A Slant on Divine Omniscience

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Perhaps this is too early to bring up. Netslave and MIA recently had an epic argument about the compatibility of omniscience with free will and I think they are both still exhausted, but I find the subject strangely interesting. My attention was caught by a discussion of theistic evolution at Panda's Thumb. In this discussion (The Link ) another problem was raised with omniscience; to wit, if God is omniscient, there is no reason for Her to actually set anything in action. God-as-Cause is uninteresting because God would already know the outcome. No surprises. No suspense. Boring.

This argument is from David B who states, “What is a sticking point is divine omniscience. That rules out surprise or experiment as a reason for natural selection, and also any parsimony of effort, since a being that knew everything would not need a genetic algorithm to arrive at an acceptable solution.”

Do you find David's argument compelling?

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I always thought that those ******** from Hondo were full of themselves, but these Devine guys are taking it too far.
 
Epic huh?
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Anyway, in response to your question:

Keep in mind, I didn't bother reading the link. I'll check it out a little later. But it seems like this David is trying to assume something that he can't possibly assume, and that's 'WHY' God did what He did. Maybe this whole Creation thing isn't as much for God but for us. Maybe He doesn't care about being surprised or experimental with us. Maybe it's all about we mere humans learning to live right and to love God on our own. Maybe this whole life is about us making the right choice, whether or not God knows the outcome prior to our choice.

I think the problem is that some people want to completely humanize God and try to fit His reasons into our infinitely small perspective. This is just not possible, and any 'conclusions' you come to by making these types of assumptions will just lead to more confusion. None of us can answer the 'why' of Creation. The only thing we can answer is the 'what now' for ourselves.
 
My grandfather died and is buried in Devine, and he was always a know-it-all sumbitch, so there may be something to is.

Among his words of wisdom, while we were changing heavy blades on a plow:

"The ladies like what you can do with your finger, boys. So don't smash your finger -- that's just like smashing your dick."

Omniscient indeed.
 
As an agnostic, that seems like a lot of contradiction and rationalization to me but it gives me some deeper perspective of Christians' concept of God. Thanks.
 
Coelacanth, I've started an answer to your question several times and for some reason can't get it into words right now.

I have too much work stuff going on to really concentrate on what I'm trying to convey. (One of the reasons my posts are usually little more than a sentence or two!)

I'll take another shot at it when I can concentrate on it more fully.
 
NetSlave,

Is there a chance that your God is in danger of becoming too rarefied? Christianity's strength, it seems to me, is that God is completely humanized. In Christian myth (I don't mean that word to be derogatory, I mean it to summarize what we know and what we think we know about Jesus) God becomes human, with human emotions, desires, and, I guess, failings. That's a considerable improvement over a burning bush.

P.S., I've corrected the spelling on the title of the origial post. Now the only errors are on your replies!

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Ultimately, the problem is ineffability. If God is all-powerful then he can create a universe which appears however he likes, even if its apparent functioning is counter to its actual function. Which is to say, God could have made the universe 6000 years ago in such a manner so as it would look 13.7 billion years old. This means that if you've got a divine doctrine, then it must trump observation. Reconciling doctrine to observation is a futile exercise because observation may be misleading in the light of the ineffable will of God.

My point about about the inconsistency of the omniscience/free-will debate is that it assumes that something can be foreknown without being predetermined. If things are predetermined PRIOR to the creation, then there can be no will but God's, who chose the specific creation and by extension its outcome. It is a logic argument, but as I've said elsewhere ineffability inherently denies logic.
 
To me, it seems netslave and David's difference rely on assumption. David starts at a point before netslave in his analysis. David's is a question of IF there is an omniscient God. Netslave begins with there is an omniscient God and makes assumptions based off that. I'm an atheist, but I tend to agree with the side of netslave on this, except I'll begin with an if. If there is an omniscient God, he doesn't really need a reason to create humanity, even if he knew what we would do or become. He could still make us flawed, where we fight wars, and we get diseases, and we die. It doesn't even really matter why. He could have been bored or lonely. I mean infinity is a long time to spend as a solitary being.

I do find it interesting that God discussions on this board always either support the Christian God or no god. It would be interesting to hear a non-academic Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist perspective. On another thread, I saw Coelocanth say that an agnostic must choose whether Jesus died for his sins or not. I thought that was odd since there are infinitely more choices that an agnostic could make and still believe in a god.
 
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