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On The Concept of an All-Knowing God.

Assuming there is such a being as an all-knowing (omniscient) Maximally Great Being (i.e. - God), this would suggest among other things that:

If you are all knowing then you know the past, the present, and the future as well since one can, being all-knowing, use the all omni-knowledge of the present to predict the future perfectly.

If God is all-knowing, God has to see what you see; taste what you taste; smell what you smell; hear what you hear; feel what you feel both physically and mentally. God may not think what you're thinking, but He would have to know what you are thinking, what you have thought about, and what you will think about. You can't even hide from God in your dreams. God would have to know everything that's in your subconscious mind and know other things about you like how loudly you snore and know all about the intimate details of your various body odors. Multiply that database by every organism, not just human beings that has ever lived, lives now and will ever live.

God knows why I chose a blue tie over a red tie even though the rationale for that choice is buried in my subconscious and I have no actual conscious knowledge of why I made that choice.

Now apply that principle to each and every human who has ever lived, lives now and will ever live. This principle could also be extended further down into the animal kingdom.

God knows how many hairs are on my cat from day-to-day; moment-to-moment. That equally applies to every cat (past, present and future) and in fact all animals that have hair or fur.

God would have to know the state of health of each and every one of your body cells and by extension each and every cell of every multicellular creature that was, is, or ever will be. The same applies to all of those micro-organisms past, present and future. That's trillions upon trillions of cells to note and log.

God knows which sperm cell(s) will score the touchdown(s) for each and every conception, human or otherwise, that ever was, is, or will be.

In seeming defiance of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, God knows the exact position and velocity of each and every fundamental particle in the entire cosmos from nanosecond to nanosecond and has instant recall of the state that existed for any particle at any time in the past and what will be in the future.

God knows every typo and misprint in every book, newspaper, magazine, letter, Internet blog, etc. in every written language that ever was, is or will be. Of course God has committed to memory every book, newspaper, magazine, letter, Internet blog, etc. in every language.

God could beat anyone, anywhere, at any trivia contest (past, present or future).

God could read and comprehend any medical doctor's handwriting that's been scribbled on their prescriptions.

Take this daily morning scenario:

  • You wake up (God knows when) and you go to the bathroom to take a morning piss. God knows the volume you passed as well as the number of molecules of each chemical compound that was present as well as how long you took from start to finish and what it smelled like. God also knows if you then washed your hands! (God also knows those same details for my cats in their morning foray to their litter box apart from the hand-washing of course.)

  • Then you take a morning shower. God knows the temperature of the water; how many drops of water came out of the shower head; what your bill for that water will be; how many bacteria got washed down the drain, the species of each and whether they survived. He also knows what brand of soap you used, how much you used, what it cost, and where you bought it from.

  • When you get dressed He knows if you put on fresh underwear or not!

  • Does God really need to know whether or not you had eggs or cereal for breakfast and if so how you had your eggs or what brand of cereal you dished out? God would also know the temperature of your morning coffee (or tea) at first sip and at final swallow.

By the way, you might have to add in all the nitty-gritty details of any and all possible extraterrestrial life forms into God's databank as well.

Are you getting the impression that these are examples of Information Overload taken to extremes? Isn't this scenario of an all-knowing Maximally Great Being not just getting a bit out of hand but getting pretty darned ridiculous to boot?

But the icing on the all-knowledge cake is that God could NOT forget anything, ever, or else He wouldn't be all-knowing (omniscient) anymore. Isn't that a curse rather than a blessing?

johnprytz 7 Mar 23
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4 comments

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1

Johnprytz again staying true to himself trying to drown us in words postulating a gawd......have you thought about taking up crotchet? I mean, really thought about it?

@johnprytz crotchet...make pink pussy hats!

1

And your point is that there is no God. Would A god allow death, murder, theft, earthquakes, famine, war?

Trod Level 5 Mar 23, 2019
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Deep stuff! I love it~~
On the forgetting part...there is a bible verse where god says that he will remember our sins no more ?
...and if there was a god that knew everything, he would also have known that the bible is saturated with contradictions and has him doing 99% of the evils ?

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The funny thing about omniscience is that it would render intelligence superfluous; what use would you have for cognition if you already know everything? Was God an intelligent designer, or an omniscient designer...?

@johnprytz Right, but I'm asking which version an apologist is going defend lol

@johnprytz It depends on how far they take omniscience, I suppose. If God knows everything that can be known, including about the future, then he would never use intelligence even if he had it. Intelligence would not have been used in his designs.

However, if someone is an open theist, for example, where not even God has certain knowledge of the future, but knows everything that has ever happened in creation, then he could use intelligence.

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