Leelee

Whoever wrote Genesis apparently did not think so.

Genesis 18:20-21

20 Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."

I have never seen a good explanation for this one. This verse is yet more proof that the authors of the Bible had contradictory views of God's nature.

Half-Life

It's only recently that views of God have evolved.

Back then, God was in the sky and had human qualities. For example, he demanded animal sacrifices and the burning aroma pleased the Lord, according to the Bible. So, somehow God, being a spirit, somehow has a sense of smell and enjoys the smell of burning animal flesh.

Now that we know this is silly, God is "moved" into another realm way way way beyond the sky, or perhaps another dimension in order to keep him "existing" by believers. Funny how God failed to mention all these other dimensions in his own book until apologists came along.

It's easy to read the Bible now and say "Genesis wasn't literal" or "God didn't mean this or that" because we have more knowledge than we did in the past.

it seems theists will never understand they keep redefining God to be whatever the fuck they want him to be.

gstafleu

Well, duh, of course they did. The thing got written over a long time. OK, around exilic times some significant editing was done, but that doesn't change the fact that the composing stories come from varying times and cultures. My guess would be that the bit you quote is a story about the old tribal god Yahweh, from the time that he was just a god among gods and not omnimax. The omnixmaxness of gods is a fairly recent (axial age and later, say post 500 BCE) phenomenon.

Gerard Stafleu

John Kesler

In this thread I list other passages which indicate that God is omniscient. To the list of passages which place limits on God's knowledge you can add the following: