Is God omniscient? Start Over.

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

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

To which I agree and agreed. You and another made the statement infinities and not countable. This is not a factually correct statement if applied to the lowest cardinality infinity (the one most people think of). I was simply adding a bit of (probably unnecessary) precision to the conversation.

[bluebell]

17 minutes ago, Calm said:

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?

From my perspective, He's not 'knowing in 2022 what we will do in 2034'.  He's watching us in 2034 do something in 2034.  He's not seeing what will happen in the future. He is in the future when it happens.

 

[Stargazer]

16 minutes ago, Calm said:

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 wasn't trying to suggest that we have as much choice as the chemicals. It was just a parable to show that knowing in advance that a given thing will certainly happen does not make it happen. 

16 minutes ago, Calm said:

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. 

But your predictive powers, however well-developed they are, do not determine or cause their choices. And your grandkids could surprise you and choose something else.

God's foreknowledge is not of the same quality. His foreknowledge is not predictive. He can't be surprised.

I know a lot of people find this uncomfortable. I certainly did. 

[Stargazer]

10 minutes ago, Nofear said:

To which I agree and agreed. You and another made the statement infinities and not countable. This is not a factually correct statement if applied to the lowest cardinality infinity (the one most people think of). I was simply adding a bit of (probably unnecessary) precision to the conversation.

Perhaps you meant "You and another made the statement infinities are not countable"?

No, I wouldn't have said that, at least not in that context. At least I don't think I did. The closest I might have gotten to that was when I said "God can't count to infinity." Which doesn't mean "infinities are not countable."

LOL: Isn't "lowest cardinality infinity" just a fancy way of saying "the natural numbers"? I love jargon.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

I wasn't trying to suggest that we have as much choice as the chemicals. It was just a parable to show that knowing in advance that a given thing will certainly happen does not make it happen. 

But your predictive powers, however well-developed they are, do not determine or cause their choices. And your grandkids could surprise you and choose something else.

God's foreknowledge is not of the same quality. His foreknowledge is not predictive. He can't be surprised.

I know a lot of people find this uncomfortable. I certainly did. 

I never said our behaviour was determined by God’s foreknowledge or made to happen by God. However, God has foreknowledge because our behaviour is determined (by our personal character responding to a set of known influences) if his foreknowledge is based on his knowledge of our character just as your foreknowledge of the result of the chemical reaction is based on your knowledge of the character of chemicals, which is what determines the outcome of the reaction. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Calm

[ksfisher]

20 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

He can't be surprised.

So much for surprise parties in the celestial kingdom.  Or even wrapping birthday gifts.  "It's just what I was expecting you to get me!"

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, Stargazer said:

But did He?

Did God invent mathematics?

In a sense, Of course.

Mathematics is a symbolic representation of logic bounded by human reason and consciousness. It is a communal agreement defining the way we think and what is logical reasoning.   It is the calculator chip in all human brains. 🤓

God is a human, that is our LDS paradigm.

So The Gods, we could postulate, have passed on the eternal pragmatic way their logic works to enable us to be like them.  Our human minds operate LIKE theirs, but who knows how much more we have to progress to even get close to their abilities.

I wonder what math is required to call together atoms shared in many bodies throughout what God sees as the history of the "Human" species, to fulfill that all will have back every hair in our heads as they were.

"As"......

Talk about entanglement... 🤔😶...

Edited August 19, 2022 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

7 hours 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."

 

God must be immanent to be a Father, and therefore not fully transcendent, but of course those are simply human words describing human ideas, or attempting to.

We can always find loopholes in all the "omnis", based alone on the very idea of "all things".

What is a "thing" and exactly how many "things" are there in meta-universes?

The whole notion is a semantic absurdity!

How many "things" would God have to know to know "all things"?

Linguistically absurd

 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

It was just a parable to show that knowing in advance that a given thing will certainly happen does not make it happen. 

I have illustrated this by holding a pencil up, and telling the class I am absolutely certain that I can cause the pencil to travel through space on it's own

I drop the pencil.

I knew it would drop but did not cause it

As  moral example, a three year old and  chocolate cookie can work. 

Just tape it ahead of time, hidden camera, so there's no audience interference.

Tell the child not to eat the cookie, then leave the room.

Child eats cookie.

Does God KNOWING what you will do CAUSE you to do it?

Of course not!

