One of my biggest problems I have never gotten a good answer from Christians is “why did God create Lucifer knowing he would fall”. Many Christians argue the suffering/pain of the world is a result of sin/evil/the fall and that the devil is at the pinnacle of all of that. The problem then to me is if God knew lucifer would cause all that evil/suffering etc, why create him knowing full well what would happen.
you guys want a Good answer i will give it to you proverbs 5: 21 for all the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths. one mistake you guys make is that you think we have one path of future nope we have multiple paths and God know all of this paths but which you choose is completely up to you. when God creates you his taking a chance on you. He know every posible outcome, but which one come to pass is up to you this is the gift of free will the truth is guys God chose all of you before the foundations of the earth were even laid. but he is waiting on you to choose Him now that this is out of the way let deal with Lucifer. just like we have multiple path so does licufer. God did not intend for lucifer to rebel but he gave him the possibility of rebelling because of free will. as for evil in this world Jesus says their will be many trouble and tribulation and they will hate and persecute you for my sake but do not worry for i have over come the world think of it this way Jesus the most pure most perfect most inconent being to ever walk this. was persecuted, almost thrown of a cliff, crucified and humiliated. just for that very act the Father had his army ready to wipe out the world but Jesus said to forgive as for we don't know what we do. now what is our excuse. a being that compared to Jesus is evil. what is our excuse for suffering. but don't worry for the Lord will wipe every tear from your eyes on that day. I urge you to come back to Jesus he is you only hope please consider
@@kyle9777This makes no damn sense to me either. The end of Revelations makes no damn sense. God puts the world through this horrible 7 year period of the most heinous atrocities one could imagine; stars falling to the earth, turning water into blood or making it bitter that it’s undrinkable and all of the sea creatures dies (why does God constantly punish animals for human sin??); locusts with a scorpion tail, human face with long hair and lion’s teeth going around torturing humans by stinging them, but they (humans) can’t die. Massive earthquakes, painful sores, the sun scorching people, intense darkness, hail and fire mingled with blood rain upon the earth; four angels that command a force of two-hundred million mounted troops whose horses exude plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone (the horses have lion's head with tails like a serpent with a head) The plagues exuding from the horses will kill a third of all mankind. All of this, and much more, will take place during the Tribulation. Afterwards, god locks up Satan for a thousand years, and there’s peace on earth. After that time is up, god releases Satan for him to deceive mankind once again and prepare for the battle of Armageddon, which is a total joke, because there is no battle. As soon as Satan gathers his army, god cast them into the lake of fire. The end. Why??? Why??? Why???? None of this makes any sense! God torments the world, then he grants it 1,000 years of peace, only to release Satan to cause chaos on the earth right before he nuclear bombs all existence??!! This 💩 makes my brain hurt. 🤦🏾♂️
When I was 15 years old, I started having a medical condition called hemiplegic migraine attacks. My doctors frequently misdiagnosed and mistreated it. I can't tell you the amount of excruciating physical and emotional pain that I suffered year after year because of it and the multitude of losses I incurred. It bankrupted me because I could no longer work after I worked my butt off to get a Master's degree. Took away my driver's license thereby ending my frèedom. I frequently went unconscious for days sometimes because the pain was too great for my brain to handle. I lost friends and family members because I became unreliable and a burden on everyone. When I was still 15 years old, I was told that it was an extremely rare autosomal dominant condition that had no known cure. Meaning that there was a 50/50 chance my kid would have it. I was also told it was atleast partially hormonal and any pregnancy would be extreme high risk. And that taking birth control pills would put me at an extreme risk for a stroke. Knowing full well that if my kid had this disease, it would be my fault for being so selfish as to risk it. And, knowing there is absolutely no way I could watch my child go through the intense agony I have repeatedly gone through, I made the most responsible decision I think I could have made in never having children. I don't understand how a loving god could make me...knowingly watching me suffer and do NOTHING as I writhed in pain begging it for help to make these things go away. I didn't deserve that. NO ONE COULD! I think at 15 years old, I was more responsible than this god that is supposed to be all knowing, all powerful, and loving... if it existed!
@a.b.2405 Depends what moment you ask me. I never know what condition I will be in. Some days I can't tell you my name. Other days, I can write this to you.
One of the terrible things christianity does to people is it disables their empathy - they will excuse any amount of suffering in order to protect their god.
Yes … and no. Christians have indeed done heinous things … and also have historically been moved to acts of profound self-sacrifice and loving-kindness. We tend to notice the bastards I guess. But we need to avoid too-sweeping statements in this regard or our arguments as atheists/agnostics may be seen as mere rhetoric.
Excellent point. Apologetics, for the most part, is all about making excuses for God; an odd thing to do when God -- the supposed omnipotent and omniscient creator of the universe -- would be responsible for EVERYTHING.
When someone dies, "they went to a better place", which is a guess. Death just might be annihilation, and we cease to exist, just like we didn't exist before we were born. We are animals, so why wouldn't we wind up like other animals? Animals suffer and their pain isn't going to get them anything in any afterlife, so why do they have to suffer? It's purposeless.
@@jimscott9974 They don't even see him as all powerful, they don't even care that the bible says everything that happens is God's will. So why bother to pray?
@@OfficialWordOnTheStreet That’s the obvious point if you can poof a universe into existence wtf do need a boat for just poof what you don’t want out of existence.
Brandon, I am blown away by your ability to clearly and succinctly say things that I've been struggling to articulate for YEARS. Thank you for these videos.
You are too kind. Your comments are so encouraging and i really appreciate you reaching out. Thanks for letting me know and for being an early part of this.
@@MindShift-Brandon Why would you think that "the majority" of His creation will be separated from Him eternally in hell ??? "His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring ALL things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth" (Ephesians 1) "now I urge you to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship" (Acts 27) "he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2) "we are saved by hope" (Romans 8) "In hope, the Church prays for all men to be saved" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1821)
Yes. I totally agree with you. Brandon has stated many things that has swirled in my big, beautiful brain (haha). He just articulates them much better than I can. ☺️
Excellent points. It's this concept that always gave me pause, even back when I was a devout little Southern Baptist boy. Why would you undertake an enterprise if you knew how disastrously wrong it would all go beforehand? And once it did, why not just erase it all and start over and spare everyone the turmoil? What even is the purpose of any of this; why did any of it need to be? You created a being to acknowledge and worship you, yet 95% of those beings you're going to send to Hell. I don't think there are really any sound arguments to defend this. They usually just end up being, "The Lord works in mysterious ways." or, "You don't have a right to judge God." Which I think is ridiculous. If I'm caught in the middle of this mess, I don't think it's unreasonable to pass judgment on something I cannot justify or even comprehend.
As always, well said! The blinders of faith are the only thing miraculous as i just cant believe how hard it is for christians to see all this for what it really is.
"Why would you undertake an enterprise if you knew how disastrously wrong it would all go beforehand?" 1) How do you know that it will go disastrously wrong? What if it won't in fact, go "disastrously wrong" and that what appears as such are either mythological stories (such as Noah's flood) or minor compared to the alternatives? For example, the colonization of India by Britain resulted in around 100 million Indians being killed. However, it also opened India up to more advanced science which otherwise, would have killed 500 million Indians (don't know for sure because unlike you, I am not omniscient so I can't see what would have happened in alternate histories). 2) What if the alternative (such as not doing it) is even WORSE than the "disastrously wrong" outcome you think will occur? My point is, you can't adequately judge an intelligence unless you are close to being that intelligent yourself (a being that can accurately judge what would really happen in alternate histories would be WAY more intelligent than me).
@@elzoog How do I know it would go disastrously wrong? God is supposed to be omniscient - He knows everything that has ever happened and everything that will, because He's the one who made it all happen. Ergo, He knew that Lucifer would rebel, He knew that Man would fall, He knew that billions and billions of people would end up in Hell. And the alternative to not doing any of it is just that nothing ever happens, which is way preferable. It's not like God was under any obligation to make anything; He did it because he wanted to. You're right, I'm not omniscient, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to pose questions.
@@TH3F4LC0Nx "How do I know it would go disastrously wrong? " You don't get it. YOU think it will go disastrously wrong. YOU think that. Let that sink in. "He knows everything that has ever happened and everything that will" But does HE think it will go disastrously wrong? That's the question. "Ergo, He knew that Lucifer would rebel," So, YOU think that "Lucifer rebelling" constitutes "disastrously wrong". "And the alternative to not doing any of it is just that nothing ever happens, which is way preferable" YOU think it would be preferable. How do YOU know that? How do YOU even know that "nothing ever happens" would be the result of not creating Lucifer? "It's not like God was under any obligation to make anything; He did it because he wanted to." How do you know that God was under no obligation to make anything? How do you know that God did it because he wanted to? What does "want to" even mean in reference to "God"? Isn't it kind of stupid to speak so confidently about stuff you have no knowledge of?
@@elzoog Alright, I see your point, but no, I do not think it's stupid to speak of such things, for the simple reason that it directly concerns me. But I'm not sure your premise is entirely sound. - Everything in the Bible makes it overwhelmingly clear that Lucifer rebelling and Man falling were adverse developments; i.e., they were not what God wished. The Christian defense is that they were permitted to happen to allow for free will, but that's beside the point. As the Bible makes abundantly clear, they weren't good things. - And no, I do not think it would be preferable if nothing had ever happened; I KNOW it would be preferable; again, because I have to experience the fallout, so for me, (and, you know, everyone), it would be better if things simply hadn't been at all. - And if God was indeed under some sort of obligation to make all this, then that would seem to be contrary to omnipotence. God says that He is the Alpha and Omega; nothing can exist that can force Him to do anything. Ergo, he did what he did through his own desire to do so. So again, I don't think it's wrong to interrogate the design when it's harmful or at least potentially harmful to you.
mind shift proverb 5: 21 for all the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord , and he ponders all his paths. we dont have one path or future. you have multiple future this mean the God know every single one of the future. but as for which one come to pass its completely dependent on you action God may know every our come but as far as which one come to pass is a choice that he has given you. God has given you a series of choices even though he know every choice that you could choose but which one you choose are up to you and the consequences that follow are completely one you. he has gave you a path name Jesus. God know how many way you cannot choose Jesus but weather you choose him or not or which path you chose is completely up to you and God does not intervene. this mean God is omniscient and we preserve our free will. and it not some dumb excuse i came up with. its in the bible as you can see. its say God thought outnumber the sand on the see shore. what is he thinking about if he already know the perfect future out come. repent from you way your are leading many on a path of destruction . Jesus will forgive you but he is not happy with what your are doing right now. if you see this right a response if i im wrong but if i am right review you topic better. i can tell you from see you videos most of them are flawed God love you remember that
The God of the Bible ONLY responds to His children's prayers. Most people who call themselves christians, aren't christians at all, not according to the Bible. The church of Christ is the ONLY body of believers that God recognizes.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” -Epicurus Representing Atheism since 341-271 BCE
Old school, ha. It doesn’t hurt that he’s already one of my favorite philosophical thinkers, but then i discovered that quite that sounded like it was from Hitchens and you realize its like 2300 years old, just amazing.
Strictly speaking, Epicurus was not clearly an atheist. Elsewhere, he does talk about a belief in the gods (look at his "letter to Menoeseus"). From what I remember, there's some speculation that he was an atheist but couldn't outwardly say it (just look at Socrates a few decades before Epicurus - he was put to death in part because they claimed he rejected the gods). However, I don't think there's strong evidence that he really was an atheist. I haven't looked into it recently, but I think there's even a question whether the above quote was actually from Epicurus. I think David Hume is the source of this quote, and he cites it as coming from Epicurus, but I seem to remember reading that it's not actually clear that it really is a quote from Epicurus. Now, this is neither here nor there regarding the main point at discussion here. But I just wanted to clear up the misconception that Epicurus was an atheist.
Epicurus: _"Then why call him God?”_ Rationally-thinking person: _"Epicurus, who were you calling "God" just now, in the first line of your little spiel, when you said "Is God willing...?""_
@@DPortugal You wrote: _"Maybe just hypothetical, to make a point."_ Get back to me if you figure out how to write a declarative sentence. You need to have a subject and a predicate in order to construct a declarative sentence. You need to construct a declarative sentence to make a point.
Jeff Beck played guitar on a song that addresses this question in a pointed way: "Whatever God Wants, God Gets." I heard that song and chills ran up my spine.
Really well said. I started making a list of things I would have done differently had I been god and it quickly got so long I abandoned it. Just practical things about the world and life - we don’t have to be a god to recognize what could be improved to reduce suffering. A little compassion goes a long way.
Add two lines. Don’t hurt children. Don’t own people and you win the morality game over god already! I can only imagine what else could be on your list.
@@MindShift-BrandonLately, when I see a picture of a sweet baby’s face or a video of a baby laughing (which I think is the most precious sound on this planet), my mind sometimes turn to god and I think…..how in the world could a god look at that sweet baby and strike them down. Sorry , let’s call it out for what it is…..murder. God came down himself to murder the firstborn of all Egyptians. He didn’t send any angels; he did it himself. That alone tells me that this biblical god is total bull💩.
Once again, spot on! I often think back to questions I used to ask about god when I was a kid (like why pray if god already knows the outcome; I was told that he likes to be asked) I think my b.s. meter was going off loud and clear then, but the longer I was indoctrinated, the quieter it got. Why would I ever want to serve a god that would make throw away people as part of his “perfect” plan? “Because God’s ways are higher than our ways and it will all make sense when we get to heaven” 😂 Can’t wait to see the other video coming up!
"Why would I ever want to serve a god that would make throw away people as part of his “perfect” plan?" How do you know that he made "throw away people"?
Man, I couldn’t have said it better, when you said that your BS meter was going off but you suppressed it the deeper you were indoctrinated. Ditto. Evan when I was young, some of the things I was being told didn’t make sense to me, like the story of Noah (at this point, anyone who believes that ridiculous story is just mental!), or particularly how god, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit can be three separate entities but yet all three roll up into one god. Huh?? So when Jesus was baptized and a voice shouted from heaven, “this is my beloved son, whom I am well pleased”, was Jesus throwing his voice?? 🤷🏽♂️ And let’s not forget that a virgin child had a baby. Oh the Bull💩 was strong. 🤣
Yes. Think of all the other ideas we have outgrown since we were told the as children. But, religion, it's a tough one, because it touches us at a very deep and moral place, making it so difficult to question it, without feeling bad...but you are doing well about it, and you can help someone else just by sharing like you just did. :)
My son was born 36 years ago with a genetic disorder that has prevented him from growing up mentally. In many ways he is still a toddler, but a toddler with 36 years of experiencing this world. It seems at times that his mind is superior to anyone I know, in that he has no vision of the future, no thoughts of what he will be doing next year, or next month. He lives entirely in the present. His concept of God is pure and untarnished by emotion. He sees God as just another fictional character on the same level as Poke' Mon. Through him I have come to understand more about the human mind than most will ever see. He taught me that every day is a new chance to get closer to my goal of a perfect knowledge of reality, without any of the false ideas of yesterday. Every morning I can see far more clearly than I did the night before. Every day, my mind is new.
Great points as usual. You could have added the issue of free will in heaven. If we are sinless in heaven, do we have free will? If we have free will in heaven, does that mean we can have free will without sin? Then why didn't god create us with that kind of free will to begin with?
Can people sin in heaven? Allegedly, the angels did. So if you can sin in heaven, can you lose your place in heaven? If you can't sin in heaven, are you a zombie or a robot? How is that paradise?
@@DPortugalThat’s a question I’ve asked. 😁 Wouldn’t you think that, at some point…you know, after 17,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years of worshipping god, one would get sick of it and maybe they gather with others who are sick of worshipping god and plan an attack……then god strike them down and starts this whole process over again. 🫤🙄
@@dinard38if there is any chance of sin in heaven then in an infinite time it will happen. So yeah it will definitely happen and we are probably just the second species God is experimenting with, if he is real of course
I remember when I was a kid asking a question about the effects of one choice or another, and someone said something along the lines of “God can see all different possibilities of people.” He knows when someone makes one choice, but then he can see that person making the opposite/alternative choice. With that logic, God sees people make a good choices or better choices, good choices or bad choices, and/or bad choices or worse choices. If he can see all these possibilities then this makes God even worse than you think. If God is omnipotent and omniscient (of all possibilities), then he can witness a world where people aren’t discriminatory, prejudice, murderous, pedophiliac, sexist, or evil and can change that. He can see a world where “his children” are making good decisions. One the flip side he sees and knows the worse possibilities that someone can be in. He sees a woman about to be rapped, a man committing suicide, a kid being bullied. He witnesses a holocaust, a war, slavery, a wave of societal violence. Whether or not it happens _he sees it happening._ God is either: - omnipotent and omniscient AND cruel, - or he’s omniscient but NOT omnipotent, - or NEITHER omniscient or omnipotent, - or he doesn’t exist. And if someone says “god’s ways are mysterious and beyond our understanding,” if that were true then we wouldn’t have an entire book about him. And God giving people free will to make decisions is pointless because if an all powerful being meddles with mortal beings then there’s interference. And if God knows what’s going to happen, if he knows the choices we’ll make then people are just following a divine spreadsheet. There’s no significance in what people do if God sees what’s going to happen.
I don't agree. You are confusing possible worlds with feasible worlds. Let me explain. A possible world is something that could logically occur, i.e., there is no law of logic that prevents the event from occurring. A feasible world is the true value of a contrafactual, i.e., that which would actually occur given certain circumstances. Every feasible world is a possible world, but there is only one feasible world within the possible worlds. In other words, a possible world is anything that could be, and a feasible world is anything that would be given certain circumstances. For example, if I win the lottery I could do any of the following: 1) I could burn all the money 2) I could buy a big house. 3) I could spend the money buying all the pencils in the world. Those 3 are possibilities (obviously there are many more things I could do but this is just to illustrate), but what I would actually do if I won the lottery would be to buy a big house. Therefore, in this case numbers 1, 2 and 3 are possible worlds, however, only number 2 is the feasible world. The fact that it is logically possible for anyone to do any evil act does not mean that it is feasible for God to make such a world.
