But most religions (outside of the abrahamic ones) don't believe in an all powerful and all knowing supernatural being...
There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life
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But most religions (outside of the abrahamic ones) don't believe in an all powerful and all knowing supernatural being...
That is very true, but an overwhelming majority of religious people in the world today, and for the past couple of thousand years are believers in abrahamic religions.
(Around 4 billion followers I think)
It's about 2 billion max.
Additionally, there's the issue of the belief that omniscience must mean the future is preordained, which isn't the case unless the supernatural being is bound by the same perception of time as we are.
You will struggle to fill 2 billionThe rest are non-Abrahamic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions
Wiki puts it at 3.8 billion around the world.
Plus the fact that good and evil are arguably just contextual labels we place on the outcomes of actions and purely the creation of human perspective.
If there is a God who is all knowing he certainly wont be viewing things in the way we do.
If there is a God who is all knowing he certainly wont be viewing things in the way we do.
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Caporegime
Double post, noob.
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Caporegime
No, it's very much a christian belief. I'll quote you a boatload of bible verses to back that up later. Paul wrote extensively on sin and grace, but the theme runs through the whole bible.
Besides, even without the issue of original sin clouding things, no one can live a perfect life. We all sin.
Caporegime
It's in the bible, so yes - god has told me, albeit via a collection of authors that he inspired over a long period of time.
Might be worth checking the referenced source...
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
and this section provides a deeper understanding of the various issues.
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Specific
So it's far from clear cut, and uses a variety of sources with different criteria to get the numbers, and many of those sources count in strange ways (such as counting everyone baptised who hasn't been actively kicked out, or counting everyone in a family where one person is active).
Do you ever wonder why god couldn't just appear and tell you himself? Why spread his message in such a manner that it creates skeptics and mass confusion?
He's apparently omnipotent, omniscient and infallible, yet completely incapable of spreading his message in a convincing way.
Why must we all be on the look out for 'signs' of his existence? He seems to have gone about it in a rather convoluted and round-about way.
The whole point of religion is faith though. While I don't believe in it you have to understand that many of those who do believe don't need a God to appear to them. Many would say that this negates the point of their faith.
I noticed the same footnote. However, countless other websites put the number at around half of all the world religious adherants as following one or another of the abrahamic religions; therefore, my original point about the free will paradox stands.
Well, except it doesn't, because it's only a paradox if the observational point of the deity is identical to that of a human.
I'm a little confused by this reply. It quite clearly is a paradox in the context of what religious believers preach, which is apparently the direct word of God.
It is completely illogical to believe in free will whilst also believing in an omnipotent and omnicient being. From your comment, I get the feeling you're trying to argue that if there is a God, he can decide for something to be both true and false at the same time, as he does not think the way we do - which is an answer quite commonly used against the 'God Paradox,' albeit a rather simplistic one.
Both Protestantism and the Greek Orthodox church allow you to go to heaven if you truly regret your sinning and seek forgiveness. The Catholic church is a lot less flexible in that regard.
I'm not going to argue that they could do something true and false at the same time, that would be stupid, because the two ideas are mutually exclusive.
The argument I'm going to make is the perception argument. You are arguing from the point of view of our perception (eg time moving forward etc), and therefore that knowledge of the future negates freewill in the present, because it requires that the decision be preordained.
What if there was no future? What if you were not bound by time in the same way?
If you do not perceive time the way we do, then you can know events that happen in our future without having them predetermined. Awareness of the outcome of the decision, in such a context, is not the same thing as guiding the decision. You effectively know what decision was made, not what decision is going to be made, which is a fundamental difference.
If I get find out what you had for breakfast today, then get a time machine and go back and watch you eat it without interacting with you or doing anything, have I robbed you of your choice of breakfast foods this morning? No, I haven't. Awareness of outcome is not the same thing as determining the outcome when the perception is different, and the idea that our perception is what actually happens is just a statement of faith.
This makes your stance much clearer, but with this understanding, God is more of an omniscient and malevolent being. Why worship such a deity?
[edit]What I'm trying to get at is that this possible perception still falls down when placed in the context of the God Paradox, though I do admit it's a really eloquent way in which you've explained it.
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In all fairness, I don't, so I can't answer that question. Not every religion has a single, omnipresent and omnisicent diety at it's centre. I just presented an option of how it could be logical.
The god paradox is normally defined as mutually contradicting proposals. In the particular example I've given above, there is no contradiction in that way. It's not akin to the 'god creating a mountain he cannot lift' example that's commonly used.