Omniscience
August 11, 2009 on 1:00 pm | In Discussions | 15 CommentsOmniscience: the state of being omniscient; having infinite knowledge.
Seriously, I leave you guys alone for about 4 days and a great big religious debate breaks out? Honestly.
Still, debates are debates so I’ll leave the grand scheme of things to you lot (or you two, at least), and tackle one argument line only. Feel free to debate it with me, but try not to take it off in another direction; I want to try and keep it from expanding into such a multifaceted argument that nothing works anymore.
The argument line I will approach is that of an omniscient God, and how by being omniscient he becomes a fully-fledged divine evil. A bit strong, you might say, but hear the logic. I concocted this argument myself a long while ago, apologies if it appears somewhere else already.
A central tenet of the Christian faith, and many others, is that you have free choice in your life to do with as you will, with the result that you end up either accepting god or not, be forgiven or not, and end up in heaven or hell. Free choice is a much-advertised part of the whole story. However, all it requires to scupper this argument is the existence, in any universe or outside it, in any time (and for any length of time) or outside it, a being that knows everything.
God is omniscient, and hence knows everything. If he knows everything, he already knows the outcomes of all the choices you make. That point is so vital, you should read it again. If you murder someone, he knew you were going to do it. What you’re going to eat tomorrow? He knows. Whether you’ll accept god or not? He knows, and he knows all this BEFORE you were ever even born. In fact, before the universe was, he knew all this. As such, all of your choices are rendered hollow shells of choices: they are nothing but an illusion of decision in a life which already has a predetermined path and a predetermined end. That’s a bit irritating, but actually (ironically) in a universe where there is no afterlife that doesn’t matter: you have the illusion of choice all your life and you don’t know any better: you might as well have had free will all along as far as you are concerned.
Where it breaks down is the afterlife. It’s fine, in a way (although I don’t like the idea) that all of life is predetermined, provided that you don’t then get elevated to heaven or cast into hell depending on the outcome of it. With the afterlife, it’s a less pretty picture: if you are born and god already knows you are going to commit a murder, and never accept him, then you will go to hell and burn in eternal fire (with much wailing and gnashing of teeth if my biblical memory serves me correctly*). This means that god has created you knowing your existence to be an eternity of torment. Moreso, he created millions of others who shall also be confined to suffering beyond measure with absolutely no choice in the matter.
That is no being I’d want to worship.
There is then the counterargument that god is somehow not omniscient, ergo none of this will hold up. I’ll countercounterargument that now. If god does not know everything, then there is the possibility that he is wrong about things, or ignorant of things, and is flawed. Fine, if you accept your god to be flawed, but that is not the Christian god’s way. Also, if god is flawed and ignorant, then all of ‘his’ words (bible) and similar become equally flawed and ignorant. Meaning, of course, that the whole lot could be rubbish.** When one of the founding texts of something is just as likely rubbish as fact, that something enters a dangerous place, don’t you think?
*and it does: “And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:42
**which I pretty much think anyway, for all that it is an interesting historical text.
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Yeah, the God of the Bible is a bit of a shit.
“then all of ‘his’ words (bible) and similar become equally flawed and ignorant”
Not even his words! Written by a bunch of people over different times, and thrown together in one book (hence why it contradicts itself an incredibly large amount). The bible is more an anthology of short stories than a book to live your life by.
I think it was predictable that I’d agree with this, but it is a really nice argument. Looking forward to the riposte, Jenny :p
Comment by Dickie — August 11, 2009 #
I have lots of things I want to say to this, however I am revising, so I’ll say only the most important thing right now :P :
‘Tenement’ is a word for a kind of building or habitation; in your fourth paragraph I believe you rather meant ‘tenet’?
However, an interesting idea. God is omniscient and outside of time. A very simple rejoinder would be that God is so very much greater than our entire universe, being outside of time and space and all the rest of it, that the machinations, complications, moral judgements, pain, rise and fall of human society is of no more importance to him/her/it than the welfare of the headlice on the head of a child two blocks away is to me.
