Omniscience Argument Against God's Existence

[Minimalist]

To "know everything" is shorthand for "knowing everything that is capable of being known." If something cannot be known for logical reasons then it does not fall within the scope of omniscience. I also point this out to my Calvinist friends who think God knows the future. God cannot know the future because it does not yet exist and you cannot have knowledge of something that does not exist. Likewise you cannot have knowledge of something that logically cannot exist, like a one-sided coin. So your argument is correct, God cannot logically have meta-knowledge. That does not disprove God or His ability to know everything that it is capable of being known.

Um....other jesus freaks disagree with you. Guess you'd better take it up with them.

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apconten...ticle=1394

God knows every future action. The fact that God gave prophets the capability to predict accurately very specific events in the distant future is one of the great evidences for the inspiration of the Bible (Thompson, 1999, p. 19). God has emphasized repeatedly that He knows the future, perhaps never more emphatically than when Jesus Himself prophesied (see Matthew 24:1-51; Mark 8:31; John 2:19-22). The fact that God knows the future does not imply that humans somehow lose freedom of choice. Just because God knows that something will happen, does not mean that He causes it (see Bales, 1974, p. 49). God cannot be taught anything about the future (Acts 17:31; John 14:3).

Of course, those "prophets" did not do so good on the prediction shit but you'll never get a fundie to admit that, either. Knock yourself out.

[MindForgedManacle]

It's good that there are atheists who are looking to work on arguments.

Speaking of which, could you take a look at another of my arguments when you get the chance? http://atheistforums.org/thread-19833.html

But your argument commits a modal error in P2. To see this, we can make a distinction between two sorts of metacognitive states:
a) Cognizant unawareness: I KNOW that I am unaware of how many atoms are in my body.
b) Non-cognizant unawareness: I DON'T KNOW that I am unaware of how many atoms are in my body.

P2 denies the possibility of (a). Although, (a) is obviously a possible stance to hold.

I guess my argument is unclear then. I intended to refer to the metacognizant state b) ('unknown unknowns').

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

It's good that there are atheists who are looking to work on arguments.

Speaking of which, could you take a look at another of my arguments when you get the chance? http://atheistforums.org/thread-19833.html

But your argument commits a modal error in P2. To see this, we can make a distinction between two sorts of metacognitive states:
a) Cognizant unawareness: I KNOW that I am unaware of how many atoms are in my body.
b) Non-cognizant unawareness: I DON'T KNOW that I am unaware of how many atoms are in my body.

P2 denies the possibility of (a). Although, (a) is obviously a possible stance to hold.

I guess my argument is unclear then. I intended to refer to the metacognizant state b) ('unknown unknowns').

So given
(a) your original premise (P2) You cannot be aware of that which you are [currently] unaware of, even if in principle you could one day become aware of it.
(b) any proposition F that an entity does not know
© noncognizant unawareness ('unknown unknown')

does (P2) say
P2*) "You cannot know that you don't know F"?

I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but when you make arguments like this, I find it important to be precise.

[FallentoReason]

I'd have to disagree with your definition of omniscience: "The maximum possible knowledge a mind could have is that there is nothing it is aware of that it doesn't fully understand." I'd say omniscience is simply when the set of all possible knowledge also happens to be the set of what an entity/mind knows.

I don't see the problem with my definition, which by the way isn't as you quoted. What you quoted was my statement of what the maximum possible knowledge was, not my working definition of omniscience, which was "possessing all knowledge".

Oops, my apologies. Then we agree on the definition.

Under this definition, the statement "what this mind doesn't know is ____" never applies to a mind which is omniscient. This leads me to your statement: "But a being could never know that there is something it doesn't know of (nor how much it doesn't know), because by definition it wouldn't know about it." So if "by definition" it "doesn't know about [something]", then it was never omniscient to begin with i.e. your argument concerns a non-omniscient mind, which of course isn't your desired end game.

Actually, that is my end game, that any claim to there being a... being who possesses all knowledge is in fact impossible because it leads to an impossible knowledge claim.

