Omniscient entities, such as some gods, are incapable of forming new thoughts or new decisions.

[ZombieHorde]

Omniscient entities, such as all knowing gods, already know every thought they will ever have. The Omniscient entity can not make new thoughts because the entity is already aware of those thoughts. Every possible thought was thought the very moment the Omniscient entity became an omnipotent entity.

Omniscient entities cannot make decisions because they already know everything they will think or do. Every decision already existed the moment the Omniscient entity became an Omniscient entity.

In the Holy Bible, if one considers The Lord to be Omniscient, The Lord knew Eve would be tricked by a talking serpent before The Lord created the Earth, Eve, the fruit, or even the talking serpent. The Lord knew he would kill almost all people and other animals with a flood, The Lord knew he would destroy all of the people, including infants, in Sodom and Gomorrah. Those people were doomed before the Earth even existed.

An Omniscient god would already know every action of every person who has yet to be born. An Omniscient god suggests events are somehow predetermined, such as fate, destiny, or 100% predictable causation laws.

edit to change omnipotent to omniscient for accuracy and clarity.

[zipplewrath]

1. You presume that God exists in time

The usual proposal is that God exists outside of time. He "sees" all of it simultaneously. There is no past or future. God exists "always".

It is the problem of "free will". If all of time is already "known", even if it is only to the creator, does that not mean that one cannot actually "change" anything about the future because it already exists.

[RandomThoughts]

4. Just because someone knows what you will choose, does not mean you did not have a choice.

Think what you had for lunch yesterday. When you had that lunch, it was a free will, but when you think of it now, you think there was only one meal you could have picked, because you did, yet you had free will to choose at that time.

God outside of time I agree with. Or all time at once. I sort of think of it that way also, but it is beyond being able to fathom or understand within our limitations.

[zipplewrath]

10. You presume it was free will

It is easier to argue against free will than for it. You presume that free will exists and then declare its exercise in the choice of lunch. It isn't clear that in fact that choice was not pre-ordained by the universe and you merely played your role. Humans have the capacity to see patterns where none exist. They can also miss patterns literally right in front of them. You have little ability to "prove" that your lunch choice was freely made. Having no knowledge of the controlling features isn't proof.

[RandomThoughts]

12. Proof is what you choose to believe.

An arguement that says you can not prove something, really means you can not prove it a way some person or group would conclude is enough evidence.

That evidence in logic is presumed things agreed to be true.

But we can't make any discussion one way or the other on the topic, because of a difference of meaning of choice.



You say what happened means there was only one choice, I say the choice created what ultimetly would happen even if known in advance.

If I know a person walking will reach some point, does it mean he has no choice to do it? I say the choice is his faculty to make a decision. You say it is the outcome of what he does, and only one outcome means no choice in your arguement.

But a bit busy right now for such a conversation. But I have heard that concept before.

[dmallind]

18. The difference here is key

I am not the omnipotent omniscient creator of all possible lunches. I can only choose from what is available to me by proximity, price or knowledge, and I have only the barest inclination of what that specific lunch may do to harm or help me in the future.

A putative double omni creator on the other hand not only knows what choices I will make but actually knew those choices when he made me, and had the option of changing how I was made, and hence the choices I would opt for. A slight twitch in brain chemistry when I was created and maybe we'd be seeing Saint dmallind ministering to the needy of India, or at the very least a Christian dmallind wallowing in how great God was for making me so.

But no - if you accept a double omni creator you must accept a god who knoew what I would choose, and made me that way anyway when he could have done otherwise. Thats' why there can only be the illusion of free will, because the double omni deity would have considered all options and gone along with this one long before I had any existence let alone any choice.

[RandomThoughts]

26. God would not need to script everything to get an effect, so why would he?

You put a limit on God by saying he could not create free will and also have known effect. It could be beyond understanding or it could be more like waypoints, where for some effect to happen, all that needs to occur is a set of effects. God could limit his knowledge to create free will, and it would make more sense on a conservation of work idea, if you could achieve the same goal without scripting everyone.