Interestingly this makes religion a complete irrelevance – my prayers are not then going to be heard, much less answered, by God, and no-one will really care if I live my life striving to do my best and end up in heaven, on this kind of scale, it’s just somewhere to put me. That doesn’t stop me wanting to be a good person and do the right thing according to what my religion tells me but it does then make the reasons why I do the right thing suddenly a lot more focussed on the idea that I want to end up in heaven when the truth as to why I try to do the right thing is because it is right, and doing the right thing gives me that gratifying warm fuzzy good-person feeling.
Anyway, that’s one way in which I can come back at you – God is so much bigger than anything else, in a metaphorical sense, that we are like the dust under his heels; why should he care? I don’t like that argument, though.
And if there is a god, it’s not about choosing to beleive in him because you *want* to and approve of him; you just *do*. Or so I find. I didn’t and wouldn’t have chosen to believe in God, I just find that that is how it is.
Comment by Jenny — August 12, 2009 #
“A very simple rejoinder would be that God is so very much greater than our entire universe, being outside of time and space and all the rest of it, that the machinations, complications, moral judgements, pain, rise and fall of human society is of no more importance to him/her/it than the welfare of the headlice on the head of a child two blocks away is to me.”
He comes across as rather meddlesome in the Bible. Sending a flood to kill the vast majority of life on Earth because he didnt like people, isn’t the action of an uninterested being (probably not the best example, there are better ones but I cba to find one when this makes the point just as well…)
Comment by Dickie — August 12, 2009 #
“A very simple rejoinder would be that God is so very much greater than our entire universe, being outside of time and space and all the rest of it, that the machinations, complications, moral judgements, pain, rise and fall of human society is of no more importance to him/her/it than the welfare of the headlice on the head of a child two blocks away is to me.”
This does not counter the argument at all. It does not address the point: if this greater-than-everything god is omniscient, then free choice is an illusion. It doesn’t actually matter whether he cares or not, the point is the knowledge exists and therefore all our lives are irrelevant shadows and freedom anyway.
and yes, tenet is exactly what I meant, thankee!
Comment by Callan — August 13, 2009 #
‘”Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing.’
Comment by Fiona — August 16, 2009 #
@ Fiona: Where is that from…sounds rather familiar!
Comment by Callan — August 17, 2009 #
The thing is that omniscience is *not* the same as destiny. God may know everything, may know us and the choices we are bound to make because of who we are, but that is not the same as directly having fated us to do one thing or another. There’s a thin line, and it’s a hard difference to grasp, but the difference is there.
Comment by Jenny — August 17, 2009 #
That is the Douglas Adams on the subject of the Babel fish. Because he’s awesome like that. And it seemed appropriate :)
Comment by Fiona — August 17, 2009 #
@ Fiona: Ah, Douglas Adams. Should have known =)
@Jenny: How is it not the same? He created us, and if he created us in such a way that we are bound by the way we are to reject him and go to hell, then that’s pretty shitty really, whether you call it fate or not. As for the ‘because of who we are’ escape line – that doesn’t really matter, because we could be anything: anything bound to one path is just as trapped as anything else, regardless of its personal characteristics. Simply saying something is difficult to grasp does not fill the hole left by a lack of reasoning: it’s dangerously close to the ‘there are some things about god you just can’t understand’ argument used (to the derision of everyone) by the Christian Alpha people who came to college.
Comment by Callan — August 17, 2009 #
There are some things about quantum mechanics that you just can’t understand. THere are some things about neuroscience that you just can’t understand. There are plenty of things that we can’t understand, and maybe some day we will, or maybe we won’t and it just isn’t possible, and God could for all I can say fall into either of those to camps. It’s not an utterly ridiculous or risible argument and it doesn’t stop us searching for the answers.
And it isn’t the same. It’s like being, for a fairly obvious example, a parent, and knowing that your child is going to go to a party and get completely wrecked, or fall off the climbing frame if he continues to do that completely stupid thing of trying to climb all the way round the outside of it rather than stay on the inside; you’re not controlling the fate of that child or that teenager, you’re not making them get drunk or fall off, yet you know that’s what will happen. It honestly does come to the same thing in a way.
