@buffalobill90 Said
I take it your answer to this paradox is, "We are free, and God is also omnipotent and omniscient, and that makes sense but we can't possibly understand how"? Great. The theological get-out-of-jail-free card has been played yet again. Are you afraid of being critical of your beliefs or can you just not be bothered to address an obvious contradiction and would prefer not to think about it?
The problem is right there: God is omniscient, he knows everything that we will ever do, and in fact determines what will occur because he is the omnipotent creator of everything, and yet we are also undetermined and unpredictable and therefore God can judge us as if we are responsible for our own actions. These jigsaw pieces do not fit together.
Wait a minute, you are actually contending that there is no ethical difference between a human and an item of furniture because they are both property.
This is basically your argument:
Premise 1: It is not ethically wrong to harm your property.
P2: God created humans.
P3: Humans are God's property.
Conclusion: It is not ethically wrong for God to harm humans.
P1 is only true insofar as your property is not a moral agent. If I owned a conscious being, let's say a pet dolphin, would it be ethically permissable for me to treat it harmfully simply because it belongs to me? Pain is pain whether or not you belong to someone else. An item of furniture is an inanimate object without conscious sensations, so I can kick a chair without being concerned for its welfare as a moral agent. You seem to arrive at the first premise by assuming that, because items of furniture are property, and it is not immoral to harm furniture, then it is not immoral to harm property. This is a classic invalid argument; you are confusing predication with identification. Property is a predicate of furniture, property is not identical to furnture.
If I wanted to be particularly zealous, I might argue against the truth of P2 and P3 as well, but we'll focus on the first premise. My initial negative contention is that property or ownership is not the sole determinent of moral status. My positive contention is that what entitles something to respect and rights is its capacity to suffer, i.e. to have undesirable or otherwise intrinsically negative experiences. Humans are undoubtedly capable of this, and are therefore entitled to respect regardless of whether or not they are the property of God. You have argued in other threads that slavery is not necessarily immoral, and that may help to illustrate my point; just because someone is a slave does not mean their entitlement to respect is revoked. Your present claim could easily be used to justify the most dehumanising and abusive forms of slavery that have been practised.
We don't know how the human brain stores information or where it stores information - does that mean the brain does not store information? Therefore not knowing how human responsibility and God's sovereignty work doesn't mean that they don't work together.
Humans have their dignity found in the fact that they are made in God's image and are His most valued property.
I can kill a cow for profit and God will not condemn me for sinning.
I can't kill a human for profit without falling under God's condemnation for sin.
The difference isn't in the fact that the human more capacity for pain, but rather that the human is my equal and God's property. I have no right to damage God's property like that, unless God expressly gives me permission - which He has not done.
Can I beat my dolphin without sinning? Definitely. God cares about the motives behind my actions against my property, not the actions themselves. However this does not apply to humans because God never gives up His claims of full ownership of humans and therefore I never fully own another person, and also I am not allowed to dishonor someone made in the image of God.
Human value and rights are all bound up in being made in the image of God and being the property of God. Two equal pieces of property do not have the right to take it upon themselves to bring pain or dishonor to one another. But God is the owner, and value is determined by how much He values something, so nothing has any value or rights before God unless He Himself grants such value and rights to that thing.
We are not allowed to treat others the way that God is allowed to treat us. Why? Because God has given us rights in our relationships with each other that are based on our being His property. But that clearly doesn't apply to the property owner.
My cow does not have the right to kick my sheep - but I have the right to slaughter them both.
You have no rights before God, He can do anything He wants with you.
By the way, if you want to argue that dignity is demanded by being able to feel pain - are you a vegetarian? You would have to be, because you'd have no right to eat meat or cause death or pain for the sake of having meat.