ellauri096.html on line 53: Typically prophecies like catastrophe warnings are made to serve opposite goals simultaneously. Competition between accuracy and helpfulness makes it possible for a prediction to be self-fulfilling by being self-defeating. Consider a prophet who warns ‘Your godless life will cause fatalities along the sinners’. Because of the warning, spectacle-seekers make a special trip to witness the carnage. They die like flies. The prophet’s announcement succeeds as a prediction by backfiring as a warning, or conversely.
ellauri096.html on line 67: In response to the apparent conflict between freedom and foreknowledge, medieval philosophers denied that future contingent propositions have a truth-value. That´s silly. They took themselves to be extending a solution Aristotle discusses in De Interpretatione to the problem of logical fatalism. According to this truth-value gap approach, ‘You will take a dump tomorrow’ is not true now. The prediction will become true tomorrow. A morally serious theist can agree with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
ellauri096.html on line 74: Cod’s omniscience only requires that He knows every true proposition. God will know ‘You will take a shit’ as soon it becomes true – like when the turd is halfway out - but not before. Naah, this is really weak. That takes no omniscience, just a good nose.
ellauri112.html on line 819: “God himself provides ‘wine which makes man’s heart glad’ just as He gives ‘food which sustains man’s heart’ (Ps. 104:14.15). He promises His people that, if they will obey Him, He will bless them with an abundance of wine (Deut 7:13, 11:14, Prov. 3:10. etc.). He threatens to withdraw this blessing from them if they disobey His law (Deut. 28:39, 51; Isa. 62:8). The Scriptures clearly teach that God permits His people to enjoy wine and strong drink as a gift from Him. ‘You may spend the money for whatever your heart desires, for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household’ (Deut. 14:26).
ellauri164.html on line 685: Even with me the LORD was angry on your account and said, ‘You also shall not go in there. (Deut. 1:37ESV)
xxx/ellauri212.html on line 106: Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
xxx/ellauri212.html on line 115: ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
7