Omniscience

I do believe that God has foreknowledge of everything. However, I do not believe that just because of that, He actually causes the outcome.

Nice to see you Neo!

I believe that poofism is a cancer in the body social . . . but, then, you knew that.

PPLPPL!

bm

Well, let's put it this way, God's omniscience kinda puts some logical contradictions in place if you also believe he is a Kind and caring father.

If he could see everything, then how was it possible that he didn't know Adam and Eve had ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? (What is the original Aramaic name? I'm sure it must be shorter than the English version).

If he knew everything, surely, he would have known that they'd eat from the Tree, so if he didn't really want them to eat from it he wouldn't have placed it in an easy to get to position?

Furthermore if he knew they would eat it and placed the Tree in a position where they would eat from it, surely exacting any punishment against Adam and Eve is unfair?

These are to name some theoretical examples.

Exactly, Wolf.

But do you take this as proof that a loving God cannot exist or do you aver that the true God must not be limited by the necessity of omniscience?

How were omniscience a limiting factor, unless you suggest that your god were playing games?

Does not the definition of the word imply necessity?

It would be like saying you must read the last page of the whodunit because you can.

No, not at all. Omniscience, by definition, means that you already know every word of the "whodunit."

God is not omniscient.

You've got one too many words, there, Boss . . . drop the last one.

Thus spake Setanta

I take it as proof of not only the former but also the opposite of the former.

It is "proof" (although scant un-empirical proof) that either a loving God as described by Christians does not exist or that the God as described by the Bible does not exist.

Either God is not omniscient or he is unusually cruel.

I would not say "unusually." After all, his cruelty as retailed in scripture simply represents the extent of the imagination of the men who wrote--although that cruelty may not have common, the thought of it were not unusual.

In retrospect, I see that you are right. Unusually is not the right word. Mankind is perfectly capable of the cruelty that God commits in the Bible.

I think a question that should be asked is - what would be the purpose of a god being "omniscient." I don't see what purpose it would serve unless it used it to change future happenings.

Omniscience as in a genuine knowledge of the future or as in a way of describing a hugely higher plane of thought/being? A state of being that is to us as we (maybe) are to the common ant for instance, the common ant which from our perspective acts as some kind of robot/droid, with little deviation from picking up object A, moving to area B, dropping object A, moving back to area A etc etc. This common ant that, again, we could manipulate and predict future actions with levels of success that go on to astound ant communities worldwide.

So God is "omniscient" in perspective only and he created us knowing with apparent certainty the kind of path we'd take with a hope/goal for our continued existence. Since perspective is everything though, altering this idea of an omniscient God possibly doesn't change much at all, except for making God's actions less personal (right word?). Comparing humans to ants is definitely the way to go then...

Omniscience means that God is not limited in knowledge.

I understand your point, Neo, that God need not exercise His omniscience. But that does not mean that He is not omniscient.

Compare this to omnipotence. God 'can' do anything He wishes to do. That doesn't mean that God 'must' do something simply because He can. But His restraint does not negate His omnipotence.

I think it's plausible to imagine a theoretical god who could be omniscient to the point of now while being clueless about tomorrow without negating his omniscience. (I'm pretty sure that's the one you got your money on ain't it neo?)

But then it's plausible to imagine a lot of things when you don't need to prove them true.