God is bored.
Omniscience is a curious condition. Boredom comes from a lack of curiosity; curiosity comes from imperfect knowledge. Hence God, with all knowledge, discovers nothing, learns nothing, is surprised by nothing: ennui writ divine.
And yes, that last phrase is completely new.
Except to God.
6 comments:
And therein lies a more compelling argument for Jesus being the son of God. A vacation from the seat of omnipotence, with the pager set on vibrate.
The breakdown there is: if such a situation was created, then God would know about it. There would be nothing to learn, per se.
But surely, an absence from power is as shocking as a rise to it? Can learning and experience be separtated out, espically for beings that are on either one of the extremes?
Our mutual attorney-judge argued recently that if God is omniscient, he has experiential knowledge that is evil, such as the feeling of glee a psychopath experiences when torturing a victim.
Yes, but at the same time, God expierences the cop gunning down said psychopath, or being a flower in a field of really happy flowers.
My argument is that limiting omnipotence to a singular expierence or point of view would be the only "expierence" not had. Even if God could turn everything into white noise and focus on a single point, the noise would still be heard.
Cutting oneself off from that would be a real "expierence" because it would be a defining one, albeit for a short time.
Where to start?
Your premises are not unassailable, especially (1). Why does being omniscient entail boredom again? Especially a Tri-Personed omniscience. It seems like Knowing is the really exciting part, especially when it comes to knowing persons. Why think that "learning" is necessary for "excitement" (as opposed to "boredom")?
Secondly, why does "knowing" necessitate experiential knowledge? That seems just patently false. I know lots of things that I don't have direct experience of (math is one such obvious example). Similarly, I can know that someone else is angry without having to experience that anger for myself. "I know Charity is happy" is not identical to "Charity is experiencing happiness" or "I am experiencing Charity's happiness." For the claims made here to be successful, you would need to demonstrate that those mean the same things. Good luck!
"It seems like Knowing is the really exciting part, especially when it comes to knowing persons. Why think that "learning" is necessary for "excitement" (as opposed to "boredom")?"I would argue that Knowing is "exciting" because we have continually imperfect knowledge, "especially when it comes to knowing persons" (emphasis added).
(Please note that the posting is not a rigorous argument, but rather a provocative observation, along the lines that perfect knowledge has its limitations.)
The second issue (which is not my own opinion, as noted), hinges on the definition of "knowledge," or of omniscience. If experience is a subset of knowledge, and omniscience is the possession of all knowledge, then God also "knows" psychopathic glee. Simply because you "know-that" or "know-of" does not mean you have exhaustive knowledge; you merely have exhausted your subset. But then, you're not omniscient.
To argue otherwise is to say that 1)omniscience excludes certain forms of knowledge or 2) if this isn't the case, God isn't omniscient or 3) God doesn't exist, a reductio
g.k.c: But they are the same things. To an omniscient God, they are all true or all false or all in between at the same time. The difference between observing and feeling emotions is arguably a type of knowledge. To God, the difference exsits, but is irrelvant. Because anything similar, or contrasting, is simaltaniously "known."
jim: I'll quibble later. I don't quite agree, but I also can't articulate exactly why.
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