>God created the entire universe
>God knows everything that will happen without a shadow of ambiguity
>Life is some kind of moral test
>Somehow, bad actions are punished in the afterlife
>Even though God knew you'd fail the test
>He didn't need to test you at all to know that
>But that's because you have free-will!
>But then God wouldn't know how you'd act which contradicts the very idea of God
>But if humans don't have free-will, then the very basis of moral judgement would crumble
>Then religious institutions lose their grasp on social control
>So humans need to have free-will and the world needs to be totally pre-ordained and stop asking questions
All explained by God's love
It's the fatal flaw of Abrahamic religions which are by far the dumbest most insane religions ever that murdered, connived, and gaslighted their way into popularity despite being no better than Zeus-worship.
Taoism, the Dharmic Religions, Platonist or Spinoza style spirituality, even some obscure branches of abrahamism like Gnosticism, Mandaeism and Sufism make sense.
But somehow the world has Stockholm syndrome to these other brainless, murderous cults whose core doctrines are directly contradictory.
No where in the Bible does it say that God is testing anyone for anything in return.
When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of Yahaweh called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
“Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”
Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “Yahaweh will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of Yahaweh it will be provided.”
Then the angel of Yahaweh called again to Abraham from heaven. “This is what Yahaweh says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”
The previous anon wrote it wrong, but the point stands, God MIGHT choose to test certain people for certain purposes, such as Abraham, or Israel in the wilderness, or Job, but that doesn't mean that we're all being tested all the time.
If you are righteous then God does test you.
>Psalm 11:4-5
the Lord's throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
>Psalm 17:3-4
You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tested me, and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.
>Jeremiah 20:12
O Lord of hosts, who tests the righteous, who sees the heart and the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you have I committed my cause.
>Psalm 66:10-12
For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.
>2 Chronicles 32:31
And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.
>Psalm 7:9
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous— you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God!
>Jeremiah 17:10
“I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
>Zechariah 13:9
And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”
Precognition is not predestination. Think of it this way: If I flip a coin, I know for a fact that it will fall heads or tails, but that doesn't mean that I predetermined to fall on one the other.
Then God is not all-knowing, according to official doctrine of multiple religions. Fake and gay
>Then God is not all-knowing
He is, like in the coin example, He knows the outcome but He didn't predetermined it.
>He knows the outcome
If he knows the outcome then literally nothing else can possibly occur, which is effectively the same thing as predestination.
>If he knows the outcome then literally nothing else can possibly occur
Not necessarily, no. You can know that a number of outcomes can be possible, but that only one will. But that doesn't mean you decreed that one outcome to happen.
Kinda does when you're the precondition for all things, and got a superpower to always get what you want
God is not like me flipping a coin
Mysterious ways
/thread
Mysterious cope
It says in the bible that god predetermined who will get his grace and literally nothing will change that. No prayer or good works can get your grace.
Calvinist correctly preach this and it makes other denominations seethe because it exposes how dumb the religion is.
Larping as an old school Calvinist or Gnostic is the very best way to deal with Christians because both of those interpret the Bible more accurately than they do. Christians have to go into cope mode and contradict their own theology with "uhh but that's metaphor, I don't believe God would truly do that" and out themselves as a heretic by their own religions standards.
And yes I've done this in real life with missionaries.
>>God knows everything that will happen without a shadow of ambiguity
Not in Open Theism.
New cope just hit!
>fatal flaw of religions
>only talks about the Problem of Evil for Christianity
It's endlessly funny that people will be doing this in another 1000 years.
>ss3 goku when you shave the hair