h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here are my views:

About no free will:

God made the universe as he wanted, He controlls everything that happens, thus there is no free will and agrees with this theary.

About time as an illusuion:

This agrees with "no free will" because everything happend at once and then plays itsself out with time. God made everything at once and planned everything at once so of course he "sees the future" and there is no free will. Our lives are already planned out and thus there are technicly no choices.

Both of these agree with my views as a christian so they make sense to me wether or not someone proves them right or wrong in 1000 or maybe 20 years.

Iluvatar

Based on the eclectic set of interests displayed at your User Space, I will assume these opinions are not your honest opinion, but were rather an attempt to see how others would respond. If my assumption is incorrect, and you actually espouse the above views, please tell me, so that I may eviscerate them properly.

I'm not a devout Christian by any means, but I completely disagree with your take on it.
The way I see it, according to the Bible, God created everything, and let it be. He let it all play out, giving human beings choice, thus explaining evil; some people choose to be evil.

What kind of a God would predetermine his universe, allow the monstrosities that our world has, and then send people to hell? What's the point of judgement day? A god who planned out things like the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks, genocide in Rwanda (etc. etc. etc.) would be a God not worthy of my worship.

And if you blame all that shit on the devil, well, God created the angels, by your theory, planned out what all of them would do, let Lucifer fall, and erego let him do all this shit. It's still on God's head.

Plus, I think sentience disproves this whole dealy anyway; choice is real. At least, it is in my head.

God lit the blue touch paper.

The big bang went off.

God alone knows what god thinks of the results.

Mind you, it is fun to guess!!

Via wikipedia found this link in the USA http://www.factorypipe.com/Technical/Tech_Articles/BMEP/bmep.html
quite technical, but interesting.

I now believe in free will. I don't see what diference it makes. either way it feels like i have free will. i still believe god, being outside of time itself, sees all like time doesn't exist. God predetermined time and the universe, and then set us in it. i still don't see how he created us with free will, but that is the only way for us to glorify him.

What would you say to someone who said "religion" was a play by people in the future travelling to the past? So prophecies and the like, miraclulous events and such, were realised by technology and knowledge from the future. Thus many incredible feats accomplised in the past and prophecies are really only a product of time travellers from the future. Such time travellers may be mistaken to be angels or ghosts or spirits or what have you.

My question is therefore how does time travel and causality fit in with theology?

Most prophecies and miracles recorded in holy books are so nebulus that they can be interpreted how one wishes. Random chance always makes some look better than other and naturally these ones are targeted as proof.

Miracles and prophesies never seem to happen in a way whereby they can be recorded, all require faith in whatever to believe.

Miracle cures range range from the not really ill, through misdiagnosis with only a few being inexplicable, probably because all the facts are not known.

Whether or not time travel is possible is still under debate, the consensus so far being that if it is then only observation rather than interference can be possible. Useful for sorting historical conundrums but not much else.