I don't think you're picking up on the subtlety here... there's *nothing* you can say about the omniscient being which it doesn't know of. That's a violation of the definition of *omniscience*. Therefore, technically speaking, your argument makes it seem like you're talking about one omniscient mind, but *since* there's a violation of the term "omniscient", what's happening is that you unknowingly swap out the omniscient mind (via this violation) for a non-omniscient mind, which then we get told "doesn't know _____". <<<< that statement *does not* and *will not* apply to an omniscient mind!!!! It's simply *NOT* the definition of omniscience!

Another way of pointing out the problem: you say it can't know that it doesn't know something. The simplest and most obvious rebuttal is "yes it can. It's omniscient. It knows *everything*".

I think it's simply not possible to take omniscience alone and show that there's a logical contradiction. Or if it's possible, you'd have to use a different route other than purely knowledge, as knowing everything by definition doesn't seem to cause any problems.

That's what the argument does (I think). Even under the sort of stop-gap definition of knowledge (a justified, true belief) omniscience becomes incoherent, because the being claimed to have omniscience can never justify the belief that there is nothing it doesn't know of, even if the belief were true, hence it couldn't have knowledge of it.

What makes you think having *all* the knowledge possible means you can't intellectually justify any one statement? You *know* every aspect of any statement that could be made, thus a justification could come in a myriad of different ways.

A true belief held without justification isn't knowledge.

And since this being is omniscient, *by default* all beliefs it holds are pieces of knowledge.

An omniscient mind would know that it knows everything. A simple proof of this is that knowing that you know everything is itself a piece of knowledge, and the attribute of omniscience would entail that this mind knows that already, thus the set of potential knowledge that it could acquire about absolutely *anything* is the empty set.

Except the being couldn't know that by virtue of it being an incoherent claim. That is literally saying: "I know that there is nothing of which I do not know that I'm unaware of". That's epistemically impossible.

There's no problem there. That sounds like something someone would say who "possesses all knowledge".

To me it sounds like your hypothetical being is one which *worked* its way up to an alleged state of omniscience. This is the only way I can make sense of certain statements you make about this being.

No, it would be about a being who believes it knows it's omniscience, but it is a belief that can never be justified even if it's true, because knowledge of that which you don't know that you're unaware of is a contradiction in terms. Regardless of whether or not there are any members of this set, that is true. In other words, the being could never know this set was empty.

But it does know. It's omniscient.

But when it comes to the *definition* of omniscience, I just don't see how your argument applies to it. *By definition*, this hypothetical mind knows all that there is to know, and thus implying that it can't know ______ is either a false statement OR you're referring to a different being altogether - one that is non-omniscient.

Or it shows that the definition of omniscience is incoherent if it is "possessing all knowledge". It shows that such isn't a possible attribute to begin with.

The real way to beat the argument is to show that you can know there is nothing you don't know, that you don't know (that there are no 'unknown unknowns').

[/quote]

But that's easy to do. By virtue of it being omniscient, it **knows** that.

[MindForgedManacle]

So given
(a) your original premise (P2) You cannot be aware of that which you are [currently] unaware of, even if in principle you could one day become aware of it.
(b) any proposition F that an entity does not know
© noncognizant unawareness ('unknown unknown')

does (P2) say
P2*) "You cannot know that you don't know F"?

I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but when you make arguments like this, I find it important to be precise.

Hah, I don't mind questions, that's why I posted the argument in the first place.

Anyhow, yeah I guess the argument wasn't precise there. What I meant in P2) was that you cannot know there is something of which you do not know of. I didn't mean not something of which you know that you don't know (e.g. the number of atoms composing your body.

[bennyboy]

I think Omni arguments are bullshit, because they are addressing obviously bullshit definitions of God. If there IS something mystical pervading the universe, or responsible for its existence, it's not going to be comprehensible to Gomer the fuckwit or Mehmed the goatherd.

I'm not sure who's dumber, the ones who make these silly arguments, or the ones who keep bothering to explain why they fail, when it's so obvious.

