Thoughts upon Omniscience

[Modred]

In Christian thought, it is generally accepted that God has three main attributes that describe his power. Ominpresence-being everywhere, omnipotent-having no limit to his authority, and omniscience-knowing all knowledge. Apparently, a large number of people believe that this means that God knows what the future holds.

It seems to me that only three main paths of thought can be arrived at if it is to be believed that such a power is possible:

1)God simply knows everything because he is God. End of story. Don't think, just believe. You don't neat to rationalize, you don't need logic. Such a simple idea seems destructive to me. Humans always want to know more. Using this thought structure turns into nothing more than a way to brainwash and standardise superstitous or lazy persons. Since I am very little of either, I don't see validity in this option.

2)God knows everything that can and will ever happen and nothing can variate from that plan. This leads to the belief of predestination. If it is guaranteed that a person will make a certain decision that leads them to either heaven or hell, then there is no such thing as free will, only luck. Thus Christianity has nothing special to offer and is nothing more than another religion of "work hard, pray hard, and hope you get lucky when you die."

3)God knows every possible scenario that could occur for all time based upon what decisions people could make. According to this idea, God knows everything that could happen, and at least one such history will occur, meaning that he knew what would happen. This preserves free will, however could be construed to mean that God doesn't know everything that will happen, he only knows what could happen.

While I find #3 to be the most logical, I find that none of them fit exactly with the Bible.

What are your thoughts? Am I opening Pandora's Box, or simply questioning things in an innocent pursuit of more knowledge?

No flaming of religion, please.

[ShawnManX]

God exsists out side of time.

I like to think of it like a person resting beside a stream, even thoguh the stream sometimes floods, and sometimes dries up to a trickle it all the water flows to the same spot eventually.

[Ender]

Well... (this is a WONDERFUL topic by the way, I see lots of deep discussion ahead) I'm an agnostic. I'm open to the fact that there could be a "higher power" as it were, but right now, I don't see one that fits. I don't think people who believe in religion or anything are stupid or moronic or other such things: they just have a different belief. So what?

Personally, I do not like the fact of predestination. I want to be in control of myself. Otherwise, what's the point? The only one of your options that makes sense to me is the third. It allows free will, and yet God remains "omniscient." If anyone has ever read the book Timeline by Michael Crichton (sp?) they say that they aren't actually going back in time, but they found a wormhole to an alternate dimension, created by someone making a different decision than they did in another dimension. That decision could be as insignificant as eating a grape, or not eating a grape; or as important as killing someone or not killing someone. Because of this belief, that each decision creates a whole new universe of possibilities, and then each of those "spawn" universes has decisions that create even more "spawn" universes...well, there are infinite possibilities. This seems to make sense to be. I don't believe that that is how things are, but it makes more sense to me than having one set way for the world to come out, and we can't do anything about it.

[Nuts]

A quest for knowledge of this sort is futile as there is no conceivable method to verify your hypothesis. There are great numbers of possibilities within your grasp and an infinte number of possibilites that are far beyond your comprehension. If there is a God (note: I am an atheist) then your perception of such a being is bound by your current reality. Life after death cannot be bound by those rules, period.

[pixels]

Nuts is right. It all depends on your definition of reality. There are infinite definitions of reality; I'm sure each individual person has their own views. I'm not much of a religion person ;)

[Modred]

A quest for knowledge of this sort is futile as there is no conceivable method to verify your hypothesis. There are great numbers of possibilities within your grasp and an infinte number of possibilites that are far beyond your comprehension. If there is a God (note: I am an atheist) then your perception of such a being is bound by your current reality. Life after death cannot be bound by those rules, period.

While I see what you are saying, I don't think you really addressed the topic.

I used the example of God because that is what first made me think of the topic. Strange, the things that I think about at church.

In essence, I was asking a hypothetical question that "If such a power were possible, what is your philosophy on how it would work?"

As to what EnderWiggin said, I find what you said to be interesting. I've heard similar theories before, and it does seem to work well with my third option. I find myself leaning more to the third one, for the same reasons that you stated. That vaguely resembles Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five as well...another story behind my connection to that...

God exsists out side of time.

I like to think of it like a person resting beside a stream, even thoguh the stream sometimes floods, and sometimes dries up to a trickle it all the water flows to the same spot eventually.

As for your reference to time, I understand the stream simile. However, simply being outside of time does not account for a difference caused by one decision made in the past. To say that God knows everything that can happen because he can step away and see time from beginning to end means that everything we can and ever will do is already decided. We have no choice in the matter. There are strong tendencies in the Bible to show that God gives humans free will to either accept him or deny him. Logically, this free will extends to all other things. Thus, it would make sense that while God can see everything in perspective, the scene would always be changing as "time" moved along. Sort of like a long piece of sheet music, and "time" is the current note, and time ends at the end of the song, only the players can change what notes there are along the way, eventually changing the song.

Thus, I return to my question of how omniscience would work. Does he just know everything? Or does he know every possibility and follows with what happens, knowing the end for each possible combination?

[hammocksleeper]

A quest for knowledge of this sort is futile as there is no conceivable method to verify your hypothesis. There are great numbers of possibilities within your grasp and an infinte number of possibilites that are far beyond your comprehension. If there is a God (note: I am an atheist) then your perception of such a being is bound by your current reality. Life after death cannot be bound by those rules, period.I don't really think this is a thread about the question of the existence of a god, but according to your logic, how dare you make such a bold statement as "I am an atheist" (not that pronouncing oneself a theist isn't equally as bold)? What method did you use to "verify your hypothesis"?


