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r/DebateReligion•
MatrixExponential

Are omniscience and omnipotence contradictory properties

First, for the sake of argument, assume there is an omniscient being (mind, spirit, robot, God...whatever). Let's call it The Mind, for short (and to remove the argument slightly from other preconceived notions and properties one might typically attribute to God).

Now, by definition of omniscience, The Mind knows all things in every detail. Thus, all things exist within The Mind, in the form of information.

Now my first premise is that there is no (practical) distinction from these things existing within The Mind and existing outside of The Mind, since both entail the same level of detail, the same objects carrying out the same actions with the same consequences, etc.

Assuming the validity of this premise, then in what way could The Mind be considered omnipotent? All things that can be known are known to it, with no ability to affect them. All conceivable universes exist within The Mind, unchangeable, because The Mind must imagine them by virtue of being omniscient.

Thoughts? What flaws do you see in this reasoning? Rebuttals to the premise that there is no difference between a perfectly imagined thing and the thing itself?

Posted Jan 6, 2013, 4:36 AM UTC

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mynunameex-atheist Christian•

I know I am not answering your question, but I do not like to consider any "onmi's" when talking about God. I do not think that God is omni-anything when considered in this infinite logical sense. It only serves to form silly logical paradoxes.

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samreayatheist | BSc - Cosmology | Batman•

Which is why the poster phrased things in terms of "The Mind" and not "God", so we could examine the logical problem presented without arguing the semantics of God.

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MatrixExponentialOPagnostic atheist•

Yes, that is the essence of my reasoning, that most (if not all) "omnis" lead to an inherent inconsistency. However, I would wager the vast majority of the religious would disagree (insofar as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence are often espoused as foundational to the definition of God).

So, if not in an infinite logical sense, then in what sense do you find "omnis" appropriate?

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Pinkfish_411questions whether reality is real•

The problem is that most of the lay debate about God's "omni" attributes really misses the point of how they function in classical theology/philosophy. Classical theism speaks of God as maximally perfect, but there's a recognition that maximal perfection cannot be self-contradictory, so there's no commitment to purely abstract notions of omnipotence, omniscience, etc Of course God's power and knowledge have to cohere with each other, so if one conception of God's power contradicted a conception of God's knowledge, then at least one has to be wrong. This isn't some kind of evidence against God or evidence against God's being maximally perfect; it's an attempt to figure out what maximal perfection concretely means. The problem though is that many laypeople seem to think that theism has some abstract commitment to attributes like omnipotence and omniscience, understood without qualification, and so if there's any apparent contradiction between them, that's seen as some kind of disproof of the notions themselves. But many of these supposed disproofs are already debates that have taken place within theism and have ended up shaping what classical theists actually say about God's attributes.

And then of course there's the fact that much of "classical theism" has increasingly fallen out of favor among probably most theologians and many philosophers of religion in contemporary, since it's come to be seen as a kind of abstraction from the biblical depiction of God, where God's "omnipotence" and "omniscience" are portrayed more as relational powers (the power to save) rather than abstract attributes of a maximally great being.

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mynunameex-atheist Christian•

I do not think that these omni's are real, and therefore they are only appropriate for semantic arguments.

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davasaurous•

Could you give an example of something God doesn't know?

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mynunameex-atheist Christian•

How to solve a logical paradox.

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hskiel4_12atheist•

How could he? We need to proof that god is omniscient, not the other way round

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MrSenorSan•

However that does not make sense.
For anything to be generally accepted as a god it needs to be Omni something.
Else that entity would not be a god just some highly technically advanced entity with a lot of power, but not a god as it would have limits.

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mynunameex-atheist Christian•

I don't accept your definition of a god. I don't think many religions would either.

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[deleted]•

I don't see your steps between The Mind's omniscience and The Mind's inability to change or affect anything.

I also don't see why you have concluded that The Mind's knowledge of all things means that all things exist within The Mind. Furthermore, what is the functional importance of this conclusion?

It seems that, underlying your reasoning, it may be that The Mind you have conceived exists within time. What do you think?

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kingpombaagnostic atheist•

Yeah, that first part isn't really clear to me either.

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theriverrat•

Recall Pine's Third Law: Each and every omni vs. omni battle eventually ends at: Paradoxical, ain't it?

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Pinkfish_411questions whether reality is real•

Except that's rarely the way it ends, except for laypeople who think they're supposed to believe in the "omni" attributes but have no idea why or what purpose those attributes served in classical philosophy.

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samreayatheist | BSc - Cosmology | Batman•

Now my first premise is that there is no (practical) distinction from these things existing within The Mind and existing outside of The Mind, since both entail the same level of detail, the same objects carrying out the same actions with the same consequences, etc.

I would say this premise is false.

For nothing that exists within the Mind can exist outside it. For example, the Mind can conceive the concept of me with 100% detail. This is categorically different to the actual me, as I am not a concept, I am a physical and material being.

Furthermore, one could argue that, being omniscient, the mind could imagine all possible ways it could interact with all possible things, therefore the statement "with no ability to affect them" necessarily becomes false.

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MatrixExponentialOPagnostic atheist•

I would say this premise is false. For nothing that exists within the Mind can exist outside it. For example, the Mind can conceive the concept of me with 100% detail. This is categorically different to the actual me, as I am not a concept, I am a physical and material being.

Categorically different, but what is the practical difference? If all of the atoms in the universe were replace by something else that behaved in the exact manner that all of the atoms in the universe would otherwise behave, what is the difference?

