The Responsibility Of Omniscience

sent in by Steve
http://journals.aol.com/geworfenheit2001/MyMusings/

Geworfenheit2001 at aol dot com

One of the attributes that are ascribed to God is that of omniscience. Most Christians and theists take the strong definition of omniscience when they apply it to God, meaning that God knows everything, past, present and future, including supposedly free choices made by human beings. I have pondered this idea for quite some time and for me there seem to be many difficulties with this concept, particularly with reference to God’s knowledge of future events and decisions as I will explain shortly. Now, there is a movement in theology by some (open and process theists), who take the view that God cannot know future events with certainty when it involves choices by humans, but only probabilities based on past decisions, the general temperament of the individual and the cumulative affect of the contributing factors. The majority of this article is not directed at those individuals, however the open theists may feel obliged to re-think their position before they get to the last sentence of the essay.

However, the majority of Christians and theists do indeed believe the strong definition of omniscience should be applied to their almighty God. I know that many Christians check this site out and attempt to use it as a hunting ground for converting us evil atheists, agnostics and free- thinkers back into the fold. Well, it is to those Christians that I extend this challenge: How can you defend and hold your God guiltless in the face of the all evil atrocities committed on this planet throughout the entire history of human existence? I am not even going to mention what most theologians refer to as natural evil (see my “Why I Became An Agnostic” in the February archives on this site). This inquiry will be specifically directed at the problem of moral evil. The evil resulting from human free choices.

There are two problems with moral evil when it is understood from a theistic standpoint: First, if God knows our future decisions before we make them, how can they be freely made? This conundrum has baffled philosophers and theologians for centuries and is still a major difficulty for theists who have not closed their mind to rational thought and fallen into the trap of blindly accepting church dogma simply because it is biblical. “If the bible says it, it’s true and no evidence to the contrary is being considered thank you very much.” Well folks, do you know there is much biblical support for the idea that God does not know future events? The story in Genesis about the “test” God put to Abraham to kill his son Isaac is a perfect example. The idea of an all-knowing being requiring tests seem ludicrous. I know that many Christians will say that the test was for Abraham’s benefit to test his faith and not to teach God anything so let me offer another example: Genesis 6:6 states that after God saw all the wickedness and evilness of man’s heart, he “was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (NIV version of the Bible) It sounds to me as if all this came as a surprise to God. If God did know before creation that he would end up destroying all but eight people in a flood and decided to create anyway, I would say God is a foolish, derelict that deserves not to be worshiped but scorned. Look at all the waste of human life as a result of God’s decision to create a species only to nearly destroy it later. It would seem that most Christians would be all too happy to deny their God the ability to foresee future events and spare him the image of a capricious spoiled child.
Not the case though. Many philosophers and theologians have been able to hold the view that we are free and God is omniscient by developing a view of free will called compatibilism. Basically, it states that we are free to act within the boundaries of our created nature and since that nature was created by God, we can be both “free” and still have our choices foreknown by God. This view is particularly popular within the Calvinist ranks of Christianity.

The other alternative is a libertarian view of free will which states that we are completely free to choose to act or not act in a certain way. Yes, we all have proclivities to certain behaviors and more often than not we “cave in” to them. But libertarianism allows that some times, we rise above our habits and dispositions and make choices that could not be pre-determined based on them. This is a much higher and nobler idea of free will in my opinion and has been shared by many even in early Christianity such as Pelagius.

The second difficulty is that even if we believe our choices are completely free in the libertarian sense and God does not know the outcome of our decisions, while we may be able to relinquish God’s direct responsibility for human atrocities, how can we hold him blameless in an indirect way? Let me give a simple example from a human perspective, which of course is the only example we can give: Let’s say you are out walking and as you turn a corner, you see a person robbing a elderly woman. What do you do? You could try to forcibly stop the thief, which may not be the wisest choice, after all, you are a mere human, not an omnipotent being. You may get injured or worse in the process and still not help the victim. You could grab your trusty cell phone or scramble to the nearest payphone and dial 911 (probably the wisest choice, unless of course you’re a police officer), or, you could take the third choice and just stand by and watch and do nothing. Doesn’t it seem like choice three is the one almighty God chooses on almost all occasions? Now, we have this concept of complicity to deal with. You see, in our system of jurisprudence, a person who is not directly involved in an act of violence could be considered as an accomplice to the crime if they had some involvement in it. How is witnessing a crime and not reporting it not considered being involved? Okay, I know I’m stretching the idea a bit when it’s applied to witnesses as opposed to the guy who drives the “getaway car”, but you get the point. Could you live with yourself or consider yourself to be a good and moral person if you stood by and watched someone being robbed and terrorized? But isn’t that what God does daily. How often have you read about missing children’s bodies being found and there was evidence of sexual abuse and torture? Can you imagine the horror and pain that child went through? Is it a stretch of the imagination to believe that they may have cried out to God to be rescued? But there was no deliverance for them except in the surrender to death. How do we absolve God from the guilt of that child’s blood? Did he just turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to her pleading cries? How could we absolve ourselves if we had the opportunity to stop it? Is the moral standard applied to God any less demanding than what we apply to ourselves? And, like I said, the above scenario does not even require that God be omniscient regarding future events, which of course only exacerbates the problem and begs the question to our open theology friends.

