Arguing Against Gods
Omniscience vs. Knowledge
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For a god to have omniscience, it would have to be conscious and alive - but does it make much sense to say that a god is "alive?" Our only experience of life is through physical, biological processes. Indeed, all definitions of "life" are based upon basic aspects of biology like metabolism and growth. Does it make any sense to apply the same word to a being for which nothing in biology is supposed to apply? Does it make any sense to apply a physical term to an allegedly non-physical being? I don't think so, and so believe that life and hence also knowledge might be concepts excluded from a non-physical god.
We can say the same about the quality of consciousness, since once again everything points to it being inextricably linked to physical, biological processes. Consciousness is a manifestation of the physical and biological processes of our brain just as digestion is a manifestation of the physical and biological processes of our digestive organs. There is no more evidence of consciousness being independent of the functioning of the brain than there is of digestion being independent of the functioning of the stomach and intestines.
When the concepts of consciousness and life are taken out of their natural contexts, they become vague abstractions lacking real substance. Theists simply shouldn't use these terms when they can only be meant in ways radically different from common usage. Ditto with knowledge - we must conclude from the above that "knowledge" cannot mean the same in application to a god as it does in normal usage.
As previously indicated, acquisition and verification are two vital aspects to knowledge as we understand it. But when it comes to a typical omniscient god, neither of them make sense. If such a god were to acquire knowledge, then it couldn't have always been omniscient - and this means that omniscience is really an acquired trait, not an inherent characteristic. Thus we can't really say that this god is defined by omniscience. The idea of verification raises similar problems. If a god has to verify a claim, then that means it isn't certain that the claim is fact - and hence is not currently omniscient. If a god ever had to verify a claim, then it was at some point not omniscient.
In all of these points, we see that if "knowledge" is used in conjunction with an allegedly omniscient god, then it can't be knowledge in the form we understand it. It doesn't look anything like the sort of thing we mean when we use the term in conjunction with humans or even other animals. This can only mean that the difference between our sort of knowledge and such a god's sort of knowledge is a matter of kind, not simply of degree. Not only would it be a good idea to find some other term, but any explanation of the nature of our knowledge won't serve to explain this god's knowledge. It's a totally different animal, so explanation and justification will have to start from the ground up.
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