Anyways, Modred, I sort of get at what you are asking, and I guess #3 seems more reasonable, but one think I cannot understand is the difference between God "just knowing" everything, and God knowing "every possibility and follows with what happens, knowing the end for each possible combination." Aren't these two the same thing? It's not clear to me what you mean.

[xjudicator]

First of all, I am a Christian and believe in the existence of God. My mind is set on this and I don't doubt it, not just because I am blindly following Christian beliefs, but I am following what I believe to be truth. To me the existence of God, the God, is fact.
Other theories of creation and/or other events may sound logical or even be logical, but the fact that something came from nothing troubles me. I think that it actually defies physics. They claim that there was an explosion from gases, but then where did those gases come from?! No matter how you get around it there has to be some spark; something that the physics of this world don't or won't apply to. That is why I believe that God exists.

Now on to the omni's. I believe that God is almighty, all-seeing, and all-knowing. By all-knoing, I mean he knows everthing that happened, is happening, and will happen. He knows what you will do and what you should do you do choose your destiny, but no matter what he knows the outcome. And this doesn't mean that everything is predestined, but it means that everything done has a witness.

[Modred]

Anyways, Modred, I sort of get at what you are asking, and I guess #3 seems more reasonable, but one think I cannot understand is the difference between God "just knowing" everything, and God knowing "every possibility and follows with what happens, knowing the end for each possible combination." Aren't these two the same thing? It's not clear to me what you mean.

What I was attempting to differentiate between was that "God knows everything and thus everyting follows a set path" or "God knows everything that could be and thus things are not on a set path."

but no matter what he knows the outcome

And that is the point of this thread. How does he know? I'm not expecting to ever get a solid answer, short of asking God himself (and I doubt he would tell me, at least while I'm still alive), just attempting to make you think.

[KesTrel]

I say this as one individual from another.

Regardless of what you belive, the universe is here, you are here along with myself and around 5 billion plus other individuals currently on our little space ship earth. What ever reason that might be. You still maintain this, you can think independently. You have total autonomy of thought, unless for some reason or another you choose to surrender that. You as an individual have the right to seek understanding and verification of anything you can imagien or ponder really. I think its a great thing that you are considering this.

Its said that god formed us in his image. Yet its also said god has no face because he exsist as a spirit. (Unless you refer to catholic changes in the bible which say that god came down to earth accompnied not by angels but by men. Then god was simply refered to as a man. Nice, changing)
Anyways, you should consider what would the purpose of making man be ? I may be getting ahead of myself, because for god, who is if we are in his image, an individual intellect. Then it takes great intellect and knowlege to create an atom for example. Can you imagen what it takes to create an atom ? Then use these atoms properly with other things such as electrons (which by the way scientist [here on earth]do not understand fully either especially electrons. ) to use these to create a plant, an animal, or even a complex human body. The human body is a magnificient ajointment of matter, would you not agree? So we can establish that this is a truly great intellect to alone bring about the beggining of a universe. However, again what is the pourpose for creating other intelligent intellects?
In the image of yourself? (Keep in mind monkeys, dogs, zebras, birds,ect animals can make choices but do not have the INTELLIGENCE the ability to understand things such as we do. They are of limited intelligence. They may be able to comprehend this and that and such but are no where near as advanced as us, would you not agree ? ) Do you think that this invididual (God, the Great intellect what ever you call them) would create this intellect to annoy them ? Possibly to make an enemy, would that be intelligent ? The only reason to create another intellect is for intelligent, exchange of high feelings. Enjoyment, possibly if you have ever been lonely you can imagen being the only existable thing in nothingness (which is quite hard to consider, but worth a moment of thought) can you see a need for wanting to experince love ? Please also consider whats needed for love, which would make this essay extreemly long, needless to say if you want love, you can recive it from less advanced individual's however coming from a near equal is the ultimate enjoyment.

Now, can you imagen desining a universe? I mean, you're not going to create kids and have them learn in the dark are you? Now, you would not want to interfer either so as not to place limits on them. So you would have to create a universe where there is feedback meaning concequences and all that fun stuff. A universe a good learning enviorment for diffrent stages of development,ect,ect.
A universe that is self correcting, in a sence. However, how can one love one that they cannot see ?
Nature is a good example, most people love nature, its a simple manifestation of creators intelligence.

Now, thats a little much right now however after much condideration there is logic there. Just remeber disipite how many billions of people disagree with something the universe is well established. Even if you choose to belive in something it will not change the actual truth of the universe.


as for Omnipotent

If the creator (I don't like the term god myself ) were to make a rock that could not be moved. If the creator could move the rock, then they are not omnipotent. If they make a rock that cannot be moved, yet they can not move it then they are not onmipotent.

So on thats just one example. But I say this, beliving is more dangerous than anything. You are an individual, you have a great chance to verify things for yourself. You are here on earth thats a great challange, but I am sure you can make the choice to either care or not care about such an important topic. Caring is one thing, verficiation to prove certin aspects TO YOURSELF is you're choice. How far do you want to go in the universe, do you think that the creator put a limit on you're intelligence?

Would you if you could create every aspect of you're child create one which did not have the potential to become you're equal ? If not then you're child would be a vertible retard in comparison.

I look forward to discussion further with anyone about the topic, forums like this are good for making eachother think about such things. Thinking is an importan in the process to verify something.


Additoin: We know mabey 1% - 2% of what the great creator has learned. When I say hes more intelligent thats a understatement :p You see, the way you precive things is based upon what you understand. We surly precive time here diffrently. It is relative to our current level of understanding.

I am not a member of any religon. I do not want to bash you if you are either. I am simply going to go about my life as an individual, I respect you, I am going to try to verify many things. I wont accept "belifs" however. :D