One cannot be both omniscient (knows everything) and omnipotent (can do anything) simultaneously. If you’re omniscient, you’ll know precisely what you’re going to do tomorrow. If you’re omnipotent, you’ll be free to choose to do something in conflict with what you know you’re going to do. Fairly simple.
I don’t see how this conflicts. Being omnipotent seems to be more of a requirement to be omniscient. If you knew exactly what you were going to do tomorrow but did not have the means to make it happen then you’d be at the will of random forces. So your omniscience would then be downgraded to guessing what was going to happen tomorrow rather than knowing.
Then you’re talking about guessing what’s going to happen tomorrow and being able to do anything not being incompatible.
I’m talking about knowing everything and being able to do anything being incompatible.
Are my definitions of omniscience & omnipotence wrong?
I think your definitions are incorrect by way of you saying that they’re not compatible. Being omnipotent means you can do anything you want. Being omniscient means you know everything that is going to happen. Neither of those definitions impede on the other. There isn’t any fine print that says you can only be omniscient as long as you’re not omnipotent, same vice versa.
What I am saying is that being omnipotent would essentially grant omniscience, by way of brute force. Your will would always be done because anything you want to happen will happen. Regardless of if you knew what was going to happen or not, you would always get what you wanted to have happen. Omnipotence would always override freewill, which seems to be the underlying deal breaker that you are implying.
Hell, while we’re at it, if I’m omnipotent then I’ll just snap my fingers and grant myself omniscience. Now I can do whatever I want and know all of the outcomes as well.
If you know everything and can do anything, then you will know that you’re going to choose A instead of B tomorrow. However, if you can do anything, then you could choose B tomorrow. So it is logically impossible to both know everything and be able to do anything.
Remember the breakfast cereal choice scenario? God knows on Mark’s Wednesday that Mark will choose Cheerios on Mark’s Friday. Mark, who has free will, chooses to eat Wheaties come Friday. This means one of the following must be true:
A) Mark really doesn’t have a free will choice of Cheerios or Wheaties come Friday
B) God doesn’t really know on Mark’s Wednesday what Mark will choose on Mark’s Friday
C) God is incapable of injecting himself into our time and letting Mark know on Mark’s Wednesday what Mark will choose on Mark’s Friday
Which one of those three is true?
The choosing of A and B is irrelevant because an omnipotent being can choose both. Their is no ‘choice’ for an omnipotent being. There is only aboslute power of will.
I’ve seen you make these arguments before so I’m not going to waste my time on it. Take it or leave it, maybe someone else will persue this thread for you. If you don’t thik that an omnipotent being can do two things at once then your definition is incorrect and that’s the end of it. You’re still hung up on the concept of freewill. There is no freewill in the presence of omnipotence, there is only the will of the being.
Are you saying an omnipotent & omniscient being is incapable of making a choice? Given what you said, it seems as if you’re saying an omnipotent being CANNOT do anything.
No, what I am saying is that there is no choice to be made. To say that an omnipotent being must choost either A or B implies that an omnipotent being cannot have both, which means it is not omnipotent by definition. Doing something is entirely different from choosing to do something.
Two objections:
Firstly, you’re imagining the future, and an omnipotent/omniscient being’s vision of it, is static. There is nothing to suggest that it is. An omnipotent/omniscient being could know it would choose A on Wednesday, then forsee a change of heart.
Secondly, why does knowing what one might do in the future preclude that is what one will do?
Re Omniscience:
There is only one future (known or not), and there is also Free Will. This is compatablism, as championed recently by Daniel Dennett.
I think a more convincing argument against the probability of omniscience is the discovery of quantum indeterminism and virtual particles.
There are many, many possible futures. Only one will become actualised and become the fleeting present. An omniscient being should be able to see all possible futures.
Surely you don’t need to be a God to see possible futures that don’t come true? Just a good imagination.
The omniscience is in knowing the one and only future that will come true, including Free Will (and quantum uncertainty) as factors that help determine it.
They fit together absolutely perfectly if, and only if, you are what is causing tomorrow.
…and Free Will is a cruel illusion.
If free will is a cruel illusion, then stating that is pointless. No one who does not see determinism as fact will have the freedom of mind to suddenly agree by rationality as they are predestined to disagree by the very logic of predestination; thereby making the argument from determinism futile.
No, “Free-will” is a misunderstood concept. The misunderstanding is the illusion that insists that you cannot have one if you have the other.
OK, I’ll bite…
So in your scheme, can the omniscient omnipotent being exercise Free Will? How can you avoid the infinite regress of predicting the prediction of the prediction…? And presumably the omnipotent being is impotent in the power to make a mistake due to omniscient predictive powers.
Why would you need to avoid that regress?
Because otherwise you can simply relabel this omniscient being ‘Fate’ with no change of meaning.
What reasoning causes you to say that?