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Barrett 385 posts 05-14-03 04:41 Reply	so were the last 2 comments... you ruined it!
Mark 276 posts 05-15-03 01:58 Reply	There's a difference between God and your mother, one that makes your argument completely illogical. Your mother would not KNOW you weren't going to do the dishes, she would merely BELIEVE you weren't going to do them. This, obviously, means that she doesn't truly KNOW what you're going to do. God, being omnipotent, KNOWS what you are going to do... there is NO way around doing what He KNOWS you will do. In the case of your mother, you may, for no apparent reason, catch your mother off guard and actually do the dishes, though she thought you weren't going to. You could never catch God off gaurd... never do something He didn't already know you'd do. If you don't believe this, of course, then you also do not believe God is omnipotent... if you believe this and you still think you believe God is omnipotent, I suggest you look up the definition of omnipotent in the dictionary again. For future reference, I happen to be 15 years old. Use whatever words you wish to use with me; I read a lot.
Mark 276 posts 05-15-03 02:04 Reply	I think I see what you're not understanding. You said, "So she doesn't have to force anyone to not do any dishes." 'Forcing' doesn't need to be an immediate action. Since your mother can't tell the future, the only way she'd be able to force you to do something is if she forced you to do it at the time you were about to do something she didn't think you'd do; i.e. She thought you weren't going to do the dishes, but then you started doing the dishes, so she forced you to stop. With God, since He's omnipotent and can tell the future, this is not the case. i.e. God would know you weren't going to do the dishes, so God, knowing it would please your mother and make the future of the world come out perfectly, made you feel in the mood to help your mother with the dishes, because He knew that it would surprise her and make her feel better and make the future world a better place. I'm not sure I can explain it any better in this post; if you need clarification, you know what to do...
Barrett 385 posts 05-15-03 03:51 Reply	no, God does not "make" anyone do anything. How many times do I have to say this? If there WAS a way around doing what God knew would be the future it wouldn't matter! You'd still do, with your own free agency, what God knew you would do. All that is required for free agency is the ability to choose - God does not take that away, he merely knows what you will choose.
AcDecMan 111 posts 05-15-03 07:58 Reply	Damn it, I knew it, too, but hey, I was talking about meaning, not spelling, so point stands...
Xathien 1255 posts 05-15-03 18:48 Reply	Nah, my mom knows I'm not gonna do dishes. It would be completely against the nature of my character to do the dishes without her asking. ;D
Barrett 385 posts 05-15-03 22:05 Reply	lol to both above 2 comments. AcDecMan - i was infering that i also know the meaning.. usually people know the meaning over the spelling... but oh well...
Jeremiah Walgren 1187 posts 05-15-03 22:27 Reply	So what is it you guys are discussing now? Or are you at all?
Mark 276 posts 05-16-03 02:57 Reply	Sure it would matter if there was a way around doing what God thought you would do... that would totally defeat my arguement, and I'd be on your side. Let me ask a quesion... do you believe that God can see as far into the future as He wants to at any given time for any given situation? This is generally included in the definition of omnipotent. Also, do you believe that God knows the world will eventually come out exactly as He plans, and that He created the world knowing it would work out exactly the way He wanted it to?
Barrett 385 posts 05-16-03 19:12 Reply	Mark, your whole argument is based on God knowing the future - yes, we believe he is omnipotent. The world will come out exactly as he KNOWS - He didn't make plans as to how specific people would behave, he just knows how they will behave because he knows them. Again, he's not the one controlling everyone, he just knows how they will control themselves.
Mark 276 posts 05-17-03 01:58 Reply	So what you're saying is that when He created the world, He simply made it so that everything would eventually come out as He planned, but He didn't think out everything that might happen with His creation?
Barrett 385 posts 05-17-03 03:31 Reply	GOSH! that's what i said did NOT happen. He created the world. He put us on it. We decide how we act on the world. He helps us from time to time. We make our own decisions. You need to take some reading comprehension classes.
