Omniscience Argument Revisited

[Rational AKD]

I'm not actually talking about you. More like apologists who use ridiculous arguments like the (Craigian) moral argument or the Kalam.

then maybe you should specify your claim to "some Christian apologists" since it obviously doesn't apply to all.

Please tell me where I said that the Bible says God is omniscient. Go on. I specifically said that you have to give up any basis for claiming God is omniscient, "certainly if God said so himself". In other words, even if God said so, it wouldn't change the impossibility of rationally affirming that about himself.

you missed the point entirely. my whole point is that the bible doesn't say God is omniscient, and therefore your claim that God is being dishonest is false. if I were to show that God is omniscient, it wouldn't be with the bible.

You're not quite getting it. The fact that God can't rule it out, yet it's still POSSIBLY TRUE and knowable, God has to remain agnostic on this issue.

something is possibly true given other truths. if you can't determine if there is a greater being than God, then you can't determine if it's possible for him to know that or not since if there's not. it would be impossible if there wasn't a greater being then God. you can't say it's possible something is impossible since according to axiom S5 of modal logic that would simply reduce to "it's impossible." and if you don't believe me, i'll prove it with modal logic terms. "if there is at least one possible world (definition of possible) that X is not true in any possible world (definition of impossible) then there is no possible world where X is true."

And you can't really get mad at this hypothetical, seeing as, as far as I'm concerned, we're already engaged in a hypothetical even discussing God's existence in the first place.

i'm not getting mad at the hypothetical. i'm saying you can't determine if the hypothetical is true or not, and the possibility of God to have that knowledge is contingent upon whether the hypothetical is true or not. if it's true, then it's possible. if it's false, then it's impossible.

Further, it's self-evidently absurd (especially in your worldview) to say that it's NOT possible to have been created by a higher power without realizing it, especially considering you have to believe that is true of me and all other atheists (that we were created by a higher power but just don't realize it).

I never once made that claim. I merely claimed that it would be impossible for him to know that he was created by a higher power if he wasn't. since you can't show that he was, you can't show that it's possible since you can't rule out the possibility of it being impossible.

Then my next question is, is God omniscient? And if [you think] so, how do you know that?

i'm afraid this question is getting whether I believe this or not is irrelevant to the argument at hand, whether it is possible God is omniscient. we both agree that it is possible he is, and we both agree it would be impossible for him to definitively know that he is. it seems that we're no longer in disagreement on this topic.

If one sees mathematical knowledge as knowledge applicable here (annd it certainly seems to be), it would seem that God would have to have infinite knowledge since any particular mathematical problem is at least possibly answerable. Which means that apologists who are against actual infinites have a real problem holding both positions.

so you're now arguing that because there are an infinite amount of numbers on both sides of zero, there are an infinite amount of problems that can be formed from them. there's only one problem, however... this doesn't make an infinite amount of knowledge. you can actually store all that mathematical knowledge on a very small device... a calculator. with it, you can instantly find the answer to any mathematical problem of basic operations. and yes, I know there are more operations than just the basic ones you find on calculators... but the amount of operations aren't infinite, so it's not inconceivable to know the answer to every mathematical problem with only a finite amount of knowledge. if calculators can do it, why can't God?