An omniscient God cannot think.

[Greylorn Ell]

By "thought" I mean creative thought; i.e. concepts that have not previously been invented.

"Omniscient" takes the classic religious definition: knowing all things in the past, present, and future, without reservation. An omniscient God knows the moment when every star in the universe will go nova. He knows when every termite farts, and when every termite will fart.

An omniscient God also knows his own thoughts; past, present, and future; and therefore cannot have a new thought.

Suppose that at the very moment you read this, God has a new thought. Then he cannot have had that thought an hour ago. This means that an hour ago God did not know everything and was not omniscient.

God can either think or know everything, but not both. Q.E.D.

Greylorn Ell

[WanderingLands]

By "thought" I mean creative thought; i.e. concepts that have not previously been invented.

"Omniscient" takes the classic religious definition: knowing all things in the past, present, and future, without reservation. An omniscient God knows the moment when every star in the universe will go nova. He knows when every termite farts, and when every termite will fart.

An omniscient God also knows his own thoughts; past, present, and future; and therefore cannot have a new thought.

Suppose that at the very moment you read this, God has a new thought. Then he cannot have had that thought an hour ago. This means that an hour ago God did not know everything and was not omniscient.

God can either think or know everything, but not both. Q.E.D.

Greylorn Ell

I'm not sure that I can agree with the idea that God would know everything yet not think. I relate the universe to the human mind (as in consciousness), where much like the human mind, is limitless and is capable of any and/or all possibilities. We constantly make thoughts which perpetuate our reality, which I believe what God is doing with this universe, since it is limitless and can't be hindered by bounds. That's the reason why everything in this universe is alive and is animated by the life force or the energy that is present. If God cannot think, then this Universe is not alive.

[Gee]

WanderingLands;

Please consider my following responses.

I'm not sure that I can agree with the idea that God would know everything yet not think.

What is thinking? Not thought, but thinking. When we think, what we do is process thought. We compare, deduce, and calculate the thoughts that we now possess in order to create new thoughts. So how could a "God" have new thoughts if he already knows everything? At best, it would be redundant, but is logically not real or possible.

I relate the universe to the human mind (as in consciousness), where much like the human mind, is limitless and is capable of any and/or all possibilities. We constantly make thoughts which perpetuate our reality, which I believe what God is doing with this universe, since it is limitless and can't be hindered by bounds.

You are anthropomorphising "God". You assume that because we think, "God" and the universe thinks. There is no evidence of this. And the human mind is not "limitless", it is in fact quite limited.

I had a neurologist explain this limiting concept to me. He explained that when we are babies, we learn to get out of bed, so we must learn to judge distances, judge our balance, move our bodies, etc. There is a lot to learn in accomplishing this very simple task. But we do not think about this every morning when we get out of bed. It becomes automatic.

If you consider how many simple tasks we accomplish in our day to day lives, then consider that our brains hold knowledge of our bodily functions that we are not even aware of, and our memories, it is easy to understand that there is a great deal of knowledge floating around in each of us. But if we were aware of all of this knowledge all of the time, we would go mad. It would be too much. We would not be able to think. So most of our knowledge is dumped into the sub/unconscious aspect of mind where it sits until we need it or forget it.

Our conscious minds must be kept clean and orderly or we can not think, because they are indeed limited like RAM in a computer. Our minds are not limited by boundaries, they are limited by focus.

That's the reason why everything in this universe is alive and is animated by the life force or the energy that is present. If God cannot think, then this Universe is not alive.

So you are saying that trees think? They are alive. What about daffodils? Crabgrass? Knowledge, awareness, and thinking are not the same things.

G

[WanderingLands]

What is thinking? Not thought, but thinking. When we think, what we do is process thought. We compare, deduce, and calculate the thoughts that we now possess in order to create new thoughts. So how could a "God" have new thoughts if he already knows everything? At best, it would be redundant, but is logically not real or possible.

The only God and the Universe can be alive is if it self-generates itself in thought (in a metaphysical/metaphorical sense). That's why infinitesimal forms of life, of all kinds, are able to exist - it's so that this universe, and God, can forever be sustained and stabled.

You are anthropomorphising "God". You assume that because we think, "God" and the universe thinks. There is no evidence of this. And the human mind is not "limitless", it is in fact quite limited.

