Is God omniscient? Start Over.

[Stargazer]

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

I see. Please allow me to ask some questions.

Oh, please do!

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

Is God able to recall everything that happened in the past?

God doesn't need to recall everything. He has it laid out for Him in every respect, in the structure of the space-time continuum itself.

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

There was no beginning, so would you agree an infinite number of things happened in the past?

Was there no beginning? You say that you don't believe there was a beginning, but what do you mean by a beginning? Does this universe not have a beginning? Even Stephen Hawking, a much smarter man than you or I, seemed quite clear that there was a beginning to this universe. 

The problem is that before this universe began with the Big Bang (which is the consensus cosmology, I remind you), time did not exist. Hence there was no time before the BB. The smallest possible duration of time is Planck time, which is the time required for light to travel a distance of 1 Planck length in a vacuum, which is a time interval of approximately 5.39×10−44 seconds. Time cannot be subdivided in shorter intervals than this. Hence, the number of Planck intervals from the moment of the BB until now is not infinite, but finite. It must therefore follow that only a finite number of things could happen in the past.

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

Recalling all past events would be the same as counting to infinity in an instant.

As I demonstrated above, recalling all past events is not the same as counting to infinity. And if the the number of past events is less than infinite, which it is, then one may count them until they are all counted. If one can do it quickly enough.

Problem is, however, that as one counts, more past events occur. So perhaps it can't be done in reality, even if it can be done theoretically. I tend to think that God, being rather omnipotent along with His omniscience, may be able to say to Universe, "Here is your end, you may go no further." And in that case, the number of past events in all of universe-time has reached a countable number. And Georg Cantor is saved from insanity in the end.  

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

Do you believe God can instantaneously count to infinity?

Of course not. Infinity cannot be counted. Even by God.

I suppose that in the paradoxical mind, the question "Can God create an object so large that even He cannot lift it?" is a devastating conundrum. As it happens, this particular question and others of the same ilk are nothing more than semantic tricks. It is like over- or under-punctuating a sentence so as to make it absurd and devoid of meaning. If I write "The Koala eats shoots and leaves" we know what is going on, but if I stick some commas in there, suddenly it becomes absurd: "The Koala eats, shoots, and leaves." The two sentences have the same words and in the same order. Yet they mean completely different things. How powerful are commas! Yet they are the smallest little jots and tittles. 

Even God cannot make 1 + 1 equal 3. This is because even God is not above the law.

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

To clarify, I honestly don't believe there was a beginning. A true beginning would create many problems, but infinity in the real world also creates problems (paradoxes).

I'll ask you a question then. What problems would a true beginning create? You needn't exert yourself; one example would be sufficient. The same for what problems/paradoxes would infinity in the real world cause? Honest questions these are; I'm not trying to trip you up.

19 hours ago, DT_ said:

Do you believe God created an infinite number of worlds? If so, can God name all of them in an instant?

My earlier statement about God and infinity answers this question, too. No, he hasn't. Hence he need not name them all in an instant.

And though your second question here is indefinable because its premise is not defined, nevertheless can you tell me what an "instant" is in this context?

Thanks very much! You ask lovely questions!  

[Stargazer]

19 hours ago, blackstrap said:

Hard to imagine this because man can make some very big numbers eg. 10 to the power of 80 which supposedly is the number of particles or molecules in the entire universe.

It's worse than you think. That number is not the number of particles in the universe, it's "Take every subatomic particle in the universe, because that's how many it would take to write the number of zeros in that number if every subatomic particle represented a zero." Or something like that. It's getting late, and I've fixed that last sentence four times and it still doesn't quite feel right...

Mind. Boggled.

I love trying to imagine these kinds of things. It's almost the same feeling you get when you jump out of an airplane. Which is something I've never done, but I can still imagine it!

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by Stargazer

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, pogi said:

I don't know about you, but I don't have to count every single memory in regress until I get to my memory of taking swimming lesson at the Rec Center when I was 5 years old.  The memory is just there.  Instant recall.   It is not possible for our brains to really process/focus on much more than one bit of info at a time.   We should not be tempted to limit God to the capacity and confines of the mortal human brain.  I have a theory that knowledge and memory in heaven is more like a connected network of intelligence via the medium of the light of Christ.  Kind of like a glorified "cloud" or internet.  The info is just there...all the time.   It is not like he is a computer that processes info from the internet, I think it is more like he is the internet.  He is "one" with this network.  It emanates from Him/them.   "God/Elohim" to us is not singular.  Tapping into the light of Christ in its fullness is like tapping into all knowledge - the all seeing eye of God/gods.  It is what makes him omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent - as far as what is possible.   I also think God may have a different relationship with time and space than we have - so you are putting mortal limitations on God that might not exist for him/them.  

