There's too many to list. One example of God's managing things for the protection of man is in the great beasts such as dinosaurs dying out. The SOP points out that man did not have the strength to manage these beasts.



The Egyptian plagues is one such example. Do you think the following are true?

1.God caused the plagues to happen?
2.God did so to get His way?

The only way I think you could deny what I said was to say that the plagues did not involve force or violence. Is this your contention?



We disagree on this point. I believe there is a connection, and that because you don't perceive this connection, you are not interpreting the violent events of the OT correctly.



We disagree on this point. I think you're making the same mistake the Jews did in regards to Christ's first coming, by missing the spiritual implications. For example, in DA 107, 108, I think your understanding of things is similar to the Jews:



I think you interpret this in physical/literal terms instead of spiritually, which is the same mistake the Jews made. I think the principles involved here are the same principles involved at the cross. We're not dealing with two different Gods here. All that can be known of God really was revealed in the life and character of His Son during the first Advent. Only as we understand what Christ revealed in the first Advent can we understand what happens in the second.

I think it's because of a lack of this understanding that Christ hasn't come. The same mindset the Jews had prevails.

GC, my question is a legitimate question, and an important one. I'll try again to state it in a way that it doesn't come across as a wife-beating question, and hope you will address it.

In the case of the plagues of the Egyptians, as I perceive your view of things, God used His power to achieve His purposes. He did so by escalating the destruction He Himself was causing against the Egyptians bit by bit until they could no longer resist His power.

Now this is accurate, isn't it? That is, I have accurately represented your view?

Let's stop here for a moment, and see if you agree with this characterization of your view, and go on from there, and if so, I can get back to my question.

Regarding your example with the Doctor, that doesn't seem to work at all. For one thing, the Doctor is acting to save a life, and doesn't destroy any lives in so doing. Unless you wish to make the cancer (or the lung, or kidney, etc.) into a living being with rights to live, the Doctor isn't acting destructively. Also, you'd have to be equating the Doctor's removing the cancer with God's killing people by dropping giant stones of hail on them, and such like. That doesn't work.

(Note, I changed "get His way" to "achieve His purposes," as it seemed you were objecting to this phrase. I don't want an objectionable use of a phrase to get in the way of discussing the underlying issues involve)

MM, in the quotes you presented regarding the two types of compelling power, which type do you see God using in the case of the Egyptian plagues? Assuming you say it's the good kind, how do you see that playing out?



Yes, they were different strokes. In the case of Herod, the angel's stroke released the power of God which was protecting Herod from one of a thousand dangers, all unseen.

post 117952 the post in context:
your original post above and subsequent post below do not seem to be matching up.

Yes, this fairly accurate. However, it is not complete. It is possible that you misunderstood why God would do this as a result of not understanding the full picture.


I agree with this, so feel free to continue.

Why does it not work because the Doctor is acting to save a life? Do you not think God is doing the same thing?

Paul, in the New Testament, compared the body organs to individual members of the church. My example evokes the same line of thought. Jesus used the example of branches of a tree, and Paul spoke of removing the "natural branches" in order to replace them with those grafted in. Do you not see these branches as representing people? But of course, the church is one body. Yet individual members, if cut off from the Vine, would die, would they not?



Would it matter how God removed those branches? If He removes them, they die, right? It could be by saw, by flame, by giant hailstone to knock them off, or by disease which causes them to drop away...in any scenario, the end result is that the branch will die--and that branch represents a person. So, it seems in this sense, we have a portion of God's character revealed through Jesus that parallels the character He demonstrated in the plagues.

Tom, the "get his way" phrase is commonly used here on earth today in speaking of the most selfish of motives. It is definitely objectionable in applying such selfishness to God, for God is not selfish.

Yes, God achieves His unselfish purposes. What may even seem selfish to us, would not thus appear could we be permitted to see the whole picture.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

QM involves randomness, but "unpredictability of individual events" is probably more accurate.

However, CT is not unpredictable. It is deterministic. "A small change can result in drastic, unpredictable change" is correct. Unlike QM, CT is unpredictable only because we lack information or processing power. Given all the necessary initial conditions (position and momentum of every particle) and enough time to do the calculations, the outcome is predictable.

Not necessarily. Chaos may or may not be deterministic. Also, even in deterministic chaotic systems, there is noise, making the results unpredictable. Also, what happens if the initial conditions are themselves random? When one puts together randomness with small changes resulting in drastic changes/unpredictable behavior, what results is a very different world than the one Newton envisioned. This is without even taking into account free will.

Did God create a world which is truly spontaneous, even for Him? Or is the world He created in actuality deterministic, where if one simply had enough information, nothing would be spontaneous? This is an open question, but I believe the former is the case.

You are conflating the issue of unpredictability due to lack of information in Classical Mechanics with the unpredictability due to the probabilistic nature of the universe (i.e., the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) in Quantum Mechanics. It would strengthen your argument to stick with the QM/HUP analogy, and leave Chaos Theory out of it.

In theory, Newtonian Mechanics fully explains all the "randomness" and extreme variability found in CT. Quantum Mechanics has unpredictability built into the theory. Your idea fits QM better.

However, that doesn't mean I'll agree with your idea.


I'll ask my question again in the context of GC 35: When God's protection was withdrawn, did God know what was going to happen next?

Chaos theory doesn't have to be deterministic. For example, there's quantum chaos theory. Also if the initial conditions are random, then the chaotic system will be unpredictable. Also there may be unknown factors in a system which have unknown effects (e.g. noise). So it's certainly not necessarily the case that if one just had more accurate information and better measuring devices, one could do things like perfectly predict weather. Perhaps a probabilistic model better reflects reality.



I'm not understanding the motivation of this question. If you're asking if God knew Jerusalem would be destroyed, certainly. Even Jesus in His humanity knew this.