Omniscience Argument Against God's Existence

[MindForgedManacle]

P1) Omniscience is the ability for a mind to possess all knowledge.

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.

P3) If you are unaware of something, you cannot have knowledge of it so long as you remain unaware of it.

P4) Because P1-3 are true, knowledge of the status of the set referring to "everything one's mind is unaware of" is unknowable, even if the set itself has no members.

C1) Therefore omniscience is an impossible attribute to possess.

P5) God is defined as a being whom possesses the attribute of omniscience.

C2) Therefore God does not exist.

Is there anything wrong here?

[Doubting Thomas]

I don't know, it just isn't convincing to me that it is impossible to know everything. It is highly unlikely and possibly impossible for humans, but omniscience for an all-powerful being seems possible. Since it would be unaware of nothing, then P2, P3, and P4 wouldn't matter.

[MindForgedManacle]

The point of the argument is that it's impossible to ever know whether or not there is something you are unaware of, by definition.

[Captain Colostomy]

...assuming 'you' is a 'you'. God doesn't qualify, so 'he' sidesteps the whole argument.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I can see the religionist answer to this one already: God IS aware of everything, and he is aware that he his aware of everything.

Since Omni-awareness is a condition requisite for omniscience, omniscience is possible [Plato enters, stage right], and since everything that is possible has a necessary existence, there is a necessary Being who is omniscient.

We call this Being 'God.'

(Never mind that the above has logical holes you could throw an angry dog through, or that it puts a polish on meaningless tautology - it IS how the Godists will respond).

Boru

[MindForgedManacle]

I can see the religionist answer to this one already: God IS aware of everything, and he is aware that he his aware of everything.

That is incoherent. You cannot ever know that you are aware of everything because by definition you can never know that there is something of which you are unaware, because if you are then you are unaware of it.

---

...assuming 'you' is a 'you'. God doesn't qualify, so 'he' sidesteps the whole argument.

What? That doesn't make sense...
Regardless, I could simply change 'you' to 'a mind' or 'conscious entities'.

[Ryantology]

Omniscience is what Christians thought of to make their God better than all the other gods. It's nothing to them to move the goalposts again, as needed. Omniscience, as a general attribute, probably isn't an argument against a general god's existence. It does, however, create a host of problems for the Christian God in particular, when God knows precisely how he wants humans to behave yet, with allegedly complete foreknowledge and understanding, creates them so that they act precisely opposite to how he wants them to.

[Neo-Scholastic]

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.

[FallentoReason]

I think the first three premises are a little bit ambiguous and could lead to a non-sequitur, depending mostly on what you mean by "aware".

Awareness ~ the act of consciously bringing forth an idea/thought/memory at that point in time for t amount of time

Having knowledge of something and being aware of that knowledge are two different things. I have the knowledge that a force is equal to a mass times an acceleration, but just because I'm not aware of this while I'm e.g. focusing on making breakfast in the morning, it doesn't mean that I no longer posses this knowledge simply because I'm not aware of it during that period of time. Under this view of "awareness", I would reject (P3) because arguably I *do* possess the knowledge that a force is equal to a mass times an acceleration - it's in there in my brain somewhere. Thus, the rest of the argument is a non-sequitur.

Awareness ~ the act of attaining knowledge where this knowledge was previously unknown to the individual

By this I mean e.g. I could become aware for the first time of some tragedy that happened in a country via the news, and so now I have obtained that knowledge whereas before I was unaware of it. Under this view of "awareness", I would reject (P4) due to the fact that it misunderstands (P1): the first premise states that an hypothetical omniscient mind *already* possesses *all* knowledge. Therefore, it's impossible for such a mind to even become aware of more knowledge, as there is no more knowledge *to be aware of*. Therefore, I reject (P4) simply because an omniscient mind would *know* that there is no more knowledge to become aware of. Another way of highlighting the issue is that (P2) & (P3) are describing difficulties associated with a *non-omniscient* mind, which by default won't apply to an omniscient mind, and thus the rest of the argument is a non-sequitur.

[Ryantology]

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.

The only being I could conceive of recognizing as a legitimate god is one which was more powerful than logic. Anything less than that can, given enough time, be revealed as an ultimately natural process. If a god is to impress me as much as the Christian God impresses Christians, it has to have a quality that absolutely must be unique to it. Being able to bend logic itself to its will is the minimum which would fit that criteria.