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spockrates
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ancestors were still drawing on cave walls when Spock’s ancestor coined the phrase. Vulcans get the bragging rights for that bit of logic, I’d say.
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Marc_Anthony
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Actually, you have me exactly right! Humans need to experience certain things to gain knowledge of them. God has no such limitation-he knows the things we learn from experience without experiencing them!
You asked if God felt pain. But the experience of pain was not knowledge. Experiencing something-a burn, say-led me to learn what it feels like to be burned-what we call pain. But God knows the feeling of pain without needing the experience of being burned.
The same with sex. We must engage in sexual intercourse to know the pleasure of sex. The experience of sex is not knowledge-experiencing sex gives us the knowledge of what sexual pleasure feels like. But God does not need to experience sexual intercourse to know how sexual pleasure feels.
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spockrates
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Do you know what pain feels like, David?
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ccmnxc
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One could say that the Trinity is illogical. It could also be said that Jesus being 100% human and 100% divine is also illogical. However, this is where the line begins to blur. The Trinity and Incarnation describe the (to us, illogical) nature of God. However, these being part of God’s nature, they are not performed in a way that creating an unliftable rock is. God’s nature is beyond comprehension, but as was said earlier, God cannot change that nature of an object, like a perfect cirlce with right angles, as He’d be creating an entirely different object.
Hope that made sense.
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Marc_Anthony
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Actually, explained properly, neither are illogical.
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spockrates
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I don’t see how the Trinity is an illogical concept. God is one what in three whos, so I see no logical contradiction. I think you must mean that the concept might be beyond comprehension, but not without reason.
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spockrates
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Yes, I think CC must have meant that the concepts are beyond understanding, though not really contradictary. However, I’m thinking it actually would be illogical to say God has an experience without experiencing it.
That seems to me to be a genuine contradiction. It’s like saying God can make a perfect circle with right angles!
But please explain how it is possible and not illogical to say someone has the kind of knowledge that IS experience without ever having the experience.
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Usagi
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I don’t believe that Spock specified a Vulcan ancestor. It could simply be that either Doyle or Holmes (if he was real in the Star Trek universe) was an ancestor of Amanda Grayson.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ancestors were still drawing on cave walls when Spock’s ancestor coined the phrase. Vulcans get the bragging rights for that bit of logic, I’d say.
Usagi
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Marc_Anthony
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Well, I don’t think knowledge IS experience. I think you get knowledge FROM experience. I just don’t think God has the limitation of needing the experience to get the knowledge, since He is omniscient.
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Usagi
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Actually, we might be able to use Spock (or any fictional character with telepathy) as a way of resolving your question.
God doesn’t just perceive everything that happens “from the outside.” He also knows the inmost thoughts and feelings of every creature. Might that not enable Him to have the “knowledge of experience” of things like sex without having personally done those things either as God or in the Incarnation?
If Spock, during one of his mind-melds with Kirk, stumbled across the memory of one of Kirk’s many sexual experiences (say, with Carol Marcus, whom Spock would only even meet in person years later), he would have the experience in his own head just as Kirk remembered it. But clearly Spock was never sexually intimate with Dr. Marcus. does telepathy provide a way out of your contradiction?
Even if not, I will reiterate that the classical theistic descriptions of God’s omnipotence do not include a claim that He has experiential knowledge of all things. So even if you are putting that forth as a kind of knowledge that God lacks, it doesn’t contradict anything actually asserted about God’s omniscience. No orthodox Christian theologian would insist that God has personal, experiential knowledge of sin, for example. Even those who insist that Christ’s Passion included the full “weight” of human sin or the outpouring of God’s wrath against it would still insist that Jesus Himself remained entirely innocent.
Usagi
God doesn’t just perceive everything that happens “from the outside.” He also knows the inmost thoughts and feelings of every creature. Might that not enable Him to have the “knowledge of experience” of things like sex without having personally done those things either as God or in the Incarnation?
If Spock, during one of his mind-melds with Kirk, stumbled across the memory of one of Kirk’s many sexual experiences (say, with Carol Marcus, whom Spock would only even meet in person years later), he would have the experience in his own head just as Kirk remembered it. But clearly Spock was never sexually intimate with Dr. Marcus. does telepathy provide a way out of your contradiction?
Even if not, I will reiterate that the classical theistic descriptions of God’s omnipotence do not include a claim that He has experiential knowledge of all things. So even if you are putting that forth as a kind of knowledge that God lacks, it doesn’t contradict anything actually asserted about God’s omniscience. No orthodox Christian theologian would insist that God has personal, experiential knowledge of sin, for example. Even those who insist that Christ’s Passion included the full “weight” of human sin or the outpouring of God’s wrath against it would still insist that Jesus Himself remained entirely innocent.