If you have an characteristic that is 51% of a person, and it passes on to next generation, then in enough time that characteristic would be 100%, or actually 99.9999...%. But the point is to get an effect you would not need to control every action, just have some effect have a building effect. The world bends towards justice, if things get more just every century, then as long as things survive, you eventually would have a pretty just system, and it would not required scripting so why script?

Besides scripting is to create despair, if people think they have no free will, they think they can not make any choices, and nothing they do will matter, changing the choices they make.

Lets say some person had to get a cup of coffee to for God's plan to move forward. there could be 500 people possible to do that, and then the one that wants to do that thing, or has developed the potential to do such a thing, is put in the place to do it. It is still a ramification of his choice and then he is put in the position to do it.

If you put many atoms in an environment and increase pressure they will collide, and some will bounce out, you do not need to know which would bounce out to know that effect would occur, and you could even predict the effect without knowing the path of every atom, so why would you set the path of every atom, when the same effect can be done by the interactions between people in a system. (Thats why I sometimes use the comment bounce off when talking about things, because of that thought, like so and so is bouncing off of so and so thought)

It has been said everything that can happen has happened somewhere in the multi-verse. In a smaller example, almost everything that could be thought has been thought by someone on earth, so if you needed a piece of thought to be part of something, you would not have to control the free will of a person and make them think it, you would only have to put them in some way to be heard, by the people that need to hear that thought.

Again it is more the idea of waypoints to create connectivity. So that there can be free will, however connectivity can be used to limit ideas by making people just repeat other ideas, limiting the pool of good ideas to make effects, so there has to not only be free will, but free thought.

The concept of no free will limits God, I think he is capable of setting a system that both has free will and known outcomes.

[dmallind]

28. Ironically, you are the one limiting this god idea

Omniscient has a meaning. It's an attribute widely assigned to the Judeo-Christian god and is, a reminder, the focus of this thread, which applies to all putative omniscient gods.

It means "all knowing" obviously, and there is no way to weasel out of all knowing by pretending that it could mean only knowing little snapshots of future history if God so chose. To make that choice, God himself would have to decide what to limit his future knowledge TO, surely? And to do that he would have to, obviously enough since he knows everything, know what parts of future history he is excluding from his own knowledge. As such he would still be in a position, being omnipotent, to change where his self-imposed blinkers operate and where they don't, thus still removing humanity's free will as God has already decided what knowledge of the future he will allow himself, but had to know ALL the future to make that decision.

The ONLY way to allow the free will of a creation is to limit the knowledge or power of the creator. God can only create free will if he either does not know the future (at any moment, and hence is not omniscient) or if he lacks the power to change it (and hence is not omnipotent).

[damntexdem]

17. There's no proof that free will exists, but ...

the question just doesn't seem interesting unless there is.

Of course, I could be preordained to think that way.

;-)

[damntexdem]

16. Yeah, limitations like logic.

And good sense.

[Deep13]

5. Just the opposite.

Existence in time would presume a limit on knowledge and, therefore, action. Knowing everything in advance makes god powerless.

[zipplewrath]

9. Except during creation

It suggests that creation wasn't a "beginning" but was the entire universe, inclusive of time. If there is and "end", then God has a chance to "recreate". The question becomes, if God wants to change his creation, would we experience the change, or would it just become the new reality of this universe?

[Deep13]

11. I don't think so. God still knows what he will do...

...before he does it. Which means he can't change his mind. He's set on a highway with no exits. For those of us who exist in time, there was a beginning and will be an end, but it's all the same for god, as though everything happens at once.

[zipplewrath]

14. Stuck in time

It's hard to have these discussions because we want to place him outside of time. Doing that makes it tough to use expressions like "what he will do". There is no will and no was, there just is. He knows what he creates. He can't be on a highway because there is no "time" to go anywhere.

[dmallind]

19. But we all ARE on the highway

And not only did he supposedly make us AND the highway, but he made us in the full and certain knowledge of which highway we'd take and how far we would go. How then can we truly have free will about our route or destination?

[zipplewrath]

27. Yes, but he is not

We're in metaphore hell here, but basically he made the highway, but he is not "on" the highway. In some sense he IS the highway.

[dmallind]

29. But we are the ones with supposed free will, so it matters how WE perceive time, not how he does.

And since we operate in linear time and sequentially, whether he does or not is immaterial. We have no free will because he made the highway and set us upon it knowing where we would go.