I had a neurologist explain this limiting concept to me. He explained that when we are babies, we learn to get out of bed, so we must learn to judge distances, judge our balance, move our bodies, etc. There is a lot to learn in accomplishing this very simple task. But we do not think about this every morning when we get out of bed. It becomes automatic.

If you consider how many simple tasks we accomplish in our day to day lives, then consider that our brains hold knowledge of our bodily functions that we are not even aware of, and our memories, it is easy to understand that there is a great deal of knowledge floating around in each of us. But if we were aware of all of this knowledge all of the time, we would go mad. It would be too much. We would not be able to think. So most of our knowledge is dumped into the sub/unconscious aspect of mind where it sits until we need it or forget it.

Our conscious minds must be kept clean and orderly or we can not think, because they are indeed limited like RAM in a computer. Our minds are not limited by boundaries, they are limited by focus.

The mind actually is unlimited, and is a lot more complex than what is beyond our perceptions. Evidence of this are some deeper explorations into human consciousness, which documents cases of humans experiencing things outside of this physical reality. Examples include explorations into Astral Projection, Lucid Dreaming, Meditation, etc., and are talked about in Noetics and the psychology of Carl Jung, who talks about the "Collective Unconscious".

We learn many things, and can go beyond everyday human experiences, by also simply putting in the will and the mind to accomplish things. That's why there exists polymaths, like those of the Renaissance or the Islamic Golden Age. That's because those people had curiosities great enough to put their mind into philosophy, medicine, alchemy, mathematics, aesthetics, and other various sciences of that era.

So you are saying that trees think? They are alive. What about daffodils? Crabgrass?

There have actually been many experiments done that show that plants and trees actually have senses and communicate with each other. One such examples includes researchers finding out that plants can communicate and respond via electrochemical signals.

Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2 ... -and-react

There's also a book called Plants Have Senses by Brian J. Ford, who documents cases of plants and trees being conscious.

http://www.brianjford.com/soulsa.htm

Excerpt (Chapter 5):

Trees manage to grow in well-spaced patterns, as a walk through woodland will confirm. They employ mechanisms designed to prevent overcrowding, which would lead to competition for food, light, and water. Not only can plants communicate an attack by pests to other plants in the neighbourhood, but they can react to disease by chemical responses which parallel some of those seen in animals. Plants have great regenerative powers, and the way they heal themselves shows immense coordination of cellular growth. A tree from which a branch has been cut covers the site with wound tissue and makes good the damage. If you do not cut down a branch, then the tree may well do that for itself.

Trees have the ability to configure their outline during their lifetime. For example, they can shed their branches to maintain their equilibrium. An even more remarkable ability is reported by Bill Vinten in Suffolk, who reports that a tree which was partly dislodged by a gale has altered its branches to regain its balance. He observed that the tree had been left leaning down wind after the storm. Over the following years, no branches were lost from the tree, but those that remained have grown round to restore the tree's centre of gravity. We have no knowledge of how a tree does this, and the maintenance of the outline of a tree is clearly a result of its sensory awareness and is worthy of further study.

What this means is that all things are alive in that they have memory so they can think, which is why they are able to generate and grow.

Knowledge, awareness, and thinking are not the same things.

They may be different words, but nevertheless are synonymous with each other. When you think, you get knowledge, and when you have knowledge and you think, you are aware. All products of realization and life.

[Greylorn Ell]

What this means is that all things are alive in that they have memory so they can think, which is why they are able to generate and grow.

Knowledge, awareness, and thinking are not the same things.

They may be different words, but nevertheless are synonymous with each other. When you think, you get knowledge, and when you have knowledge and you think, you are aware. All products of realization and life.

WL,

It looks to me as though your mystical, New Age philosophical tendencies are more important to you than coherent conversation. Knowledge, awareness, and thinking are in no way synonymous. You might consider opening a dictionary. While it does not think and is unaware of its existence, a dictionary does contain knowledge that you do not.

These words are all related to mysterious processes and mechanisms by which we discover existing information and invent new information. An intelligent conversation on this subject is only possible if such words are treated respectfully, honored for the concepts they represent. It is common for new-age religionists to redefine the meaning of words and insert them into confusing and irrelevant arguments, a technique formally known as neuro-linguistic programming. That is what you are doing. Spare us the nonsense, please.

Greylorn

[HexHammer]

By "thought" I mean creative thought; i.e. concepts that have not previously been invented.

