All Knowing God proves problematic

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The subject of omniescience is all that can be known. If something has a nature that makes it impossible to be known, it can not be included in omniscience. Since a free choice, that results from the faculty of free will is not a priory knowble, it does not pertain to the omniscience realm.

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A cogent, clear resolution to the contradiction. Of course, it depends on a certain definition of omniscience. Do you have any evidence that your definition is the one that people of faith use when they are talking about an omniscient god?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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A cogent, clear resolution to the contradiction. Of course, it depends on a certain definition of omniscience. Do you have any evidence that your definition is the one that people of faith use when they are talking about an omniscient god?

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The population of people of faith is not uniform. I only can say that I am in a section of this people that uses this definition.
This is a quotation from wikipedia, on the subject of omniscience:

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It is not possible for God to know the result of a free human choice. Omniscience should therefore be interpreted to mean "knowledge of everything that can be known".

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The population of people of faith is not uniform.

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Granted.

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I only can say that I am in a section of this people that uses this definition.

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And I acknowledge that there are those who take this approach. Would you acknowledge that there are those who do not? That some, perhaps most, instead hold the seemingly contradictory view that is the subject of this thread?This dichotomy of views raises the following question: which of the views is more consistent with the bible's description of god as omniscient?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

You can't, as you make clear later in your post when you ask how one would tell the difference between no God and an omniscient God. The fact that signals are traveling down nerve paths and firing synapses that set the "I am exercising my will free will" bit in your brain doesn't mean that you actually are, and there's no way that we could ever tell if we actually are or not. As residents inside this hypothetical universe we don't have access to this information.What it really comes down to is how you can know something in the absence of any evidence. Are you exercising your free will as you read this sentence, or are you just a collection of matter behaving in a manner in which it has no choice.And that's the ultimate implication of omniscience. If it is possible in a given universe to *know* (not predict) what will happen, then all events in that universe have no choice but to happen, which means no free will. Even the firing synapses that cause you to experience free will have no choice.This is why the tests you proposed for detecting whether or not an omniscient God exists are inadequate. Perhaps such tests from within the universe exist, but my bet is against it. You ask, "If it's so mutually exclusive, why are you unable to show me how they are different?" and it's because these are hypotheticals, not scenarios drawn from reality. How could anyone ever devise a real-world test for an imaginary world? What real-world test could you devise to determine who would win a battle between Snape and Harry Potter? It's the nature of such things to generate endless discussion and few if any unquestioned answers. That you made a decision is an illusion. It's just the word we use when the synapses in one's brain fire in a certain pattern. You can call it a decision if you want, but it certainly isn't free will, because the synapses in your brain had no choice but to fire in the pattern they did and render the decision you made.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Omniscience means knowing everything. There are no qualifiers.If someone wants to start a thread where they define omniscience with qualifiers that would be fine with me, but that's not how this thread started. This is from the opening post: AbE: Also, there can only be a debate about the contradictory natures of omniscience and free will if one defines omniscience as all-knowing. As soon as you qualify it as all-knowing of things that can be known, and explicitly state that free-will decisions by men cannot be known by God, then there's nothing to debate. I certainly agree that under this definition of omniscience that it can exist in the same universe as free will.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add AbE portion.Edited by Percy, : Spelling.Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Hi, PercyI think I understand what you’re saying. Omniscience can only exist in a universe that is completely deterministic, and free will is antithesis to determinism. Is this correct?Edited by Bluejay, : I just read your message about your power outage. I'm sorry to hear that, and I look forward to continuing our discussion when you get back online.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Forget determinism and all that philosophical mumble jumble. If god knows where you're going to end up (hell or heaven) and he's got the power to either do something about it or not make you exist at all if he knows you're going to hell, then god is anything but an all loving god. He created those of us who are hell-bound for the sole purpose of toruring us for an eternity. What the hell kind of narcissistic god is that?An all knowing god IS problematic! We literally have the worst character that have ever existed and will ever existed in the universe. We literally have a character that has a hard-on for torturing billions and billions of his own children for an eternity.