There is simply no way to reconcile free will in humanity with an omnipotent and omniscient creator.

[zipplewrath]

31. I agree

The truth is, it is hard to prove free will at all. It relies upon at least one assumption about the function of the universe. A prof. I had used to "assign" topics for defense or critique. You didn't get to pick the topic nor the position. The two that were most surprising were free will and DUI law in the early days of MADD. Everyone presumed that the "pro" free will guy had it relatively easy. But he got his clock cleaned. Ditto for the guy arguing for stronger DUI laws. In both cases it was pretty obvious that they thought they had the easy assignment so they basically just boilerplated their way through it. The reverse side actually did some work. In the case of free will, several of us came to the conclusion that it was the "easier" to falsify than support (although neither could be called conclusive). There was far more information to refute it, than support it. The truth was that a huge portion of clinical psycology at the time was devoted to basically characterizing conditions in which there was no apparent free will.

[dmallind]

33. Funnily enough I'm still arguing both "Con" sides and still getting roundly abused for it

Admittedly the most fervent abuse comes from those emotionally invested in MADD propaganda and emotional justification of draconian penalties for infitesimally increased risks rather than proponents of free will, but hey them's the breaks when you try to approach any question with the same process of making decisions based on best evidence and argument available.

[zipplewrath]

36. The founder of MADD quit

I always love to start there.

I'm kind of a mixed feeling about the topic. I don't really advocate driving hammered. My problem always was that the statistics were severely suspect, implying that the real issues were being missed.

The killer fact, that the student surfaced and just absolutely killed the unprepared student, was that the correlation to the presence of DUI qualified drivers and fatalities (or even injury accidents) was poor. What did have a strong correlation, was a bad driving record, and fatal accidents. The numbers skyrocketed if the bad driver was hammered. The implication being that the primary problem was bad drivers (which had a definition defined by accidents, execessive speeding, and some other factor I don't remember). The inescapable conclusion was that what we should be doing is getting bad drivers off the road, really regardless of whether they are drinking or not. Furthermore, DUI should not be STRENGTHED as we have, but in fact be reduced to a relatively minor infraction. The reason being is that you WANT people cited for DUI so that the correlation can be established to bad driving. If you are hammered, get a DUI, but never show any other driving issues, you're just a harmless idiot that's probably gonna drive (slowly) into a ditch. If you get a DUI AND you have a speeding ticket for more than 25 mph over the limit (mighta been 15, it's been a while) we want you off the road NOW.

One other little factoid that came out of the presentation, the police look for a certain set of driving behaviors to detect DUI. Strangely, they (amongst others) were driving well below the speed limit, stopping well short of stop signs, and "excessive" use of the turn signal. The problem was that these were not signs that they were dangerous, and in fact quite to the opposite, they were relatively "safe". They were very similar behaviors to most drivers over 70. Speeding, which has a strong correlation to accidents, was not on the list of behaviors they looked for to detect DUI's.

[dmallind]

40. Much agreement - risk and harm are the issues, but it has become

just ONE (and relatively minor) cause of risk, absent any harm, that has been criminalized to a ridiculous degree. I have no problem at all adding a multiplicative factor to the sentence or penalty of anyone who commits an infraction, from speeding to murder, while driving drunk, because it certainly does indicate at the very least a willingness to increase the risk, to some degree at least, that you will commit these infractions. But simply to be taking that risk WITHOUT an infraction, should be no more harshly penalized than driving while old, or tired, or angry, or inexperienced, or anything else that increases the same risks.

[zipplewrath]

42. Performance base standards

Instead of blood alcohol, they should have generated some functional test. Their problem would have been that some fairly healthy folks could have passed it pretty hammered. Conversely, some older folks, and probably certain other people with chronic conditions couldn't have passed it stone cold sober.

It's an arbitrary standard, made worse by the fact that they got the levels pushed down to 0.08 in most places, well below what most studies defined as measurably impaired. Nominally 0.12 is really the beginning of measurable impairment, and when compared to things like interior distractions (babies, cell phones, etc.) or being tired or medicated, 0.15 would be a more scientifically "defensible" standard.