Because some people don't understand why they fail.

Obvious to you, perhaps.

Also, discussion on omni-facets almost always become a definitional debate about what omni-facets mean (already evident on this thread within two pages).

If you say, "God can't be both all good and all powerful, because there is evil in the world," then there are really only two responses: 1) agree; 2) hide the simpler logic under complex semantics. The logic is so obvious that anyone who needs it explained isn't really worth debating.

Here's the semantic argument I would try if I were Christian:
"Good" is defined by the conformity of a behavior with a goal. If the goal is to enjoy a meal, for example, then a hamburger can be good. If the goal is to reduce the suffering of all organisms, it may not be. The judgment of behaviors as good or bad is as various as the goals people might have.

Now, let's say that there is a kind of goodness that is on so much higher a level of importance that it is worth all the suffering of every being in the universe to sustain it. Is allowing (or imposing) that suffering good, or bad? From the perspective of the sufferers, it is clearly bad, since their goal is not to suffer. But from the perspective of God, it may be clearly good. It may be that the suffering of a few can sustain the Universe, or that a few years' suffering will be rewarded by infinite bliss.

Should people worship a God whose concept of goodness includes their capacity (and tendency) to suffer? That I can't say.

[MindForgedManacle]

I don't think you're picking up on the subtlety here... there's *nothing* you can say about the omniscient being which it doesn't know of. That's a violation of the definition of *omniscience*. Therefore, technically speaking, your argument makes it seem like you're talking about one omniscient mind, but *since* there's a violation of the term "omniscient", what's happening is that you unknowingly swap out the omniscient mind (via this violation) for a non-omniscient mind, which then we get told "doesn't know _____". <<<< that statement *does not* and *will not* apply to an omniscient mind!!!! It's simply *NOT* the definition of omniscience!

That simply means the concept of omniscience cannot be possessed.

Another way of pointing out the problem: you say it can't know that it doesn't know something. The simplest and most obvious rebuttal is "yes it can. It's omniscient. It knows *everything*".

Which makes it just an assertion of belief, and thus not knowledge which voids omniscience as a possible attribute.

What makes you think having *all* the knowledge possible means you can't intellectually justify any one statement? You *know* every aspect of any statement that could be made, thus a justification could come in a myriad of different ways.

You're misunderstanding what I said. What I said was that the belief that a being possesses all knowledge can never be justified, and thus isn't knowledge (by definition )

And since this being is omniscient, *by default* all beliefs it holds are pieces of knowledge.

Only of they are both true and justified. Hence, the argument would demonstrate that there is one belief no mind could ever be justified in holding, and thus isn't knowledge, which eliminates omniscience.

There's no problem there. That sounds like something someone would say who "possesses all knowledge".

They could say it yes, but it'd just be an assertion that could never be justified.

But it does know. It's omniscient.

But it couldn't know it, because that's a contradiction in terms of what knowledge is [usually] defined as being.

But that's easy to do. By virtue of it being omniscient, it **knows** that.

To say that it knows that would entail justification for holding that belief and that it was true, but the justification is impossible here. You can't be aware of that which you don't know that you don't know.

[FallentoReason]

I don't think you're picking up on the subtlety here... there's *nothing* you can say about the omniscient being which it doesn't know of. That's a violation of the definition of *omniscience*. Therefore, technically speaking, your argument makes it seem like you're talking about one omniscient mind, but *since* there's a violation of the term "omniscient", what's happening is that you unknowingly swap out the omniscient mind (via this violation) for a non-omniscient mind, which then we get told "doesn't know _____". <<<< that statement *does not* and *will not* apply to an omniscient mind!!!! It's simply *NOT* the definition of omniscience!

That simply means the concept of omniscience cannot be possessed.

It means you haven't successfully attacked the concept of omniscience. Call it a sort of strawman, if that makes things more clear...

Another way of pointing out the problem: you say it can't know that it doesn't know something. The simplest and most obvious rebuttal is "yes it can. It's omniscient. It knows *everything*".

