How omniscient is God?

[Charlemagne_III]

So there is nothing “natural”, everything is created. Why should anyone bother to investigate the nonexistent laws of nature? All you have to say: “Hey, it is a miracle! Goddidit. Somehow…” Fortunately no scientist - not even the religious ones would accept that as a starting point…

Well, that’s a fresh point of view!

I’m not aware of any religious scientist who does not regard the entire creation as a miracle.

And these scientists also believe God intelligently designed the natural laws that govern the universe.

That intelligent design might not be subscribed to as a scientific theory by some of them can be attributed more so to the bully dictatorship of the Darwinians than any other reason, a point of view very well advanced by Stephen Meyer in the chapter titled “The Rules of Science” in his book Darwin’s Doubt. The chapter begins with a reference to Chesterton’s detective story “The Invisible Man,” and demonstrates the psychology of why people fail to look for clues where they might be expected to look because they have for so long been looking for clues with a blind eye to the clue that is right in front of them.

 

[Bradski]

And these (religious) scientists also believe God intelligently designed the natural laws that govern the universe.

Someone tell Meyer. He thinks that God’s natural laws weren’t good enough as He designed them. Needed a bit of fine tuning, it seems.

This whole natural business must have got stuck at one point. You know what it’s like…you write the code, it runs perfectly for ages and then…nothing. Just freezes up. You give it a kick, switch it off and on again, nothing works.

Only thing to do is fudge it a little and hope no-one notices. Well, Meyer caught Him out. He can see that it’s all entirely natural right up to about…well, wherever he decides. God made a whole universe from entirely natural means, but he couldn’t do bacteria apparently.

Beats me.

 

[Solmyr]

I’m not aware of any religious scientist who does not regard the entire creation as a miracle.

Not in the literal sense of the word. No religious chemist (for example) would say that the litmus paper turns red or blue (as the case may be) due to God’s direct, second-to-second intervention. Theologians could be different, but scientists stand firmly of materialist ground. No religious physicist would invoke a special miracle to explain why the positive side of a magnet ALWAYS attaches itself to the negative side of the other magnet.

And these scientists also believe God intelligently designed the natural laws that govern the universe.

But they also believe that God simply created the laws, and then stepped back and enjoys the scenery as it unfolds. No physicist asserts that God individually forms every snowflake to give it a nice hexagonal symmetry.

---

You keep avoiding the problem of your general “argumentation” method. Do you REALLY think that any hypothesis should be entertained, if it is not formally refuted? About time to confirm or repudiate it OPENLY and unequivocally.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Someone tell Meyer. He thinks that God’s natural laws weren’t good enough as He designed them. Needed a bit of fine tuning, it seems.

This whole natural business must have got stuck at one point. You know what it’s like…you write the code, it runs perfectly for ages and then…nothing. Just freezes up. You give it a kick, switch it off and on again, nothing works.

Only thing to do is fudge it a little and hope no-one notices. Well, Meyer caught Him out. He can see that it’s all entirely natural right up to about…well, wherever he decides. God made a whole universe from entirely natural means, but he couldn’t do bacteria apparently.

Beats me.

Try some caffeine in your coffee?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

No religious physicist would invoke a special miracle to explain why the positive side of a magnet ALWAYS attaches itself to the negative side of the other magnet.

But they also believe that God simply created the laws, and then stepped back and enjoys the scenery as it unfolds. No physicist asserts that God individually forms every snowflake to give it a nice hexagonal symmetry.

Gee, it must be fun to be so omniscient!

 

[Richca]

This question has been plaguing me for some time. I may be losing my mind. But here goes.

Exactly how omniscient is God?

In particular, we believe that God knows everything that has happened, that is happening, and that will happen. But that knowledge concerns only the real world of events.

Is it possible that God also knows all the potential world of events; that is, those events that could happen but don’t happen? For example, if a person dies in childhood, would God also know all the events that would have happened in that person’s life had the person lived to old age?

Please don’t ask why I am obsessing over this question.

