"Rationalizing" is to understand shallowly or wrongly, by definition.
You don't get to redefine words that have bad connotations to them just because they apply to what you want to do.
Of course, yet we all do it. All of us. We are trying to take our ideas make them work. The only difference between rational and rationalizing is what we choose to ignore. Until then, we all rationalize because we have working paradigms. When those are sufficiently challenged, we rework our beliefs and allow them to follow. I simply used your word and embraced it. I rationalize and then reason.
You seem to do it all the time! The implications do not trump the direct meaning of the text, Lon! The implications can be anything you want to imply!
Indictment is a rabbit trail.
Saying it doesn't make it so. Reality is not about "to me" or anything similar to that. Reality is what it is. It is objective and your personal opinions don't have anything to do with it.
Yeah they do. You aren't without it. If we see it in ourselves, that is a good thing. I rationalize. You rationalize. We entrench. Is it bad if we all do it? Depends if we see it in ourselves and know the remedy. I've been here 25 years on TOL. I think I've got a handle on it. I truly look to anything new to challenge. I rationalize less.
NO OPEN THEIST ANYWHERE OR AT ANY TIME HAS EVER SAID OR EVEN SUGGESTED THAT GOD CANNOT READ MINDS!!!!
My point was that ONCE Abraham made his intents KNOWN... God knew it. Even before Abraham had to act.
It's so simple that a child can understand it.
God "knows our hearts" once we give Him that information....
As Abraham did. But NOT before!
That is the most ridiculous claim I've seen you make this week. Well, it's Sunday today! It's the most ridiculous claim I've seen you make is several days, perhaps a month.
"Seems" like rationalizing to me. It doesn't jive with your theology of course.
Nonsense. We know for a fact how God came to know. The incident is recorded for us in God's word. Why is it that you cannot believe the words on the page, Lon?
I'm not a slave to English translations. Reactionary on your part? Of course. I have
no problem questioning translations. My professors were the very men that translated one of the most used English bibles on the planet. They taught me to not trust. Why? Because the ones who hired them also employed English teachers who reworked the texts. Granted they were resubmitted back to the Hebrew Greek scholars (at times).
Not helpful, even to/for you. It certainly means nothing to me.
Yeah, God could have raised Isaac from the dead but then He would have been the God that ordered actual human sacrifice and for Abraham to actually murder his "only" son. Talk about not thinking through the implications! I mean come on, Lon! As it is, God finds out that Abraham was willing to make the same decision that He made before the foundation of the world and He got to have just a beautifully awesome parallel story to put into the pages of the bible as both prophesy and proof of what we now call the gospel. The way God directed that scene was brilliant to the point of perfection!
You are defending 'my' position on point. I'm trying to see it 'from' and Open perspective, remember? I'm the one who sees a ram already trapped in the bushes. It truly renders 'now' as translation error as one and likely the culprit.
It makes absolutely perfect sense! Deciding that you're going to obey is great, actually doing it is greater. God waited until Abraham was in the act before stopping him. As I said, PERFECT!
It is good you see this passage isn't about God, as much as Abraham. "Now I know" would be taken not as literal, but rather that the devotion act had to be carried through. There was already a ram in the thicket. So did God know? Of course. "Now?" If God can read minds (and He can), then acts are simply follow-through for what is there. Abraham was conflicted but following through with every action and intent.
Except that they totally did use the correct term, which I have already established.
It makes problematic sense and "now" English.
Except that this isn't what the text says! It actually does say, "NOW I know". That isn't an opinion. That isn't wishful thinking. That isn't rationalization. It is a pure fact!
Read Hebrew? No it does not.
There is no such thing as a right way to rationalize.
Seeing it in ourselves is a good step in the right direction. I posit we all do it. The first step in change is to see the need.
Assuming for the sake of argument that God is keeping track of the precise number of hairs on each and every person's head, which He isn't actually doing, but even assuming that He is, it would not prove that God is omnipresent in the classical sense of that term.
Luke 12:7 But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.
First of all, God wouldn't have to be present to know such a meaningless point of trivia. Even if He actually knows this, it's not like He has to sit there and physically count each hair.
Agree! My scripturally driven belief: Colossians 1:16-20 Acts 17:28 It is because He actively sustains them.
But let's grant that premise as well and say, for the sake of argument, that God couldn't know such a thing from afar. It still wouldn't prove that God is omnipresent in the classical sense of the term. It would merely prove that God is everywhere He chooses to be, which is as close to "omnipresent" as the scripture supports.
Remember there are 8 billion people in the world. As you say, that is in all practicality an omnipresent definition but if He currently sustains everything, all created for Him, the connections would be omnipresent as necessity (or as you say, very nearly).
Of course it's possible!
Let's say you make a broom and that during the process of making this broom you make a very specific point of making sure that there are precisely 2376 bristles in the head of the broom. You know EXACTLY how many "hairs" are on the head of the broom you made and it was very good! Then your son comes around and has a mess to clean up and take the broom and uses it. He doesn't damage the broom at all but gets distracted and doesn't put it away where it belongs. The next day, you come to use the broom and can't find it. You don't know where it is and yet if someone were to ask you, you could still tell them just exactly how many bristles it has.
Okay, but this analogy does not account that you and I lose approximately 100 - 200 hairs every day so analogy cannot accurately dismiss.