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

So much for surprise parties in the celestial kingdom.  Or even wrapping birthday gifts.  "It's just what I was expecting you to get me!"

That is really my only frustration with the idea of determined behaviour (because I see it as self determined).  For the other issue I have of being limited by my own self, God has made it (with the Atonement and mortality and who knows what other ‘estates’ of opportunities and experiences) so that if we want to, he can provide us the means to become whatever we want to be and he knows us well enough to help create the situations where what we want to be is the best. 
 

But being surprised by unexpected beauty or connection is something that is very meaningful to me.  There is a warmth to it, an intimacy.  It seems to me that it is the unexpectedness that often opens the door more, the walls aren’t already up so I don’t have the chance to distance myself…and I am someone who reads the end of the book or watches the last episode because I prefer to see development of ideas as they happen rather than look back and think ‘that’s what it means’, so I tend to want only very few surprises in my life. But those few that embrace me rather than shock or startle…I would miss those.

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Does God KNOWING what you will do CAUSE you to do it?

Of course not!

It is still determined behaviour though, it is gravity and its own mass that determines it falls. 
 

It is the child’s hunger and/or love of cookies that determines they will eat. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Calm

[manol]

@Stargazer posted something imo rather intriguing (emphasis mine):

11 hours ago, Stargazer said:

... 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.

Let me interject here that there is probably at least one perspective from which "knowing the end from the beginning" may not necessarily imply knowing in advance every single detail of every single step along the way (and I'll come back to this in a minute).  Continuing:

11 hours ago, Stargazer said:

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. 

Presumably from that "outside this universe" "place" or "state", our co-eternal-with-God I-AM-self can or does likewise "know the end from the beginning", at least as it relates to our passage through THIS (our current) universe. 

What might it look like if our mortal self somehow made contact with our immortal, outside-this-universe self?  Well, we might get a sufficient glimpse of "the end" that the outcome of our mortal probation would no longer be in question, even if we would not yet know all the details of all the intervening steps.  Is there anything like this in LDS theology, wherein the final outcome is no longer in question, but the specifics of all the intervening steps are still very much in play? 

I think so!  It is referred to as "having one's calling and election made sure," wherein the outcome is no longer in question, though it is still up to the individual whether the path between here and there is "the easy way" or some variation of "the hard way."  

(This is by no means the only interesting implication of Stargazer's post; imo it's just the tip of the iceberg.)

Edited August 20, 2022 by manol

[mfbukowski]

11 minutes ago, Calm said:

It is still determined behaviour though, it is gravity and its own mass that determines it falls. 
 

It is the child’s hunger and/or love of cookies that determines they will eat. 

Yes of course. Pre- knowledge does not CAUSE anything 

[mfbukowski]

18 minutes ago, Calm said:

It is still determined behaviour though, it is gravity and its own mass that determines it falls. 

"Determined"?  Not important 

Compatiblism!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

[Nofear]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

No, I wouldn't have said that, at least not in that context. At least I don't think I did. The closest I might have gotten to that was when I said "God can't count to infinity." Which doesn't mean "infinities are not countable."

Point taken.

[BlueDreams]

22 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Events are things, are they not? 

But then, how do we define "thing"? Patriotism is a thing, as is love. 

Why would He not know all events?

The passage you quoted doesn't mention events or patriotism or even love. It's specifically talking about worlds and the inhabitants in them. Most scriptures attribute the knowledge of God mostly with God's knowledge of us. On the last question, to me it's not why he wouldn't, but more so is it necessary? Or is this how God is described in scriptures? It can be interpreted to mean that. But it's not necessary. There's other interpretations that just see the parameters of omniscience to be a little different than the traditional definition. 

 

22 hours ago, Stargazer said:

There really isn't any problem with fate vs. agency in God's perfect foreknowledge. Your not knowing what will happen does not extinguish the fact that God knows, nor does it extinguish your agency. He knows what you will choose, and you cannot surprise Him. Our ignorance is immaterial.

Some are concerned because it seems to defeat agency, but as long as you don't know the outcome the test is fair. He has seen everything in advance, not as predictive only, but in certainty. Can God be surprised by an outcome?  I don't think so. If He could be surprised, then He would not be God.

