About omniscience

[Vera_Ljuba]

As others have pointed out, we are hardly the first people in history to notice these potential problems.

Wonderful. So how do they deal with these real contradictions, which are not potential problems? I will be happy to read your explanations. Use your own words. As I pointed out there are only four possibilities, all with their own problems.

And the four possibilities have nothing to do with any kind of temporal sequence. I only deal with causative relationships, not temporal ones. Let me recap the problem in a short form.

Both “A” and “B” are sets.
Set “A” represents God’s knowledge.
Set “B” represents the events in the world, some of which are deterministic, while others are the results of actions make by free agents.

The set “A” has “n” members: a[sub]k[/sub], where “k” goes from 1 to “n”.
Also the set “B” has “n” members: b[sub]k[/sub], where “k” goes from 1 to “n”.
The one-to-one correspondence means that for every “k” a[sub]k[/sub] = b[sub]k[/sub].

In other words, God has exact knowledge of every event in the world. (The world is not limited to the physical world.) This is what you (generic Catholic you) assert. I did not invent it.

There are exactly four possibilities:

1) A causes B.
2) B causes A.
3) A and B are caused by an external agent.
4) There is no causation, so the one-to-one correspondence is a lucky coincidence.

As a mathematician this should be obvious to you.

I am only interested in your analysis. Of course if some other Catholic thinker has already presented an analysis of this problem, you are most welcome to quote it.

You, of course, may read the whole article, but courtesy would point out that the relevant portions are from “Free will and the Christian religion” through “Thomist and Molinist theories.”

As before I have to point out that the church has no explicit and coherent philosophical underpinning. Some theologians are Thomists, other are Molinists. Some might even be the followers of Aristotle or Plato, or some other philosophers.

It won’t take long to read. That will give you a general, but not exhaustive idea of the history of Catholic thought in this matter.

I do not want to impose limitations. If an explanation is rational, I don’t care if it comes from a Catholic theologian or a Protestant one, or an atheist one. If the Catholic thought is rational, you don’t need to point out its origin. Coming from a Catholic source adds nothing to its rationality. If it is not rational on its own, then coming from a Catholic thinker does not make it rational.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Bunch of words…

Read the post directly above.

 

[Gorgias]

Bunch of words, ignoring the rebuttals many have made to her claims.

As I pointed out there are only four possibilities, all with their own problems.

There are more than four. You’re ignoring others, the most obvious of which continues to be mentioned to you: God exists outside of His creation, and with simple knowledge, knows it completely. It is contingent on Him, not vice-versa. God does not “learn” about an event in the context of the temporal framework in which we (humans) encounter it inside of spacetime.

And the four possibilities have nothing to do with any kind of temporal sequence.

They have everything to do with temporal sequence!

I only deal with causative relationships, not temporal ones.

Umm… might I gently remind you that you’re describing causation of actions which are within a temporal framework?

Both “A” and “B” are sets.
Set “A” represents God’s knowledge.
Set “B” represents the events in the world, some of which are deterministic, while others are the results of actions make by free agents.

The set “A” has “n” members: a[sub]k[/sub], where “k” goes from 1 to “n”.
Also the set “B” has “n” members: b[sub]k[/sub], where “k” goes from 1 to “n”.

I’ll stop you right there, since this is where your analysis goes off the rails.

God’s knowledge is not bounded. It is infinite (or, if we’re talking mathematics, then at least uncountable). Therefore, you cannot posit that the set of “God’s knowledge” has a finite number of elements. Moreover, if the world is created and as such, will one day end, then the set of “the events of the world” is finite.

In other words, there is not a 1:1 relationship between the members of the set. Moreover, the cardinalities of the two sets are not equivalent. |A| > |B|. Therefore, your reasoning fails. Sorry.

In other words, God has exact knowledge of every event in the world.

Simple knowledge. (This is a term of art. Please read up on Aquinas’ Summa, especially I.14.1 through I.14.16.)

God’s knowledge is not gleaned from observation (as is some human knowledge). In other words, the cause of God’s knowledge is not the observation of events in your set B. Therefore, God is neither the secondary cause of these events, nor is He constrained by them in any way.

There are exactly four possibilities:

There are more, but seemingly, you refuse to acknowledge that you’ve already been informed of this.

In order to ‘see’ the other possibilities, you need to recognize the difference between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ causation, and the implications therein.

As a mathematician this should be obvious to you.

As students of philosophy, it is obvious to us that this is not the case.

As before I have to point out that the church has no explicit and coherent philosophical underpinning.

We could make the same case against science… but what’s the relevance?

Some theologians are Thomists, other are Molinists.

Stop moving the goalposts: “the church” is distinct from “some theologians”. Therefore, the presence of multiple schools of thought among theologians does not prove a lack of explicit and coherent underpinning of Church philosophical and theological knowledge.

 

[Aloysium]

The assumptions to build upon:

1. God is outside of time, in some frozen, unchanging “eternal now”.
2. God is sovereign, meaning that God is not contingent upon anything “outside” God.
3. God is omniscient, which means that God knows the past, present and future.
4. The word “knows” means that God has information about something.

