Omniscience
Written: June 30, 1999
Omniscience vs. God
There are in fact a host of other characteristics normally attributed to traditional gods in the West which also fundamentally conflict with the idea of omniscience. The most obvious, of course, is the attribute of having a non-physical nature. As we already observed, knowledge involves fundamentally physical and material processes, and it does not appear to make any sense to attribute it to a vague non-physical entity. But more significant is the fact that this non-physical nature conflicts with some types of knowledge inherently. If you'll remember, one type of knowledge which we discussed was process knowledge - the knowledge of how to do things like juggling or gymnastics. It is significant that such knowledge involves more than what one would get from reading a book because that seems to be the limit of what a god could do.
Why? Because it makes no sense to claim that a non-physical entity "knows" how to do the physical acts involved with things like juggling and gymnastics like we know them. Part of what it means to know such skills is a demonstrated ability to do them, not simply to be able to repeat what instruction books say. Having such knowledge of how to do such physical acts requires that one is in space an time, so a non-physical god existing outside of space and time is simply incapable of having such knowledge.
Some Christians might argue that their god did acquire such knowledge when it was incarnated as Jesus, but Jesus certainly didn't acquire all procedural knowledge during his brief stint on earth, especially in areas like driving a car. Christians have in fact vehemently argued that Jesus definitely lacked such knowledge in areas like sex. Besides, this would mean that god knew these things for a brief time, and omniscience doesn't mean much if it is only intermittent. Thus, being non-physical and transcendent is incompatible with omniscience - a god which is supposed to be both cannot exist.
Another characteristic contradiction is that between omniscience and omnipotence. Complicated proofs of this have been devised, but I find that the simplest can be the most effective. An omnipotent god can achieve whatever it wants in the pursuit of its goals. This means that it cannot experience things like frustration, fear or horror. And of course, this god cannot know what it is to make a mistake. So a transcendent god without limitations cannot know things which we know due to our inherently limited nature, and it is reasonable to think that a god which is both omniscient and omnipotent cannot exist.
Omniscience vs. Goodness
A crucial contradiction occurs between the ideas of omniscience and perfect moral
goodness. On one level, this occurs as a result of this god not knowing what many
humans are able to experience. For example, Richard the Lionheart was able to know
what it was like to enjoy slaying heathens in the name of Christianity - but no non-physical
god could know what it was like to experience anything like that, and a morally perfect
god certainly couldn't come near something like that and still retain that perfection.
Innumerable humans know what it is like to enjoy innumerable nasty and evil acts
- but a morally perfect god is necessarily precluded from knowing those things, as
well.
Another, more serious contradiction involves the moral status of any of this god's
acts. A morally perfect god must be a god with genuine free will, because morality
makes no sense without the ability to choose. If a god cannot change its mind and
cannot act in any way other than what it does, then it cannot be called moral - it
is a robot. But as we saw above, a god with free will cannot perfectly know the future,
since it cannot know when it might intervene with a miracle.
But if this god cannot know the future, then this means it cannot know the ultimate consequences of its actions. In consequentialist theories of morality, the moral judgment of any act must at least in part be based upon the actual consequences of that act. An act with good consequences will be judged as morally better than an act with evil consequences. If this god does not know the future consequences of its actions, then it could be argued that it cannot know for certain and perfectly how morally good its actions are - in fact, some of its actions may in fact be evil, but the god wouldn't know. This lack of knowledge doesn't preclude a human from being regarded as morally good within our limited abilities - but it does preclude a god from being perfectly morally good.
Perhaps some people would argue that the consequences of an act are irrelevant, but I would question whether or not they have a truly moral system. At best one could argue that consequences play only a small role and that their god knows many of them, even if not all and even if not with certainty. But this pretty well guts the concept of omniscience for the sake of preserving some semblance of moral goodness and it is reasonable to think that such an omniscient god cannot exist - or that if it somehow does, it is fast approaching irrelevance. So a god which is supposed to be both omniscient and have perfect moral goodness does not exist.
Omniscience vs. Humanity
As a matter of fact, we have seen throughout the defenses of omniscience a persistent effort to gut the concept without appearing to do so. All along we find arguments to the effect that a god's omniscience is of some "limited" sort, as if a "limited omniscience" made any sense. But in the process an interesting fact has appeared: humans having extensive knowledge of matter which a god could have absolutely no knowledge of whatsoever. It is a curious state of affairs when people claim belief in an "omniscient" god which is supposed to be all-knowing, but which in fact knows a great deal less than they do. For this reason, it is reasonable to think that an omniscient god cannot exist.
Perhaps this god's factual knowledge is supposed to make it seem really important and powerful, but I'd be willing to put up against it the very human knowledge which can only result from our limited, physical nature any day of the week and twice on Sundays. I certainly wouldn't give up the ability to know the touch of a loved one or to know taste of a fine beer for the sake of knowing more facts, like in math.
Omniscience vs. Truth
Oddly enough, even that trade-off might not be possible - because it could be argued that a god could not logically know even all facts which would be included in the first category of knowledge, propositional knowledge. Even if there is a set of all truths, that set would have to be infinite and a god could never know that it knows all truths. To verify such a state would take an infinite amount of time - and although an infinite god might have such time to spare, it would never achieve its goal. But more interestingly, it has been argued by some like Patrick Grim, that there cannot logically be such a thing as "a set of all truths." If this is true, then a basic premise of omniscience is fatally flawed and it is reasonable to think that an omniscient god cannot exist.
Conclusions
So what can we conclude? A god which has omniscience as a quality probably does not exist, since that conflicts fundamentally with numerous other qualities typically attributed to gods. Omniscience is a rather incoherent concept to begin with, and theists who nevertheless wish to argue it have to explain it independently of the sort of knowledge which is typically attributed to humans. And even after omniscience is severely limited so that it no longer appears to be contradictory, it become an unrecognizable omniscience - we are left with a supposedly omniscient god which knows next to nothing that we do.
So an omniscient god either does not exist, or is quite irrelevant.
Don't miss the other section:
Part 2: Omniscience vs. God, Goodness & Humanity
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