Barrett 385 posts 05-17-03 03:34 Reply	(and when I say "He" it's refering to any member of the God Head... we believe it's 3 seperate beings, but for the sake of simplicity in debate I won't specify any individual God)
Barrett 385 posts 05-17-03 03:40 Reply	I'll try to clarify... but that probably won't stop you from telling me what I said so you can argue against me: Right now i'm arguing that we have free agency. Free agency requires that we have choices. God does not force us to choose what he wants us to choose. He simply knows what we will choose. Do you know what the word "know" means, Mark? It does NOT mean "to force one to act a certain way" It means he looked at our personality and said "hmmmmm... Mark will choose to do this because his name starts with M" (obviously to have a perfect knowledge as he does it's a lot more complicated than that)
Barrett 385 posts 05-17-03 03:41 Reply	and since WE do not know the future, WE have MANY choices. Just because God knows the 1 choice we will choose does not mean it's the only choice we have, it only means that that is the only choice we will choose.
Jeremiah Walgren 1187 posts 05-17-03 04:20 Reply	Barrett, perhaps they're simply not ready to comprehend the idea of Free Agency. Or just don't want to accept it.
Dexter345 677 posts 05-17-03 07:40 Reply	Barrett, perhaps you should be less condescending. You are going to give people the idea that all Mormons are people who call others inferior when they simply do not agree. Just to throw a question into the air (and then quickly get away from this thread), I'd like to ask this: if our choices come from our personality, and if God created our personalities, then doesn't that mean that God created our individual choices? -Dexter345-
Mark 276 posts 05-17-03 19:17 Reply	So Barrett, what you are saying is that God does not know that the world will end how He wants it to, and at the time He wants it to, and in the way He wants it to?
Barrett 385 posts 05-17-03 19:57 Reply	Dexter, He did not create our personalities; we did. Don't ask me how because I don't know. That's another question we will have answered at a later time. Mark: "So Barrett, what you are saying is that God does not know that the world will end how He wants it to, and at the time He wants it to, and in the way He wants it to?" The way the world will "end" is up to him - he's the one that will end it. WHERE it ends (the situation the world will be in) is completely up to us. The situation it will be in has been revealed, mostly in revelations, which simply means that he knows how each person will choose - it does not mean that he forces people to choose.
Mark 276 posts 05-19-03 00:00 Reply	Okay, now I'm on the same page. I think I see where the disagreement lies, too. I believe it's in our definitions of "omniscient". I was under the impression that when God created the world, He knew exactly what would happen as a result of His creation... what everyone would do, throughout the entire future of the world... and that He would know exactly what they would think, exactly what decisions they would make, throughout their entire lives, and exactly how those decisions would affect other humans. Do you see why this would make me think that free will doesn't exist? That if He knew exactly what everyone would do as a result of something He did, it would be no different than controlling us?
Barrett 385 posts 05-19-03 05:54 Reply	yeah that makes some sense. i could write a paragraph about it but i'm too tired, maybe tomorrow.
pentatonic184 33 posts 09-22-05 03:36 Reply	If the definition of a cult is to follow someone unconditionally, then wouldn't that make Christianity in general a cult? Not that that's a bad thing, but usually the word cult doesn't bring nice images to mind.
Dexter345 677 posts 09-22-05 14:06 Reply	I don't think that's the definition of a cult, but okay.
pentatonic184 33 posts 09-23-05 01:49 Reply	The definition of cult from Merriam-Webster's dictionary is: formal religious veneration 2 : a religious system; also : its adherents 3 : faddish devotion; also : a group of persons showing such devotion — cult•ist n (c)2000 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved
Jeremiah Walgren 1187 posts 09-23-05 18:33 Reply	Does the definition of something really matter when compared to what it actually is? When I think of cult, a secret group of people out to take over the government or something comes to mind. Not the Catholic church or something like that...

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