Facts:
5) We exist inside of time.
6) We have free will, which means that our decisions are not preordained and not predetermined.

Questions:
7) How can God know about something that has never happened, does not happen and will never happen?
8) How can God prove that he is omniscient?

These are not easy questions. Think them over before attempting to answer. Have fun!
(P.S: Please spare me of the nonsense: “Why would God submit to such questions?”. If you don’t want to answer, then don’t.)

The eternal now is this now and every other now. Each is full of life and power, where else can anything happen but in its now.

God is Existence itself and the Origin of everything that relative to this single point in time, is, was and will be.

As the Source of everything, God is infinitely creative. Not contingent upon anything, He interacts with His creation, calling and helping us back to Him. Unchanging in His eternal nature, He connects and responds to us in time. In Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity became incarnate, died and was resurrected that we might all be saved.

God, as the Source of all beings, including us, we who have free will and determine for ourselves who we are to become, knows us at our conception, in this moment and as we lie in our death bed. God’s omniscience is the life that fills all moments; we are only participating in this one. He is greater, transcendent to mankind.

God is within and knows everything intimately. His knowledge I would describe as a being’s existence. He knows everything about us and our circumstances compassionately and far better than we ourselves. Information is not a very appropriate word to use here.

God knows the challenges we face and tries to help us deal with them.

Everything exists and constitutes the reality of His knowledge. That would appear to be sufficient proof.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Information is not a very appropriate word to use here.

Information is the ONLY word which must be used. Knowledge is information about something.

 

[Aloysium]

Information is the ONLY word which must be used. Knowledge is information about something.

I hardly think so. Give me all your vital statistics and I will know nothing about you.
Spend a bit of time over a coffee, tell me a dream, and I will know who you are.

I think that is why you consider eternity to be frozen - just a bunch of facts and statistics.
Reality is not like that; it throbs with life, over-flows its beauty.

 

[Gorgias]

I hardly think so. Give me all your vital statistics and I will know nothing about you.
Spend a bit of time over a coffee, tell me a dream, and I will know who you are.

Yet, there’s a certain truth (albeit incomplete) to VL’s point.

• Data are simply raw signals. All creation is data, of one sort or another.
• Information is data that someone (or something?) has identified as carrying a valuable signal.
• Knowledge, on the other hand, is information that is possessed by a conscious agent.
  ‘Knowledge’ is a subjective term, signifying a particular actor and a particular set of information. (In a way, if VL had constructed her sets such that set A was the set of all conscious actors and set B was the set of all data in creation, then we’d be able to say that ‘knowledge’ is a mapping of A onto B. There’d still be some problems with this set, as A would be the union of created conscious actors and uncreated conscious actors, and B would be a proper subset of A, but still, it would be a more helpful illustration…)

If VL was thinking about her set ‘B’, then I’d say she’s talking about either data or information. If she’s thinking about the contents of her set ‘A’, then she’s talking about ‘knowledge’. (The mapping construct she offers isn’t terribly helpful, since by definition, ‘B’ is a proper subset of ‘A’.)

The fact that ‘information’ may not give complete ‘knowledge’ of a subject is immaterial, in the present discussion.

However, VL’s assertions about God vis-a-vis His knowledge don’t really hold up, so whether we classify things as ‘data’, ‘information’, or ‘knowledge’ doesn’t really help her see the deficiencies of her claims.

 

[vz71]

Fine. God knows the result, because God observes the event. As such God’s knowledge is contingent upon the free action of the humans.

Sorry it took a while to think about this, and I am uncertain what your point here really is.
Are you saying that knowledge of the crash depends upon there actually being a crash?
If so, you are drawing a distinction where there is no difference.

Where there is no event, there can be no knowledge of the event.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

That is only true if future does not exist. Your argument fails if we are living in a block universe.

Almost missed this. Of course the future does not exist as physical reality. Physical existence cannot be separated from “when” and “where”. So the argument stands. There are some people who argue that the future does not exist for us, but it exists for God, which is major nonsense. Existence is absolute, it is not relative to the observer. There is no such thing that object “X” exists in relation to observer “A” but does not exist in relation to observer “B”.

 

[STT]

Almost missed this. Of course the future does not exist as physical reality. Physical existence cannot be separated from “when” and “where”. So the argument stands. There are some people who argue that the future does not exist for us, but it exists for God, which is major nonsense. Existence is absolute, it is not relative to the observer. There is no such thing that object “X” exists in relation to observer “A” but does not exist in relation to observer “B”.

We could be observers who are moving along the states of universe which already exist or we observe states of universe which changes accordingly. We cannot argue in favor of one of these scenarios merely by observing changes.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Sorry it took a while to think about this, and I am uncertain what your point here really is.
Are you saying that knowledge of the crash depends upon there actually being a crash?
If so, you are drawing a distinction where there is no difference.