Obviously a less than perfect analogy but the point it makes is that ignorance of one thing does not imply ignorance of another thing. God is perfectly able to give someone privacy if He chooses to do so.
It does when it is fact the number is not the same one moment to the next. I'd imagine most go in the drain after a shower, another few when we rub our heads and another few when a good wind hits us.
The error you've made is in thinking that because it doesn't "appear" to you that we've thought things through that we therefore definitely have not done so.
Is it an error? It appears that way, even with the broom analogy.
The fact is that we have done so!
I'm encouraged, however, by your new found affinity for presenting actual arguments! Keep it up! What you'll find is that not only have we thought it through but that it is in fact you who have not done so.
I look forward to that day.
Why, for example, would a failure to think through the implications of something as trivial and mundane as counting the hairs on someone's head cause you to "eschewing the plausibility of Open Theism", but the implications that Classical doctrines have in regards to God's righteousness and justice not have a similar effect on your thinking?
Those tend to be emotional concerns. Emotions are good like dashlights on a car, but I quickly move beyond them to try to make sense of what God does and 'why.' For me, the wheat/tares analogy is very near akin to answering all problematics: "Don't touch them lest even one of my wheat is harmed!" Such allows either Open Theism or the rest of us to peer into the heart of God and see His concerns.
On the contrary. It is precisely logic that leads to the doctrines. The only thing it isn't logically consistent with is the doctrines which you read into the bible!
Yep.
God is definitely NOT omnipresent in the classical sense of the term. Your own thinking based on your own premises do not prove that God is omnipresent except in the sense that He can be everywhere He desires to be at once.
On this, I am duly challenged. I appreciate that I do not take terms to Greeks nor even often enough further than etymology. Panentheism is certainly problematic. I have no problem with you expounding the further meaning. Panentheism, in a dictionary is nowhere near as problematic as in philosophy and religious connotations. This is probably the largest issue of frustration between us, but I want to say again 1) thank you for correction when such applies and 2) the need for Godly longsuffering, patience, and grace. I appreciate you putting up with me and the frustration thereof.
Well, I've just demonstrated otherwise.
OH! Don't think I didn't notice your "something incredibly near" concession there! That concession blows up your entire thesis here, Lon!
Not if we agree. It means (as with just above), much of our disagreement is just over what to call something. We are apart, true enough. How far apart seems less every day I talk to you. We will continue to argue over definition on point.
What you present here is the same argument as before and it has the same refutation. The bible definitely does support from multiple directions that God is everywhere He wants to be. It DOES NOT teach, however, that God is required to be everywhere at all times nor would any Christian affirm that God can be forced to do something He doesn't want to do. Why they are then willing to accept that God MUST be somewhere He doesn't want to be is difficult to understand.
As I've said many times, all of the omni-doctrines over state the truth.
Remember this, however, for future consideration: I believe scripture says the universe is sustained by Him. There would be, in my understanding, no need to count, ever. It has a definite omnipresent sense.
Well, the only thing I can say in response to this near gibberish is that the only thing that the plain reading of scripture is logically inconsistent with is the doctrines which you desire to impose on God and insist on reading into the bible.
"Gibberish." Yet you followed it all. Further, in order for you to state that you've thought of these things, you'd have to concede you also have entertain 'gibberish' in your own mind else you haven't entertained the arguments. That my friend, would be rationalization. Best to hold off value statements most often. I rarely tell somebody their ideas or gibberish. Your broom analogy is problematic as it doesn't coincide with hairs. Gibberish would be unkind and untrue. It was a good thought. Aren't you better for me simply telling you where it doesn't cross-over than to tell you it was stupid (it was not, just not thought through far enough).
You, quite frankly, are not that good of a logical mind.
LOL! I didn't come up with the broom analogy.
You seem incapable of discerning what your own premises are and are completely blind to your driving need to read your doctrine into the text, even to the point of trying to justify rationalizing by equating it with the use of sound reason as though attempting to justify a belief after it has already been made (rationalizing) is the equivalent to carefully, honestly and objectively evaluating an idea before reaching a conclusion (sound reason).
"Gibberish" is rationalizing, doing this very thing.
None of us are completely logical. We aim for it and seek scriptures to be more logical. This very thread is exactly that else none of us would be here. We test our ideas and see if they stand and when we find ideas from scripture that truly work, we share them that we might return the favor to another. We are seeking to understand God and Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches. It intimates taking care of one's instructor, but it also has context for sharing what we learn.
You've heard 'three fingers pointing back.' In psychology, it is a truism of observation that when name-calls in frustration, they are revealing the limits of their patience, not able to address the issue, etc. In teaching, we are instructed to draw out the student when they make an unclear statement to 1) help them learn to explain themselves and 2) to practice patience and foster a teachable moment. You have a good mind Clete, but you often portray yourself the quintessential logician over and against any contenders. I wasn't born with a silverspoon. I have to work for all things academic. I've done well, but had poor grades as I had to work 5 hours every day to make ends meet in college. Then there was this girl. By my senior year, I'd saved enough to not have to work and graduated at least that year with a 4.0. In Master's college I earned a 3.87. Why all this? I want you to know me when we interact. It may allow for less frustration if you know more where I come from. I'm not exactly an academic. I have to work harder than the rest of you. That must necessarily require patience and longsuffering. I'm sorry, but thank you just the same. In Him -Lon