I haven’t explained it very well because the example I’ve given has obvious flaws, but there is a difference, and I’m working on ways to explain it; it might be one of those things that either you get it or you don’t (and believe me it has nothing to do with whether you believe in GOd or not because I got that argument back when I did PHilosophy and spent actual lesson time arguing this kind of thing from an atheist standpoint).
Meanwhile, it’s also worth pointing out that the entire Abrahamic religion(s) are based around the whole free will *thing*: goign way back to Adam and Eve and the apple – they had the choice whether to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, or not, and they did so, and that free choice got them thrown out of Paradise – I’m pretty sure that wasn’t actually in God’s plan, was it? I mean, he was there, he got pretty cross, to be honest. Even if that whole thing is actually a kind of extended metaphor, it is an extended metaphor about choice, responsibility, sin, and consequence, which jsut goes to show that Christianity is not about being fated to go to heaven or hell; that it is all about free will, in all things.
Finally I would jsut like to point out yet again that my take on the whole religion thing is that I am still hardly completely sure that there’s a GOd, let alone an afterlife, and I’m still thinking about these things. I don’t know what I’ll end up believing, whether I’ll ever really work out what I think, but I’m keeping an open mind. Twenty years down the line I could be entirely athiest, rabidly born-again Christian or hippy, vegan Buddhist, something else entirely, or something in between all of those things. Who knows.
Comment by Jenny — August 19, 2009 #
“There are some things about quantum mechanics that you just can’t understand”
There are things we don’t understand at the moment. In quantum mechanics (from my laughably limited understanding), the evidence leads us to conclusions which seems absolutely logically absurd. So I think that the thinking goes “well… we think this is true, but we’re not exactly sure because its kinda nuts”.
To go back to my argument elsewhere, a “god” of some sort is a logically absurd creation with absolutely no evidence behind it :)
Also I think you miss the point of the post. It’s that God of the Bible “allows” us free will, and that if this is the case He/She/It cannot know what we are going to do, because if he/she/it knew that then it wouldn’t technically be free will. The Bible says god is omniscient. As Callan points out, an omniscient God who creates people who are going to do bad things (actually not even that, just not accept that the baby Jesus died for their sins. According to Christians) and so go to Hell for all eternity, is a bit of a shit. (But then I suppose that isn’t going to be a shock to anyone well-versed in the Bible…)
Comment by Dickie — August 19, 2009 #
“jsut goes to show that Christianity is not about being fated to go to heaven or hell; that it is all about free will, in all things.”
And clearly about not having knowledge, which is perfectly fine. And that women are bad and all (thats why women have the babies, remember!)
You couldn’t make this stuff up. Oh, wait… :-p
Comment by Dickie — August 19, 2009 #
Both the quantum mechanics and neuroscience that is documented has been researched and experimented and any hypotheses which have not stood up to the evidence have been discarded. Quantum behaviour is predicted, and then when tested stands up to scrutiny – this is why the theories are accepted. That is science – evidence supporting observations. God has no such evidence, and as a hypotheses is pretty obscure – Occam’s razor, anyone?
“…I’m pretty sure that wasn’t actually in God’s plan, was it? I mean, he was there, he got pretty cross…”
The point is that an all-knowing god would have known that was going to happen, and hence getting angry and dishing out punishment makes no sense unless he is a mite sadistic. And if he didn’t know it was going to happen, the bible falls down and so does the whole perfect god thing.
The example you give regarding the climbing frame and the drinking: you are correct in saying it isn’t good because it is flawed. Both are so flawed they do not address the argument: parents are not all knowing. They may think something is likely, they do not know it will happen until after it does. God, on the other hand (being omniscient and all), would know for certain. That certainty is the basis of the whole thing, so removing it invalidates the riposte.
Comment by Callan — August 19, 2009 #
[...] one for y’all to get your teeth into (philosophers, I’m talking to you ) – Callan’s post on how God’s omniscience theoretically makes him evil for condemning us without choice to heaven or hell because omniscience obviously makes our having [...]
