To some extent, I'd have to disagree with you, Gluadys. Epistemology can divide knowledge into dispositional and occurrent knowledge. For example:


It seems to me therefore, that God is not aware of a great many things--most things. I would suggest that God has dispositional knowledge of the above, but God does not have occurrent knowledge of the above.

So, I think it is quite possible that certain parts of God's mind are aware of a very limited amount of knowledge.

Everything we expereince is in "living thought"

We see a World that is seperate and that appears to die because that is our state of Mind

You will remember we are told GOD IS LIFE

Therefore what see are looking upon cannot be of GOD

In some ways we could be seen to be worshipping death

I have to disagree with John Leslie. Why would an infinite mind not contemplate all these things? It is not as if they would be a tedious burden to omniscience.

It is as vacuous an argument as those who think the universe must be young because God would not wait billions of years to create humankind. As if time had any meaning to an eternal being.

Just so, the ability to contemplate infinite details is exactly what makes a mind infinite.

Certainly. And I'm glad you're enjoying it. Gluadys and I may not offer intelligent conversation, but maybe we have at least a wee bit of entertainment value.





Then, iyo, who or what created the physical world?





There's a Jewish statement that goes like this: yesterday is today is tomorrow. This is sort of a spin-off of "a thousand years is but a day in the eyes of God". It's not meant to be taken literally, but what it does indicate is that not only is God beyond time, but that history tends to repeat itself.

A week from tomorrow night starts Passover, and one thing we have the kids do is to draw parallels between the Exodus from Egypt seeking freedom with those who seek freedom today. We may also bring up, which I usually do, that it might be possible down the road whereas our people may have to flee again-- heaven forbid. The idea is to show the kids that we are not just dealing with a historical event during Passover. We also teach that even the aggressors usually suffer as well.

Thanks for the input and have a great weekend.

__________________
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Einstein wasn't comparing deities, but was essentially saying that the Abrahamic belief in a deity that rewards people for good behavior is "childish" in that it's just as if God is this Big Daddy who watches, protects, and rewards-- much like our fathers would do. IOW, he's saying we never outgrew this desire.





If God made all and is omniscient, where does chance come in? I honestly cannot see how. This issue we've talked about much within Jewish circles with dealing with the Holocaust, for example. A close friend of mine and a survivor of Auschwitz who died three years ago, became an atheist after growing up Orthodox. He said why would God allow this to happen? Why would God allow the decimation of so many innocent people? How can God be a loving God and allow this?

I couldn't answer him then, and I can't answer him now.






It's interesting that both the Deists and the Pantheists both claim Spinoza and Einstein as their own.





What I was saying is that the descriptions are vague to begin with, and then there's the question of their accuracy.






Yes, I would assume as such, but the question leads to why do you believe as such? What evidence is provided that convinces you? I'm only asking you what I have asked myself many many times before. For example, do we really believe there's only one God? If so, where did this belief come from, and how certain are we that it's correct?

Please do not take offense to what I've done here and, trust me, I've done this to myself for a long time now. For decades, my reoccurring "mantra" was why do I believe in what I believe?

However, this last section is actually getting beyond the topic, so don't feel any obligation to respond to it. And I'm sorry to be such a pain in the a**.

Shalom & have a nice weekend

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

If there's a God, here's where I tend to agree with you more than with gluadys. To us God may well seem "omniscient" because of the vastness of creation, but it is hypothetically possible that God may not always understand all that will actually happen with His creation. Here's one area where I depart from Spinoza and Einstein even though I do tend to share some of their pantheistic ideas to only a certain extent.

IOW, it is hypothetically possibly just us that has attributed omniscience to God. But, as you and I discussed before, there's still the problem of whether God (or Gods) caused our universe or whether it all came out of energy/matter going back into infinity? Let's not discuss this however, since we pretty well beat up that dead horse. Let me just say that I don't know the answer. I got a lot of questions-- but far fewer answers.

Maybe we're just not supposed to know. But as I mentioned in my thread "Doubt", there's something in regards to the formation and continuance of life that may well indicate to me there's a God or Gods.

Shalom & have a great weekend

__________________
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

I can think of a few reasons:

A1) Most "knowledge" of this sort is "junk knowledge," hence a divine mind would be mostly filled with junk (i.e., even if God's knowledge were infinite, the junk knowledge would be a larger infinite than valuable knowledge).

A2) Much of that knowledge would be the contemplation of real horrible stuff that maybe a Jeffrey Dahmer-type God might contemplate, but surely not an intelligent divine being.

A3) This would make no distinction between dispositional knowledge and occurrent knowledge, which strikes me as odd since omnipotence is seen mostly as dispositional with regard to the existence of evil (e.g., God could utilize unlimited power but mostly chooses not to do so). Hence, why must omniscience be a fully occurrent property of God, whereas omnipotence is not?

On the positive side, there's good reasons to think that dispositional knowledge characterizes most of God's knowledge:

B1) From the perspective of evil, it is possible for God and a future creation to not have occurrent knowlege of evil, which goes more in line with idealistic Christian concepts as presented in the New Testament (e.g., "it will be as though they never have been"). Past evils would become dispositional knowledge that is simply never accessed.

B2) An answer to the problem of evil is more within reason in that God becomes conscious of the suffering in the world once "two or three are gathered in his name." IOW, if God has occurrent knowledge of evil via the process of our own spiritual awakening on the planet, then we don't have to make crazy excuses for God not saving hungry and starving children, etc.

B3) God's attributes are all consistent with each other (e.g., God is occurrently omnipotent when God acts in nature, God is dispositionally omnipotent when God is not acting in nature; God is occurrently omniscient when God is acting in nature, God is dispositionally omniscient when God is not acting in nature, God is occurrently omnipresent when God acts in nature, God is dispositionally omnipresent when God is not acting in nature, etc.)

I suppose it is possible, but my view is that God's presence, knowledge, and power forms a spectrum (like the spectrum of a prism). As creation evolves it moves from the darkness (i.e., furthest from God's occurrent presence, occurrent knowledge, and occurrent power), and gradually moves toward the light. But, creation resists this evolution, and hence creation is resisting God's will. This is a losing battle, so God's presence, knowledge, and power eventually win out.

Then I would still see this as a false dichotomy. "when God is not acting in nature" is equivalent to "never" as I see it. Why would one suppose that for a single nano-second God is not acting in nature?

IOW, there are times when God does not act in nature. For example, God did not act through or in the massacre in the Sudan. God still has omnipotency over the Sudan crisis, but God does not exercise all-power over the situation (obviously), otherwise the crises would be over in a single nano-second. If God's attribute of omnipotency is not exercised (or what I call a "dispositional" attribute), then why is omniscience an exception?

Biblically speaking, God is seen to exercise divine omniscience by not knowing sin, by being far off, and even "not knowing us." Doesn't that suggest a God that does not always exercise omniscience?