If there were a God, I’m convinced he doesn’t have a plan for each of us. “A plan” directly contradicts free will, which is absolutely confirmed in all versions of the Bible and necessary for Faith.
So: the plan would have been: set up the initial conditions, ensure uncertainty and randomness, and let the simulation run. Omniscience can be constrained to awareness of the current state of everything (although, even God would be constrained by Heisenberg’s principle), yet still not know the future. And the ability to knowing the state of everything still doesn’t imply the intelligence and ability to calculate, simulate, and project the future state of anything - which, with randomness, becomes increasingly difficult with each second into the future you project, even if you have a good clipping algorithm to ignore things unlikely to impact Nick.
No, God would merely be a voyeur. Since he’s omnipotent, he can affect change, so he could help Nick… but that would violate Nick’s free will and the premise on which Faith depends. And the Christian God is strangely dependent on Faith; Faith is given an unreasonably high importance.
In any case, there’s no plan other than maybe some tweaks here or there to nudge things in a certain direction. They’re all macro changes, too. Not something as trivial or personal as preventing the soccer mom from running over 6 y/o Luna’s beloved cat that Luna grew up with. With chaos and entropy given free reign, Luna could develop a brain tumor in the next couple of years and die young; why bother save her from the trauma. If she’s been good enough, she’s just going to end up in heaven, lobotomized and permanently blissed out, and forced to spend the rest of eternity singing praises to God, anyway.
According to the Bible. If you’re a practicing Christian, feel free to explain where I’m wrong about any of this. Extra points if you can avoid resorting to the fundamental inscrutability of God’s purpose.
she’s just going to end up in heaven, lobotomized and permanently blissed out, and forced to spend the rest of eternity singing praises to God, anyway.
This always scared the shit out of me. I don’t want to do that. I’ll gladly take the embrace of the void any day.
Because if you don’t have faith, the entire house of cards would fall down. Some people would have to contend with justifying why they deserve to have authority or power, and others would have to justify their thoughts and actions without being intellectually lazy. Cave ab homine Deus libri.
If there were a God, I’m convinced he doesn’t have a plan for each of us. “A plan” directly contradicts free will, which is absolutely confirmed in all versions of the Bible and necessary for Faith.
So: the plan would have been: set up the initial conditions, ensure uncertainty and randomness, and let the simulation run. Omniscience can be constrained to awareness of the current state of everything (although, even God would be constrained by Heisenberg’s principle), yet still not know the future. And the ability to knowing the state of everything still doesn’t imply the intelligence and ability to calculate, simulate, and project the future state of anything - which, with randomness, becomes increasingly difficult with each second into the future you project, even if you have a good clipping algorithm to ignore things unlikely to impact Nick.
No, God would merely be a voyeur. Since he’s omnipotent, he can affect change, so he could help Nick… but that would violate Nick’s free will and the premise on which Faith depends. And the Christian God is strangely dependent on Faith; Faith is given an unreasonably high importance.
In any case, there’s no plan other than maybe some tweaks here or there to nudge things in a certain direction. They’re all macro changes, too. Not something as trivial or personal as preventing the soccer mom from running over 6 y/o Luna’s beloved cat that Luna grew up with. With chaos and entropy given free reign, Luna could develop a brain tumor in the next couple of years and die young; why bother save her from the trauma. If she’s been good enough, she’s just going to end up in heaven, lobotomized and permanently blissed out, and forced to spend the rest of eternity singing praises to God, anyway.
According to the Bible. If you’re a practicing Christian, feel free to explain where I’m wrong about any of this. Extra points if you can avoid resorting to the fundamental inscrutability of God’s purpose.
This always scared the shit out of me. I don’t want to do that. I’ll gladly take the embrace of the void any day.
Because if you don’t have faith, the entire house of cards would fall down. Some people would have to contend with justifying why they deserve to have authority or power, and others would have to justify their thoughts and actions without being intellectually lazy. Cave ab homine Deus libri.