@jexelbur6872 you are more right than you know! The arguments that you present are precisely why liberal theology is just a giant brain fog and when carried out to the logical conclusion it falls apart; the primary basis, bedrock and foundation of liberal theology is man's free will (autonomous free will). They make mincemeat of God's omniscience and omnipotence and in the end they come up with a god that is anti-scriptural. Conservative theologians, Calvinists, would be able to answer the questions that you asked but I'm certain that the answers would still be offensive to you. I just wanted to point out the folly of liberal theology.
Another nail in the coffin for god's omniscience is that if he is all knowing, he can forsee the future. If he can forsee the future, he cannot change his mind. If he cannot change his mind, then his mind seems robotic and not conscious. If his mind is robotic, then all our actions are predetermined and we don't have free will
If He were to change His mind that would imply an imperfection in His plan, since God is perfect and just He would have zero imperfections. Also, I partly agree with your last sentence regarding free will. I, as well as a good handful of Christians, reject this pagan notion of autonomous (or libertarian) free will; instead we would ascribe to a will that is bound by its nature (or an enslaved will).
I've always wondered why a god who's "perfect" needs a creation in the first place, considering by definition it has everything it already needs, otherwise it's not "perfect ". Perfection means it's whole, complete, not needing anything else. It can't be "more perfect".
@@CatDaddyGuitar I'm agnostic, but I don't disagree. There's so many problems with the God belief. We were told to praise Jesus blah blah, and also told he was "without sin" and "not capable of sinning", so how is that commendable?
@@gusgrizzel8397 I can only imagine one reason a "god" needs a creation.: Narcissism. If you see the God of the Bible in that light, all the killing and slavery and his jealousy... it all makes sense. Who wants to worship such a petty, jealous (his words), angry, vengeful being? Even if there were evidence I think I would not, again. I say again because I did once. It's something I would (actually can't) go back to and believe in.
@@CatDaddyGuitar You know what's weird? There's no Egyptian record of having had Hebrew slaves. Never. So one has to wonder...Yeah, this makes death even more terrifying. Just going to sleep and that's it, would be better than being tortured by him for eternity. "Hey, you guys...don't stop worshipping me after a few millenial...come on..."
As an (ex) catholic, I do remember oftentimes the question of unjust suffering being a hot topic in a few groups I was active in (I was fairly involved in a catholic discord for a while that had a very active debate/apologetics channel.) From what I can gather, the most reported conclusion/excuse for things like animal suffering in particular was this: "Suffering only came into the world when the sin was committed and the trust between god and his creation was broken. By sinning against their creator, Adam and Eve brought death and pain into the world, not only for humanity, but for *all* creatures." They would often point to descriptions in the bible about the serenity of the garden of Eden, and symbolism about lions and lambs resting together peacefully after the second coming of christ created the new perfect earth. This of course cycles back into questions of **why"" exactly an all-loving, all-knowing and "merciful" god would cause such a domino effect to affect arguably completely innocent animals due to the mistakes of two humans, but also notice that it plays directly into the guilt narrative that perpetuates almost every aspect of christian/catholic philosophy. Because humans are so despicable, all the innocent pure animals of the world were thrust into chaos and violence-- we bear the guilt of quite literally every instance of pain on the planet on our shoulders simply by being born--something we did not even ask for in the first place. It's all so tiresome, and so very mind numbing to wrap your head around. Glad I started critically analyzing my beliefs and presuppositions Love your channel too, by the way. I have been on a binge going through every atheist/agnostic philosophy channel I can find as I deconvert and deconstruct my religious convictions. Thank you for your dedication to presenting your perspective in such a concise but clear and informative manner!
That excuse is so broken, ha. But i wont reply to it here ha. Thank you very much for your kind words and for being here. Bow recent is your deconversion?
@@MindShift-Brandon Of course! And yeah, it only makes sense if you have no deeper consideration for biological developments throughout history, truly a backwards, draconic perspective. I only very recently started to consider myself truly non-religious. My catholic convictions were quite strong up until mid 2022, about a year to the day, in fact. Not to going into extreme detail here, but my religious life has been a rollercoaster throughout the last few years--after losing my loved one to covid in 2021, I had lapsed back into very devout practices. Looking back, I can see it was clearly a psychological response to grief and trauma, and I'm a little embarassed at how quickly the tendrils of catholic dogma had wiggled into my brain. Thankfully after getting real therapy and treatment for depression/anxiety, I realized that despite relying on prayer and spirituality to "help me" get through the pain and stress, it really did no more than my own self awareness and mental fortitude. I can say at least now I'm way more excited to lear about history, science, and psychology without having to censor or filter it through the lens of orthodoxy.
Thanks for sharing. So sorry to hear about your loss. And yes a whole new world opens up after leaving religion. Appreciate you being here and wish you well on this continued journey.
I always struggled with this one. The version I settled on was basically thinking that instead of knowing all my choices He knew the outcomes for each and every possible choice and that each time we went down a different branch. Kinda like a super complicated tree branch thing. That way I could have my free will by making the choice and he'd have omniscience by knowing my actual choice and every possible alternative web. The only thing with that was that it created mental gaps with him having a plan which I squared by thinking he pretty much just set everything into motion and mostly left it all alone as long as the sum total was everything ending at his plan. Occasionally he'd have to intervene with a small nudge pushing someone in the right direction so we all get there. That then created mental gaps on prayer then. Does it work which i then squared with saying I'm so small and insignificant and the plan so complicated that whatever small nudge he made for me wouldn't be enough to throw off the whole plan anyway. The mental gymnastics you've got to use to keep your faith once you take a few seconds to think about it is astounding.
What does it even mean to say that an omnipotent and omniscient being “wants” something? I want things I don’t have or can’t have. There’s a temporal component as well. What does it mean to say that a being outside or above time “wants” something?
Like Michael said in an earlier comment, you have a great gift in articulating the very things I have pondered for so many years. My ADHD mind often has a difficult time putting thoughts and ideas into a coherent dispute, so thank you for sharing your words. I look forward to every video you put out.
do not follow hes articulation for his words may sound convincing but the are not true. look at both side and relize that Jesus Christ is the truth. i do agree that he articulate well but this make it Good for consealing his true motive which is to make God semm like a monster and lead you away from Life. for example this topic he talk about proverbs 5: 21 for all the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths. one mistake he make is that you think we have one path of future nope we have multiple paths and God know all of this paths but which you choose is completely up to you. when God creates you his taking a chance on you. He know every posible outcome, but which one come to pass is up to you this is the gift of free will the truth is guys God chose all of you before the foundations of the earth were even laid. but he is waiting on you to choose Him as for evil in this world Jesus says their will be many trouble and tribulation and they will hate and persecute you for my sake but do not worry for i have over come the world think of it this way Jesus the most pure most perfect most inconent being to ever walk this. was persecuted, almost thrown of a cliff, crucified and humiliated. just for that very act the Father had his army ready to wipe out the world but Jesus said to forgive as for we don't know what we do. now what is our excuse. a being that compared to Jesus is evil. what is our excuse for suffering most suffering is not of God but its man made. but don't worry for the Lord will wipe every tear from your eyes on that day. I urge you to come back to Jesus he is you only hope please consider
The problem isn't omniscience. It's not even omnipotence and omnipresents (they have some paradoxes, but you could work with that), but the real problem is if you mix in omnibenevolence. That implies that all good come from him. However what to do with all the evil in the world (or just things that are not good)? Yeah you could just blame a devil figure, but who created the devil figure with the knowledge that he would do such a thing. Not to mentioned that what someones finds good is evil in the eyes of others. Someone can claim he is 100% good, but someone else could say he is 100% evil. Is god good because he knows what good is (which implies goodnes came somewhere else) or is good good because god says so (which implies he can say anything and it would be considered good). If a higher being exist that created the universe, it probably doesn't really care that much about us (100%) or is asleep/passive for alot of time
Such an excellent video Brandon. I’m constantly amazed that this isn’t more of a sticking point for most Christians. Especially theologians who have done the hard work to dissect the nuances of the biblical text.
The only thing I would have added was the interaction between omniscience and omnipotence and furthermore omnibenevolence: you cannot be both omniscient AND omnipotent, and arguably you cannot possess more than one of these three traits as they all necessarily cancel each other out. If you are all knowing then you know every action you will ever take and when you’ll make them. If you know every action you will ever take and when you’ll make them then you are subject to determinism and thus have no power to make any decisions. Free will is the power to make decisions(there are many definitions of free will and I would argue most of not all fit this syllogism’s purpose) Therefore omniscience is incompatible with free will. Conclusion A: If you lack free will you cannot be all powerful. Omniscience is incompatible with free will. Therefore omniscience is incompatible with omnipotence. Conclusion B: If you lack free will your actions cannot be motivated by morality even if they are congruent to what is to be considered moral. Omniscience is incompatible with free will. Therefore omniscience is incompatible with omnibenevolence. And just round things off it’s not hard to understand why being all good means you powerless to perform evil and therefore prevents an all good being from being all powerful. I’m sure there is a shorter, simpler, and more elegant version of this argument but this is generally how I tend to present it.
7:29 While predestination explanation is a good reply, you do not need to even go there. If by omniscience you also mean, 'has the discernment to determine the truth or falsehood of all propositions', it is not merely that God know a possible outcome, but he knows the exact outcome this is true. Meaning he knows what you will do, not just the choices that you have.
wow another fascinating expose and major Mindshift !!! I have been checking out a few videos on your channel and plan to check them all out as time permits. you do a wonderful job of bringing clarity to so many issues that have plagued me since I was a child but could never quite come to terms with. I hope this content reaches many people . this channel of yours seems to really get to the heart of the matter. tks Brandon I thoroughly enjoy listening to you!!
This is 4 months late, but I'd certainly like to give an opinion on 3 parts, (though I think I may be repeating myself from your other videos): the property of omniscience and how it relates to free will (I have not watched your Thursday video on free will yet), the problem of evil, and the mentality of Christian apologetic reasoning. I think for theists and atheists, we tend to focus a lot on how God's omniscience affects us, but I don't think we stop to think how it affects God himself. We can apply a very similar situation to God and we can sort of show that God doesn't have free will as well: 1. God knows all 2. God has choices available to him 3. God has a range of actions available to him in regards to those choices 4. God knows what consequence will come out of all action in regards to all choices 5. HOWEVER, God knows what choice and action he will ultimately make While this won't invalidate omniscience, it would invalidate his free will. If you know all, then even though you know have choices laid in front of you, you already know what choice you are going to make ultimately, forevermore. You become a puppet who can see the strings. We can also do a thought experiment with omniscience. Let's say human beings evolve enough over the next few billion years that we are able to know and demonstrate literally everything in the universe instantaneously. Everything that can be known about the known universe is somehow able to be achieved. Not only that, but let's say somehow, since we are able to model what human behavior in a group setting now, we are now able to model it down to an individual level due to new technologies. We augment ourselves with these technologies to know what each and every single quark is doing. No thought escapes us. Nothing can escape without us knowing it in this universe. But from here a question remains: Would we still ask if a higher power exists? Would we still ask of any unknowns? Would we still ask about abstract concepts like "the meaning of life"? Christians tend to argue that God has limited this world according to the rules he set. So no matter how hard humans try, they cannot escape the "bounds" of the universe and enter the realm of God on their own (even though Genesis 11:6 exists) But to conceive of a higher power, would require an unknown, thus it would require curiosity. If human beings are able to consider, create and visualize concepts supposedly higher than ourselves, is God capable of conceiving of a concept higher than himself? Is God capable of being curious? As babies, we are often curious first (taking a "leap of faith" into the unknown, which is where a lot of Christians try to level the charge of faith against atheists), before moving on to being rational (seeing how things work together), to being trusting (seeing how things work together consistently), to being knowledgeable (demonstrating and explaining with high confidence how things work together consistently). An all knowing god is only knowledgeable. He does not need to be curious, rational or trusting. But the first 3 still requires us to consider a concept we call "the unknown". Now none of this on its own disproves anything, like I said it's a thought experiment. But let's say we humans can imagine a concept of a higher being HIGHER than a god. Is it possible for this super-god to create an environment where an entity we call god is omniscient and omnipotent ONLY in the environment he is created in? If God cannot consider a concept higher than himself, it could be possible the super god has made it so that he cannot demonstrate things outside his own omniscience within his environment. Because of that, god only THINKS he is omniscient and omnipotent. If God CAN consider a concept higher than himself, he is then capable of becoming curious. But if he can become curious then that must mean there is an unknown to god, and then that might mean he becomes subjected to unfalsifiable propositions. But he can't falsify those propositions because the super god limits his omniscience and omnipotence to ONLY his environment. In his realm, in his environment, it is true that he is omnipotent and omniscience, just like how we are limited by what we can do in this environment we call the universe. If there was anything God cannot know, he couldn't know it, because he doesn't know there's an unknown. And the same would apply to the super god too. I do find it funny though how Christians like to say God didn't make us as robots, even though the word robot means "slave" and Romans 6:20-23 calls Christians slaves. On the problem of evil, I basically just state heaven as a counterargument, and wrote this: www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/15l9c6u/doesnt_the_idea_of_heaven_go_against_the_reasons/ On the mentality of Christian apologetics, I have a hypothesis that Christians are not attracted to goodness, but to power and authority. I don't have a sufficiently strong case for that yet, but I do have a few reasons for saying so and that is when you mentioned that "are you saying that you are god now? That you know better?" If goodness is tied to knowledge and expressed through actions, then power and authority should not be factors. If a proposed god came along and stated that he gives charity for all, or his religious proposition is based on universalism, prevention of evil or rehabilitation of people, similar to our systems, then why don't people move towards that? No one has got to be punished, everyone gets to live in harmony eventually in the afterlife after rehabilitation. Yet Christians will reject that because there is no "punishment for sins". An authority dictating objective morality is suspect because an authority that claims goodness but is unknown could be lying to you about its goodness if it doesn't have to be transparent. The truth however IS transparent. But power and authority ARE tied to rewards and punishments. And I personally think Christian apologetics are more hung up on "punishing evil, receiving justice, and divine retribution". You see it all the time with words like "God's vengeance", "taking accountability", "satisfying god's wrath", "punishment for sins". Ray Comfort's "did you lie?" is an example that he is only interested in the lie being punished. Or how about words that inspire fear like "What if you're wrong" or "going to hell". It doesn't matter if it is good or not first. It only matters that your self-preservation comes first. You even have terms like "free from fear", "meaning in life" in Christian lingo. Christianity is not comfortable with uncertainty. This is where you get the "if no one is around to judge for it, you can sin all you want" charge that Christians like to say. That probably says more about the Christian then it does more about the atheist, because if they can be convinced that there won't be a god around to judge them for it, then they might "sin all they want". It reminds me of when Muslim apologists tried to make fun of people for having open marriages, like how they perceive open marriages as weaknesses, and in doing so show what they're afraid of. They perceive that a man must feel slighted and unhappy if their wife has close relationships with another man, and thinks it is always the fault of a man or a weakness on their part if they wife cheats, even though the man has done literally nothing wrong and has been faithful and it has always has been the wife's decision to cheat. So rather than control their actions based on their emotions, they control what the wife gets to do. You can't make fun of a man for being bald if he chose it. I suspect that Christian apologetics' focus is on an inherent fear of retribution for being sinful, as opposed to focusing on being good. Because remember, the Christian doctrine isn't about the promotion of good deeds as its focus, the Christian doctrine is focused on retribution for sins, and how you need Jesus to remove those sins. Christians can say all the "saved to do good works" all they want, but that only tells me that they are still focusing on their own sense of self-preservation. Would Christians still do good works, if proposed that they are all going to hell anyway? There is a song called "The Impossible Dream". And in one of the lyrics, it says: "To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause", and although this is anecdotal, I still distinctly remember my dad catching himself singing it and was like "crap I don't wanna do that". But the thing is, that is what a good person would do? Don't Christians accept that Jesus went to hell for a period of time? There's probably a lot I am still missing here, but I would love to see a video on this attraction of power and control over goodness, if you haven't made it already.
When I was a believer I always thought of time as happening for God all at once, e.g. not experiencing time linearly. I think that reduces some of the free will issues, at least in my mind.
Awesome content. Early off you touch on the Jesus never list. This is where I’m at. Abused in childhood, scapegoated and abused in marriage, alienated in divorce and I have to have Christian guilt because I escaped and omit these ppl? This guilt and shame kept me Married 15 yrs longer than needed. If there was a god that wanted me to follow him, then take away my molester(s) and the stain they left me with- but Jesus couldn’t know that and didn’t. Thank you. Helps.
You're very knowledgeable and well educated. You've given me more insight about just how cruel and diminishing modern day Christianity just really is. I've listened to people like you and Planet Peterson. Always great to expose this stuff.
"Oh, god doesn't want robots, he values free will!" What's the difference between a robot with programmed actions for a desired outcome and a person being threatened with a gun to their head to do something?
I have additional problems with the "All Knowing" concept. 1) Being all knowing is a prison from which there is no escape. If you have absolute knowledge to the smallest detail as to what you are going to do in the next minute, hour, day, and decade... what choice do you have? Nothing happens, inside or outside of time, that you can control. You are trapped in a movie. A terrible fate even for a god. 2) Where does god get all this knowledge? How does he come by it? Why is it assumed that he can just get it... like something that is a trivial exercise? How does one start from nothing and then suddenly have all this knowledge. I am aware of the "begotten not made" excuse, but being "begotten" does not mean you have all knowledge. Anyway, two more point that bug me about omniscience.