"Omniscient" takes the classic religious definition: knowing all things in the past, present, and future, without reservation. An omniscient God knows the moment when every star in the universe will go nova. He knows when every termite farts, and when every termite will fart.

An omniscient God also knows his own thoughts; past, present, and future; and therefore cannot have a new thought.

Suppose that at the very moment you read this, God has a new thought. Then he cannot have had that thought an hour ago. This means that an hour ago God did not know everything and was not omniscient.

God can either think or know everything, but not both. Q.E.D.

Greylorn Ell

Nonsense, a reporter appearing everywhere on the world, speaking to the public is like an omniscient god.
People can talk with multiple people around the world on Skype, etc.

If we can, why wouldn't a god do the same?!?!

[Blaggard]

Omniscience is impossible anyway if quantum mechanics and its probabilities are in fact underlying reality. At best God would seem omniscient, but in fact could not contain all the information in the universe and being able to utilise it within a time frame needed to predict the future without breaking fundamental laws of nature- the time needed just to process such vast amounts of data are not achievable by any mind no matter large unless it is infinite which is possible for God. I am sure God could do this after all God is magic, but why he would bother who knows. End of the day I don't believe in God or Leplace's Demon, I just don't find the idea has traction. Ironically I do like discussing the issues, if for no other reason the arguments are interesting even if ultimately not reflecting anything I believe in. Which I suppose is one aspect of philosophy.

Arguments against Laplace's demon

According to chemical engineer Robert Ulanowicz, in his 1986 book Growth and Development, Laplace's demon met its end with early 19th century developments of the concepts of irreversibility, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics. In other words, Laplace's demon was based on the premise of reversibility and classical mechanics; however, Ulanowicz points out that many thermodynamic processes are irreversible, so that if thermodynamic quantities are taken to be purely physical then no such demon is possible as one could not reconstruct past positions and momenta from the current state. Maximum entropy thermodynamics takes a very different view, considering thermodynamic variables to have a statistical basis which can be kept separate from the microscopic physics.[4]

Due to its canonical assumption of determinism, Laplace's demon is incompatible with mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics, that stipulate indeterminacy. Whilst indeterminacy is the majority position amongst physicists, the interpretation of quantum mechanics is still very much open for debate and there are many who take opposing views (such as the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation).[5]

Chaos theory is sometimes pointed out as a contradiction to Laplace's demon: it describes how a deterministic system can nonetheless exhibit behavior that is impossible to predict: as in the butterfly effect, minor variations between the starting conditions of two systems can result in major differences.[6] While this explains unpredictability in practical cases, applying it to Laplace's case is questionable: under the strict demon hypothesis all details are known and therefore variations in starting conditions are non-existent.

In 2008, David Wolpert used Cantor diagonalization to disprove Laplace's demon. He did this by assuming that the demon is a computational device and showing that no two such devices can completely predict each other.[7][8] If the demon were not contained within and computed by the universe, any accurate simulation of the universe would be indistinguishable from the universe to an internal observer, and the argument remains distinct from what is observable.
Recent views

There has recently been proposed a limit on the computational power of the universe, i.e. the ability of Laplace's Demon to process an infinite amount of information. The limit is based on the maximum entropy of the universe, the speed of light, and the minimum amount of time taken to move information across the Planck length, and the figure was shown to be about 10120 bits.[9] Accordingly, anything that requires more than this amount of data cannot be computed in the amount of time that has elapsed so far in the universe.

Another theory suggests that if Laplace's demon were to occupy a parallel universe or alternate dimension from which it could determine the implied data and do the necessary calculations on an alternate and greater time line the aforementioned time limitation would not apply. This position is for instance explained in David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, who says that realizing a 300-qubit quantum computer would prove the existence of parallel universes carrying the computation.

Wiki: Leplace's demon.

[Greylorn Ell]

By "thought" I mean creative thought; i.e. concepts that have not previously been invented.

"Omniscient" takes the classic religious definition: knowing all things in the past, present, and future, without reservation. An omniscient God knows the moment when every star in the universe will go nova. He knows when every termite farts, and when every termite will fart.

An omniscient God also knows his own thoughts; past, present, and future; and therefore cannot have a new thought.

Suppose that at the very moment you read this, God has a new thought. Then he cannot have had that thought an hour ago. This means that an hour ago God did not know everything and was not omniscient.