And as I said before, the FIRST people you should be concerned about is bad drivers, drunk or sober.

[ZombieHorde]

6. I was going to mention time, but I was afraid of adding additional confusion,

so I just stuck with the free will and ethical implications.

[RandomThoughts]

2. An all Powerful Omnipotent entity,

could also choose to limit his own knowledge at any time.

Although nobody knows the mysteries of God.


It just sorta makes sense.

[dmallind]

3. I think you are talking mnore about omniscience, but the point stands

It's very simple. A creator deity who knows everything and can do anything obviously mapped out the destiny of every single atom in his creation before it was created. Because if he did not, he either lacked the knowledge of what would happen or lacked the power to change it (or of course, intended it to be exactly as it is/was/will be).

Any such deity completely destroys the concept of free will and human ability to determine our own fate (including salvation).

[ZombieHorde]

7. You are right, I should go back and change my wording to avoid confusion. nt

[Deep13]

8. Actually, the god of the Pentateuch acts more like a pagan diety...

...than the god of Christianity. He is jealous, wrathful, has a human form (as noted in the burning bush story), is irrational and is primarily concerned with micromanaging the lives of the inhabitants of the geocentric universe and with his own vain glorification. That god does not act omniscient.

[Newest Reality]

13. That which exists, to my knowledge

occurs simultaneously in space and time as we understand it. The two are inseparable, except by pure abstraction - our predilection.

If what is actually an abstraction drawn by the propensities of the mind to extrapolate and imagine, is considered to exist, then where does it do so in any demonstrable way?

Considering that the layer of thought and ideas we utilize to represent symbolic containers for experience is like the skin of a soap bubble that contains the same amount of substance that said bubble does, how can we lay much credence on philosophical considerations of omniscient, etc.? Can we consider the speculation about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin valid today?

Every organism's experience of what is is an abstraction, so it is not just human nature to do so. However, we are a species that can project our ideas and thoughts outwards with the hopes and belief that they are real, (or even more real) than our more concrete, (yet subject to interpretation) sensory experiences or our interactions with matter.

It is quite possible that our reason and logic and the degrees of abstraction that are necessary for human cultures and our ability to bind time and project it across generations does not correspond very accurately from actuality, (vs. reality). We tend to be so embedded in our own cultural Gestalts that to see it for what it is and understand it would be like trying to describe what water is to a fish. Therefore, we can put great credence on our interpretations and ideas as if they are actually so, while never seeing the sheer absurdity of their artificial nature, e. g., notions of gods, infinity, omniscience, etc. The higher the level of abstraction the more inclusive it is, yet the more vague it becomes. Note also that more money is made as the work itself becomes more abstract; it is a fascinating game.

There are many forms of intriguing, fascinating fairy tales to amuse, captivate and confuse us, but they tend to fall into an infinite regress when carefully considered. However, the mind is purely a oneupmanship device, despite all the nobility and value it ascribes to itself, so that queues-up the next mind to refute this missive with a punitive valor or to underscore its salient points in with greater panache and exhibitions of wisdom.

[damntexdem]

15. It would appear to be a really, really boring existence.

I'd guess that a formerly-omniscient god would invent free will just to create the possibility of surprise.

;-)

[trotsky]

20. Basically, ANY characteristics that are assigned to a god...

become absurd if you really think it through.

[laconicsax]

21. Only if you can think beyond the childish mindsets that spawned them. n/t

[trotsky]

23. Or just come up with a deep-sounding yet ultimately meaningless "grown-up" answer.

Such as "we cannot possibly comprehend god's nature". There! You're off the hook! (Just rest assured that oh yes, we absolutely CAN comprehend god's nature when we think about the things we like, such as sacrifice, selflessness, morality, etc. Don't think about the double standard too much!)

[laconicsax]

24. I think that expression simply speaks to people's ability to contradict themselves mid-sentence.

"God's true nature is incomprehensible, but that sure doesn't stop me from making absolute statements about it." Or, "It's impossible to know for sure if God exists, but I know that he does."

[humblebum]

32. Even as absurd as, "If I can't see it, hear it, smell it, taste it ,or touch it,

then it doesn't exist"?