Hey, that's MY theory, too! Have you been reading my mind? 

 

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Hey, that's MY theory, too! Have you been reading my mind? 

 

Do you mean our mind?  It appears we are synced in the network in the sky. 

[manol]

9 hours ago, pogi said:

I have a theory that knowledge and memory in heaven is more like a connected network of intelligence via the medium of the light of Christ.  Kind of like a glorified "cloud" or internet.  The info is just there...all the time.   It is not like he is a computer that processes info from the internet, I think it is more like he is the internet.

 

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Hey, that's MY theory, too! Have you been reading my mind?  

 

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Do you mean our mind?  It appears we are synced in the network in the sky. 

I agree with you guys on this. 

Back before computers and the internet, what I think is a conceptually similar idea was expressed in terms of a vine and its branches. 

 

[Calm]

14 hours ago, CV75 said:

names all of them in an instant

Why the “names them all in an instant” (to the poster who put that up first)?

[Calm]

5 hours ago, Stargazer said:

He knows what you will choose, and you cannot surprise Him. Our ignorance is immaterial.

It means our behaviour is determined though, which means we don’t actually have choice (even if determined by our own qualities that existed eternally).

Edited August 19, 2022 by Calm

[carbon dioxide]

Does God know exactly how many bacteria cells are in the world at any given second in time?  Hard to know as the number changes by the trillions every second of the day.  Perhaps there are some things of trivia God does not know because its useless information that he does not concern himself with.

[Calm]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Some might say, if God knows whether I will do everything as required and be eligible for exaltation, then why does He bother putting me through all this? As soon as He had created me as a spirit/soul, He must have known already what was going to happen, so there's no point in going through it. EXCEPT, if you don't go through the test, He cannot know. It's actually quite a neat package.

Taking the test may be part of the process of becoming the person who makes that choice.  A child or a teen will not make many of the same choices they will make as an adult, for example.  If you bless the child with the gift that the adult has prepared for, the child can’t make use of it (tuition for college or a house down payment, for example).

[Calm]

15 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

Does God know exactly how many bacteria cells are in the world at any given second in time?  Hard to know as the number changes by the trillions every second of the day.  Perhaps there are some things of trivia God does not know because its useless information that he does not concern himself with.

But he would know how to find out if he needed to know it, most likely.

[manol]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

It means our behaviour is determined though, which means we don’t actually have choice (even if determined by our own qualities that existed eternally).

Not that I claim to actually understand how this works, but I think the paradox of free agency vs God's foreknowledge may arise in part because our perception of time is linear, in contrast with God's perspective wherein all things (past present and future) are continually manifest.  (D&C 130:7)   Whose perception is more likely to be "accurate" - ours or God's?   Yet for whatever reason, we do not know "the end from the beginning".   That's just not a perspective which is available to us.  (However the fact that Beings who DO know the end from the beginning are investing considerable effort in us has imo very encouraging implications.   One such Being has even gone out on a limb and told us that his job is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.")

Perhaps the "internet/cloud" of @pogi and @Stargazer includes this "all things continually manifest" aspect, which in turn is presumably among the aspects obscured from our perception by the Veil. 

Despite the temporary limitations imposed on our awareness and abilities by the Veil, I think there are aspects of this "higher reality" which we can yet align ourselves to, and which we can bring forth into in this relatively low-light world we presently inhabit.  In being a conduit for introducing Light (insofar as we are able) into the myriad less-than-Light situations we encounter in this relatively dark world, perhaps we are playing a small-but-co-creative role of assistance to the Source of that Light.  Imo this is one of the ways we can be like so many little branches of the great Vine. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by manol

[mfbukowski]

20 hours ago, Amulek said:

I believe God knows everything that can be known.

So, depending on how you define omniscience, I guess that's either a yes or a no.

 

He invented it all, how could he NOT know it?

 

[CA Steve]

God cannot count to infinity in the same way God cannot travel north from the North pole. There is no there, there.