God can either think or know everything, but not both. Q.E.D.

Greylorn Ell

Nonsense, a reporter appearing everywhere on the world, speaking to the public is like an omniscient god.
People can talk with multiple people around the world on Skype, etc.

If we can, why wouldn't a god do the same?!?!

Hex,
This is a stupid and irrelevant analogy. Were you drunk when you wrote this nonsense?
G

[HexHammer]

Hex,
This is a stupid and irrelevant analogy. Were you drunk when you wrote this nonsense?
G

No, try think about it, you are jumping to farfetched conclusions and think you know everything about things that doesn't exist.

..that constitues idiocy..

[Greylorn Ell]

Hex,
This is a stupid and irrelevant analogy. Were you drunk when you wrote this nonsense?
G

No, try think about it, you are jumping to farfetched conclusions and think you know everything about things that doesn't exist.

..that constitues idiocy..

Hex,

Kindly accept my apologies for coming down so hard on your comment. I've been watching too many dipsticks on FoxNews and elsewhere. The idea of a reporter (a.k.a. "news personality," meaning someone who reads teleprompters reliably and can improvise a sentence with fewer than 3 "you knows" in it) as "god" just pissed me off. What can I say? I was a bad day.

I reread your post, and may have a sense of what you were proposing. Not that far removed from some other pantheistic ideas, like the extended gaia hypotheses where living planets and their supportive stars are controlled by a conscious entity. Likewise galaxies. All communicating via telepathy unlimited by "c."

But a universe managed by teleprompter readers. even if a gaggle of idiots made such a person their president-- no way. I just cannot abide such a notion.

My OP was not intended to further the notion of an omnipotent creator-god. Exact opposite. My intent was to show that the classical God-concept is illogical, then to initiate a discussion about logic-limited and physics-limited creators.

[HexHammer]

Apology accepted.

[attofishpi]

Omniscience is impossible anyway if quantum mechanics and its probabilities are in fact underlying reality. At best God would seem omniscient, but in fact could not contain all the information in the universe and being able to utilise it within a time frame needed to predict the future without breaking fundamental laws of nature- the time needed just to process such vast amounts of data are not achievable by any mind no matter large unless it is infinite which is possible for God.

Hi Blaggard...please provide biblical account of such a God, or should i say, where God is considered or deemed to have such omniscience.

(i will really appreciate it)

[attofishpi]

So am i accurate in stating that those that are ascribing an omniscience that was never ascribed to God via scripture...in that God was never declared to know ALL of the future, are in fact wrong?

[jackles]

theres is only one future and thats god.both directions past and future lead to god.the god that never moved but causes time to move.

[Greylorn Ell]

So am i accurate in stating that those that are ascribing an omniscience that was never ascribed to God via scripture...in that God was never declared to know ALL of the future, are in fact wrong?

Atto,
If I interpret your question properly, yep, they're all wrong. If you'll peruse the Torah/Old Testament, and even the missing books, it is clear that the Jews had invented an entity who was, for them, the best God, one above all others. They were insufficiently thoughtful to invent notions of omnipotence and omniscience, and indeed, the Torah includes no such concepts. One of the original commandments advised the Jews to not put other gods before Moses' newly discovered God, and after the Golden Calf debacle, they appear to have listened-up. Archaeological evidence shows that they did worship other minor gods, little protective deities that they were allowed to represent with clay figurines.

The notion of omnipotence/omniscience did not appear until Christianity's Augustine of Hippo, a notion supported by Emperor Constantine for his own political ends. It was finalized and fleshed out by Aquinas, centuries later. Modern printings of the O.T. are, of course, adjusted accordingly. (I learned this from a scholar of ancient Hebrew, and from a retired Catholic Priest who has studied the history of his religion more exhaustively than I would care to do.)

For me, the ultimate Bible is the physical universe and the mathematical principles that define its behavior. Omniscience is logically impossible for an intelligent creator capable of original thought. Omnipotence is not a necessary property for creation, and cannot be exercised without destroying the entire universe.

The absurd mathematical probabilities rule out random mutations as a potential explanation for biological life forms. The most obvious solution is creative engineering. The engineers do not need to be any more omnipotent/omniscient than the guys who sent men to the moon. However, they must not require matter-based bodies.

Greylorn