Which makes it just an assertion of belief, and thus not knowledge which voids omniscience as a possible attribute.

No it doesn't! I *explicitly* said it knows, and not it believes. Plus, an omniscient mind believing something means that it's a justified true belief, since it *knows* everything. In other words, it can't believe something which isn't true, as that would lead to potentially attaining falsehoods as "knowledge".

What makes you think having *all* the knowledge possible means you can't intellectually justify any one statement? You *know* every aspect of any statement that could be made, thus a justification could come in a myriad of different ways.

You're misunderstanding what I said. What I said was that the belief that a being possesses all knowledge can never be justified, and thus isn't knowledge (by definition )

An omniscient mind possesses all knowledge, therefore any belief it might hold *must* be justified.

And since this being is omniscient, *by default* all beliefs it holds are pieces of knowledge.

Only of they are both true and justified. Hence, the argument would demonstrate that there is one belief no mind could ever be justified in holding, and thus isn't knowledge, which eliminates omniscience.

Unless the mind happens to be omniscient, in which case....

There's no problem there. That sounds like something someone would say who "possesses all knowledge".

They could say it yes, but it'd just be an assertion that could never be justified.

Unless the mind happens to be omniscient, in which case....

But it does know. It's omniscient.

But it couldn't know it, because that's a contradiction in terms of what knowledge is [usually] defined as being.

But that's easy to do. By virtue of it being omniscient, it **knows** that.

To say that it knows that would entail justification for holding that belief and that it was true, but the justification is impossible here. You can be aware of that which you don't know that you don't know.

[/quote]

For starters, the last sentence doesn't apply to the concept of omniscience, as I have been saying. Secondly, whatever an omniscient mind happens to believe *must* be justified, since it *knows everything*.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

So given
(a) your original premise (P2) You cannot be aware of that which you are [currently] unaware of, even if in principle you could one day become aware of it.
(b) any proposition F that an entity does not know
© noncognizant unawareness ('unknown unknown')

does (P2) say
P2*) "You cannot know that you don't know F"?

I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but when you make arguments like this, I find it important to be precise.

Hah, I don't mind questions, that's why I posted the argument in the first place.

Anyhow, yeah I guess the argument wasn't precise there. What I meant in P2) was that you cannot know there is something of which you do not know of. I didn't mean not something of which you know that you don't know (e.g. the number of atoms composing your body.

But isn't that tautological?

[MindForgedManacle]

It means you haven't successfully attacked the concept of omniscience. Call it a sort of strawman, if that makes things more clear...

If there is a truth that cannot be justified in holding as a belief, that means omniscience isn't possible, yes?
That's the point of the argument: showing there is at least one truth that cannot be justified in holding to.

No it doesn't! I *explicitly* said it knows, and not it believes. Plus, an omniscient mind believing something means that it's a justified true belief, since it *knows* everything. In other words, it can't believe something which isn't true, as that would lead to potentially attaining falsehoods as "knowledge".

You saying it 'knows' it is entirely irrelevant to whether or not it actually[i] knows it. The mind in question could [i]think it's omniscience, but because such a belief can never be justified, it isn't knowledge. The being itself is irrelevant to that fact, as it cannot possess an incoherent attribute, or it wouldn't exist.

An omniscient mind possesses all knowledge, therefore any belief it might hold *must* be justified.

That's false actually. If there is knowledge that can't be possessed - because to say otherwise entails a contradiction - then the being would simply not be omniscient.

Unless the mind happens to be omniscient, in which case....

The argument is that no mind could ever possess it.

Unless the mind happens to be omniscient, in which case....

Same a before.

For starters, the last sentence doesn't apply to the concept of omniscience, as I have been saying. Secondly, whatever an omniscient mind happens to believe *must* be justified, since it *knows everything*.

Not if omniscience is an incoherent concept. Which is the argument.

The equivalent of what you'e saying is that a square-circle must be a square and circle simultaneously by definition, when my hypothetical argument would be that such a concept is a non-starter because it's incoherent.