Omniscience applied to God means that He possesses infinite and perfect knowledge, He is all-knowing. There is nothing that is known or that can possibly be known that God doesn’t know and that from all eternity. Philosophically, God is pure act and Being itself. Now, if there was something God did not know but could be potentially known, then God wouldn’t be pure act but He would be in potentiality to some further knowledge. However, God is pure act without any admixture of potentiality whatsoever. Further, knowledge is a kind of being, it exists. God is Being itself and He possesses the fullness of being in a perfect and infinite degree. Accordingly, God possesses knowledge in an infinite and perfect degree. God is also eternal and has his Being all at once. There is no past or future in God. He possesses the fullness of being in an ever abiding present. The eternity of God excludes any kind of knowledge that could possibly be future to God because there is no past or future in God.Whatever God knows which includes whatever is known or which can possibly be known, God knows from all eternity by one act of His intellect.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Omniscience applied to God means that He possesses infinite and perfect knowledge, He is all-knowing. There is nothing that is known or that can possibly be known that God doesn’t know and that from all eternity. Philosophically, God is pure act and Being itself. Now, if there was something God did not know but could be potentially known, then God wouldn’t be pure act but He would be in potentiality to some further knowledge. However, God is pure act without any admixture of potentiality whatsoever. Further, knowledge is a kind of being, it exists. God is Being itself and He possesses the fullness of being in a perfect and infinite degree. Accordingly, God possesses knowledge in an infinite and perfect degree. God is also eternal and has his Being all at once. There is no past or future in God. He possesses the fullness of being in an ever abiding present. The eternity of God excludes any kind of knowledge that could possibly be future to God because there is no past or future in God.Whatever God knows which includes whatever is known or which can possibly be known, God knows from all eternity by one act of His intellect.

Indeed, from the point of view of human intelligence, altogether awesome.

The paragraph you wrote should be offered to atheists as a reason why they cannot reason their way to God as they might reason their way to the law of gravity.

 

[Bradski]

What is MyGod?
He is being itself.
How do we know that?
Well, if He wasn’t, He wouldn’t be MyGod.

What is being?
Being is MyGod himself.
How do we know that?
Well if it wasn’t, He wouldn’t be MyGod.

I think that’s it. I haven’t made any errors there, have I?

 

[Solmyr]

Omniscience applied to God means that He possesses infinite and perfect knowledge, He is all-knowing. There is nothing that is known or that can possibly be known that God doesn’t know and that from all eternity. Philosophically, God is pure act and Being itself. Now, if there was something God did not know but could be potentially known, then God wouldn’t be pure act but He would be in potentiality to some further knowledge. However, God is pure act without any admixture of potentiality whatsoever. Further, knowledge is a kind of being, it exists. God is Being itself and He possesses the fullness of being in a perfect and infinite degree. Accordingly, God possesses knowledge in an infinite and perfect degree. God is also eternal and has his Being all at once. There is no past or future in God. He possesses the fullness of being in an ever abiding present. The eternity of God excludes any kind of knowledge that could possibly be future to God because there is no past or future in God.Whatever God knows which includes whatever is known or which can possibly be known, God knows from all eternity by one act of His intellect.

Observations:

Q: What is knowledge of an object “X” or an event “Y”?
A: It is information about the object or the event.

Knowledge always pertains to something. From this it follows that knowledge can never be primary, it is always contingent upon the object or the event. This leads to the follow-up observation/question:

Q: How can one obtain knowledge about something that has never happened, does not happen and will never happen, EVEN IF it could have happened? In other words, how can one get information about non-existence?
A: It is impossible. How many pages are (not could be, but “are”) in the book, which was never written, due to the fact that the writer has never been born, since his parents never met?

I suggest to start over, and give a coherent definition of “knowledge”. Without that all the big, bombastic words simply mean nothing.

 

[Richca]

Q: How can one obtain knowledge about something that has never happened, does not happen and will never happen, EVEN IF it could have happened

 

[Solmyr]

Before a builder forms a house in matter, he first forms the idea or form of the house in his intellect which is at it were the blueprint of the house.