Many Christians will defend a God who watches indifferently because they state that he does not want to interfere with free will. Well my first response to that defense is that the bible is replete with examples of God interfering with free will.

Second, who in their right mind would say that a rapist exercising his free will is of more value than the life of his victim. Think about that folks, it sounds insane. But that is the defense used by Christians and theists when this question is asked.
My conclusion is that God is at the very least indirectly responsible for moral evil by virtue of his omniscience. God’s attributes come with a price tag and the price is high. You cannot have the ability to see all and claim not to bear at least partial responsibility for allowing it to happen. Especially when you also have the attribute of omnipotence. Unless God is held to a lower moral standard than humans, to allow evil that could be stopped is to be partly responsible for it.

Milan bans 'blasphemous' poster

By Irene Peroni BBC News

Dan Brown sparked controversy with his novel based on Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper - now a French clothing company has followed suit in Italy.

The authorities in Milan have banned a billboard featuring an all-female version of the 15th Century fresco, which the fashion house itself says was inspired by the hotly debated book.

The campaign has run without controversy in both Paris and New York.

But its use of religious symbols could offend Milan, the town hall ruled.

The advert for the Marithe et Francois Girbaud fashion house features well-clad women surrounding what seems to be a female Christ. The only male in the picture is a young bare-chested man sitting on a woman's lap in a provocative pose.

Italy's advertising watchdog, the IAP, said the ad's use of Christian symbols including a dove and a chalice "inevitably recalls the very foundations of the Christian faith".

This kind of image cannot be parodied for commercial ends without offending the sensitivity of at least part of the population

Italian publicity watchdog IAP

"This kind of image cannot be parodied for commercial ends without offending the sensitivity of at least part of the population," it said.

And what is more, "One of the women apostles is kissing the naked torso of a man, which just makes the imitation more offensive."

Milan town hall said it had consulted the IAP before issuing the ban.

"We rejected a request to put up this huge billboard after getting a negative opinion from Italy's advertising self-regulating body," said Maurilio Sartor, the head of the publicity office at the Milan municipality.

"Had they given us the go-ahead, we would have put it up," he added.

'Da Vinci code'

The campaign was inspired by Brown's bestseller "The da Vinci code".

The novel is based on parchments found in the mid-1970s which later turned out to be false, claiming that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife, and that they had a child together.

A mysterious organisation, the Priory of Sion, was allegedly formed to guard this secret - and Leonardo was one of his members.

Indeed, in Da Vinci's famous fresco the figure sitting to the Christ's right - supposedly John - bears an undeniable resemblance to a woman.


Man or woman? The figure in pink should be John

Critics believe this is due to the fact that in the Renaissance, female models were used to pose for artists depicting adolescent men.

The fashion house meant to turn the painting on its head as a tribute to women and their role in society.

And while their application was rejected, observers note their spurned efforts have doubtless brought the company more publicity than if their request had been approved.

Christian Evolutionists

provided by Ed Babinski

Did you know that Michael Denton has changed his view from evolution being a "theory in crisis," to evolution being a fact of nature? Denton even told the Discovery Institute that he no longer wished to be described as an "associate" of that institute.

Although Denton's book, Evoultion: A Theory in Crisis preceded Behe and Dembski's works, Denton no longer finds evolution to be in such a "crisis" not anymore.

I also wonder what creationists and I.D.ists think of Christians who accept Darwinistic evolution, and reject I.D. arguments?