Btw, an interesting thing about infinity is that there are smaller and larger versions of it, which also does not make sense, but if you take the infinite set of all whole numbers, you find it is smaller than the infinite set of all fractions by an infinite amount. So, what we are dealing with here is definitions, not objects to be counted.

Who knows, one day we may find that the reason that matter cannot be created has to do with a similar concept. Maybe matter is by definition eternal.

The Omni's are another example of definitions. The Mormon God, by definition, contains the Omni's but they are not perhaps defined the same way as those Omni's in more mainstream Christianity, where God is the origin of everything without limiting Him to being the origin of everything possible, like Mormons do.

So the answer to the question in the OP is, it depends on how you define God vs how others do.

[Stargazer]

10 hours ago, Calm said:

It means our behaviour is determined though, which means we don’t actually have choice (even if determined by our own qualities that existed eternally).

With all due respect, No, it doesn't. Foreknowledge is not determination. You are still making a free choice, even if I have peeked ahead and already know what you will choose.

I was once a chemistry major. When I performed a chemical experiment, knowing in advance what was going to happen did not determine what was going to happen. The same is true with your free, untrammeled choices here in mortality. 

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, CA Steve said:

God cannot count to infinity in the same way God cannot travel north from the North pole. There is no there, there.

And then, there is the Infinite Hotel.

And here's Veritasium's version:

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Stargazer

[Amulek]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

He invented it all, how could he NOT know it?

Well, maybe not all of it, depending on what "it" we are talking about. One of the revolutionary principles affirmed by Joseph Smith was that there are entities and structures which are co-eternal with God (e.g., intelligences, chaotic matter, and law-like structures or principles).

If some part of us truly is eternal then I think that leaves room for the possibility of libertarian free will. I've always been drawn to, and remain cautiously optimistic about, the open theism movement - which, admittedly, probably dates me a bit, since it's still very new.

So, when I say that there are things God may not know it's in the sense that I believe there are things which are simply unknowable. Analogous, perhaps, to the way in which we say God's omnipotence is constrained by logical possibility, I believe his omniscience is likewise constrained by only being able to know that which is logically possible to be known.

I think that's probably a fair statement that most people could agree with - even if we then disagree on the set of things "which are logically possible to be known."

 

[Stargazer]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

He invented it all, how could he NOT know it?

 

But did He?

Did God invent mathematics?

[Stargazer]

5 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Well, maybe not all of it, depending on what "it" we are talking about. One of the revolutionary principles affirmed by Joseph Smith was that there are entities and structures which are co-eternal with God (e.g., intelligences, chaotic matter, and law-like structures or principles).

If some part of us truly is eternal then I think that leaves room for the possibility of libertarian free will. I've always been drawn to, and remain cautiously optimistic about, the open theism movement - which, admittedly, probably dates me a bit, since it's still very new.

So, when I say that there are things God may not know it's in the sense that I believe there are things which are simply unknowable. Analogous, perhaps, to the way in which we say God's omnipotence is constrained by logical possibility, I believe his omniscience is likewise constrained by only being able to know that which is logically possible to be known.

I think that's probably a fair statement that most people could agree with - even if we then disagree on the set of things "which are logically possible to be known."

 

Nice!

When I read Hawking's last book, in which he in the first chapter stated that there could be no creator because at the moment of the big bang time did not yet exist, so there was no time for a creator to exist in, I realized that Hawking was both absolutely correct and absolutely wrong. This is because a creator, in order to be a creator, must incontrovertibly exist outside the creation in order to create it. In the same way that a carpenter must exist outside the chair he or she is creating, God must exist outside the universe. And because He exists outside it, he must incontrovertibly be able to see and have unlimited access to all of it, at all times and places within it. This is what knowing the end from the beginning means.

And since we are each co-eternal with God, only a part of us exists in this universe. The rest of us, the most important part of us, our "I AM", must exist outside of the universe. Thus, we will remember everything that happens in our little slice of the universe which we have observed, even if our body is instantly vaporized by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. It's all being recorded elsewhere and elsewhen. 

[Nofear]

6 hours ago, CA Steve said:

God cannot count to infinity in the same way God cannot travel north from the North pole. There is no there, there.

19 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Of course not. Infinity cannot be counted. Even by God.