Totally true on all the points. Suppose humans had to suffer to know good from bad. But what about animals? They do not choose, they live totally natural lives -- no painkillers, no wound treatment, the worst meaning of the "natural" nightmare. Why? For what purpose? Why not creating them without pain receptors, or without a chance to suffer for days before they die? Because of what happens to them, I've struggled through depressive episodes since my childhood. I would never understand (or forgive) such a god =(
If predators get too weak or injured to make a kill, they starve to death. Yet religious people just dismiss all of this, saying this life isn't important. Wonder if there's PTSD in heaven....
@@DPortugal exactly! They dismiss anything that doesn't fit the "perfect god" picture. Moreover, they neglect those precious souls their god arguably created.
He made us just for that reason that we worship him, while he tortured us and set us up for failure. He does all these horrible things while he claims that he is the source of morals. That's 100% the same reason my father wanted to have children. Sky daddy is a malignant narcissist.
Yet religious people try to make pain and suffering all noble, like they can buy a better place in heaven. Or they bring up how Jesus suffered. Or they bring up how this life doesn't really matter, and talk about rewards in heaven. I wonder how any prisoner of war, tortured continuously, starved, beaten, no hope of ever getting out, hoping for death as relief, could ever mentally bond with this god who allows this to happen, and yet...commands worship and adoration. Cannot imagine their constant terror of the sounds of the jailer coming to get them again, for another interrogation session.
Just thought of the hymn where we'd sing the quiet part out loud: "trust and obey, *for there's no other way*, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey". Willful ignorance and blind obedience is what kept me (relatively) happy in Jesus for 35 years. Then "I did some research, some thinking" the famous last words if anyone as a christian😅.
I love the way you summed up your video, it beautifully encapsulates the obvious glaring issue with trying to circumvent objection by side stepping to some concept of a challenger having no basis, right, or understanding of some supposed divine being. You brought it back to the actual issue, which is as it is claimed, in using all the concepts and language of humans, by humans, to argue a concept as we understand it - it fails. Any one of us could do better. To me there is simply _no_ outcome that justifies a world where children are literally tortured, starving, or infected with horrifying parasitic organisms, unless the justification, the actual reason to proceed _is_ for the cruelty. I find it sickening, but there could not be any other reason to proceed. My soul, yours, anyone's is _not_ worth that horror. _Nobody_ should be Ok with the idea their eternal happiness is worth that.
Great presentation. It remains problematic how & why God foresaw every suffering creature’s agony - the experience of every tortured prisoner, the despair of every slave, the tears of the abused, psychological and physical pain in man and beast, the torment of animals in the animal industrial complex and in vivisection labs - and yet went ahead with his creation project anyway. We seem not to have the capacity to really grasp the catastrophic depth and breadth of creaturely suffering. The current agony of the Jews and Palestinians is but one example of the nightmare God signed off on. Of course we assume God - if there is one - is good. The heretic Marcion believed the creator was evil: this goes a long way to answering a lot of the questions.
In church circles, God always gets the credit for our righteous behavior, but not for our unrighteous behavior. But Natures don’t just pop out of thin air, and as I see it, choices can’t be made without a nature. Even if God came to us individually and let us choose our own nature, the person choosing their nature would already have to have a nature to weigh pros and cons, desires, etc. Choosing a nature presupposes a nature. And where did that come from in this hypothetical? They just don’t want to say it, “God created sinners.” As I said in a previous comment, Adam and Eve couldn’t have desired evil, unless they already were evil. The evil in this case being something that is a disobedience towards God.
Well done, Brandon! I was looking forward to this video and you nailed it. I may not be omniscient, but I most definitely know that you and this channel will do great things in the future. Much success to you man. Oh and nice name by the way 😉
I turned away from the abrahamic god as a teenager and became an atheist for a few years. Then I became agnostic because I couldn't reason how the universe couldve started, as in what was before the big bang, or how is anything gere to begin with? These were questions that not even science could answer (not that I think that's a problem, it's just the limitations of observability). So that made me think that there could be something, but what that is, nobody knows.
3:17 I think the boulder argument can be reframed for omniscience by saying "Could God think of a solvable puzzle so hard, even he couldn't think of a solution?" It would still probably be dismissed as quaint wordplay, but I think that's a more accurate analogy to the boulder argument. 7:09 I agree with your counter rebuttal, but I would just say: it doesn't matter if God doesn't determine your actions. The fact that he can know what our actions will be shows that _something_ determines our actions, otherwise God couldn't know it. Thus, we wouldn't have free will. 18:30 I would have tied it in to The Problem of Evil differently. Basically, even if we assume _human_ levels of potency rather than omnipotence, and even if we assume _human_ levels of benevolence rather than omnibenevolence, we still aren't seeing a world that reflects omniscience because of all the evil and suffering. I think that's the point you were making, but just rephrased a little.
The problem with omniscience is that it's logically impossible! It's a consequence of set theory and a lot of difficult logic. There are many technical terms involved, but I'll try to explain while keeping it brief. First is the notion of Cardinality, which essentially captures the "size" of a set. Cardinalities are a way of putting each set into different buckets, where each item in a bucket has the same cardinality as any other item. Finite sets are easy: A set with three elements has a cardinality of three, as you would expect. So we'd put this set into the bucket labelled "three". All other sets with three elements would also go into this bucket. And it's clear to see that a set with four elements is fundamentally different to any of these sets, so that thing goes in the bucket labelled "four". Infinite sets also have cardinalities, but it's a lot more counterintuitive. Different infinite sets can have different cardinalities. (In terms of buckets, then different infinite sets go in different buckets. This is one situation in which the infinite behaves similarly to the finite - you can put the finite into different buckets, and you can put the infinite into different buckets.) The set of Natural numbers (1, 2, 3,...) has a cardinality labelled aleph 0. On the other hand, the set of Real numbers (put simply, the set of all decimals) has a cardinality called aleph 1. This is a larger cardinality than the Naturals. If you've ever heard the expression "some infinities are bigger than others", this is where it comes from. In addition, there is also a notion of a Power Set. Given a set S, the power set of S is the set containing all the subsets of S. There is also a mathematical theorem known as Cantor's theorem, which states that the cardinality of the power set is always greater than the cardinality of the set you started with. If you want more information about any of these terms, the wikipedia articles are good starting points. Now, let us consider "The Set of All Truths", or SAT for short. What do we expect from the SAT? Well, it must contain every last possible truth, and it must contain no falsehoods. Some examples: - "2 + 3 = 5" is true and so belongs to SAT. - "All giraffes are coloured blue" is not true, and so does not belong to SAT. This is fine so far, but what about the following statement: - "SAT contains truths about the number three" The Set of All Truths certainly contains truths about the number three, and so this statement is true, and therefore belongs in SAT! This is the fundamental problem: SAT is self-referential. Self-referential objects are extremely dangerous in logic! The key insight is that SAT must necessarily contain truths about subsets of SAT! As an analogy, imagine you are on a gameshow, and you can choose to answer questions from topics like Sport, Art, History. You might think 'Hmm, I know very little about sport, but I do know things about history, so that's the topic I'll choose.' Do you see what happened here? Your own knowledge contains knowledge about your own knowledge! You KNOW that you do NOT KNOW about sport, and you also KNOW that you KNOW about history. The same principle occurs with SAT. So SAT knows about what SAT contains, and what SAT does not contain. In particular, SAT knows about the subsets of SAT. This essentially means that SAT contains its own Power Set. But Cantor's Theorem shows us that the power set of SAT must have a larger cardinality than SAT. So the set SAT is bigger than the set SAT. Uh-oh! This is impossible! This is like saying a set can have three elements and four elements at the same time! No it cannot! So one of our assumptions about SAT must be false: either it omits some truths, or it contains some falsehoods (or both). Either way, the Set of All Truths cannot logically exist! Now, back to theology. God is supposed to be omniscient, which is usually defined as "knowing all true things, and knowing no falsehoods". Wait, this is SAT! And SAT cannot logically exist! So an omniscient being cannot logically exist! QED.
Presumably you were looking for the snappy reply that the square root of 555 equals 23.5, validating how nifty your observations are. Unfortunately, 23.5 × 23.5 equals only 552.25... As Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by THAT much" (^-_-^)
Your opening is the perfect example of the death that results from the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledgeable man now is so self-righteous that he is comfortable judging God and God's motives. If that's not enough, he becomes so self- enamored that he can decompose omniscience.
Hey Brandon Your videos are clear cut and well organized. Great content. Way to walk the viewer through the faulty mindsets of Christian dogma step by step. I do have one request.can you highlight how the Christian religion sets up people to be placed in a victim mentality. Thank you for the content!
I've heard many people describe the relationship between omniscience and free will in a way similar to what you do here, but I think it is logically possible to envision a reality where you can retain both things. Imagine the flow of events as a single, if textured, line on a page. The way you describe things, it seems that you are picturing just a single line that god observes, and so we don't really have free will in an ultimate sense. But if instead, you imagine that line forking each time someone makes a choice, splitting off into the infinite combinations of interactions and outcomes, making an extremely complex tapestry that is now the thing that is observed and known. In this way, god would know what would happen both if you chose A or B, rather than knowing that you will choose A (though god would obviously know if you were more likely to choose one over the other, and to what extent). Then you can imagine adjusting starting conditions to try to, overall, have a better tapestry. Now, god would still know that assuming I was even born, I'd be more likely than not to be an atheist, but none of it would be a sure thing, at least assuming I at some point made choices that brought about my atheism. Presumably there would be plenty of people who would have had no free will regarding knowledge of god's existence, but they would have still had free will. Where the Christian argument about all that falls apart is, in my opinion, the purported benevolence, and how that interacts with direct intervention in the world. If direct intervention was permissible, and the end goal was to produce the best outcome for the most people, it really seems like there would have been more interventions, both in the past and now. Why did the Native Americans have to wait until the 1500s to even have a chance at making it to heaven? Why now, when a simple demonstrable appearance of god would dramatically reduce the number of atheists, do we not see one or more happening? God wouldn't even need to do anything, just show up as a pillar of fire or whatever, quote some bits of the bible or whatever, and tell people they should repent their sins... with all that time on god's hands, you'd think it would be worthwhile. Of course, that is where it becomes subjective, and where a Christian can argue that we can't know, and that only god could determine the optimal plan to get the best of all possible outcomes, and that is obviously the one that was followed. But here, I side with you in saying that it just doesn't feel like this is as good as it gets, given infinite power and knowledge.
@@gg2008yayo I am a lifelong atheist, and as a result have had a lot of people try to convert me away from my "sinful ways". And no, I don't believe that a hypothetical omniscient entity, deity or otherwise, disrupts hypothetical freewill in any way. If determinism is true, and freewill is just illusory, then obviously it doesn't matter, But if we truly have freewill, then an omniscient entity would simply know all of the choices we might make, and all of the consequences of each of those choices, and how they would all interact together through time. Our desire to pin down omniscience into a more limited thing doesn't mean that it must actually be limited in such a way. As mentioned, I only believe there to be a problem when you start adding on extra powers. An omniscient being who is even generally good and somewhat benevolent, with only the ability to communicate in meaningful ways, would surely have had some cause to intervene at least a little bit in our world. And we haven't seen such intervention.
@zacharyhiland300 Thanks for your reply. Im sorry people have tried to convert you in such a way. Also, im sorry if it seemed like i was rudely asking i just didn't know how else to phrase my question. For the rest of what you said, i would almost fully agree. im sorry my response isn't as smart sounding as yours. im just not very read up as you probably are, and probably why im watch this video to get a better understanding of the other side of the argument . I hope you are doing better right now and that such people dont approach you in such a way anymore. Again, thank you for your reply
@@gg2008yayo Don't mind me if I came off as a little bit grumpy. I didn't sleep great last night... so I am a little bit grumpy. Just not at your comment. Sorry about that.
There is the viewpoint of open theism which i adhere too, basically god doesnt know the future but influences the present in an all powerful way to fulfill his words and promises.
I think a better way to put the conflict between omniscience and free will is this : Omniscience is only possible if everything is already determined. It's not that knowing what we will do forces us to do it, it's that if what we will do is not already decided, there is no way to know, because we could decide either way at any point. You can't know what i'll do if i'm able to change my decision on the fly. The only "omniscience" compatible with free will is a probabilistic omniscience, meaning knowing that i have XX% chances of choosing something. But then, you just know the odds, so your plans can go awry.
Everything you have said here perfectly explains why I feel that if there was a God, he doesn’t deserve to be worshipped and he should be begging us for forgiveness, not the other way around. Any god worthy of worship would certainly do better than this world. I have a lot of other reasons why I don’t believe but this is the big one.
6:35 You have combined the word "gist" and the word "crux" to make a new word that doesn't exist, "jux". You could either say "the gist of the argument", for when you are referring to the main point or essence of something. Otherwise, you can say "the crux of the argument" for when you mean the decisive or most important point of an issue.
i saw the flaw in an all knowing god when i was ten and left at ten, i then thought, revamped and often cane to the same conclusions, with not much altercation
"Suffering defines this world", that reminds me of the Matrix. Originally, the machines had created a the matrix so as to be exempt of suffering but people rejected it, on some level being unable to internalize it as reality precisely because suffering defines the real world of lived experience. So the machines added suffering.
You touched on something that used to bother the Hell out of me: Why is suffering so predominant?? And think of how much worse pain of torture is than the pleasure you get out of anything. Of course the Catholic answer was twofold, 1) Suffering tests your love for God and is the result of Original Sin and 2) Think of what Christ suffered on the Cross. Neither answer ever made sense. And of course it did not address mental suffering, depression and the like. And why does pleasure feel like a ten while suffering can approach a negative 10 gazillion???!!!
@ 15:40 What do you mean by "He could have created a version of free will that doesn't include suffering". What do you mean by "version of free will"? How can free will come in versions? You either have libertarian free will or you don't.
Hey, Leonard. I agree in our current system, we either do or do not. I also would state we can't break certain laws of physics within this system. But God had no problem violating physics so I assume he could have set up a different system with his infinite power. Its obviously a hypothetical, playing within the christian framework of an all powerful and perfect god.
I was told angels didn't have free will, yet Lucifer and those 1/3 of all angels had enough free will to defy god. If angels have no free will, then god created Lucifer and 1/3 of the angels specifically to rebel and be kicked out and to later torment and tempt humans that he created to live on earth where he hurled Lucifer and 1/3 of the angels. He set us up to fail and then created us to follow a path that we have no choice over and then sends a majority of us to hell for not choosing him. That sounds beyond evil to me.
Isn't it possible that omniscience and omnipotency were later additions that came from greek philosophy and eastern spirituality? Because if you imagine God as not being all-knowing nor all-powerful then the old testament starts to make more sense.
Probably. Just looking at the earliest chapters of Genesis, it's pretty clear God doesn't know anything about what will happen. He's always shocked and angry. Even just the repeated words "And he found that to be good" shows he didn't know he would enjoy light, etc. Genesis 6:6 - 6:7 debunks the all-knowing idea entirely: Genesis 6:6 - 6:7 "6 And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” You can't REGRET doing something you knew would happen before you did it. God had no idea things would turn out like that.
I find the concept that someone is self-sacrificing out of expectant pleasure... iffy; it devalues, I think, the full extent of the human experience. We are fully capable of sacrificing up to our lives without the expectation of pleasure, or reward, and indeed even with the expectation of the opposite. There's some greater, outside and perceived within us (I'm getting very Platonic here), that moves us to act in such ways without any consideration of costs and benefits in the long or short term (or at least, as they apply to us). The same may be applied to religion and belief--in it's purest form, it exists and is acted upon without a materialist, 'grounded' desire for pleasure and reward. It's the sort of "right is right because it is right, no other reason". Also, while I know this is more of a summary video, the idea that "God could have -- somehow, someway -- made a version of free will that avoids the problems of it" seems rhetorically identical to saying "Can God make a rock that he is not strong enough to lift?". It just feels like begging the question in reverse.
15:50 Someone does not believe what you said then they can't believe we have free will in Heaven. If one holds the belief that we don't possess free will in heaven, then this is consistent with the idea that heaven is a place of unerring goodness, where the choice to commit evil doesn't exist. However, if one believes that free will does exist in heaven, this implies that a realm where individuals freely and consistently choose good over evil is possible. Therefore, if such a state of affairs is possible, it suggests that God could have created such a scenario from the very beginning.
If God was all knowing and new what would happen in the future, then why did he create Satan Lucifer or the devil knowing that he would have rebelled and tempt the humans of his creation? That story of that alone made absolutely no sense to me at all growing up. However, I was assured with phrases such as God's ways are beyond man's reasoning or that God's ways are better than ours. what a cop out.
Do you know Pinecreek? I ask because you have the same take on the problem of evil, and it’s not a common one. According to him the actual problem of evil is “why did god create in the first place if he knew all the suffering that was going to happen?”. As an example he asks a question like “if you knew for certain that your child would be born with a terrible disease that would make their life short and painful would you still choose to conceive that child?”
Nope. Ironically i have only watched a few atheist channels and they are all listed in each of my videos in the description. Ill check them out right away though. Thanks for the rec!
You are making all the arguments and saying all the things I would say if I could articulate as well as you. If I believed in such a thing, I would say you were reading my mind. 😉
My atheist view is this: if god is omniscient, then what the heck is the point of the world? God can just put as all where we belong, heaven or hell, without having to let us go through it all.
I think you should slow down a bit. You have a good personality, a fine and well-placed voice and you are not obnoxious as Dillahunty is. It is pleasant to listen to you; a beer would be fun with you. Because you are the best I have heard and seen I hope you consider an easier, less frantic delivery. You really are the best at this.
