"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;"
 

A-men Jim.
 

Well, if all of this is just *so* above our heads, why do we concern ourselves with any of it? I'd feel like god's kinda using me if he wouldn't even let me in on his master plan.
 

God outlines a largely voluntary society (the time of the judges, the church age) without centralized authority. Even the allowed powers of the king (which Israel was warned not to have) were extremely limited.

This is rejected by the mighty who benefit from a force ordered society. They have lots of "wise" to propagandize the population, backed up by the force to pay them.
 

As is often the case, eventually we figure out the logical basis of what God has told us.

Mises and Rothbard show us that we don't need a little god ordering our lives (in fact the little god is incapable and immiserating) but God has set up reality so that by rejecting little gods (idols) we achieve maximum benefit, community and meaning.

Anonymous above was me.
 

While I have a few nits about Rabbi Lapin's speech on the morality of the freedom at the ASC, I thought it was wonderful and am sharing it widely.

Bob, what I've heard of you was also very good. Your extemporaneous speech in the author's session was great. I haven't seen any of them -- audio only so far, so I don't know what you're talking about with Tom Woods.
 

It is frightening when you realize "Wait, we are God's secret weapon?? Boy, God better know what he's doing leaving his will up to us."

@Logan
I think Bob just gave a good reason to concern yourself with the mysteries of God. Even though we can't fully understand, we can understand some aspects of it, and all the more so the more we study it.
I have also felt frustrated at times that God hasn't revealed his complete plan. I know it sounds cliche, but I guess that's faith-and I don't mean leap-in-the-dark faith, I mean God has proved himself to me in other areas, so I will trust him in this one.
 

"...Rather, I think what happens is that they gradually make more and more sense to you if you continue meditating on them. But you very rarely can say, "Aha! I figured it out guys!")"

Like a man who has finally figured out women - only by that time, he is too old & too senile to convey what he knows to other men?
 

God can do anything that is not a logical contradiction, such as making 2+2 = 5, creating a stone so large that even He can't lift it, or rendering a square that's at the same time also a circle.

As all of reality is drawn into the fullness of God, the trend is for things to be increasingly perfected. There are setbacks along the way, but this overarching trend cannot be avoided: and this process is itself apodictically unavoidable according to the known laws of physics. Yet before all things are perfected, it is not logically possible for all troubles to be avoided.

Regarding the ideas God has armed us with as pertains to ethics, see my following article:

James Redford, "Jesus Is an Anarchist," Social Science Research Network (SSRN), February 13, 2009 (originally published at Anti-State.com on December 19, 2001). http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761
http://geocities.com/jrredford/anarchist-jesus.pdf
http://geocities.com/jrredford/anarchist-jesus.html

Getting back to the matter of the aforesaid process: God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see Prof. Frank J. Tipler's below paper, which among other things demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God):

F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers," Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything," arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276

Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's above paper was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005," Reports on Progress in Physics. http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.highlights/0034-4885 )

Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as defined by the latter journal.)

See also the below resources for further information on the Omega Point Theory:

Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist http://geocities.com/theophysics/

"Omega Point (Tipler)," Wikipedia, April 16, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omega_Point_%28Tipler%29&oldid=206077125

"Frank J. Tipler," Wikipedia, February 9, 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_J._Tipler&oldid=269587875

Tipler is Professor of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University. His Ph.D. is in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field that Profs. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking developed), and he is also an expert in particle physics and computer science. His Omega Point Theory has been published in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed physics and science journals in addition to Reports on Progress in Physics, such as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world's leading astrophysics journals), Physics Letters B, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, etc.

Prof. John A. Wheeler (the father of most relativity research in the U.S.) wrote that "Frank Tipler is widely known for important concepts and theorems in general relativity and gravitation physics" on pg. viii in the "Foreword" to The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by cosmologist Prof. John D. Barrow and Tipler, which was the first book wherein Tipler's Omega Point Theory was described. On pg. ix of said book, Prof. Wheeler wrote that Chapter 10 of the book, which concerns the Omega Point Theory, "rivals in thought-provoking power any of the [other chapters]."

The leading quantum physicist in the world, Prof. David Deutsch (inventor of the quantum computer, being the first person to mathematically describe the workings of such a device, and winner of the Institute of Physics' 1998 Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his work), endorses the physics of the Omega Point Theory in his book The Fabric of Reality (1997). For that, see:

David Deutsch, extracts from Chapter 14: "The Ends of the Universe" of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997), ISBN: 0713990619; with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler. http://geocities.com/theophysics/deutsch-ends-of-the-universe.html

The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to resort to physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking's paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking, "Information loss in black holes," Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 (October 2005); also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July 18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507171

That is, Prof. Hawking's paper is based upon empirically unconfirmed physics which violate the known laws of physics. It's an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory's correctness, as Hawking implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he's forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.

Some have suggested that the universe's current acceleration of its expansion obviates the universe collapsing (and therefore obviates the Omega Point). But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in "Geometry and Destiny" (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459; also at arXiv:astro-ph/9904020, April 1, 1999 http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904020 ), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.

There's a very good reason for that, because that is dependant on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe's collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as baryon number minus lepton number [B - L] is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant and thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe.

Prof. Tipler's above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper also demonstrates that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Further, they didn't realize that this proper theory of quantum gravity is consistent only with a certain set of boundary conditions imposed (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). The equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). As Tipler notes in his 2007 book The Physics of Christianity (pp. 49 and 279), "It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. ... This is somewhat analogous to Liouville's theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity."

When combined with the Standard Model, the result is the Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics.
 

I have an entire post that analyzes the arguments against the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God here.

This post is a great summary of the two kinds of problem of evil. (logical and inductive) But here's a sample:

Basically, to refute the deductive version, you just point out that God can only remove human and natural evil by getting rid of free will and natural laws. Both of these are requirements for significant moral agency. So he would be removing the ability for moral choices if he removed human and natural evil.

For the inductive version which deals with gratuitous evil, the main point is that it is hard for the objector to know that any particular instance of evil is actually gratuitous, since they cannot see the future effects of permitting that instance of evil. More at the post!