[trotsky]

44. That would be a pretty absurd argument.

Which is why no atheist I know has ever made it.

[humblebum]

47. Actually, it's called 'empiricism' and many an argument has

been based upon it.

[trotsky]

49. No, that would be your strawman version of empiricism.

Sorry.

[humblebum]

52. Actually, that is the exact definition. If there are other recognized

senses in humans, then by all means name them. Otherwise, observation and experiential learning can only be conducted by those five. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

[trotsky]

53. No, it's your strawman definition.

Sorry again.

[humblebum]

54. Um, I believe you are the one who is attempting to say

what type of reasoning is absurd.

[jdp349]

50. I think you misunderstand

in the absence of sensory data that can be analyzed to determine the existence or nonexistence of something it is not claimed that it does not exist but rather we treat it as though it doesn't exist because there is no compelling reason to suspect that it does exist.

[humblebum]

51. Some have your POV, some do not. You are also defining

logical positivism (logical empiricism), which adds rationalism to the mix. Empiricism is what can be sensed - nothing more, nothing less.

[Jim__]

22. Have you read Eriugena?

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#3):

Periphyseon Book One examines the first division, God
understood as a transcendent One above, and yet cause of, all creation. God
transcends everything; He is, following Pseudo-Dionysius, the ‘negation of
all things’ (negatio omnium, III.686d). According to Eriugena — who in this
respect is following a tradition which includes Augustine and Boethius as
well as Dionysius and other Greek authors — the Aristotelian categories are
considered to describe only the created world and do not properly apply to
God (I.463d). God cannot ‘literally’ (proprie) be said to be substance
or essence (ousia, essentia), nor can He be described in terms of quantity,
quality, relation, place or time. He is “superessentialis” (I.459d), a
term which, for Eriugena, belongs more to negative theology than to
affirmative. His ‘being’ is ‘beyond being’. Eriugena particularly admires a
Dionysian saying from the Celestial Hierarchy (CH iv 1; PG III.177d1-2): to
gar einai panton estin he hyper to einai theotes (‘for the being of all
things is the Divinity above being’, III.686d) which he translates as esse
omnium est superesse divinitatis, (‘the being of all things is the
super-being of divinity’, III.686d, I.443b; see also I.516c; III.644b,
V.903c). This is perhaps Eriugena's favourite phrase from Dionysius.
(Indeed Maximus Confessor had also commented on it in I Ambigua xiii,
Patrologia Graeca XCI 1225D, a passage well known to Eriugena who
translated the Ambigua.) Sometimes, instead of invoking the Dionysian
formula superesse divinitatis, Eriugena speaks of the ‘divine
superessentiality’ (divina superessentialitas, III.634b), or — quoting
Divine Names I 1-2 (PG III 588b-cb) — of the ‘superessential and hidden
divinity’ (superessentialis et occulta divinitas, I.510b).


God is a ‘nothingness’ (nihilum) whose real essence is unknown to all
created beings, including the angels (447c). Indeed, Eriugena argues in a
radical manner, following Maximus Confessor, that God's nature is infinite
and uncircumscribable, such that He is unknown even to Himself, since He is
the ‘infinity of infinities’ and beyond all comprehension and
circumscription. In the Periphyseon, Eriugena repeats the position of the
De Praedestinatione that God does not know evil, and, in a genuine sense,
God may be said not to know anything; his ignorance is the highest wisdom.

...

The main focus of the Second Book of the Periphyseon is an analysis of what
Eriugena terms ‘the Primary Causes’ (causae primordiales) which are the
patterns of all things located in the mind of God and function as the
timeless and unchanging causes of all created things. This doctrine
represents an eclectic combination of various earlier doctrines, including
the Platonic theory of Forms or ideai, Dionysius’ discussion of the divine
names, and Augustine's revival of the Stoic notion of eternal reasons
(rationes aeternae).