 

Some infinities are known as "countably infinite". And by some, I really only mean ℵ0. Other infinities are not countable. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CountablyInfinite.html

 

 

19 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Was there no beginning? You say that you don't believe there was a beginning, but what do you mean by a beginning? Does this universe not have a beginning? Even Stephen Hawking, a much smarter man than you or I, seemed quite clear that there was a beginning to this universe. 

The problem is that before this universe began with the Big Bang (which is the consensus cosmology, I remind you), time did not exist. Hence there was no time before the BB. The smallest possible duration of time is Planck time, which is the time required for light to travel a distance of 1 Planck length in a vacuum, which is a time interval of approximately 5.39×10−44 seconds. Time cannot be subdivided in shorter intervals than this. Hence, the number of Planck intervals from the moment of the BB until now is not infinite, but finite. It must therefore follow that only a finite number of things could happen in the past.

As smart as Dr. Hawking is, cosmology has evolved in understanding since his heyday and that is not the language we used today. The Big Bang started a finite time ago in the past and before that it isn't really possible to speak about things, but time existed then too.

For me and my particular conception of LDS theology, I allow our fundamental existence to extend into the infinite past as "intelligences". For me personally, it only makes sense for such an entity to be simple/indivisible/without constituent parts. Such an entity would not be very smart and would not have memory since there is nothing to alter (imagine having a keyboard with only one key and as soon as the key pressed, it deleted itself). It wasn't until the intelligence that become our Heavenly Father acquired a machine to observe and remember the world (i.e. a spirit and physical body) that something that we might call intelligence in the normal sense of the word began. As heretical as it may be (though I view it as consistent with LDS theology), I understand God to only have existed as God a finite time in the past but that his fundamental existence (like all of us) extends into an infinite past where until "recently" nothing meaningful occurs.

 

[Stargazer]

53 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Some infinities are known as "countably infinite". And by some, I really only mean ℵ0. Other infinities are not countable.

Didja see the videos I posted?  Hilbert's hotel, and so on?

Some infinities are not only not countable, but some are larger than others.

[bluebell]

15 hours ago, Calm said:

It means our behaviour is determined though, which means we don’t actually have choice (even if determined by our own qualities that existed eternally).

I don't think it has to mean that our behavior is determined.

The scriptures say that the past, present, and future are all continually before the Lord--so it's all kind of basically "the present" for Him I guess.  If He is watching you do something in 2034, He doesn't know you will do that because it's determined that you will.  He knows you will do it because He watched you choose to do it.

Foreknowledge does not automatically mean predetermination, and agency remains intact.

[Calm]

5 hours ago, Stargazer said:

knowing in advance what was going to happen did not determine what was going to happen. T

No, but the reason why you knew what was going to happen was because of the characteristics of the chemicals, they would only act a certain way. In the same way, if God knows what will happen because of our characteristics, it is because we will only choose certain things. 
 

I can predict if I ask my grandkids what to make they will most likely say waffles because they really like my waffles. That is a characteristic of theirs. Add in all their other characteristics giving each of the characteristics the weight of influences they hold as well as other environmental influences on their behaviour and I can (or could if I was capable of having such knowledge) perfectly predict what they will choose….because their behaviour is determined by what their preferences are plus the impact of their environment. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I don't think it has to mean that our behavior is determined.

The scriptures say that the past, present, and future are all continually before the Lord--so it's all kind of basically "the present" for Him I guess.  If He is watching you do something in 2034, He doesn't know you will do that because it's determined that you will.  He knows you will do it because He watched you choose to do it.

Foreknowledge does not automatically mean predetermination, and agency remains intact.

And if he saw us do it, isn’t it determined for us in 2022 that we will be doing what he saw us do in 2034?  Can we do something else?  Wouldn’t that mean God didn’t see us do that actually?

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Nofear said:

It wasn't until the intelligence that become our Heavenly Father acquired a machine to observe and remember the world (i.e. a spirit and physical body) that something that we might call intelligence in the normal sense of the word began.

 

How did the unchanging, simple eternal aspect of Heavenly Father acquire a machine?

[Calm]

To me agency remains intact because it is our own characteristics that ultimately determine our behaviour, our choices to respond to stimuli, not external influences (we are not blank slates that others write upon).

I do not see any way to escape determinism at this point, even if the source of that is ourselves. 
 

The two options that God sees us do things and that is how we know and that God knows us so well does not remove the choice from ourselves, but it is still a determined choice. We choose because of who we are. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Calm