Vanderzyden

Hi Thomas,

The parts "before your ellipsis" are (a) God is alone and (b) God is eternal. I tried to make it clear throughout my post that the case I wanted to discuss first was God all by himself, before anything else existed.

If God is alone from eternity, then the only knowable facts are those concerning God himself. The facts are of two types only, (i) facts about his nature (i.e. his attributes), and (ii) facts about propositions that he develops regarding his plans for the future.

If you don't mind, for the present, let us restrict our inquiry to God's knowledge in his primordial state. He is alone, from eternity, and relates only with himself. Also, let us postpone the treatment of (ii) until we have discussed God's knowledge concerning (i).

Again, God has absolute knowledge. Nothing else besides God has existed for all eternity, so there is no extrinsic knowledge. It follows directly, and necessarily, that this knowledge is (a) intrinisic to him and (b) held with complete certainty. Surely you will admit the possibility of this state of affairs. Please affirm or deny.

If you agree with the above, then it also follows that God does not believe anything. The state of belief is a deficiency that attends knowledge that is held with less than complete certainty. Since God knows all knowledge with full certainty, he simply cannot believe anything. He knows everything, completely. Therefore, it seems that he has no need of testing any of his knowledge. Such an examination would be unnecessary, since he knows everything that can be known (i.e. knowledge of himself).

I agree with you that God could not forget and yet still fail a test for omniscience. However, what I am asking you to do is to consider all three premises together. Perhaps I should re-order them, in descending order of importance:

God:

(a) is eternal
(b) forgets nothing
(c) knows himself entirely

For our present purposes, we consider the state in which:

(d) God is alone

We may then draw the conclusion:

(e) Therefore, God is omniscient, knowing all truths.

In consideration of the foregoing argument, God does not "feel" confident, nor does he maintain "beliefs". Again, God is eternally alone, and knows all truths with complete certainty. Therefore, there is no necessity, nor purpose, for him to "justify" what he knows absolutely.

John

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

Amos

But there are no churches in the New Jerusalem.

Jobar

Two points I'd like to interject here- I am not sure if the first is relevant, but it might be.

God knows all facts. God also knows that he knows all facts, and knows that he knows that he knows, and on, and on, and on...

This sort of infinite regress or recursion cannot exist in the universe as we know it; very soon all the possible 'processing power' of the universe would be used up, noting the countless mirror images of all factual information.

Since God is supposed to be infinite, it might be that he also has infinite capacity for knowledge.

Which brings me to my second point. It is meaningless for us to try to understand any infinite system. We don't have the processing power. We would not have that power were we to use all the quanta in the universe as quantum computing devices.

Even if an omnimax god existed, we could not say anything meaningful about him. Our processing power is limited by lightspeed, and by the limited number of particles in the universe; god is simply unthinkable.

Bill Snedden

I believe this is "begging the question". To say that God has "absolute knowledge", is to say that he is omniscient. That's the point under debate.

So, let's take your scenario of the "primordial" God and ask, "How does God know that he's alone?"

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Bumble Bee Tuna

John- How does God know he was alone? As this is what his knowledge of everything else is based upon, it's pretty important.

-B

beliefisbunk

Let's stay in reality - there are churches on earth.

As long as there are churches, there is no free will.

As long as there is praying, there is no free will.

As long as there is worship, there is no free will.

If you can find some way around this - I would indeed be interested in an explanation.

Amos

Sorry, the New Jerusalem is a metaphor for heaven.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Vanderzyden:

"Again, God has absolute knowledge. Nothing else besides God has existed for all eternity, so there is no extrinsic knowledge. It follows directly, and necessarily, that this knowledge is (a) intrinisic to him and (b) held with complete certainty. Surely you will admit the possibility of this state of affairs. Please affirm or deny."

How does God know that nothing else besides God has existed for all eternity? I think other posters have brought this point up. How does it follow that God is completely certain of this fact?

As for belief, almost every epistemologist on the planet accepts that knowledge is a kind of belief. But we can define belief as requiring something less than certainty if you want. I'm not asking that God test His knowledge. I'm just saying that it's hard for me to imagine how God knows, for example, that He's alone.

bleubird

gods believe? Only humans believe.define believe.

[ November 03, 2002: Message edited by: bleubird ]

[ November 03, 2002: Message edited by: bleubird ]</p>

beliefisbunk

You're changing the subject - big time.

While we're on the new one - provide scientific proof that there is a heaven.