confusing self-control with freewill.

[Alien]

Not really, it's only foreknowledge if you're limited to the constant progression of time. If you exist outside of the universe - and therefore outside of the flow of time - it's no more 'foreknowledge' than I have foreknowledge for knowing where the other side of the table is. Time is a dimension; our sense and our understanding are limited by the way in which we travel through it, but the limitation is ours, not the dimension's.

O.

OK with that. My point was only that knowing something is going to happen does not thereby mean you have caused it.

But you believe that god did ultimately cause it, right? I  mean Eve, the apple (or fruit/whatever) and the universe they inhabit - none of those would exist without god? So it seems you're in a position where you believe god knows exactly how his creation is going to pan out from start to finish and there's no deviation from that knowledge.

And of course, if God must act according to its nature, then there is only one possible universe. It has no choice therefore we cannot have free will.

What do you mean by "free will"?

[Outrider]

Yes-ish. Yes, nothing which has happened, happens or will happen would be the case if God had not created the universe as he did, including the bad stuff. Him being God, he must have good reasons for doing it that way.

And that's where the problem is. There are children who are born starving, struggle through a short, disease-riddled life and die.

What is there in everything imaginable that can justify that? Even if you disregard the notion of hell and eternal punishment, how many people that God already knows will go to heaven have to get to heaven to justify that existence? If the entirety of the universe's existence is known to God when it induces creation, what is the point of creation?

It's the lack of any even vaguely sensible answer to that which is the core of the problem of evil - it's not that God possibly created evil, it's that there's no rational justification for it.

O.

[Andy]

Not really, it's only foreknowledge if you're limited to the constant progression of time. If you exist outside of the universe - and therefore outside of the flow of time - it's no more 'foreknowledge' than I have foreknowledge for knowing where the other side of the table is. Time is a dimension; our sense and our understanding are limited by the way in which we travel through it, but the limitation is ours, not the dimension's.

O.

OK with that. My point was only that knowing something is going to happen does not thereby mean you have caused it.

But you believe that god did ultimately cause it, right? I  mean Eve, the apple (or fruit/whatever) and the universe they inhabit - none of those would exist without god? So it seems you're in a position where you believe god knows exactly how his creation is going to pan out from start to finish and there's no deviation from that knowledge.

Yes-ish. Yes, nothing which has happened, happens or will happen would be the case if God had not created the universe as he did, including the bad stuff. Him being God, he must have good reasons for doing it that way.

I can't make sense of what bad means here if it is ultimately good.

[Outrider]

His complete knowledge including what would happen if he created the universe this way? Then yes. That, in itself, says nothing about whether God can create creatures which are free in their will though, but rather that he knew what they would freely choose (if indeed they are free).

I'm not so sure. The very concept of free will is fundamentally flawed, I've been addressing that in the thread that Sassy set-up about free will and choice. Beyond that, though, how can we have free will if god creates the universe with all our decisions already made?

Time is a dimension, and god does not exist within it - god's complete knowledge of the universe is not constrained by the dimensions it creates, so it is aware of the entirety of existence that we only experience piecemeal as we move through that dimension.

A worm inside an apple can't see where the apple ends, but us holding it from the outside can see - so we inside the universe cannot see tomorrow, but God can. Time does not exist for God, so it does not create a universe and then set it loose, God creates an universe fully formed that we then experience from inside.

O.