God's mind, understood as the logos or verbum, contains in one undivided
Form all the reasons for every individual thing. These reasons (rationes,
logoi) are productive of the things of which they are the reasons. Their
number is infinite and none has priority over the other, e.g., Being is not
prior to Goodness, or vice-versa. Each is a divine theophany, a way in
which the divine nature is manifested. The very nature of these Causes is
to flow out from themselves, bringing about their Effects. This
‘outflowing’ (proodos; processio, exitus) creates the whole universe from
the highest genus to the lowest species and ‘individuals’ (atoma). In his
understanding of this causal procession, Eriugena accepts Neoplatonic
principles: like produces like; incorporeal causes produce incorporeal
effects; an eternal cause produces an eternal effect. Since the causes are
immaterial, intellectual and eternal, so their created effects are
essentially incorporeal, immaterial, intellectual, and eternal. Eriugena,
however, thinks of cause and effect as mutually dependent, relative terms
(V 910d-912b): a cause is not a cause unless it produces an effect, an
effect is always the effect of a cause.

He seems to agree with you, at least somewhat. When we (people) try to understand the origin
of existence, we are like monkeys trying to work a calculus problem.

[dmallind]

30. Whihc is actually a good starting point for ineffability

If this god cannot be described or understood in any meaningful way by limited humanity, how can we say anything true about him at all? How can we know or even believe that we are correct in saying God is beneficent or just, or even involved with humanity in any way if he cannot be understood at all by humans?

[Jim__]

34. Existence itself may be ineffable.

That does not mean we (some of us, anyway) are not curious about it nor does it mean we are wrong to make our best effort to understand it. Eriugena was both a theologian and a philosopher. I believe that he accepted Christianity.

Even if we cannot resolve the question of the nature of existence, we may be able to break it down to a series of possible alternatives. Then, we may be able to eliminate some alternatives through testing. An irresolvable question is not necessarily impervious to progress.

[dmallind]

35. So how do we say anything about God?

Let's stick to that question rather than introducing alternatives which may also be ineffable. The difference of course is that existence is immanent in many ways which can be measured, and God is not. That aside, the question is about gods here, not existence.

How can we say "God is X" with the almost inveitable problem that any god worthy of the name must be completely beyond our understanding or even potential understanding?

[Jim__]

37. Eriugena had a lot to say. - n/t

[dmallind]

39. And how do we know it was or is true

There is a simple contradiction to deal with - the idea of an entity beyond our understanding - almost infinitely so - about which we presume to make statements. How do we do that?

[Jim__]

43. Eriugena reasoned to the conclusion that we cannot know about god.

My guess is that other people disagree with him. If I'm interested in the question, my approach is to read as much as I can about what research has been done on it, and then, if I can, take it further on my own. At the beginning of research, we don't know the truth. To reach a conclusion that the truth is unknowable is significant progress. But, even to accept someone else's conclusion on that, you have to read and research what they've said.

[dmallind]

45. This isn't really a research issue

It's argument from first principles - an entirely inductive approach. We can certainly read the thoughts of others who have attempted to consider the issue if we choose, but this is not really a question where heuristics will be much help. It's very possible to simply consider the issue from initial premises.

So if we have any putative phenomenon where empirical observation is impossible, and which is given the two attributes of being beyond our understanding and being transcendent, how do we even try to make further statements about it?

[Jim__]

46. I include reading under research, and by read and research I mean validate what you've read.

Certainly Eriugena has reached certain conclusions about god not being knowablee in the normal human terms in the first part of Periphyseon and yet he continues to reason about him in the second part of the book. It is somewhat disingenuous to claim that his conclusions in the first part obviate any further reasoning, and then ignore the fact that he continues to reason on this issue - you at least have to identify his error. Eriugena is a well-respected philosopher and theologian. I have not read anyone who claims his reasoning in Periphyseon was self-refuting.

[uberllama42]

25. Omniscience and omnipotence are incoherent concepts

which is one of the main reasons I don't believe in God. I think people who claim to know important information about a being that is, by their account, beyond human comprehension are being silly and contradicting themselves.

[struggle4progress]

38. A: "Whoa! If I talk this way, I produce nonsensical statements and contradictions!"

B: "Well, then, don't talk that way"
A: "Umm ... My point is that you shouldn't talk this way"
B: "I didn't talk that way. You did"

[dmallind]

41. So are you saying that only nobelievers claim an omniscient god? Really? NT

[ZombieHorde]

48. My OP was not created to call you out, my OP was just meant to be

a fun logic exercise inspired by various claims of an omniscient God.