According to the Characteristics of Yaweh, Predestination is Evident

"While the debate is advertised as being on predestination, the debate is one over whether free will can exist with God." As I have stated in R2 and R3. My opponent must prove that "libertarian free will" can exist with God. If he can prove this, then he has won this debate. If not, then he has lost. C1: Omniscience "People hardly have "free will" to determine how long they live in the same way they have free will to chose to do good or do evil. God does create the child who will die at 5 with full knowledge that the child will die at 5. This is completely irrelevant to the debate at hand. This has nothing to do with choice." Granted, we cannot choose when we die, for the same reasons we cannot act outside of what is known by God. That was the point I was trying to illustrate, which is indeed relevant. "My opponent has failed to respond to my analogy of the time traveler, and has merely re-iterated his points. People make their choices; God knows how they will choose." I addressed the time traveler analogy with my bomb analogy. My opponent claims that God is like a time traveler, merely observing. This is false. God is also the creator of the person he observes. Allow me to again, demonstrate the bomb analogy. If person A created a bomb due to detonate in 5 years, he created the bomb knowingly and willingly. He is NOT a 2nd party bystander that merely observed the bomb being built and detonate. If the bomb detonated and killed millions of people, is it the bomb's fault? Or is it the creator of the bomb? I will let the audience be the judge of that. And before my opponent argues that a bomb has no "free will" I would like him to read the syllogism below. My opponent concedes that "People make their choices; God knows how they will choose", which means that he agrees that God knows all the choices we will make in our lifetime. P1: God knows all the "free choices" people will make. P2: God created Person A, knowing all the choices Person A will make. P3: Person A with "free choices" sins and goes to hell. P4: If P1 and P2 are true, God knowingly and willingly created Person A despite Person A's fate. :. Therefore Person A was predestined to go to hell. "There is no conflict, as my analogy showed. He failed to respond to this. My opponent would have you believe that if an event's outcome is known, it means that it cannot be freely chosen. This is simply not true. The fact that we know that General Lee destroyed his army on a few hilltops near Gettysburg does not mean that he did not choose to order Picket's Charge. Choice is a matter of the present; fate is a matter of the past and the future. The supposed dichotomy between the two is false." Here is why this argument fails. 1st my opponent assumes God to be some sort of observer that merely watches humanity. My opponent's argument is only valid if God was simply omniscient and nothing else. He has conveniently put aside another attribute of God, and the most important: Creator. And I have shown why Omniscience + Creator = predestination in R2, R3, and of course again in R4. Simply read above. C2: Omnipotence "The verse talks about God doing something, but any time the Bible describes God doing anything, it must be an anthropomorphization of God. God is outside of time, and the basis of time. Thus, He cannot do anything, because doing something requires changing, which is a function of time." >>"Thus, He cannot do anything, because doing something requires changing, which is a function of time."<< Then he is not omnipotent. We can't simply say God didn't do something when the Bible clearly says otherwise. "God is the reference point to which all things are relative. Everything that happens is, in some way, the will of God. Evil is because God wills people have choice (and both its positive and negative results) than a world of perfectly good automata. God knew the sociological change that was happening that would cause the Assyrians to come and do these things the passage talks about. They still did the things that they did freely c.f. C1." That is a subjective view. My interpretation of the Isaiah 10: 5-7 is rather mundane. God put two nations in a war, and used Assyrians to trample, pillage, and plunder, for his purpose. Did the two nations have the choice to not attack one another? "6 I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets." Who is "I" in the verse? It is evident (to me at least) it was "I" that sent Assyria against a godless nation. C3: Bible Points to Pre-Destination "I've yet to find a Calvinist who takes into account most of the things said in the Bible. Also, considering both Calvin and Luther threw out books of the Bible that disagreed with them (the Apocrypha; Luther wanted to throw out James and Esther too, because they disagreed with him), my argument still stands. Given respect for scripture as a whole, free will is infinitely more likely, since the Bible constantly gives ethical commands. This would be useless if humans did not have free will to fulfill said commands." And my argument still stands as well. You are simply choosing to disregard the verses of the Bible that point to predestination. How is that any better than what Luther and Calvin did? The interpretation of the Bible is subjective; my opponent claiming that his interpretation is "infinitely more likely" hardly proves his point. "No, Joseph and his brothers freely chose what they did (as is revealed in earlier chapters). God knew their choices and their outcomes, and used the evil to create a greater good. C.f. my rebuttal of C1, there is no conflict." You are merely twisting the words, the verse says: "4 And Joseph saith unto his brethren, 'Come nigh unto me, I pray you,' and they come nigh; and he saith, 'I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt; 5 and now, be not grieved, nor let it be displeasing in your eyes that ye sold me hither, for to preserve life hath God sent me before you." Note: for to preserve life hath God sent me before you. 6 Because these two years the famine is in the heart of the land, and yet are five years, in which there is neither ploughing nor harvest; 7 and God sendeth me before you, to place of you a remnant in the land, and to give life to you by a great escape; Again note: God sendeth me before you. 8 and now, ye -- ye have not sent me hither, but God, and He doth set me for a father to Pharaoh, and for lord to all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt." And finally the 3rd time "and now, ye -- ye have not sent me hither, but God," KEY: not you, but GOD. God didn't "use" what Joseph's brothers did and turned it into something good. That is NOT what the verse says. God had planned these actions from the beginning. He did not conveniently USE what happened for the greater good, but he did it THROUGH them. There is a huge difference in the two. The former is claiming that "Action A" happened, and God seized the opportunity for good. The latter is that God, through "Action A", served his initial purpose. The latter is more coherent with the scripture and the characteristics of God. "God knew what men would choose to immorally do, c.f. rebuttals to C1." This goes hand in hand with the actions of Joseph's brothers. God, through men, crucified Jesus Christ. It was not simply Men with their "free choice" that put Jesus on the cross. It was God AND men, who put Jesus on the cross. John 3:15: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son." Again, those who crucified Jesus did not have libertarian free will. God through men have put Jesus on the cross. I thank Valtarov for debating this topic with me, this has been a very enjoyable debate, and I hope this has been true to both the audience and my opponent.