The problem is that you do not differentiate between “knowledge” and “fantasy”. We can imagine whatever we want to, but to call that imagination or fantasy “knowledge” makes the concept of knowledge “nonsensical” and useless.

Another problem is that you restrict the question to the “knowledge” of the designer or builder. What about the rest of us? I am aware that you consider God to be the designer or builder of everything, so in your opinion everything is an “artifact”, nothing is “natural”. But if we have true, libertarian “free will”, then our actions cannot have been “designed”. We are the architects of our actions. As such God can only have “knowledge” about our actions if and when we make those decisions. And that makes God’s “knowledge” contingent.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… We are the architects of our actions. As such God can only have “knowledge” about our actions if and when we make those decisions. And that makes God’s “knowledge” contingent.

Yes! God’s knowledge IS contingent! In addition His “foreknowledge” travels via a kind of “time warp” outside “time” (apparently scientists seem to be tentatively concluding that there are all sorts of “dimensions” “out there”) so that if we do “differently” (from something that wasn’t going to happen in the first place) He “will know” differently.

To me this has the status of a working hypothesis. Knowledge about God is existential first - the metaphysics may emerge later.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

So there is nothing “natural”, everything is created. Why should anyone bother to investigate the nonexistent laws of nature? … YOU are the one who asserts the existence of that “dragon”, or its analogical equivalent, God. And it is YOUR argument that it is rational, because it cannot be refuted.

YOU are the one who presents a generic argumentation method, which is this: “if you cannot refute it, it is a legitimate hypothesis”. Don’t you get how ridiculous it is? No, I guess, not…

In the hypothesis that things are created it doesn’t necessarily follow that they don’t constitute nature, aren’t natural and don’t follow natural laws. The two situations might overlap.

To me, multi-hypothesis theories and multi-theory hypotheses are essential in all fields. Mother isn’t about to sweep all our jigsaw pieces off the table because it is time to set tea. We should keep all our hypotheses on the table for a lifetime and prioritise and re-prioritise them at our initiative. This isn’t the Wimbledon knock-out. True science is sacred and people suffer dreadfully on its behalf.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… This double negative of “you CANNOT prove that there is NO… whatever, and therefore it is a legitimate hypothesis” is getting very boring.

Only in a formal, axiomatic system (like math) can you PROVE a universal negative. But this has been presented zillions of time to you, and you still don’t SEEM to get it. So I will go by the appearance, and hypothesize that you DON’T get it.

It has order, but order does not imply “design”. The apologists try to argue both sides of the coin. On one hand they say: “Look, there is a miracle! Surely that proves God’s existence”. On the other hand they point to the order in the universe and they argue: “Look, there is NO miracle! Surely that proves God’s existence.”

Sorry, you can’t have you cake and eat it, too.

Order doesn’t sufficiently prove design therefore an argument from design to God’s existence and then ominscience doesn’t work for you. I follow that.

Nonetheless the fact that “you CANNOT prove that there is NO… whatever” is for you a rather weak hypothesis doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t a hypothesis. You may have identified a stronger one. This needn’t undermine your case at all if so.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… the atheist cannot begin to find the Christian God without also annihilating the God of natural theology.

Where natural theology finds a first cause and an intelligent designer (because it looks like there was a first cause and an intelligent designer) the atheist has to assert that the First Cause and the Intelligent Designer must be displaced by a Multiverse of possibilities that discard the need for either a First Cause or a Designer.

…

Second point first: I hypothesise (amongst my many hypotheses ) a development from less-caused to more-caused.

I hope all you folks realise Gen 1:2-31 isn’t about Creation. It relates an incident late in the history of humanity let alone the Earth. It is a substitute account that in usage, carries the meaning of Creation.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

What does the word “eternal” mean to you? If you think that “time” is a line from minus infinity to plus infinity (-∞, +∞), with the “now” somewhere in the middle, then you are wrong. This naïve concept of time was entertained in the times of Newton, but Einstein’s theory of relativity made this concept obsolete.