Yep, if I were god I’d rather create robots without free will to worship me, if that meant that souls don’t suffer eternally. It seems immoral and selfish to enjoy being worshipped at the expense of the suffering of others
To be fair, it's not an atheistic argument, it's a logical problem. There really is no middle-ground in the determinism vs free will debate. Either I have the free will to choose A or B or God already knows I'm going to choose A and my "free will" is just a deterministic illusion. You can't be all-knowing and not know the future, that's a contradiction. And if you know the future, then you already know I'm going to choose A. There was never an option of choosing B. It's been predetermined. If we were to imagine a situation in which God does know the future and he knows I'm going to choose A, then I choose B instead, that means God isn't all-knowing. It's a logic problem. Altho I will check out that other video you mentioned. You have a very rub-able head. I like looking at it.
The whole prayer issue is moot when prayer is more so aligning with the will of a god rather than putting in your quarter and waiting for your prize. I hated that prevalent approach in Christianity of the divine vending machine.
The only reason I could come up with, that god would need to sacrifice his son in order to forgive his creation, is because there was a bigger god that him that he needed to tithe to. Add to that the bible mentions other gods, and also that the abrahamic religion was polytheistic and Yahweh was supposed to be a war god (anyone for blood?) Which tend to be all about glory and sagas and conquest, and praising the victor for eternity....... Now I think about it, there is a lot of parallels with norse and greek mythos.
Firstly let me say that I have never been religious. When I was 5 years old in 1965 I was involved in a head on collision just after sunset as a drunk was driving at us on the wrong side of the road. I was in a utility type car which in Australia is like a pickup truck so the front seat only no seatbelts or restraints at this time. As a result I was catapulted at the dashboard and knocked unconscious and also had a the wind knocked out which collapsed my lungs. Within a few minutes I rose out of my body which was twisted under my father's feet in the driver's floor well amongst the foot pedals. At first I thought I was ok as I rose up to the seat but I kept going and thought this is impossible I can't go through the roof but I did and as I came out of the roof and rose above the car I looked down at the wrecks below me and as I rose higher I thought that if there is a fire engine in town they may be able to get me down with their ladder or even a circus with a rope. I continued to rise higher and soon I was amongst the clouds and as I was so high daylight was still apparent I now felt cold looked down at myself and thought how we could still in my school clothes and thinking how did I get here and what am I going to do as I am tired and just wanted to go to bed I can't stay here forever what am I going to do! The few minutes is hazy in my memory but I continued to rise and found myself in space with the setting sun at my back and looking down I was as a baby and completely naked now I looked to the east and saw what I thought was a bright star but it grew in size and then surrounded me it is hard for me to describe but was like a warm infinitely loving embrace as a babe in mother's arms and this is what she said to me seemed to be telepathic, "I am sorry I took so long I have been busy we did not expect that, you have been very brave I am going to take you back now." There's more to this account but I am going to finish and needless to I was returned to the wreck and restarted. Just one nothing about god or Jesus or religion and I swear this is true if you'd like more detail or information don't hesitate to contact me. I have been indoctrinated or associated with any religion. Thanks and regards.
Sorry I should have proof read this account a bit better so just to clarify, I meant there was nothing mentioned to me by her about god or Jesus or religion and also I have never really had any indoctrination into a religion or church public school educated obviously from my grammar. Also "the next few minutes is hazy in my memory." And my main point being when she related to me that "we didn't expect that." Omniscience debunked.
I think of it as a computer science/ programming and engineering perspective and I take out more of the spiritual side of things. Evil is an action not an object so that takes away the claim "evil is the opposite side of the coin to good or the absence of good." A robot cannot do something without being programmed to do something so if I programmed a robot to punch holes in the walls and a human I get in the way of the robot/ stand by the wall and the robot hits me, it's not the robots fault it's mine. If I programmed a robot to bomb things the cops would come after ME not just grab the robot and forget the person who programmed that robot, if society works this way then why does God get away with programming his robots to do evil is pretty much what I am asking, nothing can exist before or without God and we already disproved the claim that evil is the opposite coin of good. If God is omnipotent and he never put a capsule onto Lucifers jealousy then that in of itself proves that he's evil if he actually existed. To answer disprove the claim for his omnipotence you must first go back to the very beginning/ the christian perspective of the "before the big bang" so to say and show them how God can't get away with lying and saying that he didn't create evil if he actually existed, then you go onto the free will vs. omnipotent argument, ect.
A few issues but not detrimental to the overall points made. Fair? About what? To whom should we be fair? The arguement? A god? The theist? Your feelings? Weak? In whose eyes? Weak or uninteresting? If an all-powerful and all-knowing god actually existed I would expect it could reconcile human constructed paradoxes and semantics. I'd argue most christians don't analyze scripture. Logically anyway. So I think it falls on deaf ears mostly when you use it as a counter or definitionally. But trying to reconcile logic with the supernatural is always the rub. You either believe in magic or you don't. I had more issues with the first third of the video but hope are addressed in later videos. The last two thirds of the video about the problem of evil, was rock solid and very similar to many arguments out there. Keep up the good work. Sunday vids are always fun.
Good points and fair callouts. I have lots to say in reaponse and appreciate the questioning. I hope to cover most of that in a future video about morality. I do agree that applying logic to the supernatural is wasted energy. But applying logic to the claim of something supernatural is not and there is nothing in the bible or proof in the real world of the supernatural and so its up for debate in my mind lol.
Another great video. Always laugh at god not being able to look after 2 people and then I’m the next instance not looking after 4 ending up with 1/4 of the population getting murdered. He’d have been sacked in any walk of life 🤷🏻
If I had the power to create sentient beings, and I knew that doing so would lead a single one of them to suffer for eternity, then I would not create because an eternity of suffering is not a price anyone should pay or a cost any creator should accept. Further, no one would miss out on the glory if they never existed in the first place.
The Christian 'god' is said to be all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving (omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent) *an all-knowing 'god would know what it would take for me to believe *an all-powerful 'god' could set in motion my belief without violating any 'free will' I allegedly have *an all-loving 'god' would want to do it, want me to believe and yet I still do not believe.
RE: The deer analogy -- Believers will excuse god at that point by pointing to The Fall and that Adam and Eve's sin not only impacted them but destroyed the creation too. How just is a god that allows the decision of two people to destroy a creation too that he had proclaimed "good". How fair is that to the creation? The plants and animals had nothing to do with the choice to eat of the tree of good and evil. We see injustice in punishing someone for something they had nothing to do with. But there is god punishing all of creation for a mistake two people made. Not justice. Not loving. Just messed up.
Whenever I see creationists arguing that all animals lived in peace and harmony and then they say that after "the fall" they satarted killing each other I can only imagine a lion going like "oh shi!! they ate the fruit... I'm gonna kill this fucking zebra!!!"
Most people aren’t vain or weak enough to need people to worship them. It’s like an abusive boyfriend who sometimes tells his girlfriend that he loves her, just keep worshipping him or else she’ll get punished
It's interesting hearing you bring up Lucifer so much in all of your videos as if it's clearly written there as a fundamental story of the devil. (I assume this is somewhat ingrained from your fundamentalist background). The bible doesn't even mention Satan in this way as Satan is just the oppposer (there are many satans). And Lucifer just means Morning Star (Venus). These Lucifer as the devil ideas are mostly post biblical and comes from later neo-platonic authors and then authors such as Dante etc. Although I imagine most Christians have this view of Satan from being taught extra biblically from dante/paradise lost etc
Believers want to criticize the unfeeling, sociopathic, without pity, without empathy behavior of certain criminals - BUT, many of THEM are the most hateful, cruel, sociopathic, uncaring beings in existence. HUMAN SUFFERING MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THEM - they’ll dance in DELIGHT at the prospect of people being tortured for eternity Some will pound their chests and make stentorian declarations about ‘Suffering Is Redemptive’ Oh, they’ll have plenty to say about an abusive, neglectful parent, but God gets a pass
{! Disclaimer (2.S): I am a hobbyist hypothetical physicist, an amateur conjectural theologian, and an aspiring philosophical sci-fi/fantasy author. The ideas posited and owned by the author of this comment are entirely fantasy fictional or science fictional, and are not representations of actual reality or existence, but are only and exclusively abstract philosophical nonsense known as Beginnlessnessism for the purpose of curiosity and entertainment, only. Beginlessnessism is not a religion, but is a philosophy, also known as a meta-religion. Being a meta-religion does not make Beginlessnessium a religion but a philosophy about religion in general. !} Omni-Possession Omniscience is not sufficient to describe the mind of God. God is more than omniscient. God has everything in his mind. Now right now you are calling me stupid. But having everything in your mind is not omniscience it is omni-possession, or in other words, God possesses everything in his mind. Now, Internet, try to stop ignoring me like you have for the past 10 years. So how does this fix your problem when you say God is omniscient and I say God is omni-possessive? If God is omni-possessive instead of omniscient, then everyone is with God all the time and we don’t leave his presence at all because we are in his mind. Take that Internet.
It's odd how a perfect god admits he was wrong about making Saul king. So does tha mean this god didn't know Sual would fail or did he just let it happen without warning
I'm talking from a Muslim perspective here. We are taught that God is All Knowing. And in His infinite wisdom He knows what's better for us even though we make our own choices and go thru many tests. The next life will be better than this one. We find this belief consistent as it applies to our daily lives as everything essentially is a test. Our work, family, health etc. We don't blame God for our conditions because we realise thru patience and steadfastness the reward will be great in this life and the next. Look at our bodies, our brain. Our ability to even make this video, that are God given talents. It's not a random occurrence. So yes we shud question everything, this is encouraged and is normal behavior but ultimately we are created to worship God as he has given us many blessings. This is how we find peace. One cannot blame the car maker for creating cars when accidents happen. No we need to value the vehicle and live according to the rules of the road. In the same way we have to live according to God's rules and respect our minds and bodies. Be aware of our choices but always keep asking questions. God is Just and All knowing and we are limited. He set a plan in motion having infinite wisdom but we make our own choices and ultimately we are going to be responsible for them unless events happen that are out of our control but God will understand and reward accordingly.
Also, just wanted to mention. From an Islamic perspective. God is not in any way shape or form like a human. We don't believe God 'regretted' creating man as the Bible puts it. God is aware of what will happen but we are not, therefore we make good or bad choices in time. God is not stuck in time. Also the human was constructed to learn through failure. There is a lesson in failing. This is how we learnt about forgiveness and the like. It's part of the human experience and God's plan. God has one plan. Not a plan a and plan b.
It'd be easier to believe in God's omniscience had the Bible revealed some previously unknown truth like germ theory, or even like, "hey, ya'll may get to the point where you might wanna split an atom, so here are some warnings about that." The lack of any new knowledge in the Bible is one of the greatest literary disappointments of my life. I expected to have epiphanies while reading the Bible, and the seemingly most important thing is not boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk. WTAF?? "He couldn't warn us about atomic reactions because free will..." If he can tell us women to marry our rapists, and that we gotta toss gay people off rooftops, and not to eat pork, then couldn't he have warned mankind about nuclear disasters? As for "free will," that concept went out the window the moment God removed Pharaoh's free will by hardening his heart when he was about to allow the Hebrews to go free. I'm fairly certain that he gave ADAM free will, not necessarily everyone else. Anyway, all "free will" arguments ended with Pharaoh's hardened heart.
For God so loved us all. Wanting nothing created everything. With all his power and might he still needed to rest for a day. Seeing all that he created forgot to prune the Tree of Life and Knowledge. So He bore men so that they may tend to the gardens. God being pleased with his final task went back to sleep for the sabbath is sacred. Upon waking God found the garden yet not tended to. Calling unto men in anger. Not knowing what has happened. Not seeing any of his men, God enters the main garden where to his surprise sees men eating the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge..... This is the Gospel of The Unknowing. Praise be to the All Knowning All Powerful. For the Light sees All. "Alpha Sanctum Ch01".
For me, all the philosophical arguments about the possibility or coherence of omniscience are irrelevant for one simple reason: Even presuming there exists an omniscient being, that being cannot prove it to non-omniscient beings. It's completely unverifiable; even if the omniscient being is willing to offer any explanations or answers that are asked of it, there is no way to determine that it actually isn't just finitely smarter than us by some indeterminate order of magnitude. Anyone who knows more than someone else can CLAIM they know everything, but that doesn't make it true. This is fatal to tri-omni monotheism because it leaves inescapable doubt: It's always possible that this supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing being is just QUITE powerful and REASONABLY intelligent, and thus that it could fail or be wrong in a way that might be extremely difficult for us to find out about until it's too late. I wouldn't trust advanced aliens who showed up out of the blue and claimed they'd learned all knowledge and that their technology could accomplish all things, even if they could in fact answer any questions I had and produce any outcomes I could imagine. Some doubt would always linger, and in some sense, the very fact they're making the claim at all casts doubt on their motives and intentions. Does an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving being need to announce this about itself? Is God somehow more trustworthy for making maximally expansive claims over more reasonable ones, even if he truthfully is maximal, or is God less trustworthy because he insists upon that? Fallible men would need to claim their authority is beyond reproach or contention; an actually invincible and omniscient being has no need for concern about that. *REGARDING THE ARGUMENT AT **6:40* I read an interesting paper on the initial argument (before the "he chose to create" progression) being a serious paradox of causality under Molinism. For the sake of argument let's pretend God in this example didn't create the universe, but is still omniscient. Basically, if we say free will does exist, and God knows what someone will freely choose under a given set of circumstances, but DOES NOT causally intervene in the choice, then somehow God's knowledge alone is causally responsible for the choice that was made. But that's a paradox, because we've already said God isn't causally interfering; he's just watching the choice, aware of the outcome given his perfect knowledge, and the choice itself is still causally free. But then how does God know what choice will be made? Knowing what someone will do without telling them or making them do it should not in any casual sense influence what actual decision they make. God shouldn't be able to know that, but if he's omniscient, doesn't he have to? Analogously, if there were some secret computer in a basement in Lagos that had access to all data about my life and prints out predictions of everything I'd do under any given scenario, it would be absurd to say that someone just reading the printouts of what I will do today (or "on a day exactly like today") will cause me to do them. Likewise it'd be absurd to say the computer's model is causing my actions. I don't even know this computer exists, and the person reading the printouts may not even know I exist; how could it possibly be the case that I couldn't do other than was predicted if we don't assume determinism? Basically the paper argues that something has to give here: Either omniscience is incoherent (or at least fails to mean anything if free choices exist), or free will is incompatible even with the lower bar of Molinist omniscience, or we accept that merely knowing something can cause something else to happen with no further connection than that (which would still not really reconcile omniscience with free will). Personally I don't think omniscience is coherent, and even if it is, I do not believe any conscious entity could possess it and appear in any way sane. Plus I'm not going to let theists off the hook for claiming God doesn't need a sufficiently large mind/brain/storage medium for infinite knowledge and the means to access infinite information instantaneously. No one could build such a thing in material reality, and to merely say "God, as a disembodied mind, does not need storage space" does not really explain how a disembodied mind stores and processes information. Though if Spinoza was right about extension being a maximal property...
One of my biggest problems I have never gotten a good answer from Christians is “why did God create Lucifer knowing he would fall”. Many Christians argue the suffering/pain of the world is a result of sin/evil/the fall and that the devil is at the pinnacle of all of that. The problem then to me is if God knew lucifer would cause all that evil/suffering etc, why create him knowing full well what would happen.
and you wont get any good answers to any of the main questions about god they will all be abunch of indirect bs answers.
@@anthonymorrison2167yep. There is already one doing that all over this comment section haha.
Another one is that why would be he be released again after 1000 years if that is true
you guys want a Good answer i will give it to you
proverbs 5: 21
for all the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths.
one mistake you guys make is that you think we have one path of future nope we have multiple paths and God know all of this paths
but which you choose is completely up to you. when God creates you his taking a chance on you. He know every posible outcome, but which one come to pass is up to you
this is the gift of free will
the truth is guys God chose all of you before the foundations of the earth were even laid. but he is waiting on you to choose Him
now that this is out of the way let deal with Lucifer. just like we have multiple path so does licufer. God did not intend for lucifer to rebel but he gave him the possibility of rebelling because of free will.
as for evil in this world Jesus says their will be many trouble and tribulation and they will hate and persecute you for my sake but do not worry for i have over come the world
think of it this way Jesus the most pure most perfect most inconent being to ever walk this. was persecuted, almost thrown of a cliff, crucified and humiliated. just for that very act the Father had his army ready to wipe out the world but Jesus said to forgive as for we don't know what we do.
now what is our excuse. a being that compared to Jesus is evil. what is our excuse for suffering. but don't worry for the Lord will wipe every tear from your eyes on that day. I urge you to come back to Jesus he is you only hope please consider
@@kyle9777This makes no damn sense to me either.
The end of Revelations makes no damn sense. God puts the world through this horrible 7 year period of the most heinous atrocities one could imagine; stars falling to the earth, turning water into blood or making it bitter that it’s undrinkable and all of the sea creatures dies (why does God constantly punish animals for human sin??); locusts with a scorpion tail, human face with long hair and lion’s teeth going around torturing humans by stinging them, but they (humans) can’t die. Massive earthquakes, painful sores, the sun scorching people, intense darkness, hail and fire mingled with blood rain upon the earth; four angels that command a force of two-hundred million mounted troops whose horses exude plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone (the horses have lion's head with tails like a serpent with a head) The plagues exuding from the horses will kill a third of all mankind.
All of this, and much more, will take place during the Tribulation. Afterwards, god locks up Satan for a thousand years, and there’s peace on earth. After that time is up, god releases Satan for him to deceive mankind once again and prepare for the battle of Armageddon, which is a total joke, because there is no battle. As soon as Satan gathers his army, god cast them into the lake of fire. The end.
Why??? Why??? Why???? None of this makes any sense! God torments the world, then he grants it 1,000 years of peace, only to release Satan to cause chaos on the earth right before he nuclear bombs all existence??!!
