue, don't they let the sunshine through?

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I'm not confused. I'm saying if there's a possibility of knowing a future state before deciding to create, then we have to concede that the future is knowable.
In order to design human life, there must be many factors in the environment that are JUST SO - physical laws governing them. A very precise and intricate process.
The brain was created. It is what creatures use to analyze and make decisions. God had to know beforehand how creatures would use those brains before he made them. If God knew exactly how the process of determination would before before creation, why couldn't he know the results of those processes?

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Animals act in mechanistic ways like that. Humans don't. Why Satan chose to rebel, that's not rational. Why Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, that's not rational. Mechanistic determinism will never explain the irrationality of sin.

Again, God can predict all possible outcomes but the actual decisions are ours. That's the "spark of life".

Also:

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many factors in the environment that are JUST SO - physical laws governing them

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Look at how nature works. It's resilent and adaptable based on fluctuating conditions. How did a dynamic system come from the mind of a static God?



Even though the skies are blue, don't they let the sunshine through?

Edited by - Laika on 05/09/2003 12:23:08 PM

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ReasonableDoubt

Question- how did God decide to put together the human body if he did not know in great detail how it would work beforehand? Theists like to argue that the intricacy of not only the universe but the human body points to an intelligent design, and, following that, Designer.

But if you are designing, you have a plan, you work from detail. Sure, you may not get it right, and you go by trial and error. But I can't see that god created the universe and us by trial and error. He must have known what he was doing.

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This reminds me of an essay that Gregory Naz. wrote in his Theological Discources. It it he asked, pointed out that if we can't make much headway in understanding the world God made, how we might expect to understand God. In many ways and to many degrees of measure we have learned a lot since the third century. But in many other ways we have not -- like meaning. But the structure of his question Is relevant here. In talking about how God can make a universe we find that we also have to try speculating about who and wahat God is. And in so doing we come up squarely against the wall of our own limits. And limited in knowing God as God himself does, we discover more of the limits of our knowing the world -- at least through rationalism alone, without approaching the world as a doxology of praise. And limited in knowing the world we find more limits on our knowing the Creator.

What we have to learn to do is to approach the world the Creator made in a grand doxology to Him who made it and placed us to "till" and "tend" it.

THAT way we can make progress in understanding IT more, and through it and through that ordained doxology...to "know" the Creator more too.

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Hey, I think I understand open theism now , geez I am slow.

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Oh, Darth Vader was Luke's father!!!!

And Rosebud was the name of Kane's sled!!!




Even though the skies are blue, don't they let the sunshine through?

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RD: Care to tell me how you deliberate in making a choice without engaging your brain?

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What about the brainless man who chooses to just lie there on the floor?



Even though the skies are blue, don't they let the sunshine through?

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Are you kidding? I am missing the joke....

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Yes, it was just a joke. I'm still trying to think of a purely arbitrary choice, thanks alot. You may as well have told me
"whatever you do today, do NOT think of pink elephants".





Even though the skies are blue, don't they let the sunshine through?