The other problem I have is that your theory assumes that events in the bible actually happened and that the bible is an accurate record of those events.

Just another opinion from ‘the other side’.

Cheers

The way I see it, God created the universe (multiverse?) with certain ground rules–what we’d call physics, chemistry, etc… He also created this universe with the intent for humanity (all self-aware beings?) to love Him. But since love can never be pre-programmed and still be genuine love, He also created choice (quantum superstate?).

Being outside of space time, He’s able to observe time unfold non-linearly so He has knowledge of people’s choices before they make them. Thus He’s able to intervene, maybe even to the point of pre-programming certain things to occur at certain times.

Like I said, it’s a crude approximation. I think Einstein said it best, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality..”

If we assume that the universe was created by an omnipotent being then we can also assert the following:

1. The omnipotence implies that the creator will know the exact state of every single atom of his creation, at any given point in time – from the moment of inception, to entropic destruction of universe. This includes knowledge of completely “random” events. In other words, universe is a deterministic finite state machine of sorts.

2. This in turn implies that every event that occurs in the created universe has been known by the omnipotent being before the act of creation. Every event can be traced to some previous condition that can be eventually traced to the moment of creation (ie. before big bang – maybe long, long before that even).

In other words “everything that happens, happens according to god’s plan” – after all, omnipotence.

3. Because of the above, every miracle and “divine” intervention can be explained using science. The will and intent behind these events is still divine though – it just that the presence of actual divinity cannot be detected in any scientific way. You have to remember that omnipotence transcends space and time – therefore we can assume that every thought and act of god occurs simultaneously across time.

So, God actually knows he will decide destroy Sodom and Gomorrah before he creates the universe. In fact, because he is omnipotent, he already decided to destroy it, just like he decided everything else – simultaneously prior to creation, in the moment, and after it.

Ergo, the destruction of the two cities is built into the pattern of creation. The universe will unfold in such a way which will result in random meteor crashing down and destroying these settlements. It will be a natural event, but also divine intervention.

Does that make sense?

Corollary to this is that science is actually a way to get closer to god. I mean, what better way there is to get closer to a creator than by studying his creation?

From either side.

Well said.

I do have a problem with people who have blind faith. People who believe that they can sit back in their arm chairs and pray and God will fix that huge tumour growing out of their liver. The old adage “God helps those who help themselves” has some merit. I prefer to think that if there is a God, it definitely intends for its creations to help themselves. We just need to look at ourselves when building artificially intelligent systems. Perhaps this God is just a geek who gets a thrill out of seeing things unfurl the way they were designed to.