Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry 81 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  moggy lover

  Sorry, I must have misunderstood you. You were insisting that God CANNOT know because of the verity behind self realization and logic. But the logical consequence of an ignorant God is His non existence. The reason I say this is because the existence of an ignorant God is....dare I say it?.....a paradox.

  To paraphrase a Latism, He knows therefeore He is. If He cannot know, He does not exist. That is the premise I was working from. If I am wrong, then I must admit I have no idea what you are getting at.

  You accept the existence of God but, in applying ignorance as an attribute to such a God, you basically believe in an ignorant reality.
• 

  Terry

  Etude says: Reading your initial presentation as a whole, I would think that, given your example about Gitmo, it is more accurate to say : "IF you divulge the day and hour and location of an event IN ADVANCE you insure the specific event will NOT occur."

  Well I only intend that statement in direct reference to the thought experiment with the time bomb scenario. It won't extrapolate beyond that.

  So, I don't see the self-reference in either of those examples because the knowledge about the event does not guarantee any specific outcome (such as if the bombing's time and place is revealed but could not be stopped anyway). There is no guaranteed outcome.

  The interesting question (well, to ME, anyway) is what is it we are CERTAIN that God knows in advance when there exist person's who have the power and the will to change, disturb, rearrange, nullify, invent or corrupt?

  I assert that God possessing and using Foreknowledge cannot occur beyond a vague or general "best guess". And that is NOT the same thing as seeing the future in advance.

  Scientific Prediction deals with non-living physics accurately enough to --say---shoot a rocket containing a robot off through space and land it in a specific area at a precise location in time and space EVEN THOUGH earth is spinning and so is Mars WHILE revolving about the Sun! That is NOT foreknowledge of the same nature that is attributed to God, however. The Rocket cannot will itself otherwise nor is either Earth or Mars likely to decide to change orbit.

  As you have said, "There is no guaranteed outcome" when it comes to humans doing or not doing something that will change things.
• 

  Jeffro

  Schrödinger's cat just rolled over in its grave. Maybe.
• 

  Etude

  Terry: " Well I only intend that statement in direct reference to the thought experiment with the time bomb scenario. It won't extrapolate beyond that."

  OK. I get what you mean.

  " The interesting question (well, to ME, anyway) is what is it we are CERTAIN that God knows in advance when there exist person's who have the power and the will to change, disturb, rearrange, nullify, invent or corrupt ?"

  I can see that. You're setting up a hypothetical in order to illustrate how there's mutual exclusivity in knowing and the fact that the "knowing" alters the outcome, thereby presenting a self-referent paradox. But given my example of the coin toss, it's possible to conceive that any detail, in fact, all details (knowledge points) associated with an event, as much as they influence an event, can be known at the same instant by a sufficiently advanced intelligence (perhaps a super-duper computer), thus being able to process and "predict" (and possibly influence) the outcome no matter what it may be or what possibilities exist. Such a being could calculate the logical outcome and either let it happen or change it.

  " Scientific Prediction deals with non-living physics accurately enough to --say---shoot a rocket containing a robot off through space and land it in a specific area at a precise location in time and space EVEN THOUGH earth is spinning and so is Mars WHILE revolving about the Sun!"

  Yeah, I see what you're saying. But consider it this way:Any action or event you may consider "non-living" is no different than an action or event that results from chemical interactions in our brains, transported by electrical impulses that obey the laws of physics. Yes, they are much, much more complicated. Yet, they happen according to prescribe physical laws. So, in essence, you could predict thought if you knew the exact set of circumstances (chemistry, memory, brain paths and input) associated with one particular brain. I'm not saying that this is the way we should conceive everything in the universe. I'm just saying that this is a situation that can possibly occur and change our idea of what can be known and what may be possible.

  So, I'm suggesting that if we just follow the physical laws, there is room to propagate (to the n th degree) the interaction of variables to the point where an outcome can be determined, changed or allowed to happen.
• 

  EntirelyPossible

  Schrödinger's cat just rolled over in its grave. Maybe.

  Either it did or it didn't But certainly not both. And certainly not neither.
• 

  Etude

  Schrödinger's cat just rolled over in its grave. Maybe.

  Either it did or it didn't But certainly not both. And certainly not neither.

  Not both nor something in between, "Excluded Middle".
• 

  PSacramento

  Not a provable assertion. Just a statement of imposed "meaning" without meaning.

  NO offense Terry but so is your premiss when it comes to God.

  The issue is that God is NOT bound by OUR perception of reality so the "laws" of OUR rreality do NOT apply to Him.

  Stating that God can't be "THIS because THIS doesn't make sense or can't exist in OUR reality" is nothing but a comment on the limitations of OUR ability to preceive our reality and our inability to understand His.
• 

  EntirelyPossible

  The issue is that God is NOT bound by OUR perception of reality so the "laws" of OUR rreality do NOT apply to Him.

  I think the issue is that you are making an unprovable assertion.

  Stating that God can't be "THIS because THIS doesn't make sense or can't exist in OUR reality" is nothing but a comment on the limitations of OUR ability to preceive our reality and our inability to understand His.

  Not at all. When people say "God can do this"....it's a statement of how things work and why what was attributed to God is impossible. God speakers fall back on magic as their explanation. That's why it's a dead end. Using magic as the answer for such huge, important parts of your life stops thought, real searching and is intellectually lazy.
• 

  Terry

  The issue is that God is NOT bound by OUR perception of reality so the "laws" of OUR rreality do NOT apply to Him.

  Stating that God can't be "THIS because THIS doesn't make sense or can't exist in OUR reality" is nothing but a comment on the limitations of OUR ability to preceive our reality and our inability to understand His.

  Now why, I ask you, do people (humanity) insist on reading the bible to discover WHO God is?

  Our brain has a one on one relationship with the nature of our earthly reality.

  Man's sin is a default of his human nature.

  God's goodness is a default of God's nature.

  Communication and understanding of Man and God take place with words, writing and thoughts irrevocably tied down to an attempt at rational discourse.

  Rational is a ratio between verifiable and non-verifiable data whereby we actually determine a DIFFERENCE!

  Otherwise, morality is impossible to judge on the basis of understanding what is moral/immoral.
• 

  Terry

  Yeah, I see what you're saying. But consider it this way:Any action or event you may consider "non-living" is no different than an action or event that results from chemical interactions in our brains, transported by electrical impulses that obey the laws of physics.

  I can't see this being true in any meaningful sense.

  Reductionism doesn't work for certain things such as the MIND sets before itself. The Gestalt is such that the whole is actually greater (more profound) than the sum of its parts.

  What you and I perceive as beauty and truth is irreducible yet connected to "that which IS..."

  Mozart and Bobby Fischer anybody?