"Hell and Vagueness" This is an article in Faith and Philosophy a journal for Christian philosophers. In it, Sider (the author of "Hell and Vagueness"), argues that God's arbitrarily sends people to hell. There is no standard criterion for why people spend an eternity in hell. This seems to be a prima facie simple case, b/c God's justice is not the same as ours. Is it safe for the Christian to argue that God can do what He wants since it's His creation? Sider points out that he is assuming that God's rationality is the same as human rationality and human justice is the same as God's justice. I also think that Sider's article is a variation of the problem of evil. The question in his article though is, can God be justified in sending a person to hell that has a minimal less amount of faith (or belief) than another person. For example, Bert has 5.000001 units of faith in Christ, whereas Ernie has 5.00001 units of faith. It just so happens that the amount of faith that Ernie has is the absolute minimum amout required to be in Christ, therefore Ernie goes to heaven. Whereas Bert is damned to hell, b/c he did not have enough faith. Sider argues that God is not justified in this vague separation between those w/ enough faith going to heaven, and those w/o enough faith going to hell. I am going to have to think about this more and revisit this problem, but I would probably respond w/ something as follows: All people deserve to go to hell and God rescues some of them through the process of "election" which eventually leads to salvation. Does God arbirtarily do this? The Bible claims that God has a plan for people before they ever existed so that seems to imply that He does not arbitrarily elect people, but now I think I am going down a whole different route than the one I intended.

The inspiration for this blog came from my friends Ang (aka suXLor), and Tony (aka Stan from Hawaii), but also from Brian Weatherspoon from Brown. He's a phil prof and I thought that a blog would be a great way to help myself expand my whole thinking philosophisizing, thelogizing process. Which reminds me a of a great line from The Big Lebowski, spoken by John Goodman's (who is a very underrated actor) character, Walter. "Oh by the way Dude, the correct nomenclature is Asian-American." If anyone knows of a better comedy than The Big Lebowski, please let me know, b/c I do not think that such a movie exists. BTW, why do girls always have so much drama going on? Even girls that are 24, it's ridiculous.

The timeless view of God. A couple of thoughts on what I believe is the correct view to take concerning God and His relation to time. Boethius has an interesting view of conditional necessity. If I know that Ang is married to Karen, then Ang is necessarily married to Karen, b/c this is the definition of knowledge. If I know something then it is true. For Boethius, God is timeless, God exists outside of time and all knowledge is present for Him. Thus, when God knows something, He doesn't know past or future; He only knows present, therefore, what God knows about human actions are conditional. If God knows that I will go to church tomorrow, then it is conditional, b/c when I go to church, that time is present for God.
A couple of difficulties arise from this view. First of all, how can God intervene in time. This is where the doctrine of the Trinity is helpful. God, in the person of Jesus Christ, entered space-time history. In the person of Jesus Christ, God experienced a past, present, and future. Also the Spirit of God, or Holy Spirit, can help with God's intervention in time. This seems to be an orthodox view, and a biblical view of the timelessness of God, also showing the practicality of the doctrine of the Trinity.

This is my first post on my blog. I decided to follow everyone else and post my thoughts online. Hopefully this will help me to develop my thinking, which mainly follows the description that I have given for this blog. The first topic that I will discuss later on today is the timelessness of God. Can God exist in time w/o changing? If God changes is that a bad thing? I think it is b/c it seems to be that if God changes He was not perfect in the first place. One could also argue that if God changes that His previous information or knowledge was flawed and upon learning something new, God changed.