God

May 22, 2003 13:08

I've been thinking about god alot recently. Specifically about the difference between how god can be omnipotent and humanity have free choice. Well the following are my thoughts and internal resolutions to that problem


God gave humanity free will. God also is omnipotent, meaning he knows everything. How can this be resolved. My thoughts boil down to this: God can know all the possibilities of all the things that can happen, but not which ones do until we choose them.

To explain, let me represent each choice as a node. Choosing to turn left or right represents one nodal choice, with the two options leading on different paths. If you go left, one thing happens, if you go right, another thing happens. It could be the same or different. But that choice leads to another node, with a different set of choices. Since he is all knowing, God knows every node, every choice a human can make, every movement of an atom, every possible action of a quark. They all exist in potentia to him. By choosing one, it collapses the other choices and expands the new set of choices at the next layer of nodes. What makes God so incredible is the vast scale required to keep track of every possible choice, even the unlikely ones. But although God knows all the possible choices, he doesn't know which one we will make. This means that we stil have free will, in that God doesn't know which path will be taken. But he is still all knowing because no matter the path, he knows what comes next.

That's my internal resolution on the issue. Let me know whta you think?
Previous post Next post
Up