This 💩 makes my brain hurt. 🤦🏾♂️
When I was 15 years old, I started having a medical condition called hemiplegic migraine attacks. My doctors frequently misdiagnosed and mistreated it. I can't tell you the amount of excruciating physical and emotional pain that I suffered year after year because of it and the multitude of losses I incurred. It bankrupted me because I could no longer work after I worked my butt off to get a Master's degree. Took away my driver's license thereby ending my frèedom. I frequently went unconscious for days sometimes because the pain was too great for my brain to handle. I lost friends and family members because I became unreliable and a burden on everyone.
When I was still 15 years old, I was told that it was an extremely rare autosomal dominant condition that had no known cure. Meaning that there was a 50/50 chance my kid would have it. I was also told it was atleast partially hormonal and any pregnancy would be extreme high risk. And that taking birth control pills would put me at an extreme risk for a stroke. Knowing full well that if my kid had this disease, it would be my fault for being so selfish as to risk it. And, knowing there is absolutely no way I could watch my child go through the intense agony I have repeatedly gone through, I made the most responsible decision I think I could have made in never having children.
I don't understand how a loving god could make me...knowingly watching me suffer and do NOTHING as I writhed in pain begging it for help to make these things go away. I didn't deserve that. NO ONE COULD! I think at 15 years old, I was more responsible than this god that is supposed to be all knowing, all powerful, and loving... if it existed!
Wow. What a story thank you for sharing. And theres no part of that that would be his love. Just inexcusable.
@@MindShift-Brandon Thank you for listening.
I’m so sorry you had to go through this. How are you doing now?
@a.b.2405 Depends what moment you ask me. I never know what condition I will be in. Some days I can't tell you my name. Other days, I can write this to you.
@@elainejohnson6955 I’m so sorry. I hope things do get better. They have to.
One of the terrible things christianity does to people is it disables their empathy - they will excuse any amount of suffering in order to protect their god.
thats a great way of saying it. Disables their empathy. I'm going to steal that lol.
Yes … and no. Christians have indeed done heinous things … and also have historically been moved to acts of profound self-sacrifice and loving-kindness. We tend to notice the bastards I guess. But we need to avoid too-sweeping statements in this regard or our arguments as atheists/agnostics may be seen as mere rhetoric.
Excellent point. Apologetics, for the most part, is all about making excuses for God; an odd thing to do when God -- the supposed omnipotent and omniscient creator of the universe -- would be responsible for EVERYTHING.
When someone dies, "they went to a better place", which is a guess. Death just might be annihilation, and we cease to exist, just like we didn't exist before we were born. We are animals, so why wouldn't we wind up like other animals? Animals suffer and their pain isn't going to get them anything in any afterlife, so why do they have to suffer? It's purposeless.
@@jimscott9974 They don't even see him as all powerful, they don't even care that the bible says everything that happens is God's will. So why bother to pray?
He makes the statement "I regret" in several places. If he regrets, he doesn't know an outcome, and can not be omniscient.
repents
If he needs someone else to build him a boat he isn’t omnipotent.
@@Jcs57 i mean, the boat wasnt for "him;" it was for them _to survive.._
not that i believe in a ghost in the sky though...
@@OfficialWordOnTheStreet That’s the obvious point if you can poof a universe into existence wtf do need a boat for just poof what you don’t want out of existence.
@chestradamusteutonic4336 wrong
Brandon, I am blown away by your ability to clearly and succinctly say things that I've been struggling to articulate for YEARS. Thank you for these videos.
You are too kind. Your comments are so encouraging and i really appreciate you reaching out. Thanks for letting me know and for being an early part of this.
@@MindShift-Brandon Why would you think that "the majority" of His creation will be separated from Him eternally in hell ???
"His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring ALL things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth"
(Ephesians 1)
"now I urge you to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship" (Acts 27)
"he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world"
(1 John 2)
"we are saved by hope" (Romans 8)
"In hope, the Church prays for all men to be saved" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1821)
Yes. I totally agree with you. Brandon has stated many things that has swirled in my big, beautiful brain (haha). He just articulates them much better than I can. ☺️
Yeah, the: god creates us for his glory but turns us over to our own devices, so most people will suffer… but god wins either way” was excellent
Excellent points. It's this concept that always gave me pause, even back when I was a devout little Southern Baptist boy. Why would you undertake an enterprise if you knew how disastrously wrong it would all go beforehand? And once it did, why not just erase it all and start over and spare everyone the turmoil? What even is the purpose of any of this; why did any of it need to be? You created a being to acknowledge and worship you, yet 95% of those beings you're going to send to Hell. I don't think there are really any sound arguments to defend this. They usually just end up being, "The Lord works in mysterious ways." or, "You don't have a right to judge God." Which I think is ridiculous. If I'm caught in the middle of this mess, I don't think it's unreasonable to pass judgment on something I cannot justify or even comprehend.
As always, well said! The blinders of faith are the only thing miraculous as i just cant believe how hard it is for christians to see all this for what it really is.
"Why would you undertake an enterprise if you knew how disastrously wrong it would all go beforehand?"
1) How do you know that it will go disastrously wrong? What if it won't in fact, go "disastrously wrong" and that what appears as such are either mythological stories (such as Noah's flood) or minor compared to the alternatives? For example, the colonization of India by Britain resulted in around 100 million Indians being killed. However, it also opened India up to more advanced science which otherwise, would have killed 500 million Indians (don't know for sure because unlike you, I am not omniscient so I can't see what would have happened in alternate histories).
2) What if the alternative (such as not doing it) is even WORSE than the "disastrously wrong" outcome you think will occur?
My point is, you can't adequately judge an intelligence unless you are close to being that intelligent yourself (a being that can accurately judge what would really happen in alternate histories would be WAY more intelligent than me).
@@elzoog How do I know it would go disastrously wrong? God is supposed to be omniscient - He knows everything that has ever happened and everything that will, because He's the one who made it all happen. Ergo, He knew that Lucifer would rebel, He knew that Man would fall, He knew that billions and billions of people would end up in Hell.
And the alternative to not doing any of it is just that nothing ever happens, which is way preferable. It's not like God was under any obligation to make anything; He did it because he wanted to.
You're right, I'm not omniscient, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to pose questions.
@@TH3F4LC0Nx "How do I know it would go disastrously wrong? "
You don't get it. YOU think it will go disastrously wrong. YOU think that. Let that sink in.
"He knows everything that has ever happened and everything that will"
But does HE think it will go disastrously wrong? That's the question.
"Ergo, He knew that Lucifer would rebel,"
So, YOU think that "Lucifer rebelling" constitutes "disastrously wrong".
"And the alternative to not doing any of it is just that nothing ever happens, which is way preferable"
YOU think it would be preferable. How do YOU know that? How do YOU even know that "nothing ever happens" would be the result of not creating Lucifer?
"It's not like God was under any obligation to make anything; He did it because he wanted to."
How do you know that God was under no obligation to make anything?
How do you know that God did it because he wanted to? What does "want to" even mean in reference to "God"?
Isn't it kind of stupid to speak so confidently about stuff you have no knowledge of?
@@elzoog Alright, I see your point, but no, I do not think it's stupid to speak of such things, for the simple reason that it directly concerns me. But I'm not sure your premise is entirely sound.
- Everything in the Bible makes it overwhelmingly clear that Lucifer rebelling and Man falling were adverse developments; i.e., they were not what God wished. The Christian defense is that they were permitted to happen to allow for free will, but that's beside the point. As the Bible makes abundantly clear, they weren't good things.
- And no, I do not think it would be preferable if nothing had ever happened; I KNOW it would be preferable; again, because I have to experience the fallout, so for me, (and, you know, everyone), it would be better if things simply hadn't been at all.
- And if God was indeed under some sort of obligation to make all this, then that would seem to be contrary to omnipotence. God says that He is the Alpha and Omega; nothing can exist that can force Him to do anything. Ergo, he did what he did through his own desire to do so.
So again, I don't think it's wrong to interrogate the design when it's harmful or at least potentially harmful to you.
Hey all, thanks for all the support lately. Hope you enjoy this one!
Loving all of this consistency, and the content itself! Keep it up. 🙌🏼👌🏼
Thank you!
Super vid Brandon as usual. With each vid you’re setting the bar higher😉 Be strong. Keep up the great work.
Thank you so much!
mind shift
proverb 5: 21
for all the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord , and he ponders all his paths.
we dont have one path or future. you have multiple future this mean the God know every single one of the future. but as for which one come to pass its completely dependent on you action
God may know every our come but as far as which one come to pass is a choice that he has given you. God has given you a series of choices even though he know every choice that you could choose but which one you choose are up to you and the consequences that follow are completely one you. he has gave you a path name Jesus. God know how many way you cannot choose Jesus but weather you choose him or not or which path you chose is completely up to you and God does not intervene.
this mean God is omniscient and we preserve our free will. and it not some dumb excuse i came up with. its in the bible as you can see.
its say God thought outnumber the sand on the see shore. what is he thinking about if he already know the perfect future out come.
repent from you way your are leading many on a path of destruction . Jesus will forgive you but he is not happy with what your are doing right now.
if you see this right a response if i im wrong but if i am right review you topic better. i can tell you from see you videos most of them are flawed God love you remember that
Nothing fails like prayer.
You know it's a bad thing when someone gets the car they prayed for, and your prayer for cancer remission goes unheard.
The God of the Bible ONLY responds to His children's prayers. Most people who call themselves christians, aren't christians at all, not according to the Bible. The church of Christ is the ONLY body of believers that God recognizes.
It becomes more and more horrific the more you think about god.
100%!
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
-Epicurus
Representing Atheism since 341-271 BCE
Old school, ha. It doesn’t hurt that he’s already one of my favorite philosophical thinkers, but then i discovered that quite that sounded like it was from Hitchens and you realize its like 2300 years old, just amazing.
Strictly speaking, Epicurus was not clearly an atheist. Elsewhere, he does talk about a belief in the gods (look at his "letter to Menoeseus"). From what I remember, there's some speculation that he was an atheist but couldn't outwardly say it (just look at Socrates a few decades before Epicurus - he was put to death in part because they claimed he rejected the gods). However, I don't think there's strong evidence that he really was an atheist. I haven't looked into it recently, but I think there's even a question whether the above quote was actually from Epicurus. I think David Hume is the source of this quote, and he cites it as coming from Epicurus, but I seem to remember reading that it's not actually clear that it really is a quote from Epicurus.
Now, this is neither here nor there regarding the main point at discussion here. But I just wanted to clear up the misconception that Epicurus was an atheist.
Epicurus: _"Then why call him God?”_
Rationally-thinking person: _"Epicurus, who were you calling "God" just now, in the first line of your little spiel, when you said "Is God willing...?""_
@@alltimeislikethepresent Maybe just hypothetical, to make a point.
@@DPortugal You wrote: _"Maybe just hypothetical, to make a point."_
Get back to me if you figure out how to write a declarative sentence. You need to have a subject and a predicate in order to construct a declarative sentence. You need to construct a declarative sentence to make a point.
Jeff Beck played guitar on a song that addresses this question in a pointed way: "Whatever God Wants, God Gets." I heard that song and chills ran up my spine.
I do love me some Jeff Beck, I'll have to go dig it up. Thanks for being here! Love your username, ha. Should have gone that route!
Good thing god doesn’t exist or his wants based on past writings could be catastrophic.
Really well said. I started making a list of things I would have done differently had I been god and it quickly got so long I abandoned it. Just practical things about the world and life - we don’t have to be a god to recognize what could be improved to reduce suffering. A little compassion goes a long way.
Add two lines. Don’t hurt children. Don’t own people and you win the morality game over god already! I can only imagine what else could be on your list.
Ha, I made a list too! It got really long
@@MindShift-BrandonLately, when I see a picture of a sweet baby’s face or a video of a baby laughing (which I think is the most precious sound on this planet), my mind sometimes turn to god and I think…..how in the world could a god look at that sweet baby and strike them down. Sorry , let’s call it out for what it is…..murder. God came down himself to murder the firstborn of all Egyptians. He didn’t send any angels; he did it himself.
That alone tells me that this biblical god is total bull💩.
Once again, spot on! I often think back to questions I used to ask about god when I was a kid (like why pray if god already knows the outcome; I was told that he likes to be asked) I think my b.s. meter was going off loud and clear then, but the longer I was indoctrinated, the quieter it got. Why would I ever want to serve a god that would make throw away people as part of his “perfect” plan? “Because God’s ways are higher than our ways and it will all make sense when we get to heaven” 😂 Can’t wait to see the other video coming up!
Man i feel all of what you said. How long did we push down those thoughts of knowing better out if fear or duty etc. thank you!
"like why pray if god already knows the outcome"
If you already know the outcome of running, which is increased fitness, why bother doing it?
"Why would I ever want to serve a god that would make throw away people as part of his “perfect” plan?"
How do you know that he made "throw away people"?
Man, I couldn’t have said it better, when you said that your BS meter was going off but you suppressed it the deeper you were indoctrinated. Ditto.
Evan when I was young, some of the things I was being told didn’t make sense to me, like the story of Noah (at this point, anyone who believes that ridiculous story is just mental!), or particularly how god, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit can be three separate entities but yet all three roll up into one god. Huh?? So when Jesus was baptized and a voice shouted from heaven, “this is my beloved son, whom I am well pleased”, was Jesus throwing his voice?? 🤷🏽♂️
And let’s not forget that a virgin child had a baby. Oh the Bull💩 was strong. 🤣
Yes. Think of all the other ideas we have outgrown since we were told the as children. But, religion, it's a tough one, because it touches us at a very deep and moral place, making it so difficult to question it, without feeling bad...but you are doing well about it, and you can help someone else just by sharing like you just did. :)
My son was born 36 years ago with a genetic disorder that has prevented him from growing up mentally. In many ways he is still a toddler, but a toddler with 36 years of experiencing this world. It seems at times that his mind is superior to anyone I know, in that he has no vision of the future, no thoughts of what he will be doing next year, or next month. He lives entirely in the present. His concept of God is pure and untarnished by emotion. He sees God as just another fictional character on the same level as Poke' Mon.
Through him I have come to understand more about the human mind than most will ever see. He taught me that every day is a new chance to get closer to my goal of a perfect knowledge of reality, without any of the false ideas of yesterday. Every morning I can see far more clearly than I did the night before. Every day, my mind is new.
this is so beautiful, thank you for sharing
Great points as usual. You could have added the issue of free will in heaven. If we are sinless in heaven, do we have free will? If we have free will in heaven, does that mean we can have free will without sin? Then why didn't god create us with that kind of free will to begin with?
for sure! saving it all for the freewill video that im brining over from the other channel.
Can people sin in heaven? Allegedly, the angels did. So if you can sin in heaven, can you lose your place in heaven? If you can't sin in heaven, are you a zombie or a robot? How is that paradise?
@@DPortugalThat’s a question I’ve asked. 😁
Wouldn’t you think that, at some point…you know, after 17,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years of worshipping god, one would get sick of it and maybe they gather with others who are sick of worshipping god and plan an attack……then god strike them down and starts this whole process over again. 🫤🙄
@@dinard38if there is any chance of sin in heaven then in an infinite time it will happen. So yeah it will definitely happen and we are probably just the second species God is experimenting with, if he is real of course
I remember when I was a kid asking a question about the effects of one choice or another, and someone said something along the lines of “God can see all different possibilities of people.” He knows when someone makes one choice, but then he can see that person making the opposite/alternative choice.
With that logic, God sees people make a good choices or better choices, good choices or bad choices, and/or bad choices or worse choices. If he can see all these possibilities then this makes God even worse than you think.
If God is omnipotent and omniscient (of all possibilities), then he can witness a world where people aren’t discriminatory, prejudice, murderous, pedophiliac, sexist, or evil and can change that. He can see a world where “his children” are making good decisions.
One the flip side he sees and knows the worse possibilities that someone can be in. He sees a woman about to be rapped, a man committing suicide, a kid being bullied. He witnesses a holocaust, a war, slavery, a wave of societal violence. Whether or not it happens _he sees it happening._
God is either:
- omnipotent and omniscient AND cruel,
- or he’s omniscient but NOT omnipotent,
- or NEITHER omniscient or omnipotent,
- or he doesn’t exist.
And if someone says “god’s ways are mysterious and beyond our understanding,” if that were true then we wouldn’t have an entire book about him.
And God giving people free will to make decisions is pointless because if an all powerful being meddles with mortal beings then there’s interference. And if God knows what’s going to happen, if he knows the choices we’ll make then people are just following a divine spreadsheet. There’s no significance in what people do if God sees what’s going to happen.
I agree
Exactly
I don't agree.
You are confusing possible worlds with feasible worlds. Let me explain.
A possible world is something that could logically occur, i.e., there is no law of logic that prevents the event from occurring.
A feasible world is the true value of a contrafactual, i.e., that which would actually occur given certain circumstances.
Every feasible world is a possible world, but there is only one feasible world within the possible worlds.
In other words, a possible world is anything that could be, and a feasible world is anything that would be given certain circumstances.
For example, if I win the lottery I could do any of the following:
1) I could burn all the money
2) I could buy a big house.
3) I could spend the money buying all the pencils in the world.
Those 3 are possibilities (obviously there are many more things I could do but this is just to illustrate), but what I would actually do if I won the lottery would be to buy a big house.
Therefore, in this case numbers 1, 2 and 3 are possible worlds, however, only number 2 is the feasible world.
The fact that it is logically possible for anyone to do any evil act does not mean that it is feasible for God to make such a world.
@jexelbur6872 you are more right than you know! The arguments that you present are precisely why liberal theology is just a giant brain fog and when carried out to the logical conclusion it falls apart; the primary basis, bedrock and foundation of liberal theology is man's free will (autonomous free will). They make mincemeat of God's omniscience and omnipotence and in the end they come up with a god that is anti-scriptural.
Conservative theologians, Calvinists, would be able to answer the questions that you asked but I'm certain that the answers would still be offensive to you. I just wanted to point out the folly of liberal theology.
I just found your channel and am very grateful. I've felt so alone for the last decade after my deconversion.
There are many like us! Not alone. Glad to have you here. Thanks!