Dr. Colling (fundamentalist Christian and chair of Biology at a fundamentalist Christian college) is O.K. with Darwinian evolution and has even composed a book on the subject titled, Random Designer: Created From Chaos To Connect With Creator. ''It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods'' when they say evolutionary theory is ''in crisis'' and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. ''Such statements are blatantly untrue,'' he argues. ''Evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny...What the designer designed is the random-design process,'' or Darwinian evolution, Colling says. ''God devised these natural laws, and uses evolution to accomplish his goals.'' "Random Designer" or "Divine Tinkerer?"

Either way, Darwinism and God could be viewed as overlapping hypotheses. For the full story see, "Teaching Evolution at Christian College" by Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal (December 31, 2004) http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-olivet31.html

MORE BOOKS BY CHRISTIAN EVOLUTIONISTS
Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, ed. Keith B.
Miller http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/ (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003)--Essays by theistic evolutionist Christians:
Terry Gray (Colorado State)
James Hurd (Bethel College)
Ted Davis (Messiah College)
Robin Collins (Messiah College)
David Wilcox (Eastern College)
Mark Noll (Wheaton College)
Jeff Greenberg (Wheaton College)
Laurie Braaten (Judson College)
John Munday, Jr. (Regent Univ.)
Loren Haarsma (Calvin College)
Howard Van Till (Calvin College)
Deborah Haarsma (Calvin College)
Warren Brown (Fuller Theological)
David Campbell (University of Alabama)
Jennifer Wiseman (Johns Hopkins Univ.)
Conrad Hyers (Gustavus Adolphus College) George Murphy (Trinity Lutheran Seminary) Bob Russell (Center for Theology and Natural Sciences) http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/Book_Ann.html
God and Evolution (Nov. 2004) by David L. Wilcox (Ph.D. in Population Genetics, Professor of Biology, Eastern College, St. David's, PA.)
Darwinism Defeated? A debate between Phillip E.
Johnson (I.D.ist) and Denis O. Lamoureux (Ph.D.
biologist/evolutionist and Evangelical Christian
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/index.htm) Apparently Johnson does not offer copies of this debate book for sale at his website.
Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution by Kenneth R. Miller (Ph.D. biologist and Catholic Christian) http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/index.html
Chance From a Theistic Perspective (The Perspectives of Two Evangelical Christian Evolutionists: Donald MacKay and John Polkinghorne) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance-theistic.html

Fine-Tuners Who Reject I.D. Arguments
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/babinski/inerrancy.html
Darwin's Forgotten Christian Defenders
http://www.creation-science.us/creationism/darwin.html

Three Cheers For Christian Evolutionists http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/evolution/christian_evolution.html

From Abandoning Geocentrism To Accepting Evolution: A "Liberal Trend" Among Evangelical Christians?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/2/part12.html
Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project, is a Christian who accepts evolution. He stated: "I am unaware of any irreconcilable conflict between scientific knowledge about evolution and the idea of a creator God; why couldn't God have used the mechanism of evolution to create?...In my field, biology, because of the creationists the standard assumption is that anyone who has faith has gone soft in the head.
When scientists like me admit they are believers, the reaction from colleagues is 'How did this guy get tenure?'"--Gregg Easterbrook, "Science and God: A Warming Trend?" Science, Vol. 277, No. 5328, Aug. 15 1997, p. 890-893
CHRISTIAN EVOLUTIONIST WEBSITES
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/murphy__van_dyke_dialogue.html#Theistic%20Evolution


http://www.bibleandscience.com
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm
http://www.meta-library.net/bio/hvt-body.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/anthony_garrett/esct.html

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s17040.htm

http://www.faithreason.org/
http://groups.msn.com/ChristiansForEvolution
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/136886.htm
http://www.berea.edu/specialproject/scienceandfaith/ess
ay03.asp
http://members.aol.com/steamdoc/writings/evangel.html
http://zygoncenter.org/about_who.html
Voices For Evolution: Statements From Religious Organizations http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/1028_statements_from_religio
us_org_12_19_2002.asp

The Pope's Message On Evolution
http://www.cin.org/jp2evolu.html
Webpage that features the article, "I.D. For
I.Dummies"
http://www.intelligent-design.us/

Cheers,
Edward T. Babinski (author of Leaving the Fold:
Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists, Prometheus
Books, 2003, paperback edition; featuring the
first-hand testimonies of 3 dozen former
fudamentalists who moved either to more moderate or
liberal Christian, who joined other religions, or
became agnostics, or atheists) http://www.edwardtbabinski.us

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