Does omnipotence necessitate omniscience?

If you're omnipotent, you can do anything, and find anything out.

So, if you're omnipotent and not omniscient, you're willfully ignorant, which is the worst kind of boorish asshole.

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Just because One CAN do something, does not necessitate that He MUST do so.

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real life wrote:

Just because One CAN do something, does not necessitate that He MUST do so.

But the ability to do anything implies the ability to know everything. And you can't selectively eliminate knowledge and still know everything. Paradoxes abound.

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To possess 'ability' does not mean one must exercise it.

You are 'able' to walk down the hall and look in your closet. Does this mean you must do so?

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Perhaps the answer lies in the question 'are all gods equal' as the question suggest, to me, varying levels of 'power' .... so to speak.

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Ya, not goin' on this merry go round ride again...

But in all seriousness Neo, at least you try to rationalize the bible into making some sort of, albeit elastic and exegetical, sense.
This puts you a farsight ahead, in my opinion, of those that believe totally blindly with complete disregard for logical process. By 'those', of course, I mean the vast majority of the believers in your particular theos.

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Agreed Doktor. At least you can argue logically with Neo.

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Eorl wrote:

One cannot be omnipotent if one is not also omniscient, and therein lies the paradox.

There is a hypothesis to your argumentation: God does everything according to the logic. But if He is really a omnipotent God, he must go beyond logic. And that's exactly where we need belief, and not just think it as something reasonable.

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Which is like saying " but he's magic.....nah nah naaaahhh"

Saying you need belief when logic fails is the same as saying "I know I'm wrong, but I'm going with it because I want to, for other reasons"

(See my tag line)

Welcome to A2K Smile

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Eorl wrote:

Which is like saying " but he's magic.....nah nah naaaahhh"

Saying you need belief when logic fails is the same as saying "I know I'm wrong, but I'm going with it because I want to, for other reasons"

(See my tag line)

Welcome to A2K

Thank you.hehe
What I am trying to say is, as long as it's not been proved wrong, we tend to believe it. But you will never be able to prove it right.

If by logical ways one can't infer that the function of logic itself is limited, then it's not logical.

BTW, I believe the suppernatural miracles done by God like the resurrection of Juses Christ.

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I guess the question that one must ask, if he seeks to 'logically' approach God:

Are you vain enough to believe that if God exists, then you should be able to understand everything He does?

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You would think that if God is running the show, he could decide for himself what he wishes to discover.

He is under no more compulsion to know the every eventuality than you or I are to read the last page of the whodunit.

We could not lay claim to free will if it were otherwise.

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Neo, he is only under that compulsion if he wishes to claim omnipotence.

real life, it's not about vanity.... there would be no logical paradox if one were claiming a semipotent semiscient (?) god.

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Vanity is the point, if you think that finite can grasp Infinite.

History is filled with examples of things that 'weren't logical' turning out to be true as mankind learned a thing or two.

Do you think there's anything left to learn, or have we got it all now?

You can say, 'God can't be "X" because that's not logical' . All you are revealing is your vanity.

Why would an Omnipotent God be REQUIRED to do every single thing He is capable of doing?

Are you FORCED by your ability to do something , to perform that very act? Just because you 'can' slice the tires on your car, does that mean you 'must'?

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not a valid analogy.

The point is being made that god lacks the power to prevent a tsunami due to his self imposed ignorance.....or he lacks the power to know about the tsunami (not omniscient, and therefore not omnipotent) or there's the option that he knows and can prevent it but chooses not to. (and aCcording to the available evidence has chosen not to do anything, ever).

Your vanity argument is just an excuse for laziness, an excuse not to have to deal with the consequences of your ridiculous god-claim.

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Funny how all the answers fit if god is considered under the premise of exsisting as a subjective metaphor based on objective events.

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Eorl wrote:

not a valid analogy.

The point is being made that god lacks the power to prevent a tsunami due to his self imposed ignorance.....or he lacks the power to know about the tsunami (not omniscient, and therefore not omnipotent) or there's the option that he knows and can prevent it but chooses not to. (and aCcording to the available evidence has chosen not to do anything, ever).

Your vanity argument is just an excuse for laziness, an excuse not to have to deal with the consequences of your ridiculous god-claim.

Very few things actually make sense in religion, therefore the whole "faith" thing. It's kinda like this:
"Listen, I know that none of this makes any sense whatsoever... but you'll just have to bear with me - have faith and leave the thinking to god!"
The scary thing is that most religions makes the same statement, and most of their claims contradict each other... Somebody's gotta be wrong...

Anyway, back to omniscience...
I don't think we can all agree on how it should be looked at in the first place (and in what context it's attributed to god). I guess it all comes down to how it's defined:
You ALREADY know everything and can't help it - all past, present, and future knowledge is already part of you, it's who you are.
OR
You have the ABILITY to know everything, and can selectively deal with this ability.

Nature vs. Ability.

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real life wrote:

To possess 'ability' does not mean one must exercise it.

You are 'able' to walk down the hall and look in your closet. Does this mean you must do so?

Your analogy is inaccurate because you are only talking about limited abilities, not omnipotence or omniscience. Omniscience leaves no quarter for partial knowedge, even by choice.

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real life wrote:

I guess the question that one must ask, if he seeks to 'logically' approach God:

Are you vain enough to believe that if God exists, then you should be able to understand everything He does?

We don't have to understand god to understand a paradox. In this case we need look no further than the word Omniscient to reveal the problem with selective knowledge; gods or not.

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real life wrote:

Vanity is the point, if you think that finite can grasp Infinite.

With that kind of view, why would you ever bother to think about anything at all. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you just believe whatever you want to believe and that's the bottom line. But in some ways you seem too smart for that.

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Does omnipotence necessitate omniscience?

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