God is out of our jurisdiction...Follow

God Responds To Lawsuit

Rhonda Erskine, Online Content Producer
Created: 9/20/2007 8:53:03 PM
Updated: 9/21/2007 4:58:39 PM

LINCOLN, NE (AP) -- A legislator who filed a lawsuit against God has gotten something he might not have expected: a response.

One of two court filings from "God" came Wednesday under otherworldly circumstances, according to John Friend, clerk of the Douglas County District Court in Omaha.

"This one miraculously appeared on the counter. It just all of a sudden was here -- poof!" Friend said.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha sued God last week, seeking a permanent injunction against the Almighty for making terroristic threats, inspiring fear and causing "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Chambers, a self-proclaimed agnostic who often criticizes Christians, said his filing was triggered by a federal lawsuit he considers frivolous. He said he's trying to makes the point that anybody can sue anybody.

Not so, says "God." His response argues that the defendant is immune from some earthly laws and the court lacks jurisdiction.

It adds that blaming God for human oppression and suffering misses an important point.

"I created man and woman with free will and next to the promise of immortal life, free will is my greatest gift to you," according to the response, as read by Friend.

There was no contact information on the filing, although St. Michael the Archangel is listed as a witness, Friend said.

A second response from "God" disputing Chambers' allegations lists a phone number for a Corpus Christi law office. A message left for that office was not immediately returned Thursday.

Attempts to reach Chambers by phone and at his Capitol office Thursday were unsuccessful.

I didn't think God liked poofs.

Guess he's chilling out a bit, in his old age.

That's a sound argument? Maybe if God's not omniscient.

More that there is a serious problem with believing that omnisciences and free-will are compatible in the same universe. Free will (of course this depends on your definition of free will) often embodies the idea that you, the free human agent, can change things and make decisions that would not have otherwise happened. Omniscience sets up a universe in which the entire future is set in stone, and cannot be changed in any way whatsoever. That is the tension.

Well, technically omniscience only means that you know everything that is going to happen. It doesn't necessarily mean that things are pre-determined by some higher force. There's a difference between knowing that an event will occur, and making it so that the event occuring is the only possible outcome of a situation.

I do agree, though, that it is contradictory on the surface, but it's a staple of theology. Even in the garden of Eden, God must've known Adam would eat the apple. Yet he still planted the tree, and left it in place. Which can only mean that knowing what a human will do, is different from arranging the universe in order for that human to make that particular choice.

It's a bit like the chicken and the egg, and I agree with what you wrote.

But just to play devil's advocate ba-dam!, one could argue that free will "comes first". So humans freely make a decision, but God knows what that decision will be. The "free" in "free will" applies to the human's consciousness, not to some "objective unpredictability".

In other words, when man makes his choice, he does so "freely" within the realm of his own consciousness. For God, who's consciousness is all-encompassing, the choice might seem obvious and predictable, meaning He knew it would happen. But that doesn't mean that the human's choice wasn't "free", within his own conscious boundaries.

If you want to go for subjective realities, the two can coexist, but that's not what most people want to do. They want an objective reality that works both ways, where one does not exclude the other, and that's simply impossible from a logical standpoint.

I completely disagree.

Oh, I think philosophy is a complete and utter waste of time, personally. It's the faithless' man's religion, a way to flex your mental peen that yields no tangible result whatsover.