Omniscience Argument Revisited

[MindForgedManacle]

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

Okay.

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.

No I didn't, because you're impugning something on me that I didn't say. I specifically said (and you ignored) that I made no mention of the Bible claiming God is omniscient, I said regardless of whether or not it was God saying it about himself or humans saying it about God, it's not rationally affirmable.

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."

You've got it backwards. The fact that God cannot determine that means God can't rule it out. And I DIDNT say it was 'possible that it was impossible', period. I said it's possibly the case that it impossible to know given certain factors (in this case, the impossibility of rhe contrary). It's like saying it's possible that it's not possible for humans to do a particular thing, given certain limitations.

Okay, that's a rather stupid use of modal logic, much like Plantinga's MOA. Of course if you say that there is a possible world wherein X is not true in any possible world (that is, false in all of them), it is therefore not true in any possible world. That's just a tautology, it's meaningless.

Further, an attempt to use modal logic that way betrays a misunderstanding many religious apologists have and you seem to share: a confusion between epistemic possibility and metaphysical possibility.

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.

Hence, God cannot rule it out. If it's possible, then God can know it if that being allows him to. If not, it's not possible, but God doesn't know that, and can't.

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.

That creates an interesting problem for your theism. After all, it's impossible for me to know I was created by a higher power if there is none, but clearly you think there is. However, that somewhat misses the point. Neither God nor I can rule out having been created by some higher being, yet you have to make a strange distinction atheists' and non-Christians' epistemological situation, and God's epistemology on an a priori basis, i.e God can't assess if he was created but WE can.

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.

Actually, it's VERY relevant. I don't recall saying it's possible for him to to be omniscient, I'm pretty sure I was talking about this argument not seeking to establish that.

Further, you seem to be trying to weasel out of actually trying to tell me how you know he's omniscient (if you do). And I have a feeling the reason you're doing such is because if it's possible for you to establish God's omniscience through reasoning, then clearly God could do so too, but you've already agreed that's not possible. This makes you loose already flawed arguments like ontological arguments.

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?

Did you miss the part where I explicitly said I was referring to a different argument when talking about the mathematical bit?
Further, calculators fon't have knowledge, and they certainly don't STORE information. They PERFORM operations, and even then ALL computational devices have operational limits. This is why performing calculations that result in infinities will cause calculators to output an error.