Not really though. Lets say I make a maze. There is only one outcome for the subject going through the maze. If there's only one outcome and no potential shift, there isn't really a choice with the maze. On the flip side. if you have a maze with multiple exits, you can technically not be surprised by the general outcome even if you don't know exactly how this specific subject will finish their maze. After all, I still created the maze. A single exit for each individual is fate. Multiple endings is choice. It doesn't matter if the subject is surprised by the ending of the single-ended maze, the ending was always something that was going to be. The mouse's surprise was an emotional folly. No matter what was felt by the subject, the end was never a choice, but up to the creator of a singular ended maze. In order for choice to be a real thing, there has to be some form of uncertainty in the exact ending. It doesn't have to be the format of the maze, there just has to be space for real agency to exist for the individual. 

22 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. 

This bothered me, too, when I figured this out (or rather, was told about it) and went through a little trial of faith before I realized that God's foreknowledge does not impair my agency. 

Kudos for you. I experience this differently...some of what you mention doesn't compute for me. Which again, is just fine. This isn't one of those doctrinal deal breakers to me. It's just a difference of personal interpretation.

22 hours ago, Stargazer said:

It's not just technically out of our scope, it's actually out of our scope. But I think you know that.

I said technically, because the degree to which it's out of our scope may differ and all these potential scenarios are up for debate and speculative anyways. I'm not a big fan of an unknowable God. Even if there are things we may only get glimpses of, I'm a big believer that our minds are capable of great expansion and basic Godly knowledge. We'll all have gaps filled in the next life. But we can still understand concepts of it here...kinda like who you can explain the same concept in 5 levels of difficulty or depth.

22 hours ago, Stargazer said:

You have to realize that time goes both ways. The universe has been carefully crafted so that all roads lead to the Father's knowledge. Let's say that I could "turn back time," as Cher said. And having said one thing or did one thing, and the outcome did not match what was needed, so I went back ten minutes and did it over. Because I had gone back and modified the starting condition, the previous outcome was gone, replaced by the new outcome.  Each one of us is tested exactly to the point where it becomes clear what we truly desire, be it righteousness or unrighteousness. Sometimes we choose unrighteousness, and then realize our mistake, and then we repent. This doesn't erase our wrong act, but in our Father's eyes the act is deemed gone, and through Christ's infinite Atonement, everything is as if it had never happened. Though of course, if you robbed a bank the bank would stay robbed, and you'd still be in prison for a time. Though, if you'd repented, God would be like "What bank?"

This is one way of looking at it, yes. But again, it's an interpretation of doctrines that make the most sense to you. I view it differently. Not a bad thing...just different perspectives on the same topic.

22 hours ago, Stargazer said:

It's become clear to me that He knows the end from the beginning, and there are no dropouts from that knowledge. 

This is a little confusing to me as it seems to contradict the last statement you made. There are literal drop outs of God's knowledge if we simply repent. But I'm likely misunderstanding your point a bit.

 

With luv,

BD

 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

That is really my only frustration with the idea of determined behaviour (because I see it as self determined).  For the other issue I have of being limited by my own self, God has made it (with the Atonement and mortality and who knows what other ‘estates’ of opportunities and experiences) so that if we want to, he can provide us the means to become whatever we want to be and he knows us well enough to help create the situations where what we want to be is the best. 
 

But being surprised by unexpected beauty or connection is something that is very meaningful to me.  There is a warmth to it, an intimacy.  It seems to me that it is the unexpectedness that often opens the door more, the walls aren’t already up so I don’t have the chance to distance myself…and I am someone who reads the end of the book or watches the last episode because I prefer to see development of ideas as they happen rather than look back and think ‘that’s what it means’, so I tend to want only very few surprises in my life. But those few that embrace me rather than shock or startle…I would miss those.

As I see it, surprise as the most important factor making it the simplest- the fact that direct experience, unmediated by language, IS the best example of "reality".   It is untainted and unfiltered by words or analysis; in many ways that makes it like religious experience.   I am not sure what you mean by "self-determined" in that context, in my experience that phrase is usually restricted to voluntarily confining one's choices for a greater good, like no chocolate cake due to one's choice to lose weight.   You have determined your own behaviors and thus are "self-determined".

Of course in a political context it often refers to a group of people who are able to make their own rules for their community/tribe/country etc.

[Calm]

I used “self determined” because some appeared to be confused by my use of determinism, thinking it meant it was God making us do stuff, causing/determining who we are while actually I mean if God can foresee our behaviour based on our characters, this must mean our characters determine our behaviour, which is only a problem if you want one of your characteristics to be being unpredictable.