Where there is no event, there can be no knowledge of the event.

Of course. But that means (correctly) that God’s knowledge is contingent upon the reality (physical or otherwise) and it means that God’s essence is contingent. The argument goes like this.

1. God is sovereign, not contingent.
2. God is simple, he has no parts.
3. Therefore God’s knowledge cannot be separated from his essence.
4. If God’s knowledge of reality is contingent upon the existence of this reality, then God’s essence is contingent, therefore God is contingent, which is in contradiction with #1.

The problem with the so-called “God of philosophers” that there was never a proofreader, who would point out the incorrect and contradictory assumptions. It is a hodgepodge collection created by many individuals, an there was no one to point out the discrepancies and contradictions before the “manuscript” was delivered to the printing press. When someone points out the contradictions, the usual “rebuttal” is that the contradictions are really “mysteries”.

 

[Aloysium]

Knowledge changes us. Knowledge of whom we choose to make of ourselves does not change God. We exist within the ocean of His infinite compassion. He walks with us when we are in right relation with Him, in this our garden, as He did in our primordial home. He delights in who we are and seeks to make Himself known to us. He is Love.

 

[vz71]

God’s knowledge is not dependant upon our reality.
His knowledge would be even if we did not exist.

To claim no knowledge of an event that does not happen to be evidence that it is a dependance of God is as specious as claiming God to not be all powerful for not being able to construct a 5 sided square.

 

[Gorgias]

But that means (correctly) that God’s knowledge is contingent upon the reality

No it doesn’t. Check it out:

1. If God’s knowledge of reality is contingent upon the existence of this reality, then God’s essence is contingent, therefore God is contingent, which is in contradiction with #1.

If the moon is made of green cheese, then there are cows on the moon; therefore, the moon is made of green cheese.

See the logical error? You haven’t proven “God’s knowledge of reality is contingent upon the existence of reality”, so you cannot conclude that God is contingent.

In any case, ask yourself this question: “upon whose existence is the existence of reality contingent?”. When you see that the answer is “God’s existence”, you’re left with “God’s essence is contingent on God’s existence,” and you’ll realize that all you’re left with is a simple tautology: God’s existence is His essence. (Congratulations! You’ve just reached the same conclusion Aquinas did!)

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Sorry it took a while to think about this, and I am uncertain what your point here really is.
Are you saying that knowledge of the crash depends upon there actually being a crash?
If so, you are drawing a distinction where there is no difference.

Where there is no event, there can be no knowledge of the event.

God’s knowledge is not dependant upon our reality.
His knowledge would be even if we did not exist.

To claim no knowledge of an event that does not happen to be evidence that it is a dependance of God is as specious as claiming God to not be all powerful for not being able to construct a 5 sided square.

I could not have created an even more crystal clear example of a self-contradiction. Well done buddy!

 

[Gorgias]

I could not have created an even more crystal clear example of a self-contradiction. Well done buddy!

Actually, he’s just rehearsing the Molinist position for you. Molinists believe that God not only knows what actually is, but also those things which are merely possible – that is, He has ‘middle knowledge’, or knowledge of counterfactuals.

So, not “self-contradiction”, but knowledge of things like, “if Vera_Ljuba believed in God, then she would become a nun.”

You can argue against the proposition of middle knowledge (personally, I’m not too convinced of its reasonableness), but the proposition itself isn’t self-contradicting.

 

[vz71]

I could not have created an even more crystal clear example of a self-contradiction. Well done buddy!

Actually, one does not contradict the other.

But then you probably are not reading my posts. But instead reading into my posts.

 

[Aloysium]

Finding a contradiction in the truth reveals one’s own misunderstanding of what is.
By keeping focussed on the truth and revisiting our beliefs, we gain wisdom and understanding.

The fact is that in this world everything is in flux; everything changes.
What is eternal is transcendent, but the words we have pertain to this world.

Life is change, so one may think that unchanging means death.

But, unchanging also would be the structure of reality that underlies the laws of physics.
Let’s consider one aspect of God’s nature to be analogous to gravity.
In doing so let us say that gravity is aware.
Gravity pulls matter together (the first flaw in our analogy), creating planets and stars.
It creates them and spins them around in every which way.
Things move, speed up, slow down, smash into each other.
For all the infinite activity, for all that transpires from the continuous flow from beginning to end, gravity does not change.

The huge flaws are that gravity doesn’t care, matter does what it is supposed to do, and gravity never became a planet.
Matter is not the ground of our being.

 

[Gorgias]

The huge flaws are that gravity doesn’t care, matter does what it is supposed to do, and gravity never became a planet.

Not to mention that gravity actually does change, depending on the mass of the objects and the distance between them…

 

[Aloysium]

Not to mention that gravity actually does change, depending on the mass of the objects and the distance between them…

Gravity is a constant relationship between things in time-space.
They interact based on that unchanging principle, which holds galaxies together.
Between the earth and objects near the surface, its value is “g”, reflecting the mass of the earth and the distance involved.