Another nail in the coffin for god's omniscience is that if he is all knowing, he can forsee the future. If he can forsee the future, he cannot change his mind. If he cannot change his mind, then his mind seems robotic and not conscious. If his mind is robotic, then all our actions are predetermined and we don't have free will
If He were to change His mind that would imply an imperfection in His plan, since God is perfect and just He would have zero imperfections.
Also, I partly agree with your last sentence regarding free will. I, as well as a good handful of Christians, reject this pagan notion of autonomous (or libertarian) free will; instead we would ascribe to a will that is bound by its nature (or an enslaved will).
I've always wondered why a god who's "perfect" needs a creation in the first place, considering by definition it has everything it already needs, otherwise it's not "perfect ". Perfection means it's whole, complete, not needing anything else. It can't be "more perfect".
And who created God? So according to religion, he is all there is, exists on his own, and we at his mercy.
@@DPortugal There's no god.
@@CatDaddyGuitar I'm agnostic, but I don't disagree. There's so many problems with the God belief. We were told to praise Jesus blah blah, and also told he was "without sin" and "not capable of sinning", so how is that commendable?
@@gusgrizzel8397 I can only imagine one reason a "god" needs a creation.: Narcissism. If you see the God of the Bible in that light, all the killing and slavery and his jealousy... it all makes sense. Who wants to worship such a petty, jealous (his words), angry, vengeful being? Even if there were evidence I think I would not, again. I say again because I did once. It's something I would (actually can't) go back to and believe in.
@@CatDaddyGuitar You know what's weird? There's no Egyptian record of having had Hebrew slaves. Never. So one has to wonder...Yeah, this makes death even more terrifying. Just going to sleep and that's it, would be better than being tortured by him for eternity. "Hey, you guys...don't stop worshipping me after a few millenial...come on..."
As an (ex) catholic, I do remember oftentimes the question of unjust suffering being a hot topic in a few groups I was active in (I was fairly involved in a catholic discord for a while that had a very active debate/apologetics channel.) From what I can gather, the most reported conclusion/excuse for things like animal suffering in particular was this:
"Suffering only came into the world when the sin was committed and the trust between god and his creation was broken. By sinning against their creator, Adam and Eve brought death and pain into the world, not only for humanity, but for *all* creatures." They would often point to descriptions in the bible about the serenity of the garden of Eden, and symbolism about lions and lambs resting together peacefully after the second coming of christ created the new perfect earth.
This of course cycles back into questions of **why"" exactly an all-loving, all-knowing and "merciful" god would cause such a domino effect to affect arguably completely innocent animals due to the mistakes of two humans, but also notice that it plays directly into the guilt narrative that perpetuates almost every aspect of christian/catholic philosophy. Because humans are so despicable, all the innocent pure animals of the world were thrust into chaos and violence-- we bear the guilt of quite literally every instance of pain on the planet on our shoulders simply by being born--something we did not even ask for in the first place. It's all so tiresome, and so very mind numbing to wrap your head around. Glad I started critically analyzing my beliefs and presuppositions
Love your channel too, by the way. I have been on a binge going through every atheist/agnostic philosophy channel I can find as I deconvert and deconstruct my religious convictions. Thank you for your dedication to presenting your perspective in such a concise but clear and informative manner!
That excuse is so broken, ha. But i wont reply to it here ha. Thank you very much for your kind words and for being here. Bow recent is your deconversion?
@@MindShift-Brandon Of course! And yeah, it only makes sense if you have no deeper consideration for biological developments throughout history, truly a backwards, draconic perspective.
I only very recently started to consider myself truly non-religious. My catholic convictions were quite strong up until mid 2022, about a year to the day, in fact. Not to going into extreme detail here, but my religious life has been a rollercoaster throughout the last few years--after losing my loved one to covid in 2021, I had lapsed back into very devout practices.
Looking back, I can see it was clearly a psychological response to grief and trauma, and I'm a little embarassed at how quickly the tendrils of catholic dogma had wiggled into my brain. Thankfully after getting real therapy and treatment for depression/anxiety, I realized that despite relying on prayer and spirituality to "help me" get through the pain and stress, it really did no more than my own self awareness and mental fortitude. I can say at least now I'm way more excited to lear about history, science, and psychology without having to censor or filter it through the lens of orthodoxy.
Thanks for sharing. So sorry to hear about your loss. And yes a whole new world opens up after leaving religion. Appreciate you being here and wish you well on this continued journey.
I always struggled with this one. The version I settled on was basically thinking that instead of knowing all my choices He knew the outcomes for each and every possible choice and that each time we went down a different branch. Kinda like a super complicated tree branch thing. That way I could have my free will by making the choice and he'd have omniscience by knowing my actual choice and every possible alternative web. The only thing with that was that it created mental gaps with him having a plan which I squared by thinking he pretty much just set everything into motion and mostly left it all alone as long as the sum total was everything ending at his plan. Occasionally he'd have to intervene with a small nudge pushing someone in the right direction so we all get there. That then created mental gaps on prayer then. Does it work which i then squared with saying I'm so small and insignificant and the plan so complicated that whatever small nudge he made for me wouldn't be enough to throw off the whole plan anyway. The mental gymnastics you've got to use to keep your faith once you take a few seconds to think about it is astounding.
What does it even mean to say that an omnipotent and omniscient being “wants” something? I want things I don’t have or can’t have. There’s a temporal component as well. What does it mean to say that a being outside or above time “wants” something?
this is a great point. I plan on doing a larger video breaking down the issues with the omnis at some point.
I have studied this subject for a long time and your exposition of the issues is brilliant and top notch! Continue your amazing work.
Thats really lovely to hear. Thank you!
Like Michael said in an earlier comment, you have a great gift in articulating the very things I have pondered for so many years. My ADHD mind often has a difficult time putting thoughts and ideas into a coherent dispute, so thank you for sharing your words. I look forward to every video you put out.
Thats so very encouraging. Glad to help voice what so many of us feel!
do not follow hes articulation for his words may sound convincing but the are not true. look at both side and relize that Jesus Christ is the truth.
i do agree that he articulate well but this make it Good for consealing his true motive which is to make God semm like a monster and lead you away from Life.
for example this topic he talk about
proverbs 5: 21
for all the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths.
one mistake he make is that you think we have one path of future nope we have multiple paths and God know all of this paths
but which you choose is completely up to you. when God creates you his taking a chance on you. He know every posible outcome, but which one come to pass is up to you
this is the gift of free will
the truth is guys God chose all of you before the foundations of the earth were even laid. but he is waiting on you to choose Him
as for evil in this world Jesus says their will be many trouble and tribulation and they will hate and persecute you for my sake but do not worry for i have over come the world
think of it this way Jesus the most pure most perfect most inconent being to ever walk this. was persecuted, almost thrown of a cliff, crucified and humiliated. just for that very act the Father had his army ready to wipe out the world but Jesus said to forgive as for we don't know what we do.
now what is our excuse. a being that compared to Jesus is evil. what is our excuse for suffering most suffering is not of God but its man made. but don't worry for the Lord will wipe every tear from your eyes on that day. I urge you to come back to Jesus he is you only hope please consider
The problem isn't omniscience. It's not even omnipotence and omnipresents (they have some paradoxes, but you could work with that), but the real problem is if you mix in omnibenevolence. That implies that all good come from him. However what to do with all the evil in the world (or just things that are not good)? Yeah you could just blame a devil figure, but who created the devil figure with the knowledge that he would do such a thing. Not to mentioned that what someones finds good is evil in the eyes of others. Someone can claim he is 100% good, but someone else could say he is 100% evil. Is god good because he knows what good is (which implies goodnes came somewhere else) or is good good because god says so (which implies he can say anything and it would be considered good). If a higher being exist that created the universe, it probably doesn't really care that much about us (100%) or is asleep/passive for alot of time
Such an excellent video Brandon. I’m constantly amazed that this isn’t more of a sticking point for most Christians. Especially theologians who have done the hard work to dissect the nuances of the biblical text.
Thank you, and yes how are more people not moved by these concepts. Blinders!
why would it be a sticking point ????
The only thing I would have added was the interaction between omniscience and omnipotence and furthermore omnibenevolence: you cannot be both omniscient AND omnipotent, and arguably you cannot possess more than one of these three traits as they all necessarily cancel each other out.
If you are all knowing then you know every action you will ever take and when you’ll make them.
If you know every action you will ever take and when you’ll make them then you are subject to determinism and thus have no power to make any decisions.
Free will is the power to make decisions(there are many definitions of free will and I would argue most of not all fit this syllogism’s purpose)
Therefore omniscience is incompatible with free will.
Conclusion A:
If you lack free will you cannot be all powerful.
Omniscience is incompatible with free will.
Therefore omniscience is incompatible with omnipotence.
Conclusion B:
If you lack free will your actions cannot be motivated by morality even if they are congruent to what is to be considered moral.
Omniscience is incompatible with free will.
Therefore omniscience is incompatible with omnibenevolence.
And just round things off it’s not hard to understand why being all good means you powerless to perform evil and therefore prevents an all good being from being all powerful.
I’m sure there is a shorter, simpler, and more elegant version of this argument but this is generally how I tend to present it.
I love this explanation
Thank you so much 👍
7:29 While predestination explanation is a good reply, you do not need to even go there. If by omniscience you also mean, 'has the discernment to determine the truth or falsehood of all propositions', it is not merely that God know a possible outcome, but he knows the exact outcome this is true. Meaning he knows what you will do, not just the choices that you have.
Thanks for mentioning Dan Barker.. i felt his heart.. thirsty for the truth..i didnt know of him before
His other book, Godless, was one that really helped me through the pinnacle of my deconversion.
wow another fascinating expose and major Mindshift !!! I have been checking out a few videos on your channel and plan to check them all out as time permits. you do a wonderful job of bringing clarity to so many issues that have plagued me since I was a child but could never quite come to terms with. I hope this content reaches many people . this channel of yours seems to really get to the heart of the matter. tks Brandon I thoroughly enjoy listening to you!!
So so kind and encouraging. I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment.
This is 4 months late, but I'd certainly like to give an opinion on 3 parts, (though I think I may be repeating myself from your other videos): the property of omniscience and how it relates to free will (I have not watched your Thursday video on free will yet), the problem of evil, and the mentality of Christian apologetic reasoning.
I think for theists and atheists, we tend to focus a lot on how God's omniscience affects us, but I don't think we stop to think how it affects God himself. We can apply a very similar situation to God and we can sort of show that God doesn't have free will as well:
1. God knows all
2. God has choices available to him
3. God has a range of actions available to him in regards to those choices
4. God knows what consequence will come out of all action in regards to all choices
5. HOWEVER, God knows what choice and action he will ultimately make
While this won't invalidate omniscience, it would invalidate his free will. If you know all, then even though you know have choices laid in front of you, you already know what choice you are going to make ultimately, forevermore. You become a puppet who can see the strings.
We can also do a thought experiment with omniscience. Let's say human beings evolve enough over the next few billion years that we are able to know and demonstrate literally everything in the universe instantaneously. Everything that can be known about the known universe is somehow able to be achieved. Not only that, but let's say somehow, since we are able to model what human behavior in a group setting now, we are now able to model it down to an individual level due to new technologies. We augment ourselves with these technologies to know what each and every single quark is doing. No thought escapes us. Nothing can escape without us knowing it in this universe. But from here a question remains: Would we still ask if a higher power exists? Would we still ask of any unknowns? Would we still ask about abstract concepts like "the meaning of life"?
Christians tend to argue that God has limited this world according to the rules he set. So no matter how hard humans try, they cannot escape the "bounds" of the universe and enter the realm of God on their own (even though Genesis 11:6 exists)
But to conceive of a higher power, would require an unknown, thus it would require curiosity. If human beings are able to consider, create and visualize concepts supposedly higher than ourselves, is God capable of conceiving of a concept higher than himself? Is God capable of being curious?
As babies, we are often curious first (taking a "leap of faith" into the unknown, which is where a lot of Christians try to level the charge of faith against atheists), before moving on to being rational (seeing how things work together), to being trusting (seeing how things work together consistently), to being knowledgeable (demonstrating and explaining with high confidence how things work together consistently).
An all knowing god is only knowledgeable. He does not need to be curious, rational or trusting. But the first 3 still requires us to consider a concept we call "the unknown".
Now none of this on its own disproves anything, like I said it's a thought experiment. But let's say we humans can imagine a concept of a higher being HIGHER than a god. Is it possible for this super-god to create an environment where an entity we call god is omniscient and omnipotent ONLY in the environment he is created in?
If God cannot consider a concept higher than himself, it could be possible the super god has made it so that he cannot demonstrate things outside his own omniscience within his environment. Because of that, god only THINKS he is omniscient and omnipotent.
If God CAN consider a concept higher than himself, he is then capable of becoming curious. But if he can become curious then that must mean there is an unknown to god, and then that might mean he becomes subjected to unfalsifiable propositions. But he can't falsify those propositions because the super god limits his omniscience and omnipotence to ONLY his environment. In his realm, in his environment, it is true that he is omnipotent and omniscience, just like how we are limited by what we can do in this environment we call the universe.
If there was anything God cannot know, he couldn't know it, because he doesn't know there's an unknown. And the same would apply to the super god too.
I do find it funny though how Christians like to say God didn't make us as robots, even though the word robot means "slave" and Romans 6:20-23 calls Christians slaves.
On the problem of evil, I basically just state heaven as a counterargument, and wrote this: www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/15l9c6u/doesnt_the_idea_of_heaven_go_against_the_reasons/
On the mentality of Christian apologetics, I have a hypothesis that Christians are not attracted to goodness, but to power and authority. I don't have a sufficiently strong case for that yet, but I do have a few reasons for saying so and that is when you mentioned that "are you saying that you are god now? That you know better?"
If goodness is tied to knowledge and expressed through actions, then power and authority should not be factors. If a proposed god came along and stated that he gives charity for all, or his religious proposition is based on universalism, prevention of evil or rehabilitation of people, similar to our systems, then why don't people move towards that? No one has got to be punished, everyone gets to live in harmony eventually in the afterlife after rehabilitation. Yet Christians will reject that because there is no "punishment for sins".
An authority dictating objective morality is suspect because an authority that claims goodness but is unknown could be lying to you about its goodness if it doesn't have to be transparent. The truth however IS transparent.
But power and authority ARE tied to rewards and punishments. And I personally think Christian apologetics are more hung up on "punishing evil, receiving justice, and divine retribution". You see it all the time with words like "God's vengeance", "taking accountability", "satisfying god's wrath", "punishment for sins". Ray Comfort's "did you lie?" is an example that he is only interested in the lie being punished.
Or how about words that inspire fear like "What if you're wrong" or "going to hell". It doesn't matter if it is good or not first. It only matters that your self-preservation comes first. You even have terms like "free from fear", "meaning in life" in Christian lingo. Christianity is not comfortable with uncertainty.
This is where you get the "if no one is around to judge for it, you can sin all you want" charge that Christians like to say. That probably says more about the Christian then it does more about the atheist, because if they can be convinced that there won't be a god around to judge them for it, then they might "sin all they want".
It reminds me of when Muslim apologists tried to make fun of people for having open marriages, like how they perceive open marriages as weaknesses, and in doing so show what they're afraid of. They perceive that a man must feel slighted and unhappy if their wife has close relationships with another man, and thinks it is always the fault of a man or a weakness on their part if they wife cheats, even though the man has done literally nothing wrong and has been faithful and it has always has been the wife's decision to cheat. So rather than control their actions based on their emotions, they control what the wife gets to do.
You can't make fun of a man for being bald if he chose it.
I suspect that Christian apologetics' focus is on an inherent fear of retribution for being sinful, as opposed to focusing on being good. Because remember, the Christian doctrine isn't about the promotion of good deeds as its focus, the Christian doctrine is focused on retribution for sins, and how you need Jesus to remove those sins. Christians can say all the "saved to do good works" all they want, but that only tells me that they are still focusing on their own sense of self-preservation. Would Christians still do good works, if proposed that they are all going to hell anyway?
There is a song called "The Impossible Dream". And in one of the lyrics, it says: "To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause", and although this is anecdotal, I still distinctly remember my dad catching himself singing it and was like "crap I don't wanna do that". But the thing is, that is what a good person would do? Don't Christians accept that Jesus went to hell for a period of time?
There's probably a lot I am still missing here, but I would love to see a video on this attraction of power and control over goodness, if you haven't made it already.
When I was a believer I always thought of time as happening for God all at once, e.g. not experiencing time linearly. I think that reduces some of the free will issues, at least in my mind.
this is really interesting. i think i understand, but not really. could you explain this a little more?
Awesome content. Early off you touch on the Jesus never list. This is where I’m at. Abused in childhood, scapegoated and abused in marriage, alienated in divorce and I have to have Christian guilt because I escaped and omit these ppl? This guilt and shame kept me Married 15 yrs longer than needed. If there was a god that wanted me to follow him, then take away my molester(s) and the stain they left me with- but Jesus couldn’t know that and didn’t.
Thank you. Helps.
You're very knowledgeable and well educated. You've given me more insight about just how cruel and diminishing modern day Christianity just really is. I've listened to people like you and Planet Peterson. Always great to expose this stuff.
He contradicts himself a lot.
"Oh, god doesn't want robots, he values free will!"
What's the difference between a robot with programmed actions for a desired outcome and a person being threatened with a gun to their head to do something?
I have additional problems with the "All Knowing" concept.
1) Being all knowing is a prison from which there is no escape. If you have absolute knowledge to the smallest detail as to what you are going to do in the next minute, hour, day, and decade... what choice do you have? Nothing happens, inside or outside of time, that you can control. You are trapped in a movie. A terrible fate even for a god.
2) Where does god get all this knowledge? How does he come by it? Why is it assumed that he can just get it... like something that is a trivial exercise? How does one start from nothing and then suddenly have all this knowledge. I am aware of the "begotten not made" excuse, but being "begotten" does not mean you have all knowledge.