Determism doesn’t imply to me what is doing the determining, just that we are determined by something besides our own will.  I supposed my determinism might not actually be determinism depending on how I define “Will”.  Haven’t really done that yet.  Probably should.  I am just not sure how that works with “eternal intelligence”.  Is intelligence more like programming than agency?  If God gave us agency, could we be said to have “will” before then?

Edited August 20, 2022 by Calm

[DT_]

On 8/18/2022 at 10:42 PM, Stargazer said:

The problem is that before this universe began with the Big Bang (which is the consensus cosmology, I remind you), time did not exist.

That's assuming other universes don't exist. If time didn't exist before the Big Bang, then God wasn't doing anything anywhere. But it begs the question, why would our universe be the only universe?

On 8/19/2022 at 2:59 PM, Stargazer said:

And since we are each co-eternal with God, only a part of us exists in this universe.

There is no "this" if there was an ultimate beginning, the Universe would simply be all there is.

Edited August 21, 2022 by DT_

[DT_]

On 8/18/2022 at 10:42 PM, Stargazer said:

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

 

On 8/18/2022 at 5:36 PM, pogi said:

 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.  

 

Interesting.

[DT_]

On 8/18/2022 at 10:42 PM, Stargazer said:

 It must therefore follow that only a finite number of things could happen in the past.

Do you believe an infinite number of things happened in the past outside this universe?

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

I never said our behaviour was determined by God’s foreknowledge or made to happen by God.

True. But I mentioned it because some people do feel this is the case, and others read these posts.

5 hours ago, Calm said:

However, God has foreknowledge because our behaviour is determined (by our personal character responding to a set of known influences) if his foreknowledge is based on his knowledge of our character just as your foreknowledge of the result of the chemical reaction is based on your knowledge of the character of chemicals. 

I understand your point quite well. I used to believe this to be the case, too, that God understands our character so well that He cannot fail to make the correct prediction as to what we will do in all circumstances.

However, as my understanding of both the Gospel and physics has grown, so to has my estimation of the foolproof nature of God's foreknowledge.

He is not a being in Time. He stands outside it, precisely as I have argued here using Stephen Hawking's shortsighted vision of the nature of creation. Standing outside it as He does, He has full access to it from beginning to end. He doesn't remember what happened in the past, he sees what happened in the past because it is present to him. He sees what will happen in the future, also, because it is also present to him. To him, our universe is an open book in both time and space.

That's my understanding of it, anyway. YMMV. Ultimately we cannot "see" beyond the veil, and so what we do see is what we must react to.

As E says:

 

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

In a sense, Of course.

Just as DC 93:29 says "Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be," I feel that mathematics is also co-eternal with God. 

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Mathematics is a symbolic representation of logic bounded by human reason and consciousness. It is a communal agreement defining the way we think and what is logical reasoning.   It is the calculator chip in all human brains. 🤓

Mathematics extends beyond human reason and consciousness. It is not merely a consensus agreement.

[Calm]

25 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Standing outside it as He does, He has full access to it from beginning to end. He doesn't remember what happened in the past, he sees what happened in the past because it is present to him. He sees what will happen in the future, also, because it is also present to him.

What difference does this make to whether or not our behaviour is determined? If there can be no difference in what we chose in the past ten years in 2032 and what we choose in the future ten years in 2022, is not our behaviour determined?  If not, explain why not. 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Calm

[Stargazer]

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

The passage you quoted doesn't mention events or patriotism or even love. It's specifically talking about worlds and the inhabitants in them.

I brought events, patriotism, and love into it because these are all "things" even if they are not tangible.

It does specifically talk about those things, yes. But must it be limited to those things? If God knows about all the worlds with inhabitants in them, can we conclude that He knows nothing about those worlds that have no inhabitants, simply because He doesn't mention them? I propose that we cannot conclude this. There are no inhabitants on earth's moon. Is it reasonable to suppose that God doesn't know much about the moon? God created all of the universe at the beginning. He must know everything there is to know about it, from beginning to end (if it has an end). This must naturally include events.

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Most scriptures attribute the knowledge of God mostly with God's knowledge of us. On the last question, to me it's not why he wouldn't, but more so is it necessary? Or is this how God is described in scriptures? It can be interpreted to mean that. But it's not necessary. There's other interpretations that just see the parameters of omniscience to be a little different than the traditional definition. 

