Omniscience and Omnipotence are incompatible

[wynn]

Do you have any worthy evidence that states otherwise?

If you think other people can tell yu who you really are ...
Then I'm not sure what to say at this point.

Well, accepting a extremely implausible tall tale at face value...
God did lot's of good flooding the entire Earth, killing everything except two of each kind (And an entire family of great apes) on the claim that man was so wicked, he would wipe them all out.
Only to have apparently changed his mind during all this and Instructing Noah to survive, take two of each kind of animal, so that everything he wipes out can survive and repopulate the Earth. With a good deal of incest.
Lots of good and no mind changing at all.

What is it with this obsession with Jehovah??!

 

[wynn]

Given that everything God does, is good, then there is no need for Him to change His mind.

How can we possibly know that everything that God does is good?

That is actually a truism, following from some usual definitions of God.

If God is in charge and sets the terms, then everything is in line with His will, and thus good.

(Assuming that there's a God, and that God does things.) That's just a pious projection, as far as I can see.

To be clear: All the statements I make in this thread about God are part of a philosophical exercise, not a claim of personal divine inspiration or authoritative knowledge. I have already noted that, and noted the verification problem.

But even assuming for the sake of argument that your assertion is true, how is it relevant to JameR's problem in the original post?

It seems obvious to me that JamesR's formulation of the issue is leaving out an important aspect.

That problem suggests that if God did change his mind, then his doing so would contradict his omniscient knowledge of everything he does.

Indeed. So now his camp needs to explain why there would be a need for God to ever change His mind.
So far, nobody from his camp explained that.
If God is omniscient, then He doesn't have to change His mind.


It seems to me that the problem here is that JamesR's camp is working with two propositions (namely, God's omniscience and omnipotence), which as they work out their line of reasoning, alternate between being considered a constant and then later being considered a variable.
That is logically unsound.
You need to decide which one you're going to consider a variable and which one a constant.

That hypothetical scenario doesn't need to suggest that God will ever want to change his mind, let alone that he will ever actually do so. (All of that fundamentally temporal human psychology language is kind of meaningless when we are talking about a supposedly timeless being anyway.)

It's just pointing out that that God's possessing omniscient knowledge of everything that he's going to do would seem to create tight logical bounds around what he can hypothetically choose to do (regardless of whether he actually makes those choices or whether he would even want to make them) without contradicting the omniscience attribute.

You still need to explain why changing one's mind would be proof of God's free will.

It's usually considered proof (or at least some indication) of human free will. But as already noted, humans operate within a categorically different domain than God.

It might not be a fatal theological difficulty by any means, since the theologians could argue that God's knowing what he's going to choose X doesn't mean that he couldn't do Y instead, if he wants to. It's just suggesting that he isn't going to want to. In other words, this theological rejoinder might say that omnipotence and omniscience are talking about two different logical spaces. Omnipotence refers to a logical space of all possible choices, while omniscience refers to a much smaller logical space of those possible choices that are consistent with a particular set of descriptive propositions.

After all, we humans predict what ourselves and others are going to do all the time. Those predictions don't exert any binding force on us. We often violate them, and when we do, all we've done is contradict the prediction, showing that the prediction was in fact mistaken.

In the divine case, the theologian might argue that God's freedom to act is no more bound by predictions than ours is, the only difference being that God's predictions are never mistaken.

I was never in favor of this kind of explanation, as it is typically human.

And it is an inconsistency that exists as long as we specifically avoid the issue of the quality of an action.

As far as I can see, the quality of actions is irrelevent.

And yet our daily life, everything we do, is focused on precisely the quality of actions.

We could refer to actions with letters like in logic if we like. If God knows that he's going to do X (regardless of the "quality" of X), then he seems incapable of doing Y instead (regardless of the quality of Y) without contradicting the supposed-knowledge that he was going to do X, proving it wrong and showing that it wasn't knowledge at all.

As I just argued, this doesn't really represent a proof that God couldn't have chosen Y if he wanted to. So, some theologians would argue, it doesn't contradict God's omnipotence.

But... he couldn't choose Y without violating the omniscience condition, proving his purported-knowledge was mistaken. So God does seem to be limited in his options, if he wants to keep everything consistent and avoid being caught in a mistake. And that, again arguably, might constitute grounds for arguing that his omnipotence has already been violated, since he seemingly is limited in what his would-be omnipotence attribute can do without generating contradictions with the contents of his would-be omniscience attribute.

See above.

Even if God decides to rewrite the rules of logic to give himself more breathing room, he still seems limited in what he can consistently do within the existing set of logical principles.

I'd hardly call that a "limitation" - rather, it is a delineation.
We can't talk about things unless we delineate them.

Then why do people talk about divine attributes?
For that matter, why do people talk about God at all?

For their own human sake.
Talking about God has been a traditional pastime for millenia.

How can we say anything about anything, without employing our human concepts?

Sure. But that doesn't mean that just because our concepts are human, they are somehow to be dismissed, or are not part of reality, nor that those human concepts are unable to point toward a "higher reality."
I think that human concepts very much can point toward a "higher reality." They might not be able to grasp it, to give it a complete verbal expression, but they can point toward that "higher reality."

 

[Gustav]

Sure. But that doesn't mean that just because our concepts are human, they are somehow to be dismissed, or are not part of reality, nor that those human concepts are unable to point toward a "higher reality."
I think that human concepts very much can point toward a "higher reality." They might not be able to grasp it, to give it a complete verbal expression, but they can point toward that "higher reality."

i find such sentiment distasteful
it is too.... human
too....grandiose

nevertheless... a brilliant strawman

 

[wynn]

i find such sentiment distasteful
it is too.... human
too....grandiose

nevertheless... a brilliant strawman

Well, if you think that maintaining your mind as if it were a Nazi concentration camp or a brothel makes for a much more happy life, then you have that option too.

:m:

 

[Gustav]

what what
i'll have you know that nazi's have ideals too
as for hookers.....they have hearts of gold

/disappointed

 

[wynn]

i find such sentiment distasteful
it is too.... human
too....grandiose

Bah, false humility.

 

[NMSquirrel]

Well, if you think that maintaining your mind as if it were a Nazi concentration camp or a brothel makes for a much more happy life, then you have that option too.

:m:

hmm..given the choice i would rather live in the brothel..

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, if you think that maintaining your mind as if it were a Nazi concentration camp or a brothel makes for a much more happy life, then you have that option too.

I call Godwin's Law. Wynn forfeits the discussion!

 

[NMSquirrel]

I call Godwin's Law. Wynn forfeits the discussion!

LOL..love it!
also means that i have lost at least one..

 

[wynn]

I call Godwin's Law. Wynn forfeits the discussion!

You can't play the game, so you play the umpire?

Blah.

 

[DaveC426913]

You can't play the game, so you play the umpire?

Blah.

I am doing both. Multitasking you know. I've posted my own suggestion, addressed several other suggestions and refuted some.