{"id":2517,"date":"2011-09-23T09:01:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T14:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2011-09-23T09:01:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T14:01:13","slug":"the-consistency-of-god%e2%80%a6-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2517","title":{"rendered":"The Consistency of God\u2026 or Not"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the big selling points for God is that he is alleged to be unchanging. One Christian I recently talked to put it this way, \u201cGod is the same today as he was yesterday.\u201d The implication is that God\u2019s views are consistent and unchanging.<\/p>\n<p>In one sense, this makes sense. If God knows everything, then his \u201cstandard\u201d is always the same. He will never receive new information to cause him to change his view. The only reason why humans change our opinions on any given issue is if we are presented with new information either in the form of evidence or an argument we had not heard before. But if God is all knowing, then no new evidence or new arguments can be made and so he would have no reason to change his view&#8230; ever.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the Bible does not agree with this reasoning. There are many places in the Bible where God \u201crelents\u201d or changes his mind on a particular course of action after being persuaded by an evil sinning human. Plus, just try bringing up an Old Testament verse advocating stoning, slavery, or some other horrifyingly immoral action and see what your average Christian has to say about it. Most will tell you that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/atheism-in-philadelphia\/atheism-101-refuting-dispensational-theology\" target=\"_blank\">old law no longer applies<\/a> because Jesus fulfilled the convenient\u2026 or something. That is just a sly way of saying that God changed his mind.<\/p>\n<p>Now of course, God doesn\u2019t actually exist and this is just an interesting discussion which shows just how poorly thought out the concept of a God really is.\u00a0 But it is always interesting to bring these discussions to the religious and see what they have to say on this dichotomy. Will they support a God that is all knowing and therefore can\u2019t change or will they support the character as he is portrayed in the Bible, who clearly isn\u2019t all knowledge and has changed quite a bit over time.<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2513\">The Ninth Commandment<\/a> (dangeroustalk.net)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/livinglifewithoutanet.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/22\/troy-davis-the-death-penalty-and-christianity\/\">Troy Davis, the Death Penalty, and Christianity<\/a> (livinglifewithoutanet.wordpress.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ptl2010.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/23\/predestination-universalism-or-evangelism\/\">Predestination, Universalism or Evangelism?<\/a> (ptl2010.wordpress.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=c7d82aed-8bc5-4819-a413-3c3f2da49a6c\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2517\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the big selling points for God is that he is alleged to be unchanging. One Christian I recently talked to put it this way, \u201cGod is the same today as he was yesterday.\u201d The implication is that God\u2019s views are consistent and unchanging. In one sense, this makes sense. If God knows everything, [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,634,702],"tags":[43,1692,37,11,2216,242,2217,214,1264,1842],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2518,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions\/2518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}