Yes, God talks about knowing us, but I don't see why He would limit Himself to just us. Is it unnecessary to know more? In the construction of a house, the plumber knows about the plumbing, the electrician knows about the wiring, and the drywall specialist knows about the walls. But the General Contractor knows about it all. It is a very poor GC who doesn't know what the plumbing, the wiring, or the walls are all about. 

When Genesis talks about Creation, of all the heavenly bodies only the earth, the moon, the sun, and the stars are described. Does this mean that God doesn't know anything about Mars, Venus, or Pluto? Or that He didn't create them, and they just showed up on their own? I am pretty sure you know differently. The Solar System is enormous. So enormous that we cannot actually imagine how large it all is. And then we're faced with the Universe, whose size makes the Solar System look like literally nothing. It is hard to imagine any Being being able to not only have created it, but to know it all from beginning to end. But He must. I don't see how He can be limited to anything less than that.

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Not really though. Lets say I make a maze. There is only one outcome for the subject going through the maze. If there's only one outcome and no potential shift, there isn't really a choice with the maze. On the flip side. if you have a maze with multiple exits, you can technically not be surprised by the general outcome even if you don't know exactly how this specific subject will finish their maze. After all, I still created the maze. A single exit for each individual is fate. Multiple endings is choice. It doesn't matter if the subject is surprised by the ending of the single-ended maze, the ending was always something that was going to be. The mouse's surprise was an emotional folly. No matter what was felt by the subject, the end was never a choice, but up to the creator of a singular ended maze. In order for choice to be a real thing, there has to be some form of uncertainty in the exact ending. It doesn't have to be the format of the maze, there just has to be space for real agency to exist for the individual. 

Here you are dealing with three dimensions. As the creator of the maze you understand all the possible pathways. If there is more than one pathway, then there is the opportunity for surprise as each maze runner completes the puzzle. You truly do not know how it will turn out for each of them, though you may be able to make some kind of prediction based on what you know that the runners do not. They each have agency to make choices which will vary the outcome -- but in three dimensions only you cannot say with absolute certainty which choices they will make. So you may be surprised, because the fourth dimension, Time, runs in only one direction for you and the runners, and you and your awareness are all constrained to be in just one moment at a time.

However, if you as the creator of the maze are in mastery with that extra dimension, Time, then you know from the beginning which exit they will end up in.

God created Time when He created Space. He is the master of both, and is not constrained by anything other than the rules He set forth in the Creation.

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Kudos for you. I experience this differently...some of what you mention doesn't compute for me. Which again, is just fine. This isn't one of those doctrinal deal breakers to me. It's just a difference of personal interpretation.

It didn't compute with me for quite some time, either.

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

I said technically, because the degree to which it's out of our scope may differ and all these potential scenarios are up for debate and speculative anyways. I'm not a big fan of an unknowable God.

Neither am I, but in my case that is just a reaction to the creeds of post-Apostasy Christianity. He's unknowable now, simply because we cannot fully comprehend Him in our mortal state, but later we will know Him, because we will be like Him.

1 John 3:2 - Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Even if there are things we may only get glimpses of, I'm a big believer that our minds are capable of great expansion and basic Godly knowledge. We'll all have gaps filled in the next life. But we can still understand concepts of it here...kinda like who you can explain the same concept in 5 levels of difficulty or depth.

We are terribly constrained here in mortality. The mere fact that the Father chose us to come here to be tested tells us that He considers us serious candidates to do His work as He does it. See 1 John 3:2 again. 

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

This is one way of looking at it, yes. But again, it's an interpretation of doctrines that make the most sense to you. I view it differently. Not a bad thing...just different perspectives on the same topic.

Ultimately understanding this particular wrinkle in time and space doesn't matter to our salvation, at least in mortality. A darned good thing!

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

This is a little confusing to me as it seems to contradict the last statement you made. There are literal drop outs of God's knowledge if we simply repent. But I'm likely misunderstanding your point a bit.

It's a confusing point in any case. It is said in the scriptures that once you repent God doesn't remember your sins any longer, but I'm pretty certain He does remember them, just as you do. It's one of those symbolic or illustrative things that is meant to show God's mercy, in that your sins don't "count" any longer, as if they had never been committed.