LDS: Is God Omniscient?

[cjcampbell]

"No. When God showed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to Isaiah, He showed Isaiah the actual event. When He showed Adam and Moses and Abraham the whole history of the earth from beginning to end, they saw the actual events. When Moroni saw our day and said he knew our doing, he actually saw us.

It is simply a matter of perspective. If I see a bank robber, I do not, by the mere fact of observing him, take away his free will. From God's perspective, we have already done whatever we are going to do on the earth. Time as we know it does not exist for God. But time does exist for us. The fact that we are capable of perceiving time in in only one direction has no bearing whatsoever on our agency."

Where do you find that God showed Is. the crucifixtion?Where do you find tha God showed Adam,Moses, and Arah. the whole history of the world? god never showed Moroni anything because he is not an angle or even a person. God can move in and out of time. I do not understand your point. God knows what will happen even before it happens.

Moroni was not an angle. He was an angel. If you are going to assume that Moroni did not exist at all, then why bother asking about any other LDS belief? I do not know who Arah was. However, the Pearl of Great Price and other scriptures indicate that God did show Adam, Abraham and Moses the history of the world. So, are you trying to tell us that we do not believe what we say we believe? What is your point here? And please, if you do answer, try to avoid obscure abbreviations, alternative spellings, and grammar from another universe. Those things make it difficult to understand you.

[Dave Ellis]

I don't see how absolute omniscience is logically compatible with genuine free will. If my decisions in any given circumstance are the inevitable products of my nature, then the entire course of my life is deterministic and my freedom to choose is merely illusory. If, on the other hand, I really do have free will, then my decisions aren't perfectly predictable by definition.

I think God is perhaps pragmatically omniscient (i.e. his knowledge is so vast and so far beyond human comparison that we may say that, for all intents and purposes, he knows everything.) However, I don't think it's possible for him to be absolutely omniscient in the philosophical sense while still maintaining that we have genuinely have free will.

-David

[cjcampbell]

I don't see how absolute omniscience is logically compatible with genuine free will. If my decisions in any given circumstance are the inevitable products of my nature, then the entire course of my life is deterministic and my freedom to choose is merely illusory. If, on the other hand, I really do have free will, then my decisions aren't perfectly predictable by definition.

I think that is a false choice. It is not necessarily true that if your life is perfectly predictable that it is totally deterministic. It is merely a matter of our perception of time. To us, time appears to happen sequentially. From God's perspective, however, it happens all at once -- the scriptures repeatedly say that time does not exist for God. The fact that the entire path you choose can be seen by an outside observer from beginning to end does not mean that you did not freely choose it.