Usagi
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Shike
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Yes, I think the heart of the matter with regards to Spockrates’ questions is what an earlier poster said: an equivocation between knowledge and experience. It is true that it is a contradiction to say one has had a certain experience without experiencing it. But that was never in dispute. As far as I know, omniscience has always been cast in the light of the intellect’s apprehension. More properly speaking, experience is a means to knowledge.
Now, if one really wanted to go on thinking experience is knowledge… well, then that someone is talking past classical theism and would not be engaging in the debate at hand.
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Shike
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I would even say that God knows the feelings of sex better than we humans. Especially if sex in some way a sign pointing to Divine Love.
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billcu1
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The feeling or orgam is indeed a reminder and left over from a time when you used to feel that way all the time. Now people get addicted to that feeling though.
Bill
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spockrates
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From the motion picture Star Trek - the Undiscovered Country
(Watching the replay of the torpedo hit.)
Commander Pavel Chekov: It is Enterprise. We fired.
Captain Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott: That is not possible! All weapons visually accounted for, sir.
Captain Spock: An ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. If we did not fire those torpedoes, another ship did.
Lieutenant Valeris: A bird of prey?
Captain Spock: A bird of prey.
Commander Pavel Chekov: Cloaked?
Captain Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott: A bird of prey cannot open fire when it’s cloaked!
Captain Spock: All things being equal, Mr. Scott, I would agree with you. All things, however, are not equal. This one can.
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spockrates
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You might be right, but I’d like to think this through with you. If experience is not knowledge, then please tell me: What is it?
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spockrates
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Excellent analogy, Usagi! Yes it does help. For I was going to quote this biblical passage,
…it is impossible for God to lie…
(Hebrews 6:18)
and then I was going to ask, “Does God know the experience of telling a lie?” I suppose the answer to the question might be, “Yes, for God experiences our thoughts in a way that is perhaps similar to both a telepath and an empath.”
We’ve made progress, but we have not fully answered the question, yet. Please allow me to explain: It seems to me that reading the thoughts and emotions of another would not quite be the same as experiencing what that person experiences. The difference between true knowledge of an experience and telepathic knowledge of an experience would be akin to truly having an experience and having a dream.
One having a dream might think it real. She might think she sees a rabbit dressed in fine clothes and looking at its pocket watch, but her eyes are not doing the seeing. She might believe she hears the rabbit exclaim, “I’m late! I’m late!” but her ears are not doing the hearing. One might say her experience seems real, but it is no more real than looking at one’s reflection in a mirror. The one you see in the mirror is not really you, but only a mere reflection of you. So one can never have knowledge of the experience of meeting oneself.
Therefore, I’m still wondering whether it is possible for God to have the same knowledge of the experiences I myself, or you yourself have. Such divine knowledge would be like a dream. It would be merely a reflection of the knowledge of the genuine experiences themselves.
Do you agree with me, or should we take our search for the truth deeper still? Should we follow the rabbit of *knowing experience apart from experience *down the unknown depths of its hole? Or should we admit the talking bunny is just an illusion, say God doesn’t really know all we know, and stay safely above ground?
http://theredlist.fr/media/database/cadavre_exquis/Rabbit/rabbit-Alice_in_Wonderland_tim-burton.jpg
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JDaniel
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Spocrates:
I believe, and I’m pretty sure the Church agrees, that God causes everything. The only things God does not cause is our intentions. Sin is in human intent. Physical acts are simply natural, physical acts or events, and as such, possess nothing that could seriously be called, good or evil. Only our intentions possess such ethics.
“Temptation” is nothing more than materiality: consisting of both act and potency, It requires an agent to consummate any evil. The agent becomes the efficient cause and his intentions, the final cause. E.g., jewelry is nothing more than materiality. By my over-ardent desire to possess it and my design to obtain it, I supply the ethic.
But, don’t trust me, run this by a Priest.
God bless,
jd
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JDaniel
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Spockrates:
I can think of many, but here’s just two: (1) God is not Simple (rather, He is complex) and, (2) God is less than, or merely equal to His creation(s).
God bless,
jd
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JDaniel
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Spockrates:
I think your example is an anthropomorphism. Along those lines you could say, “God has never had to recover from a fever.”
God’s knowledge of Himself as well as of all changeable reality is a single act of understanding. In light of this, I think God is completely experienced.
God bless,
jd
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JDaniel
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Marc:
Exactly. Furthermore, if God exists in His implicate order, as a lattice of equidistant point particles permeated by He Himself, that, by whatever method He chooses, are being continuously reconfigured (changed), then He exists within everything. He is the unknowable substance as substance within all atoms, between the protons and neutrons and in the electron shell. He is not material, but is coterminous with all physical reality. Clearly, He must know everything.
God bless,
jd
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