Anyway, two more point that bug me about omniscience.
Grateful for the additions! Those are great points! Thank you.
Totally true on all the points.
Suppose humans had to suffer to know good from bad. But what about animals? They do not choose, they live totally natural lives -- no painkillers, no wound treatment, the worst meaning of the "natural" nightmare. Why? For what purpose? Why not creating them without pain receptors, or without a chance to suffer for days before they die? Because of what happens to them, I've struggled through depressive episodes since my childhood. I would never understand (or forgive) such a god =(
If predators get too weak or injured to make a kill, they starve to death. Yet religious people just dismiss all of this, saying this life isn't important. Wonder if there's PTSD in heaven....
@@DPortugal exactly! They dismiss anything that doesn't fit the "perfect god" picture. Moreover, they neglect those precious souls their god arguably created.
You really hit this one out of the park, holy smokes!
Hey thanks, Peter! Appreciate that.
Thank you, MindShift! 🎉
He made us just for that reason that we worship him, while he tortured us and set us up for failure.
He does all these horrible things while he claims that he is the source of morals.
That's 100% the same reason my father wanted to have children.
Sky daddy is a malignant narcissist.
Indeed
Yet religious people try to make pain and suffering all noble, like they can buy a better place in heaven. Or they bring up how Jesus suffered. Or they bring up how this life doesn't really matter, and talk about rewards in heaven. I wonder how any prisoner of war, tortured continuously, starved, beaten, no hope of ever getting out, hoping for death as relief, could ever mentally bond with this god who allows this to happen, and yet...commands worship and adoration. Cannot imagine their constant terror of the sounds of the jailer coming to get them again, for another interrogation session.
Just thought of the hymn where we'd sing the quiet part out loud: "trust and obey, *for there's no other way*, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey". Willful ignorance and blind obedience is what kept me (relatively) happy in Jesus for 35 years. Then "I did some research, some thinking" the famous last words if anyone as a christian😅.
I love the way you summed up your video, it beautifully encapsulates the obvious glaring issue with trying to circumvent objection by side stepping to some concept of a challenger having no basis, right, or understanding of some supposed divine being.
You brought it back to the actual issue, which is as it is claimed, in using all the concepts and language of humans, by humans, to argue a concept as we understand it - it fails. Any one of us could do better.
To me there is simply _no_ outcome that justifies a world where children are literally tortured, starving, or infected with horrifying parasitic organisms, unless the justification, the actual reason to proceed _is_ for the cruelty. I find it sickening, but there could not be any other reason to proceed. My soul, yours, anyone's is _not_ worth that horror. _Nobody_ should be Ok with the idea their eternal happiness is worth that.
Knowing everything, god became angry when events happened that he knew about beforehand and could have prevented.
yes just doesnt seem to make much sense.
Great presentation. It remains problematic how & why God foresaw every suffering creature’s agony - the experience of every tortured prisoner, the despair of every slave, the tears of the abused, psychological and physical pain in man and beast, the torment of animals in the animal industrial complex and in vivisection labs - and yet went ahead with his creation project anyway. We seem not to have the capacity to really grasp the catastrophic depth and breadth of creaturely suffering. The current agony of the Jews and Palestinians is but one example of the nightmare God signed off on. Of course we assume God - if there is one - is good. The heretic Marcion believed the creator was evil: this goes a long way to answering a lot of the questions.
In church circles, God always gets the credit for our righteous behavior, but not for our unrighteous behavior. But Natures don’t just pop out of thin air, and as I see it, choices can’t be made without a nature. Even if God came to us individually and let us choose our own nature, the person choosing their nature would already have to have a nature to weigh pros and cons, desires, etc. Choosing a nature presupposes a nature. And where did that come from in this hypothetical? They just don’t want to say it, “God created sinners.” As I said in a previous comment, Adam and Eve couldn’t have desired evil, unless they already were evil. The evil in this case being something that is a disobedience towards God.
Well done, Brandon! I was looking forward to this video and you nailed it. I may not be omniscient, but I most definitely know that you and this channel will do great things in the future. Much success to you man. Oh and nice name by the way 😉
Ha! thank you very much, my man! Appreciate that.
I turned away from the abrahamic god as a teenager and became an atheist for a few years. Then I became agnostic because I couldn't reason how the universe couldve started, as in what was before the big bang, or how is anything gere to begin with? These were questions that not even science could answer (not that I think that's a problem, it's just the limitations of observability). So that made me think that there could be something, but what that is, nobody knows.
Jumping to conclusions, fast. Just because we don't know now, doesn't mean we will never know.
3:17 I think the boulder argument can be reframed for omniscience by saying "Could God think of a solvable puzzle so hard, even he couldn't think of a solution?" It would still probably be dismissed as quaint wordplay, but I think that's a more accurate analogy to the boulder argument.
7:09 I agree with your counter rebuttal, but I would just say: it doesn't matter if God doesn't determine your actions. The fact that he can know what our actions will be shows that _something_ determines our actions, otherwise God couldn't know it. Thus, we wouldn't have free will.
18:30 I would have tied it in to The Problem of Evil differently. Basically, even if we assume _human_ levels of potency rather than omnipotence, and even if we assume _human_ levels of benevolence rather than omnibenevolence, we still aren't seeing a world that reflects omniscience because of all the evil and suffering. I think that's the point you were making, but just rephrased a little.
The problem with omniscience is that it's logically impossible! It's a consequence of set theory and a lot of difficult logic. There are many technical terms involved, but I'll try to explain while keeping it brief.
First is the notion of Cardinality, which essentially captures the "size" of a set. Cardinalities are a way of putting each set into different buckets, where each item in a bucket has the same cardinality as any other item.
Finite sets are easy: A set with three elements has a cardinality of three, as you would expect. So we'd put this set into the bucket labelled "three". All other sets with three elements would also go into this bucket. And it's clear to see that a set with four elements is fundamentally different to any of these sets, so that thing goes in the bucket labelled "four".
Infinite sets also have cardinalities, but it's a lot more counterintuitive. Different infinite sets can have different cardinalities. (In terms of buckets, then different infinite sets go in different buckets. This is one situation in which the infinite behaves similarly to the finite - you can put the finite into different buckets, and you can put the infinite into different buckets.)
The set of Natural numbers (1, 2, 3,...) has a cardinality labelled aleph 0. On the other hand, the set of Real numbers (put simply, the set of all decimals) has a cardinality called aleph 1. This is a larger cardinality than the Naturals. If you've ever heard the expression "some infinities are bigger than others", this is where it comes from.
In addition, there is also a notion of a Power Set. Given a set S, the power set of S is the set containing all the subsets of S. There is also a mathematical theorem known as Cantor's theorem, which states that the cardinality of the power set is always greater than the cardinality of the set you started with.
If you want more information about any of these terms, the wikipedia articles are good starting points.
Now, let us consider "The Set of All Truths", or SAT for short. What do we expect from the SAT? Well, it must contain every last possible truth, and it must contain no falsehoods.
Some examples:
- "2 + 3 = 5" is true and so belongs to SAT.
- "All giraffes are coloured blue" is not true, and so does not belong to SAT.
This is fine so far, but what about the following statement:
- "SAT contains truths about the number three"
The Set of All Truths certainly contains truths about the number three, and so this statement is true, and therefore belongs in SAT!
This is the fundamental problem: SAT is self-referential.
Self-referential objects are extremely dangerous in logic!
The key insight is that SAT must necessarily contain truths about subsets of SAT!
As an analogy, imagine you are on a gameshow, and you can choose to answer questions from topics like Sport, Art, History.
You might think 'Hmm, I know very little about sport, but I do know things about history, so that's the topic I'll choose.'
Do you see what happened here? Your own knowledge contains knowledge about your own knowledge! You KNOW that you do NOT KNOW about sport, and you also KNOW that you KNOW about history. The same principle occurs with SAT.
So SAT knows about what SAT contains, and what SAT does not contain.
In particular, SAT knows about the subsets of SAT. This essentially means that SAT contains its own Power Set.
But Cantor's Theorem shows us that the power set of SAT must have a larger cardinality than SAT. So the set SAT is bigger than the set SAT.
Uh-oh! This is impossible! This is like saying a set can have three elements and four elements at the same time! No it cannot!
So one of our assumptions about SAT must be false: either it omits some truths, or it contains some falsehoods (or both). Either way, the Set of All Truths cannot logically exist!
Now, back to theology. God is supposed to be omniscient, which is usually defined as "knowing all true things, and knowing no falsehoods". Wait, this is SAT! And SAT cannot logically exist!
So an omniscient being cannot logically exist!
QED.
Very good. Love all this info and you explained it quite well. Ill have to look into a few of these areas.
*2+3=5*
The word *truth* occurs 235 times in the KJV Bible.
Christ occurs 555 times in the KJV Bible.
What's the square root of 555?
Presumably you were looking for the snappy reply that the square root of 555 equals 23.5, validating how nifty your observations are. Unfortunately, 23.5 × 23.5 equals only 552.25... As Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by THAT much" (^-_-^)
Phenomenal! learning a lot, thank you!
My pleasure. Thanks for being here.
Your opening is the perfect example of the death that results from the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledgeable man now is so self-righteous that he is comfortable judging God and God's motives. If that's not enough, he becomes so self- enamored that he can decompose omniscience.
Wow, love this! Thank you, good job.
Thank you much!
Hey Brandon
Your videos are clear cut and well organized. Great content. Way to walk the viewer through the faulty mindsets of Christian dogma step by step.
I do have one request.can you highlight how the Christian religion sets up people to be placed in a victim mentality.
Thank you for the content!
Thank you for this very kind comment! And for the suggestion
Great video, thanks for your well stated thoughts.
Appreciate that. Thanks for being here!
I've heard many people describe the relationship between omniscience and free will in a way similar to what you do here, but I think it is logically possible to envision a reality where you can retain both things. Imagine the flow of events as a single, if textured, line on a page. The way you describe things, it seems that you are picturing just a single line that god observes, and so we don't really have free will in an ultimate sense. But if instead, you imagine that line forking each time someone makes a choice, splitting off into the infinite combinations of interactions and outcomes, making an extremely complex tapestry that is now the thing that is observed and known. In this way, god would know what would happen both if you chose A or B, rather than knowing that you will choose A (though god would obviously know if you were more likely to choose one over the other, and to what extent). Then you can imagine adjusting starting conditions to try to, overall, have a better tapestry. Now, god would still know that assuming I was even born, I'd be more likely than not to be an atheist, but none of it would be a sure thing, at least assuming I at some point made choices that brought about my atheism. Presumably there would be plenty of people who would have had no free will regarding knowledge of god's existence, but they would have still had free will.
Where the Christian argument about all that falls apart is, in my opinion, the purported benevolence, and how that interacts with direct intervention in the world. If direct intervention was permissible, and the end goal was to produce the best outcome for the most people, it really seems like there would have been more interventions, both in the past and now. Why did the Native Americans have to wait until the 1500s to even have a chance at making it to heaven? Why now, when a simple demonstrable appearance of god would dramatically reduce the number of atheists, do we not see one or more happening? God wouldn't even need to do anything, just show up as a pillar of fire or whatever, quote some bits of the bible or whatever, and tell people they should repent their sins... with all that time on god's hands, you'd think it would be worthwhile. Of course, that is where it becomes subjective, and where a Christian can argue that we can't know, and that only god could determine the optimal plan to get the best of all possible outcomes, and that is obviously the one that was followed. But here, I side with you in saying that it just doesn't feel like this is as good as it gets, given infinite power and knowledge.
So are you saying that gods ominscience's disrupts our free will?
Also might i ask are you an atheist?
@@gg2008yayo I am a lifelong atheist, and as a result have had a lot of people try to convert me away from my "sinful ways".
And no, I don't believe that a hypothetical omniscient entity, deity or otherwise, disrupts hypothetical freewill in any way. If determinism is true, and freewill is just illusory, then obviously it doesn't matter, But if we truly have freewill, then an omniscient entity would simply know all of the choices we might make, and all of the consequences of each of those choices, and how they would all interact together through time.
Our desire to pin down omniscience into a more limited thing doesn't mean that it must actually be limited in such a way. As mentioned, I only believe there to be a problem when you start adding on extra powers. An omniscient being who is even generally good and somewhat benevolent, with only the ability to communicate in meaningful ways, would surely have had some cause to intervene at least a little bit in our world. And we haven't seen such intervention.
@zacharyhiland300 Thanks for your reply. Im sorry people have tried to convert you in such a way. Also, im sorry if it seemed like i was rudely asking i just didn't know how else to phrase my question. For the rest of what you said, i would almost fully agree. im sorry my response isn't as smart sounding as yours. im just not very read up as you probably are, and probably why im watch this video to get a better understanding of the other side of the argument . I hope you are doing better right now and that such people dont approach you in such a way anymore. Again, thank you for your reply
@@gg2008yayo Don't mind me if I came off as a little bit grumpy. I didn't sleep great last night... so I am a little bit grumpy. Just not at your comment. Sorry about that.
There is the viewpoint of open theism which i adhere too, basically god doesnt know the future but influences the present in an all powerful way to fulfill his words and promises.
So basically, he is extremely impotent? Well, it is believable to a higher degree
@@ContraversialFeeder the future laid out exactly doesnt actually exist so him not knowing something that doesnt exist doesnt make him impotent.
I think a better way to put the conflict between omniscience and free will is this :
Omniscience is only possible if everything is already determined. It's not that knowing what we will do forces us to do it, it's that if what we will do is not already decided, there is no way to know, because we could decide either way at any point. You can't know what i'll do if i'm able to change my decision on the fly.
The only "omniscience" compatible with free will is a probabilistic omniscience, meaning knowing that i have XX% chances of choosing something. But then, you just know the odds, so your plans can go awry.
Everything you have said here perfectly explains why I feel that if there was a God, he doesn’t deserve to be worshipped and he should be begging us for forgiveness, not the other way around. Any god worthy of worship would certainly do better than this world. I have a lot of other reasons why I don’t believe but this is the big one.
Exactly! Thanks for watching
another classic, man! when are you just gonna blow up?!
Ha! Thanks, John!
I know, right? So succinct! ❤
Appreciate that!
6:35 You have combined the word "gist" and the word "crux" to make a new word that doesn't exist, "jux".
You could either say "the gist of the argument", for when you are referring to the main point or essence of something. Otherwise, you can say "the crux of the argument" for when you mean the decisive or most important point of an issue.
i saw the flaw in an all knowing god when i was ten and left at ten, i then thought, revamped and often cane to the same conclusions, with not much altercation
"Suffering defines this world", that reminds me of the Matrix. Originally, the machines had created a the matrix so as to be exempt of suffering but people rejected it, on some level being unable to internalize it as reality precisely because suffering defines the real world of lived experience. So the machines added suffering.
You touched on something that used to bother the Hell out of me: Why is suffering so predominant?? And think of how much worse pain of torture is than the pleasure you get out of anything. Of course the Catholic answer was twofold, 1) Suffering tests your love for God and is the result of Original Sin and 2) Think of what Christ suffered on the Cross. Neither answer ever made sense. And of course it did not address mental suffering, depression and the like. And why does pleasure feel like a ten while suffering can approach a negative 10 gazillion???!!!
@ 15:40 What do you mean by "He could have created a version of free will that doesn't include suffering". What do you mean by "version of free will"? How can free will come in versions? You either have libertarian free will or you don't.
Hey, Leonard. I agree in our current system, we either do or do not. I also would state we can't break certain laws of physics within this system. But God had no problem violating physics so I assume he could have set up a different system with his infinite power. Its obviously a hypothetical, playing within the christian framework of an all powerful and perfect god.
Like the way u break things down
Thanks, brother.
I was told angels didn't have free will, yet Lucifer and those 1/3 of all angels had enough free will to defy god. If angels have no free will, then god created Lucifer and 1/3 of the angels specifically to rebel and be kicked out and to later torment and tempt humans that he created to live on earth where he hurled Lucifer and 1/3 of the angels. He set us up to fail and then created us to follow a path that we have no choice over and then sends a majority of us to hell for not choosing him. That sounds beyond evil to me.
Isn't it possible that omniscience and omnipotency were later additions that came from greek philosophy and eastern spirituality? Because if you imagine God as not being all-knowing nor all-powerful then the old testament starts to make more sense.
Probably. Just looking at the earliest chapters of Genesis, it's pretty clear God doesn't know anything about what will happen. He's always shocked and angry. Even just the repeated words "And he found that to be good" shows he didn't know he would enjoy light, etc. Genesis 6:6 - 6:7 debunks the all-knowing idea entirely:
Genesis 6:6 - 6:7 "6 And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
You can't REGRET doing something you knew would happen before you did it. God had no idea things would turn out like that.
I find the concept that someone is self-sacrificing out of expectant pleasure... iffy; it devalues, I think, the full extent of the human experience. We are fully capable of sacrificing up to our lives without the expectation of pleasure, or reward, and indeed even with the expectation of the opposite. There's some greater, outside and perceived within us (I'm getting very Platonic here), that moves us to act in such ways without any consideration of costs and benefits in the long or short term (or at least, as they apply to us). The same may be applied to religion and belief--in it's purest form, it exists and is acted upon without a materialist, 'grounded' desire for pleasure and reward. It's the sort of "right is right because it is right, no other reason".
Also, while I know this is more of a summary video, the idea that "God could have -- somehow, someway -- made a version of free will that avoids the problems of it" seems rhetorically identical to saying "Can God make a rock that he is not strong enough to lift?". It just feels like begging the question in reverse.
Thumbs up before even watching, because I already know I'll like it 😂
Hope it stands up to the early gesture! Thanks for watching!