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And I acknowledge that there are those who take this approach. Would you acknowledge that there are those who do not? That some, perhaps most, instead hold the seemingly contradictory view that is the subject of this thread?

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It is clear that there are those who do not take the same approach, we can see some examples in this thread, but as to the size of each section, I will not venture any opinion.

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This dichotomy of views raises the following question: which of the views is more consistent with the bible's description of god as omniscient?

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I think this question would open a whole new subject. Nevertheless, I have to admit to you that, at the moment, I am not in an able position to answer it. But, as I consider that it is a very good question, I will do my homework for a future accasion. I have also to say, that regarding the Bible, i am not at all literallist.

I agree that you may continue the debate with those that admit that God knows beforehand what our free decissions will be.

This is to Chessmaster as well... I still do not believe you. I do not think you've shown that what you say is actually true. I understand what you're talking about, but I do not think it's specifically shown at all. I think you're jumping to some conclusions.However, I am at a loss to articulate how I think such, or even what it is I think you're missing, so I will concede this discussion (but not change my mind... if that makes any difference to you )The final thing I will say is this:I totally agree with you that Free Will is removed given an omniscient being who *knows* all outcomes and who also created the universe.However, I do not agree that omniscience in itself is not enough to remove Free Will. I think that an omniscient being who did not create the universe yet only observes it, beyond time (somehow...), does not interfere with Free Will. Since such a being would be 'outside of time', it is not necessary that He *knows* such things "before" we decide them. "Before" has no meaning to the being and situation I'm thinking of. And it's certainly possible for such a being that our decision comes "before" He *knows* about it. Very backwards indeed to our time-restricted thinking, however an omniscient being, outside of time, would not be restricted in this same manner. And neither would these restrictions necessarily be reflected back onto our existence.I fully concede that my added restriction (the omniscient being did not create the universe) likely should have been assumed the other way around in our conversation since I did not specify it at any time, and it is the 'classical' way to think about such things that an omniscient being would be the creator of this universe as well.Of course, with an omniscient being... perhaps one could create a universe in such a way that one did not 'set-up' the deterministic nature and therefore Free Will can still exist even if created by the same being. But... these are just random thoughts now, and I think I'm finished with this discussion.That's all I got Thanks for the ideas.

Agreed.Just having a little fun with a thought exercise, that's all.Of course, the nice thing letting God off the hook for all this torture and knowledge is that He doesn't exist

Gee, I wish I had said it that way, that's much more clear.Power is still out, we're coping fine. The only impact on the website is that if it experiences a technical problem during this period, I won't be able to fix it.--Percy

Hi, Percy.Now that I've had a couple days to think about it, I realize that this topic is a bit over my head. I'm not sure I fully agree that knowledge of the future can only exist under conditions of determinism, but I lack the technical expertise to make a case out of it.To me, limitless intelligence (if not "knowledge" per se) and familiarity with the players (His creations) would give God the capacity to predict the future with 100% accuracy, even if He couldn't directly observe the future as it will play out. I argue that the difference between this and "true" knowledge would be largely academic (even though it would technically still mean that I lost the debate).You'd also have to consider the possibility of God's universe existing outside of ours and thus, having a totally different set of rules where logic works differently, but, for the sake of not turning myself into an obstinate, apologist prick, I'll let somebody else try their luck with that.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

This has only one inherent problem - you have to define what to "exist" means and you can't use science for that. Your only hope is philosophy but no matter how much stuff you read, there is no clear cut answer at all. But even if imagine there were such an explanation, you still have not provided information where god does not exist - in your house, at school, in Paris, in the obervable universe? If all of these, then yes - i agree, there is no evidence that there is god in any of those places. But did you really expect to find god somewhere - like in the street or at the mall or in the laboratory?

No, I did not expect to find God anywhere. Because He doesn't exist. I don't use science to define words, I use english like this:

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Exist
-to have real being whether material or spiritual

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God doesn't exist in exactly the same way that all other purely imaginary ideas do not exist. There is no evidence for them in reality.But to continue this converstaion, you may want to read through this thread:
Message 1Edited by Stile, : Added link to other thread