He just knows all there is to know. The choices that people will make is something to know. therefore God knows them. — Tobias
No, 'omniscient' means 'all knowing'. That means he is in possession of all items of knowledge. All that is known, God knows. For God, being Reason, creates knowledge when he adopts a certain attitude towards true propositions.
What you are doing is conflating truths with knowledge. That a proposition is true does not entail that it is an item of knowledge. Thus, God can be all knowing, yet be ignorant of the truth of many propositions.
God is causa sui, meaning cause of himself. — Tobias
Yes and no, as it is an ambiguous claim. First, note that the definition of God is a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Being the cause of oneself is not one of the essential divine attributes.
However, as being omnibenevolent seems to involve having free will, and free will seems to require having not been created, we can conclude that God exists a se. (We can conclude the same about ourselves, incidentally, for we have free will too). But existing a se is not the same as creating oneself. And creating oneself - unless interpreted very broadly so that one can be maintaining oneself in exsitence and thereby qualify as being 'self caused' (Descartes' interpretation) - seems to involve a contradiction, as it would require existing prior to one's own existence. And as our reason is clear in telling us that there are no true contradictions, we can safely conclude that God has not created himself. He could, of course, for he can do anything and what our reason tells us about what's possible is no constraint on God, as God is the voice of Reason that our reason the means by which he communicates with us. But if one listens to God in the guise of the voice of Reason, then he is telling us that he did not create himself.
Read all of scholastic philosophy up to Spinoza. — Tobias
Why would I do that? It'd take ages and be very inefficient. Why don't you just follow the arguments I am presenting to you?
By necessity it follows that God might create another God, but that other God is identical to itself in every aspect. — Tobias
What is necessity? Some strange force outside even God's control? No, it is nothing. There is no necessity in the world, just truths that Reason is more adamant about than others. It is heretical to believe in necessity, for God can do anything and so nothing is necessarily true. Think about it. God can do anything. So nothing exists of necessity, for God can destroy anything and everything whenever he wants (including himself). And no proposition is true of necessity, for God has the power to falsify any and all of them.
Yes but you created that Jersey in time. — Tobias
You have missed the point somewhat. The example of the jersey was to show you that one can create something and then be in it. And so from the fact that God created time, one cannot conclude that God is outside of time. That would be as silly as thinking that because I created my jersey, I cannot be in it. Which is very silly indeed.
God did not create time in time because if he did he would not have created time, time would already be there. Therefore his creation is timeless. — Tobias
I started a thread on God and time and his relationship to it and explained in that thread exactly how it can be that God created time. Anyway, God did create time. And from that we can conclude that both causation and change does not require time. Time requires causation and change, not the other way around.
Well there goes God the creator of everything... God did create all things, or they must have been created from nothing which is impossible. — Tobias
No, bad reasoning. Of anything that exists we can ask whether it came into being or has always existed.
Note, one cannot say that all things that exist have come into being. For if one says that, then one will be forced to postulate an actual infinity of things, or an actual infinity of prior causes, or suppose that some things can come into being uncaused (which you admit is not so). And you would have to say that God was created as well, but by himself despite him not existing at the time - and so you yourself would be supposing something - God - to have come into existence out of nothing, the very thing you deny is possible! So do, please, be consistent!
So, some things must exist a se. That is, some things must exist uncreated. Proponents of the first-cause argument for God then conclude that there is precisely one such thing - God. But that does not follow and all the argument actually establishes is that there exist some uncreated things or thing.
God is, I agree, one of them, for he tells us this in so many words by allowing those of us who listen carefully to him to understand that he is all-good and thus has free will and thus exists uncreated (for it is toxic to free will to have been created by external causes).
But God tells us that we too have that status, for our reason is no less clear about our own possession of free will.
Note, those who place great store by the first-cause argument for God would admit, if they are clear thinkers anyway, that the argument does not establish God's existence, but is instead one argument in a suite of arguments that together are capable of showing God to exist.
And god quite frequently seems to allow har inflicted upon and innocent... — Tobias
No he doesn't. He exists and wouldn't, so hasn't. You're confusing the harm that befalls people here, living in ignorance in a dangerous world, to harm that God has allowed to befall the innocent. Follow the argument!!! He exists. He wouldn't allow harm to befall innocents. Harm befalls people here. So? Look, it's a basic IQ test. What follows? This: we're not innocent.
If you wake up in a bed, aching and covered in bandages and you look around and see that you are in a huge room with others in a similar situation to yourself, but you have no recollection of how you came to be here, what is it reasonable for you to conclude? That you are in a hospital and that something terrible has gone wrong with your health, yes?
Well, you are not in a hospital. You are in a prison. For God exists and you are living in ignorance in a dangerous world, something God would not have permitted to happen to you were you anything other than a very, very bad person. Deal with it.