15:50 Someone does not believe what you said then they can't believe we have free will in Heaven. If one holds the belief that we don't possess free will in heaven, then this is consistent with the idea that heaven is a place of unerring goodness, where the choice to commit evil doesn't exist. However, if one believes that free will does exist in heaven, this implies that a realm where individuals freely and consistently choose good over evil is possible. Therefore, if such a state of affairs is possible, it suggests that God could have created such a scenario from the very beginning.
The first option. Heaven is a place of unerring goodness. There isn’t even the possibility of committing evil.
@@lovegod8582 So you believe that you have no free will in heaven?
If God was all knowing and new what would happen in the future, then why did he create Satan Lucifer or the devil knowing that he would have rebelled and tempt the humans of his creation? That story of that alone made absolutely no sense to me at all growing up. However, I was assured with phrases such as God's ways are beyond man's reasoning or that God's ways are better than ours. what a cop out.
If god is all knowing, does he know how to feel scared, the feeling of pain? Suffering? Torture, etc?
Do you know Pinecreek? I ask because you have the same take on the problem of evil, and it’s not a common one. According to him the actual problem of evil is “why did god create in the first place if he knew all the suffering that was going to happen?”. As an example he asks a question like “if you knew for certain that your child would be born with a terrible disease that would make their life short and painful would you still choose to conceive that child?”
Nope. Ironically i have only watched a few atheist channels and they are all listed in each of my videos in the description. Ill check them out right away though. Thanks for the rec!
@@MindShift-Brandon Beware of his politics, though.
Try frank turek Football match analogy to understand determinism free will and omniscient
You are making all the arguments and saying all the things I would say if I could articulate as well as you. If I believed in such a thing, I would say you were reading my mind. 😉
Ha maybe this whole thing is all setup to eventually convince you to convert.
My atheist view is this: if god is omniscient, then what the heck is the point of the world? God can just put as all where we belong, heaven or hell, without having to let us go through it all.
100 % agree
I think you should slow down a bit. You have a good personality, a fine and well-placed voice and you are not obnoxious as Dillahunty is. It is pleasant to listen to you; a beer would be fun with you. Because you are the best I have heard and seen I hope you consider an easier, less frantic delivery. You really are the best at this.
Thanks so much for the kindness and feedback
Yep, if I were god I’d rather create robots without free will to worship me, if that meant that souls don’t suffer eternally. It seems immoral and selfish to enjoy being worshipped at the expense of the suffering of others
Preach! Yes. Fully agree.
To be fair, it's not an atheistic argument, it's a logical problem.
There really is no middle-ground in the determinism vs free will debate. Either I have the free will to choose A or B or God already knows I'm going to choose A and my "free will" is just a deterministic illusion. You can't be all-knowing and not know the future, that's a contradiction. And if you know the future, then you already know I'm going to choose A. There was never an option of choosing B. It's been predetermined.
If we were to imagine a situation in which God does know the future and he knows I'm going to choose A, then I choose B instead, that means God isn't all-knowing.
It's a logic problem. Altho I will check out that other video you mentioned. You have a very rub-able head. I like looking at it.
The whole prayer issue is moot when prayer is more so aligning with the will of a god rather than putting in your quarter and waiting for your prize. I hated that prevalent approach in Christianity of the divine vending machine.
Yup. The whole concept is flawed from every angle
The only reason I could come up with, that god would need to sacrifice his son in order to forgive his creation, is because there was a bigger god that him that he needed to tithe to.
Add to that the bible mentions other gods, and also that the abrahamic religion was polytheistic and Yahweh was supposed to be a war god (anyone for blood?) Which tend to be all about glory and sagas and conquest, and praising the victor for eternity....... Now I think about it, there is a lot of parallels with norse and greek mythos.
yes the history of this god before the jews is absolutely fascinating!
Firstly let me say that I have never been religious. When I was 5 years old in 1965 I was involved in a head on collision just after sunset as a drunk was driving at us on the wrong side of the road. I was in a utility type car which in Australia is like a pickup truck so the front seat only no seatbelts or restraints at this time. As a result I was catapulted at the dashboard and knocked unconscious and also had a the wind knocked out which collapsed my lungs. Within a few minutes I rose out of my body which was twisted under my father's feet in the driver's floor well amongst the foot pedals. At first I thought I was ok as I rose up to the seat but I kept going and thought this is impossible I can't go through the roof but I did and as I came out of the roof and rose above the car I looked down at the wrecks below me and as I rose higher I thought that if there is a fire engine in town they may be able to get me down with their ladder or even a circus with a rope. I continued to rise higher and soon I was amongst the clouds and as I was so high daylight was still apparent I now felt cold looked down at myself and thought how we could still in my school clothes and thinking how did I get here and what am I going to do as I am tired and just wanted to go to bed I can't stay here forever what am I going to do! The few minutes is hazy in my memory but I continued to rise and found myself in space with the setting sun at my back and looking down I was as a baby and completely naked now I looked to the east and saw what I thought was a bright star but it grew in size and then surrounded me it is hard for me to describe but was like a warm infinitely loving embrace as a babe in mother's arms and this is what she said to me seemed to be telepathic, "I am sorry I took so long I have been busy we did not expect that, you have been very brave I am going to take you back now." There's more to this account but I am going to finish and needless to I was returned to the wreck and restarted. Just one nothing about god or Jesus or religion and I swear this is true if you'd like more detail or information don't hesitate to contact me. I have been indoctrinated or associated with any religion. Thanks and regards.
Sorry I should have proof read this account a bit better so just to clarify, I meant there was nothing mentioned to me by her about god or Jesus or religion and also I have never really had any indoctrination into a religion or church public school educated obviously from my grammar. Also "the next few minutes is hazy in my memory." And my main point being when she related to me that "we didn't expect that." Omniscience debunked.
Funny that we are given free will, but the only way we can be saved is if we surrender it.
I think of it as a computer science/ programming and engineering perspective and I take out more of the spiritual side of things. Evil is an action not an object so that takes away the claim "evil is the opposite side of the coin to good or the absence of good."
A robot cannot do something without being programmed to do something so if I programmed a robot to punch holes in the walls and a human I get in the way of the robot/ stand by the wall and the robot hits me, it's not the robots fault it's mine. If I programmed a robot to bomb things the cops would come after ME not just grab the robot and forget the person who programmed that robot, if society works this way then why does God get away with programming his robots to do evil is pretty much what I am asking, nothing can exist before or without God and we already disproved the claim that evil is the opposite coin of good. If God is omnipotent and he never put a capsule onto Lucifers jealousy then that in of itself proves that he's evil if he actually existed. To answer disprove the claim for his omnipotence you must first go back to the very beginning/ the christian perspective of the "before the big bang" so to say and show them how God can't get away with lying and saying that he didn't create evil if he actually existed, then you go onto the free will vs. omnipotent argument, ect.
A few issues but not detrimental to the overall points made.
Fair? About what? To whom should we be fair? The arguement? A god? The theist? Your feelings?
Weak? In whose eyes? Weak or uninteresting? If an all-powerful and all-knowing god actually existed I would expect it could reconcile human constructed paradoxes and semantics.
I'd argue most christians don't analyze scripture. Logically anyway. So I think it falls on deaf ears mostly when you use it as a counter or definitionally. But trying to reconcile logic with the supernatural is always the rub. You either believe in magic or you don't.
I had more issues with the first third of the video but hope are addressed in later videos.
The last two thirds of the video about the problem of evil, was rock solid and very similar to many arguments out there.
Keep up the good work.
Sunday vids are always fun.
Good points and fair callouts. I have lots to say in reaponse and appreciate the questioning. I hope to cover most of that in a future video about morality. I do agree that applying logic to the supernatural is wasted energy. But applying logic to the claim of something supernatural is not and there is nothing in the bible or proof in the real world of the supernatural and so its up for debate in my mind lol.
But again appreciate your fairness and also your kindness.
Christians don't believe in magic - Atheist's have a monopoly on magic. Christians believe in a Magician, Atheist's believe in magic.
Another great video. Always laugh at god not being able to look after 2 people and then I’m the next instance not looking after 4 ending up with 1/4 of the population getting murdered. He’d have been sacked in any walk of life 🤷🏻
If I had the power to create sentient beings, and I knew that doing so would lead a single one of them to suffer for eternity, then I would not create because an eternity of suffering is not a price anyone should pay or a cost any creator should accept. Further, no one would miss out on the glory if they never existed in the first place.
The Christian 'god' is said to be all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving (omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent)
*an all-knowing 'god would know what it would take for me to believe
*an all-powerful 'god' could set in motion my belief without violating any 'free will' I allegedly have
*an all-loving 'god' would want to do it, want me to believe
and yet I still do not believe.
RE: The deer analogy -- Believers will excuse god at that point by pointing to The Fall and that Adam and Eve's sin not only impacted them but destroyed the creation too. How just is a god that allows the decision of two people to destroy a creation too that he had proclaimed "good". How fair is that to the creation? The plants and animals had nothing to do with the choice to eat of the tree of good and evil. We see injustice in punishing someone for something they had nothing to do with. But there is god punishing all of creation for a mistake two people made. Not justice. Not loving. Just messed up.
Whenever I see creationists arguing that all animals lived in peace and harmony and then they say that after "the fall" they satarted killing each other I can only imagine a lion going like "oh shi!! they ate the fruit... I'm gonna kill this fucking zebra!!!"
Most people aren’t vain or weak enough to need people to worship them. It’s like an abusive boyfriend who sometimes tells his girlfriend that he loves her, just keep worshipping him or else she’ll get punished
It's interesting hearing you bring up Lucifer so much in all of your videos as if it's clearly written there as a fundamental story of the devil. (I assume this is somewhat ingrained from your fundamentalist background). The bible doesn't even mention Satan in this way as Satan is just the oppposer (there are many satans). And Lucifer just means Morning Star (Venus). These Lucifer as the devil ideas are mostly post biblical and comes from later neo-platonic authors and then authors such as Dante etc. Although I imagine most Christians have this view of Satan from being taught extra biblically from dante/paradise lost etc
If god is omniscient and knows what he will do before he will ever do it to the end of time, does god have free will?
Believers want to criticize the unfeeling, sociopathic, without pity, without empathy behavior of certain criminals - BUT, many of THEM are the most hateful, cruel, sociopathic, uncaring beings in existence.
HUMAN SUFFERING MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THEM - they’ll dance in DELIGHT at the prospect of people being tortured for eternity
Some will pound their chests and make stentorian declarations about ‘Suffering Is Redemptive’ Oh, they’ll have plenty to say about an abusive, neglectful parent, but God gets a pass
{! Disclaimer (2.S): I am a hobbyist hypothetical physicist, an amateur conjectural theologian, and an aspiring philosophical sci-fi/fantasy author. The ideas posited and owned by the author of this comment are entirely fantasy fictional or science fictional, and are not representations of actual reality or existence, but are only and exclusively abstract philosophical nonsense known as Beginnlessnessism for the purpose of curiosity and entertainment, only. Beginlessnessism is not a religion, but is a philosophy, also known as a meta-religion. Being a meta-religion does not make Beginlessnessium a religion but a philosophy about religion in general. !}
Omni-Possession
Omniscience is not sufficient to describe the mind of God. God is more than omniscient. God has everything in his mind. Now right now you are calling me stupid. But having everything in your mind is not omniscience it is omni-possession, or in other words, God possesses everything in his mind. Now, Internet, try to stop ignoring me like you have for the past 10 years.
So how does this fix your problem when you say God is omniscient and I say God is omni-possessive? If God is omni-possessive instead of omniscient, then everyone is with God all the time and we don’t leave his presence at all because we are in his mind. Take that Internet.
It's odd how a perfect god admits he was wrong about making Saul king. So does tha mean this god didn't know Sual would fail or did he just let it happen without warning
I'm talking from a Muslim perspective here. We are taught that God is All Knowing. And in His infinite wisdom He knows what's better for us even though we make our own choices and go thru many tests. The next life will be better than this one. We find this belief consistent as it applies to our daily lives as everything essentially is a test. Our work, family, health etc. We don't blame God for our conditions because we realise thru patience and steadfastness the reward will be great in this life and the next. Look at our bodies, our brain. Our ability to even make this video, that are God given talents. It's not a random occurrence. So yes we shud question everything, this is encouraged and is normal behavior but ultimately we are created to worship God as he has given us many blessings. This is how we find peace. One cannot blame the car maker for creating cars when accidents happen. No we need to value the vehicle and live according to the rules of the road. In the same way we have to live according to God's rules and respect our minds and bodies. Be aware of our choices but always keep asking questions. God is Just and All knowing and we are limited. He set a plan in motion having infinite wisdom but we make our own choices and ultimately we are going to be responsible for them unless events happen that are out of our control but God will understand and reward accordingly.
Also, just wanted to mention. From an Islamic perspective. God is not in any way shape or form like a human. We don't believe God 'regretted' creating man as the Bible puts it. God is aware of what will happen but we are not, therefore we make good or bad choices in time. God is not stuck in time.
Also the human was constructed to learn through failure. There is a lesson in failing. This is how we learnt about forgiveness and the like. It's part of the human experience and God's plan. God has one plan. Not a plan a and plan b.
It'd be easier to believe in God's omniscience had the Bible revealed some previously unknown truth like germ theory, or even like, "hey, ya'll may get to the point where you might wanna split an atom, so here are some warnings about that." The lack of any new knowledge in the Bible is one of the greatest literary disappointments of my life. I expected to have epiphanies while reading the Bible, and the seemingly most important thing is not boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk. WTAF??
"He couldn't warn us about atomic reactions because free will..."
If he can tell us women to marry our rapists, and that we gotta toss gay people off rooftops, and not to eat pork, then couldn't he have warned mankind about nuclear disasters?
As for "free will," that concept went out the window the moment God removed Pharaoh's free will by hardening his heart when he was about to allow the Hebrews to go free. I'm fairly certain that he gave ADAM free will, not necessarily everyone else. Anyway, all "free will" arguments ended with Pharaoh's hardened heart.
real
Wonderful point. Wish i would have covered that! And as for pharaoh i cover that alot in the two videos coming up tuesday and thursday this week
For God so loved us all. Wanting nothing created everything. With all his power and might he still needed to rest for a day. Seeing all that he created forgot to prune the Tree of Life and Knowledge. So He bore men so that they may tend to the gardens. God being pleased with his final task went back to sleep for the sabbath is sacred. Upon waking God found the garden yet not tended to. Calling unto men in anger. Not knowing what has happened. Not seeing any of his men, God enters the main garden where to his surprise sees men eating the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge..... This is the Gospel of The Unknowing. Praise be to the All Knowning All Powerful. For the Light sees All. "Alpha Sanctum Ch01".
Stayed tuned for chapter 2. It gets spicy
I want to read the whole book!
For me, all the philosophical arguments about the possibility or coherence of omniscience are irrelevant for one simple reason: Even presuming there exists an omniscient being, that being cannot prove it to non-omniscient beings. It's completely unverifiable; even if the omniscient being is willing to offer any explanations or answers that are asked of it, there is no way to determine that it actually isn't just finitely smarter than us by some indeterminate order of magnitude. Anyone who knows more than someone else can CLAIM they know everything, but that doesn't make it true. This is fatal to tri-omni monotheism because it leaves inescapable doubt: It's always possible that this supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing being is just QUITE powerful and REASONABLY intelligent, and thus that it could fail or be wrong in a way that might be extremely difficult for us to find out about until it's too late.
I wouldn't trust advanced aliens who showed up out of the blue and claimed they'd learned all knowledge and that their technology could accomplish all things, even if they could in fact answer any questions I had and produce any outcomes I could imagine. Some doubt would always linger, and in some sense, the very fact they're making the claim at all casts doubt on their motives and intentions. Does an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving being need to announce this about itself? Is God somehow more trustworthy for making maximally expansive claims over more reasonable ones, even if he truthfully is maximal, or is God less trustworthy because he insists upon that? Fallible men would need to claim their authority is beyond reproach or contention; an actually invincible and omniscient being has no need for concern about that.
*REGARDING THE ARGUMENT AT **6:40*
I read an interesting paper on the initial argument (before the "he chose to create" progression) being a serious paradox of causality under Molinism. For the sake of argument let's pretend God in this example didn't create the universe, but is still omniscient. Basically, if we say free will does exist, and God knows what someone will freely choose under a given set of circumstances, but DOES NOT causally intervene in the choice, then somehow God's knowledge alone is causally responsible for the choice that was made. But that's a paradox, because we've already said God isn't causally interfering; he's just watching the choice, aware of the outcome given his perfect knowledge, and the choice itself is still causally free. But then how does God know what choice will be made? Knowing what someone will do without telling them or making them do it should not in any casual sense influence what actual decision they make. God shouldn't be able to know that, but if he's omniscient, doesn't he have to?
Analogously, if there were some secret computer in a basement in Lagos that had access to all data about my life and prints out predictions of everything I'd do under any given scenario, it would be absurd to say that someone just reading the printouts of what I will do today (or "on a day exactly like today") will cause me to do them. Likewise it'd be absurd to say the computer's model is causing my actions. I don't even know this computer exists, and the person reading the printouts may not even know I exist; how could it possibly be the case that I couldn't do other than was predicted if we don't assume determinism?
Basically the paper argues that something has to give here: Either omniscience is incoherent (or at least fails to mean anything if free choices exist), or free will is incompatible even with the lower bar of Molinist omniscience, or we accept that merely knowing something can cause something else to happen with no further connection than that (which would still not really reconcile omniscience with free will).
Personally I don't think omniscience is coherent, and even if it is, I do not believe any conscious entity could possess it and appear in any way sane. Plus I'm not going to let theists off the hook for claiming God doesn't need a sufficiently large mind/brain/storage medium for infinite knowledge and the means to access infinite information instantaneously. No one could build such a thing in material reality, and to merely say "God, as a disembodied mind, does not need storage space" does not really explain how a disembodied mind stores and processes information. Though if Spinoza was right about extension being a maximal property...