Pingback by Omniscience « On The Brink — August 20, 2009 #
[Here - belatedly - through Jenny's blog, admittedly partly because it's always good fun to rake over the coals and flog that poor dead horse. &, for the sake of full disclosure, what follows is probably not representative of anything other than my predisposition towards contrariness...]
Omniscience has been a thorn in the side of Christian theologians pretty much since they’ve existed. It’s one of the causes of the rather sticky Problem of Evil – David Hume rather elegantly summed up the reasons why various people have got het up about theodicies by pointing out that it appears impossible to have a God who is A) omniscient & B) omnipotent and C) omnibenevolent if D) evil exists, and it’s debatable as to whether anyone has managed to solve the problem. The omniscience versus Free Will debate has been kicking around for just as long, and, contrary to what has been said above, predestination has been successfully integrated into Christian thought by a number of thinkers at various times, most notably by St Augustine of Hippo (the African city, not the species) and John Calvin.
The justification (or wriggling if you like) for this is roughly as follows: God, being omnipotent and omniscient, can create humans with free will, but because of his omniscience he knows when you are born whether you will choose to accept Him or not & therefore whether your soul is destined for Heaven or Hell. This, however, is largely irrelevant, because individuals have no real way of knowing where their soul is bound after it has shuffled off this mortal coil & thus must do their best to behave as though they were part of the elect; Calvin (I believe) had some kind of argument along the lines of goodness being a sign of the elect, but it seems pretty shoddy thinking.
From what I know of Augustine, he seemed to view God’s omniscience as that akin to a parent knowing how their sproglets will behave in any given situation simply through knowing them very well, which seems a slightly more plausible solution: God’s omniscience gives him a perfect understanding of his creations’ motives & mores, and he thus knows which way they’ll jump – not that he has anything to do with causing them to do so. Or so it goes.
The problem with this, obviously, is that the universe is a causal universe. (Quantum mechanics may or may not fluff this up a bit, but a guy called Plantinga came up with something that might still manage to salvage the case. Possibly.) Given that we live in a causal universe, one would expect choices to also be causal, in which case free will doesn’t exist, everything stems back to the Big Bang and God’s omniscience ceases to be a problem in the free will debate. The only other option is that the possession of metaphysical souls somehow gives humans the ability to make acausal decisions of some sort, which is A) problematic for physicists and B) that decisions bear no relationship to the causes which require their taking & are therefore essentially random and likewise not free – it’s the choice between being a clock and a ball on a roulette wheel.
It is possible that someone with enough of a working knowledge of quantum mechanics to look convincing could kludge up an argument allowing souls to have free will and exercise this in the physical world on a quantum-mechanical level, but I think the above problem would still hold true. Plantinga’s argument stems from the multiple world hypothesis, and in this context would probably suggest that every agent makes every choice possible, and that given the existence of every possible world there is a world for each combination of possible decisions made, which would in one sense allow for free will but again, arguably, could undermine it completely. Nonetheless, the problem is once more with free will, rather than omniscience.
Conversely, the traditional Christian view, as I understand it, is roughly this: God gives humans the ability to ultimately choose or reject His love, because this is the best & fairest possible system. Those who do accept His love are ushered into His presence in Heaven; those who do not face an eternity without God, i.e. Hell. (Which would appear to be reasonable; it would be churlish for an atheist to spend her entire worldly existence denying God’s existence and then complain that it’s terribly unfair that they don’t get to be with God after death.) Simply to bucketload souls into Heaven or Hell willy-nilly would make a mockery of the whole system, as they might as well skip the whole tedious queue of earthly existence & go straight to the finishing line; likewise, interfering directly to definitively shepherd souls towards Heaven would make a mockery of the whole situation. God has given us his testament, and sent us his Son to show us the way to the big cloudy Philly-add in the sky, & the rest is up to us. All he can do is watch and hope that His children take His good advice and eat their spiritual greens; after all, he dearly wants to give them scrumptious desserts so long as they’ve been good. If you accept the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, then His omniscience can be palatable; if you don’t, it’s pretty hard to stomach.
Comment by Anthony — August 26, 2009 #