With hopes to arouse dialectical debate, I post my dialectical inquiries, hoping some of you with long; seemingly eternal; tortured grudges will give them reprieve or possibly put them behind & contribute as the questions are useful to advance meaningful grounds for spiritual, mental, & emotional development (possibly as a consequence, even physical). The questions are not meant to cast doubt on the omnipotence of the subject or to contradict in an attempt to discredit, but as stated above, for useful dialectical debate:

If God is omnipotent how can men have free will? If men do not have free will, how can they be judged, as God is just? Moreover, if God must judge with accordance to just precepts, can he really be considered omnipotent?

By God, I mean Jehovah (Yaweh), the God of the Jews, now the Christian God. Not Allah, the God of the Arabs as they are not the same: Allah's revelation to the world was: the Qur'an in the Arabic language to his Prophet Muhammad; whereas Jehovah's was a person according to the Bible & the Catholic faith comprised thereof. That person was Jesus; his son & part of the Holy Trinity. (One of the main precepts of Islam, as a matter of fact, part of the 5 Pillars of Islam is the precept that Allah is One, having no trinity - so, regardless of similarities, he is a different God [there are many other disimilarities as well, but the above should suffice here])

Should DonsAdvisor be attempted to appear in his typical fashion stating Allah was Jehovah's former name because of shared Aramaic roots in common between Arabic & Hebrew [& Phoenecian as well], as he already has in the past; I'll add that such an apperance & divulgence would be unnecessary & inconsequential as it would be irrelevant here, really. But, nevertheless, I would appreciate your input if you were willing to contribute it, DA.

N.B: Don't let your spirits crumble, something more casual from yours truly will be sure to follow, as there's too much drivel around these days for me to idly allow this BB to degenerate further with threads concerning masturbation & pornography.

I don't go in deep in explaining God. I simply believe He is perfection, the creator of all. And because of the mistakes of previous humans, he judges us, using life as a test, to whether or not we deserve to enter heaven when we die. People explain how can there be a God with all the evil in the world.

For this I look to the song "Sympathy for the Devil" in which is written as if Lucifer is talking about many of the infamous events in history as if he did it. But when you look at it, all of the events were because of us, humans. We have free will to be good or bad or in between. We create the evil many attribute to God's non-existence. Like all the hunger and war in this world. Is that God's fault? No, it's society's fault. It's human's fault. People can't blaim God for the evil that exists because of evil humans.

God is the one who chooses where we go when we die: Heaven or Hell. He is the one who listens to our prayers when we have no one else to talk to. As DV said, there is evil in this world. I believe God put some of this evil here as a test to see if humans could live through it. Just like a death of a family member, I think it's a test and if we pass the test, we come out of it all stronger. -Pat

Awesome. Now...what did that have to do with the subject of this thread?

Well, that's easy: Christianity doesn't center around destiny or karma. The omniscient and omnipotent Holy Trinity of God grants upon His children the blessing (or curse, depending on how you see it) of freewill. Humans can choose to be "good" or "bad"; and, that choice will determine how they're dealt with later on. We have freewill -- we're free to be good, and, we're free to be bad. Hell, even as Neil Peart says: "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice"

(By now you'd probably argue that perhaps some don't actually CHOOSE to be good or bad. Well, ask your question, then I'll answer it....)

We do have freewill, so, this is a moot point.

Sure, why not? He's omniscient and omnipotent. What more could you ask for in a God??

What am I missing here??

I don´t know if a god exist at all, but I´d belive in some superior power , who put us here , call it, jehova, allah, god, etc, for me is all the same is the vision of perfection in the world, the vision of love and all the roads go for the same place "love", so, for me don´t exist diferents gods, cuz only exist one, that´s the reason I´m don´t have a religion even if I was raised like catholic, I don´t think in my like one and like Jgeoff said we have freewill, 2 choices in life good or bad, is our desicion take one way or another.

I don´t have a religion, but doesn´t mean, I don´t think in me like an spiritual person, since I was very young, I tried to understand faith, I tried in catholic, budism, christian and I read a lot of judaism, musilm , etc, but nothing make me feel complete and made me realize all the religions are the same in the deep, all try to find the meaning of life and all use the power of faith for search the unconditional love of god to us.

Well maybe hinduism and budism are for some people pagans religions, but is their way to search unconditional love and meaning of life, I´d belive in karma, destiny and luck, like I don´t belive in hell, I think heaven and hell are here in earth and depends what we choose for live one or other. I don´t think freewill is something bad for us, cuz we always learn about mistakes and we have the choice for choose something better the next time or learn how to live with our bad desicions.

Christianity doesn't center on Karma because reincarnation is doesn't inhere in its religious doctrine. No other religion that I know of focuses on Destiny, not even those of the Far East, or the old ones of Iran & Iraq. But Christianity, a monotheistic religion, can't really be interrelated to a polytheistic one - which could be considered a pagan religion - such as Hinduism.

The very principle of Free Will, should Free Will exist, centers on the fact that man can choose what he wishes to persue in life; how he should do it; & by what ethos he chooses to live by & to engage in intercourse with his brethren in daily life or otherwise. But to accept so would rip God of his Omnipotence, as he would not have all power. However, if men do not have Free Will, how can they be judged by God? And if God must judge by delineated precepts, is he really an Omnipotent God?

The inquiries' bases -- ..whatever they may be.

Okay, NOW I get what you're saying. I must not have followed you the first time.

Good semantical questions.

However, I don't really think that a Divine Power would necessarily need to lose his omnipotent status simply because we humans make day-to-day decisions. God doesn't care if I pick vanilla or chocolate -- and surely it doesn't mean He is not all-powerful because He didn't make that decision for us.

In fact, I was taught in catechism that we were made in God's "image and likeness" - meaning (I was taught) that we are able to know and to make decisions (powers which no other material creatures have, according to this source).

When Judgement Day comes, He will NOT be judging us on ice cream flavors, of course. What you're talking about is bigger than that, of course.

We are given the right to make our own decisions. God has the power to give us that. HOW we use (or abuse) our free will is what we're graded on If one chooses to kill someone, he pays the price for it. If someone chooses to devote his life to helping those in need, he reaps the benefits of it. And everything in between.

I really don't think that this necessarily goes against the idea of God's omnipotence. But I'll have to meditate on this more.

As far as reincarnation, that would be fun - tho I may come back as a slug next time I heard rumors a while back that the Vatican is remaining quiet on some books they dusted off in the basement dealing w/ this. When I have time I'm try to remember to research that more.

No matter what religion one belongs to, I think the principles are all meant to make life better for you, me, and those around us. You don't need to be Christian to read the words Jesus used and agree they're for our benefit; eg, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If everyone followed that one simple axiom, we'd be in good shape

(This ended up being more rambling that I intended - sorry )

He is the one who initiated the precepts in the first place; as boundaries for man to follow in his everyday life. He is quite omnipotent, but like father and son...he let's his children live. Their purpose is to worship him, and he wants them to enjoy the world he created for them.

I dunno about the separation between Allah and Yahweh/Jehovah/Christ, but from what I have researched, it does follow along your analysis, imho, GP. Allah seems to almost take portions and change them...for instance, Christ was a prophet, but not the son of God. Things like that. Not that I don't respect God all the same, because I think any respectful religion dedicated to his worship, be it called Islam, Christian, Judeism, etc., then it is worship for him and he is pleased.

I doubt he is pleased however with the fundamentalism we see, and especially with reference to Allah, do not understand how terrorists feel that they are martyrs by killing in his name.