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That is the standard apologetic but it doesn't work. Complete knowledge of a finite domain like pong is not omniscience. Omniscience is full knowledge of ever

by lisper 3y ago

That is the standard apologetic but it doesn't work. Complete knowledge of a finite domain like pong is not omniscience. Omniscience is full knowledge of everything, including the future. To know the future, you have to be able to solve the halting problem (among other challenges). Of course we can postulate that God has (or is) an oracle for the halting problem, but that still doesn't make him omniscient, it just pushes the problem one level higher. An oracle for the halting problem can (by definition) solve the halting problem for ordinary Turing machines, but it cannot solve the halting problem for Turing machines augmented with an oracle for the halting problem for ordinary Turing machines. Such machines (let's call them meta-TMs) have their own halting problem which cannot be solved by a meta-TM. We can hypothesize a meta-oracle which solves the halting problem for meta-TMs, yielding a meta-meta-TM, and so on. But at every level there is still an unsolvable halting problem. It is not possible to close this loop for the same reason that it is not possible to enumerate the real numbers by repeated diagonalization, or to enumerate the transfinite ordinals. So in fact it is a much weaker condition that makes God impossible, namely, that omniscience is impossible. (It immediately follows that omnipotence is also impossible.) But that's a harder case to make because it requires an understanding of the halting problem. You might enjoy reading this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-will.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

throw0101b 3y ago
> Omniscience is full knowledge of everything, including the future. Speaking of "the future" with respect to an eternal being† is non-sensical, as it is outside of time. † Strictly speaking God is not a [bB]eing (not even the Supreme Being), but Being itself: see the term/concept of "ipsum esse subsistens".
- lisper 3y ago
  The being (or whatever you want to call this thing) might be outside of time, but to be omniscient it still has to know about things that happen in time.
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    From Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Edward Feser (2017), Chapter 6 (§Omniscience), pp. 212f: > Recall that I emphasized that God can hardly be mistaken about the cat being on the mat, insofar as he is the cause of the cat's being on the mat in thefirst place. I compared this to an author's knowledge of the characters and events of the story he has come up with. Now, the way an author knows these characters and events is not by observering them. It is not a kind of perceptual knowledge. Rather, the ahtor knows them by virtue of knowing himself, by virtue of knowing his own thoughts and intentions as author. And that is precisely the way in which God knows the world. His knowledge is not the result of a kind of observation of that happens as history unfolds. God is not, after all, in time, and thus he does not need to wait until something happens in order to know that it happens. Nor does he have a perceptual organs by which he comes to know things, since he is incorporeal. Nordoes he learn anything in any other way, since learning is a kind of change and God is immutable. As I said above, it is in a single, timeless act that God causes to exist everything that has been and will be. And it is in knowing himself as so acting that God knows everything that is, has been, and will be. His knowledge of the world is a consequence of his self-knowledge.[48] > [48] See Katherin A. Rogers, Anselm on Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 158f. Following pages go into free will and such. If you think you've come up with some clever objection(s), that have not been considered over the centuries by folks that are probably smarter than both of us put together, you're probably wrong. :) I'd recommend this book for steelman coverage of the topic: * * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-the-existence-of-god https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
    - lisper 3y ago
      I've actually never seen my objection seriously considered by theologians. (Non-religious people of course just acknowledge it as self-evidently true.) And I've done a lot of reading on this. Nothing in the passage you quoted is new to me, and nothing in it refutes my argument. I make no assumptions about God's nature at all. I don't even require that the omniscient entity be God (though it certainly could be). I am merely pointing out that omniscience logically precludes certain things, namely, the things that are known to the omniscience to be false, and therefore logically precludes omnipotence.
colechristensen 3y ago
This is still quite hinged on the assumption that there are a set of rules omnipotence must follow which is a contradiction in terms. Could you not create a simulation that had rules that didn't apply to you? Who says turing machines or halting problems even make sense at all outside our reality. Who says time has any meaning outside our reality?
- lisper 3y ago
  What difference does it make what happens outside of our reality? Omniscience and omnipotence need not be limited to our reality, but they do have to include our reality, and that it all that is required to make them logically incompatible.

by lisper 3y ago

throw0101b 3y ago

> Omniscience is full knowledge of everything, including the future. Speaking of "the future" with respect to an eternal being† is non-sensical, as it is outside of time. † Strictly speaking God is not a [bB]eing (not even the Supreme Being), but Being itself: see the term/concept of "ipsum esse subsistens".

lisper 3y ago
The being (or whatever you want to call this thing) might be outside of time, but to be omniscient it still has to know about things that happen in time.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  From Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Edward Feser (2017), Chapter 6 (§Omniscience), pp. 212f: > Recall that I emphasized that God can hardly be mistaken about the cat being on the mat, insofar as he is the cause of the cat's being on the mat in thefirst place. I compared this to an author's knowledge of the characters and events of the story he has come up with. Now, the way an author knows these characters and events is not by observering them. It is not a kind of perceptual knowledge. Rather, the ahtor knows them by virtue of knowing himself, by virtue of knowing his own thoughts and intentions as author. And that is precisely the way in which God knows the world. His knowledge is not the result of a kind of observation of that happens as history unfolds. God is not, after all, in time, and thus he does not need to wait until something happens in order to know that it happens. Nor does he have a perceptual organs by which he comes to know things, since he is incorporeal. Nordoes he learn anything in any other way, since learning is a kind of change and God is immutable. As I said above, it is in a single, timeless act that God causes to exist everything that has been and will be. And it is in knowing himself as so acting that God knows everything that is, has been, and will be. His knowledge of the world is a consequence of his self-knowledge.[48] > [48] See Katherin A. Rogers, Anselm on Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 158f. Following pages go into free will and such. If you think you've come up with some clever objection(s), that have not been considered over the centuries by folks that are probably smarter than both of us put together, you're probably wrong. :) I'd recommend this book for steelman coverage of the topic: * * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-the-existence-of-god https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
  - lisper 3y ago
    I've actually never seen my objection seriously considered by theologians. (Non-religious people of course just acknowledge it as self-evidently true.) And I've done a lot of reading on this. Nothing in the passage you quoted is new to me, and nothing in it refutes my argument. I make no assumptions about God's nature at all. I don't even require that the omniscient entity be God (though it certainly could be). I am merely pointing out that omniscience logically precludes certain things, namely, the things that are known to the omniscience to be false, and therefore logically precludes omnipotence.

colechristensen 3y ago

This is still quite hinged on the assumption that there are a set of rules omnipotence must follow which is a contradiction in terms. Could you not create a simulation that had rules that didn't apply to you? Who says turing machines or halting problems even make sense at all outside our reality. Who says time has any meaning outside our reality?

lisper 3y ago
What difference does it make what happens outside of our reality? Omniscience and omnipotence need not be limited to our reality, but they do have to include our reality, and that it all that is required to make them logically incompatible.