If God knows everything, then we do not have free will. Why does he create people

[Freelancer]

73. God was created by time traveling atheists sent back to save the future.

I'll explain. Just bear with me...

Surely, you know that there is always some convoluted way to explain why we can't be granted any obvious proof, or direct intervention by God in our problems. Well, after this, you'll be able to sleep soundly in your bed.

Know that this information came to me at a cost. While I was engrossed in these quasi-religious musings, in another room, my dogma was gnawing the legs off of my coffee table.

It was written,

> So the argument goes: there is evil in the world because God gave man free will, and to enter the
> kingdom of heaven, man must choose to do so of his own volition. Sure, the universe is capricious
> as a result, but it shows God's not a dictator and that's just peachy.
>
> It's bullshit.

Well, yes.

Unless God is like 'Sky Net' from 'Terminator' movies, and not fully assembled yet. Then it makes perfect sense.

> Apologists claim God doesn't reveal himself irrefutably because people, endowed with free will, must
> choose to acknowledge his existence through faith. If we take that a step further and ask whether or
> not there is free will in heaven, the argument breaks down completely. If there is free will in heaven,
> God clearly can reveal himself to people without their choose and that people on Earth must choose
> is an arbitrary -- even cruel -- rule. On the other hand, if there is no free will in heaven, then free
> will isn't all that important to the happiness of mankind, and again, the rule is arbitrary.<

In this 'incubating God' scenario, even though God is watching, he can't interfere, because he's just looking back at the moments leading to his own creation. Certain key moments in time have to remain 'fixed' (yep, that's from Dr. Who) in order for him to come into existence. To interfere too much would alter those fixed moments and result in a time paradox, another version of God, or no God at all (shudder).

People can't interact freely with God, in this scenario, because we are all moving parts in the Rube Goldberg machine that results in a particular future. Taking a selfie with God could mess everything up.

Since God doesn't really exist fully yet (gasp) from this viewpoint, and didn't create us, then he didn't bestow free will upon anybody. He simply relies upon the sons and daughters of ice age hunters to do what they do -- what they've always done from his perspective -- so that all the events leading to his creation come about.

There has to be conflict, though. What would a good yarn be without it? There has to be a rebel, rival, villain, or hero that is bent upon altering the timeline -- upon creating hell or preventing it. One or more sides bumping the timeline and God reaching back to seal the breach would account for all the supposed interventions in history.

It also explains the mass graves of angels and demons at Area 51 -- just kidding. Or am I?

> Of course, there isn't any evidence (despite what a certain physicist might allege) that free will is
> actually a thing. A kind of limited free will affected by social and genetic determinism is much more
> likely given the evidence.

Is this like the Schrodinger's cat box thing -- that until you root around with a plastic scoop, it exists in a state of abeyance between poop, and poop-less-ness? Since we're talking God and end times, would that make it es-scat-tology? (Oh, come on! How many times in a person's life do they get to make that joke?)

Semi-seriously, if we take this one step further -- which I am wont to do, and usually regret later -- God could be taken out of this scenario completely and the results would be the same. If time travel were weaponized at some point, you could have a particular version of the human future trying to safeguard its own timeline, pretending to be angels or gods when forced to interact with primitive peoples during their interventions throughout human history.

So, there you go... God is really a "great and powerful Oz" contrivance utilized by time traveling atheists sent back to save the future of humanity.

Ouch -- I think I tore my corpus callosum.