Time is undefined and cannot be defined “outside” the universe. Within the universe time is a geometrical half-line, starting from the expansion of the singularity. Think about it as the real numbers in the set of (0, +∞), where the “(” indicates that “0” is not included in the set. Just like there is no “smallest” positive integer, there is no “0” in time. I am pretty sure you will find this concept counterintuitive. But very few things are “intuitive” in reality.

Within the singularity time is undefined. Our current physics is unable to penetrate the first fractions of a second into the singularity. That is all we know. Before some “lover of scientism” will hop in, let’s just assert that there is no guarantee that science will ever crack this problem. Not that it matters.

There is NO “why” in nature. And it is incorrect to assume that the universe “came” into existence. The universe simply exists, and it MUST exist, because “nothing” cannot exist. Now that is simple metaphysics.

I like this post. Since science hasn’t defined the universe, it can at best hypothesise its having gone from less-caused to more-caused.

The study of nature attempts to describe “hows”.

(In addition, there is a difference between eternity and unending time - assuming of course both “exist”! )

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Simple. Because “nothing” is not an ontologically existing object, it is only an “abstraction” or a “concept”. In other words: “nothing does not and cannot exist”.

One might cautiously argue that “something” is more plausible than “nothing”. After all, there have been observations.

The universe exists necessarily, and the Big Bang does not say that the universe “popped” into existence from the vast ocean of “nothing”. The universe has no “beginning”, because “beginning” is a concept which presupposes an “absolute time”.

There may be a near-infinite number of parallel time-like dimensions, but that doesn’t necessarily negate the principle.

Any metaphysics must start from the actual physics. Actual physics says that there is no time, space or causative relationship “outside” the universe; actually the phrase “outside the universe” is a meaningless utterance, just like the phrase “to the north from the North Pole”.

Reportedly there are universes outside the “universe” with at least one extra dimension of space. Thus by “universe” in the broader sense one may understand “set of universes” and roughly the same would apply though without the same problem of words.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… It’s logically possible to be omnipotent (within the limits of the principle of non-contradiction). And it’s logically possible to be omniscient (I think). But I don’t think it’s logically possible to be both.

If this is not possible due to an external contradiction (i.e. not possible due to conflict between two powers, rather than within a single power), then in cases such as the ones I mentioned, which power will work? Will God’s omnipotence impose limits on His omniscience, or vice versa?

I also objected to the possibility of being both omnipotent and omnipresent. …

I vote omniscience over apparent omnipotence, at the present “period of time”. The balance may even up in unimagined circumstances. (What’s “apparent” is “apparent” i.e may be slightly different from what “is” if a two-letter word may be made heavy with meaning!)

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Step by step:

…

1. Arguments that I’ve heard about God existing simultaneously at all times past, present and future are equivalent to not having a clue about the nature of time or God.

I don’t understand the claim.

…

Understanding of time has to be constantly revised. As to God, those are hypotheses, weak or strong as we perceive.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

… For us to have knowledge about something means that we have information about that object or action. Also that our internal model of the object or action corresponds to reality.

… the apologists wanted even more. They insist that God “knows” even those objects and events, which not only have not happened YET, but will never happen either. And that assumption makes the apologist irrational and illogical. The word “knowledge” when applied to God is a meaningless utterance. How could one have “knowledge” about something that does not exist, never existed, and will never exist either? …

So, before any intelligent conversation could take place about “omniscience”, it is absolutely necessary to give a proper definition of “knowledge”. What does it mean, how can one obtain it.

God can know that Hitler wasn’t going to invade Britain in the 1940s. You are correct that He can’t know that Planet Zog of similar composition to Earth orbits 86 million miles from the Sun. He can know that suchlike “examples” may or may not be employed for argument’s sake like this which isn’t the same kind of knowing at all.

Knowing is done, as best we can, through investigation, observation and experience. Presumably any knowing that God would do would be roughly similar, if more capable.