Timewaster's Guide Archive

The difficult thing about Kels seems to be that he is both charismatic and needs to be able to perform physical acts.  Johnny Depp seems to be more the charismatic and Christan Bale, more the physical.  Can we just mix the two and create some sort of super actor.  I liked the idea of Gary oldman....

As for vin, Kiera Knightly seems pretty good she may be getting a bit old now, but she seems better than any I can think of.

I have given this topic a lot of thought over the last few days because the basic dilemma still seems too difficult for me to get over.  I think I may have come to some sort of conclusion that makes sense however I am not sure how succinctly I can say it.

As a little pre-discussion before I begin my point.  To me it has always made sense that given every possible decision by beings with agency or free will that the fundamental makeup of the world/universe would change for every possible method of making that decision.  An example being that (to use the example from before) deciding to go to school or not would have different outcomes for to myself, my friends, family, peers and others based on how and to what extent I made my decision. 

Given that preceding paragraph, (which I may be wrong or not able to explain as well as I wish I could) I can see God's omniscience as existing in one of two ways (there may be more, but these are the two that make most sense to me).  The first way is the way that I have always assumed it would be where God has the capability to know what will happen for any possible decision that any person can make.  Before a person makes a decision, especially one in which God was asked for guidance on, God can look at all the possibly ways the person may respond, know the resulting outcomes -- which would correspond to knowing the result of that decision for the rest of eternity, and then respond in such a way to yield the outcome he wants.  In this version of God's omniscience I still have difficulty accepting free will as existing.

The second version of God I think removes this difficulty (at least for me).  In this version, for each possible decision that any person could make, again especially ones in which prayer was done and the individuals are waiting for an answer from God (even no answer seems to be a form of answer), God can only answer in one way because that is the "perfect" way.  The only way in which God knew he was going to answer from the beginning of time, the only possible way.  In this version, God can not look at all the possible paths that a person's decision may take because they don't truly exist since God gives the ideal answer and knows the way you will take.  In this version the argument that although God knows what we will do, we are still the ones deciding it makes much more sense to me.  I don't think that this version of God takes away from his omniscience or majesty, it is just the way that seems to make logical sense to resolve this problem.

I guess the questions I have then are this: 
First, does this make sense at all and second is this version of God's omniscience more akin to the accepted version?

As I was typing this I came to a third version which is that although God may have a say in the outcome of our prayers to him, because of his ability to modify his answer to get a result, it is not the result that matters but the degree in which God had to give his answer to yield the determined answer?

Thank you for the reply. 

I am still confused as to how this is not a conflict, but I do not want to argue this point into the ground because it seems somewhat menial and nitpicking.  But let me give anther example which I think might better illustrate where my confusion comes in.

Say that individual A is debating going to school.

If we assume that god is not omniscient or can not/will not answer any prayers (i.e. has no way to communicate with individual A) then A is forced to decide on his own to go to school or not.  Thus it may be said that A has free will.

If we assume that god is omniscient and actively can communicate with A through prayer or some other means then it seems to me that A  going to school is more a matter of gods will then A's.  Because god, knowing what A's decision will be given every possible prayer answer from god can give his answer in a way such that A will then go to school or not.

It just seems to me that in the case of an omniscient god who answers prayers, free will becomes more difficult to understand.

Again, thank you for this thread.  I have learned much more about Mormonism then I ever knew before.  Also thank you Brandon (EUOL) for your books I have enjoyed them and look forward to many more.