Omniscience Argument Revisited

[Rational AKD]

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.

excuse me, I misinterpreted you when you said this:

certainly if it is supposedly stated by God himself. God can only assume his omniscience, he could never know it, even in principle.

You've got it backwards. The fact that God cannot determine that means God can't rule it out.

yes, but he can't rule it in either. it would not be possible or impossible knowledge, it would be what they call indeterminate.

And I DIDNT say it was 'possible that it was impossible', period.

thus was something I took from one of your positions. let me see if I can lay it out for you.
1. a. you claim it is possible God is the greatest being, and b. it is possible he is not.
2. if he is not the greatest being then it is possible for him to know of this being.
3. if he is the greatest being then it is impossible for him to know whether he is the greatest being.
4. 1b combined with 2 equates to "it is possibly possible God knows..." 1a combined with 3 equates to "it is possibly impossible God knows..."
5. therefore 1a and 1b can't both be true.

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.

it's axiom S5 of modal logic used to reduce redundancies of modal operators. just because it seems apparent to you doesn't mean it's not useful.

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.

so you're saying you can't use epistemic possibility to find metaphysical possibility?

Hence, God cannot rule it out.

or in. if God can't determine one way or the other, then whether the knowledge is possible for him to know or impossible for him to know is indeterminate. it's not automatically possible.

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.

there are several differences between our situation and God's.
1. we know our limitations, God knows none.
2. we know we're going to die.
3. we have no control over the world, God has unlimited control over the world.
and no, I didn't say "God can't access if he was created..." I said "God can't access if he wasn't created." it is impossible for God to know if there is or is not a greater being than he if there isn't one.

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.

right, I forgot you took a skeptical position on this matter.

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.

there's a more indirect method of determining his omniscience, though I know bringing it up will start a huge tangent so i'm refraining from bringing it up.

This makes you loose already flawed arguments like ontological arguments.

whether he knows he is omniscient or not does not mean he is not, so this doesn't go against the ontological argument.

Further, calculators fon't have knowledge, and they certainly don't STORE information.

the information is preprogrammed. the don't store new information, but that doesn't mean the don't have 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.

they would compute for an answer, which would be similar to us thinking about the answer to a test question. and yes, I already stated that there are advanced operations that calculators can't do. but because there aren't an infinite amount of operations, it shouldn't be difficult to conceive how God could know all of them.