Furthermore, one could argue that, being omniscient, the mind could imagine all possible ways it could interact with all possible things, therefore the statement "with no ability to affect them" necessarily becomes false.

Not could imagine, must imagine (by definition). And The Mind must also imagine how all possible things would play out with no interaction. Therefore, all possibilities, both with and without interaction, must exist simultaneously and fixed.

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Evolutionofg•

Yes(answering your title) but in a different way. Imagine god knowing that he will snap his fingers in 30 seconds. The question is: Can he prevent himself from snapping his finger?

If yes: Then god has no free will/isn't omnpotent and is bound by his knowledge

If no: Then gods knowledge was wrong and he isn't omniscient

Theoretical bullshit actually explains it well

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Pinkfish_411questions whether reality is real•

This assumes that God makes discrete decisions to act within time. Most classical theists--the very ones who would care about God's "omni" attributes in the first place--do not hold that assumption, but speak of divine action as a single eternal act. The reason God will snap his fingers is that he's eternally decided to do so.

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Evolutionofg•

How can you make decisions 'outside of time' ?

What is meant by 'a single eternal act'?

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Pinkfish_411questions whether reality is real•

For most classical theists, it would be wrong to say that God makes a series of decisions over time, as if God first decides to make a world, then observes what happens in it and decides at various times along the path of history to interact with it in this or that way. If God knows all logical possibilities (the way all possible creatures would react in all possible circumstances, etc.), then God can posit all of history in one act, and decide in one decision how and when he will act in the actual world he chooses to create. The classical discussions of this sort of thing are really complex and would be hard to get across here, but they're also kind of beside the point.

The real point is this: if God knows he will snap his fingers in thirty seconds, it's not because he knows the future, it's because he has already decided to snap his fingers in thirty seconds, and God knows what he has already decided. God isn't somehow constrained by knowing the future, because the future is determined by God's choice, not the other way around.

The apparent contradiction between God's foreknowledge and God's freedom assumes a lot of things: it assumes that God is temporal, it seems to assume so-called "simple foreknowledge" (which almost no philosopher of religion or theologians holds), it assumes that divine freedom would have to some kind of libertarian freedom, and so on.

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wokeupabugreverend of the aeon worm•

The argument is bunk anyway, it abuses an ambiguity in the way we express the relation between willing and knowing the object of our will. We can use it to disprove our own agency as easily as god's: either you can't know you're going to will to finish reading this sentence or else you aren't free not to will to finish reading this sentence. But no one is convinced by this sophism.

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Evolutionofg•

The video itself was meant for christians, I don't know if the response would be more appropriate for them.

Thanks for clarifying!

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lanemikOnly here for the cake.•

I think the flaw is this

Now my first premise is that there is no (practical) distinction from these things existing within The Mind and existing outside of The Mind, since both entail the same level of detail, the same objects carrying out the same actions with the same consequences, etc.

I don't see why there shouldn't be a difference in existence within the mind of God and actual existence. Let's say a painter is conceiving his painting. A human painter does not know everything about the painting he is conceiving. But let's give the painter the god-like quality of knowing everything there is to know just with respect to the painting. He knows every bump, every ridge, every precise mixture of color, right down to the motion of every particle of that painting and every particle that is and will interact with that painting. And yet, the painting he conceives with such knowledge is not the actual painting. There is a difference. I don't see why that shouldn't be the case with God. In fact, it seems to me that this premise of yours is simply false.

But this might bring up another issue. Would the subject of such knowledge know the difference? I tend to think they would not. It seems to me that our perspective of the universe is knowledge that is possible to have. If something is possible to know, then God knows it by the definition of omniscient. But the knowledge of what the world is like is the equivalent of experiencing the world. So it would seem that the subjects of God's knowledge would experience the world in a way that the subject would not be able to discern from reality. The subjects of God's knowledge would believe they are real. But they aren't real, they are in God's imagination. So this seems to follow:

  1. The number of possible worlds is infinite (follows from possible world semantics)
  2. Agents that exist only in the imagination of God will believe that they actually exist. (from the above argument)
  3. The greatest possible being can only create the greatest possible universe and this universe is the actual universe. (by definition)
  4. There can be only one actual universe. (follows from possible world semantics)
  5. Agents in the actual universe will also exist in God's imagination (God knows everything about every possible world including the actual world)
  6. There are an infinite number of any given agent that exists only in the imagination of God but only one of those agents exist in reality as well. (4 and 5)
  7. Therefore, the chance that any agent actually exists in reality is infinitesimal.
  8. Therefore, we are almost certainly imaginary.
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Blindocidehigh as a kite this whole time•

no (practical) distinction

besides one of them existing and actually doing things and the other one not actually existing or doing anything.

so yeah, no distinction.

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kingpombaagnostic atheist•

I'm not saying your idea is wrong but in my mind i dont know if the idea of true omniscience is fully valid.

Does "the mind" posses knowledge of inherently chancy events, like the roll of a dice before it happens?

You can be a world famous neuroscientist, know all about the wavelengths of blue, how the signal travels along the optic nerve and is processed in the brain, but if you are blind to blue, do you really have a full understanding of it? It seems you would need to experience these things, first hand, in reality, before you can have a fully detailed knowledge of them.

Divine simplicity might answer your question. Omnipotence might be identical to omniscience so your distinction (therefore the question) does not make sense.

[Good to see some really rigorous philosophical questions around here too]

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