War of the Words

Now that we all have our midterm essays in (actually mine's not quite in yet), let's start some more discussion in here! Spread some of your love and increase your individual stature!

Here's something I think about a lot: Can we have free will AND have an omnipotent God? The idea is that God already knows what is going to happen, but lets us play it out anyway -- like watching a DVD of a movie you've already memorized. Are we just predictable amusement for some higher power? I believe all our authors believe in God, but also in free will. What problems does this cause for you?

If you have lots of spare time like I do (yeah, right!), go and download and read the free eBook of God's Debris. I think the discussion you find there is similar to the one we should be having.

As moderator and chief waffler, I'd like to propose something.

What we are arguing about is essentially a question of human nature. I think we can agree that we will not be able to "prove" anything about the essence human nature in definite terms. What we can do is look at what humans do and try to apply a "best-fit" model for explaining why they do that voodoo that they do.

Our competing "models" for this discussion can never be right or wrong, they can just fit better with the data we have or they can be more persuasive in their arguments.