What God CANNOT Know

In this video, I respond to Josh Rasmussen's argument against the standard view of omniscience.

0:00 - Exploring omniscience/definitions
2:38 - Rasmussen's Argument
6:50 - Dynamic Omniscience
8:10 - 1) Shaving off Conceptualism
9:04 - 2) Problematic propositions don't exist
16:18 - 3) Implicit knowledge for the win
17:27 - Conclusion

[RadicOmega]

Rasmussen is just scary smart man. He also rarely shows how smart he actually is

[killuafanboy]

I have proposed an answer to the question Can God make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it? I'd say yes. But that doesn't mean that God is not omniscient. For one thing God could at any moment make it so he CAN lift that rock. Or he can move it in a way other then lifting it. God limited himself by taking on the form of a man and experience the things humans experience. Does the fact that God can become a man mean he is no longer God? No.

[Nithin_sp]

Bruh, you're really very good at this!

I wish you had a discord server or something so that I could clarify my doubts.

Can you make a video on Theoretical Virtue approach on Theism vs Naturalism?

[bobdinkytown]

Regarding Rasmussen's argument: couldn't it just be said that the problem comes about only when we try to categorize the propositions that God knows, and therefore we just aren't able to categorize them, not that God can't know them? This is strikingly similar to Russell's Paradox. In Russell's paradox there's nothing really paradoxical with each element of the paradoxical sets individually, the paradox only comes about when we try to group these elements into sets. Rasmussen's argument seems to assume that God can know a collection of propositions if and only if a set of those propositions can exist. I don't see any reason to grant this.

Regarding Rasmussen's solution using Divine Conceptualism: While I subscribe to Divine Conceptualism (at least tentatively) I don't really thing his solution really solves his problem, unless he's willing to grant certain absurdities. Let the current time be t=k and let K_k be the set of all in knowledge that God has timed t<k but not at t=k. Then God know K_k at k, but then He also know K_k at some time before k (say k-1 if time is discrete, otherwise this time k is just really close to k) (otherwise K_k isn't as defined: there would have to exist some proposition not in K_k God knows at t=k-1 but K_k includes all propositions that God knows at t=k-1 by definitoon). Then K_k is in K_k, and we're right back at Russell's paradox with self-referential sets.

I think solution 3 is very strong

Great video, keep it up!

[MaverickChristian]

Vis-à-vis propositions, replace "known" with "true" and you get a similar paradox that also leads to a contradiction, which is a pretty big hint that the omniscience paradox doesn't actually refute omniscience.

[jamesmarshel]

If God can’t change his mind, how could he bring propositions into his awareness. It seems like the first solution undermines God’s immutability.

[Kristian-qlzw]

What if Omniscience is defined as knowing everything that can be known. Wouldn't that avoid the problem of knowing K(out knowledge)?

[Hello-vzmd]

Did Joe made a 3 hours response video to this?

[euts]

Great video! I think another issue may be the definition of knowledge -- early traditional conceptions of it is under the JTB definition (Justified, True Belief) in which one both believes a proposition, it's true, and one is justified (i.e., has good reason) -- however IIRC there have been recent(ish) developments in Epistemology where that definition has been put into question? It seems to me difficult to discuss the question "God knows all propositions" when we're still working on trying to understand what knowledge even is.

[rafaelazo]

What if K_out-knowledge isn’t a proposition, yet still is a collection of such. Just like in set theory the way they solved Russell’s paradox against the set of all sets was that they turned the set of all sets to the class of all sets so such collection is not a set itself. So could one say that K_All-Knowledge is a form of knowledge too “large”( encompassing) to be a proposition but it is a class of knowledge.

[JohnnyHofmann]

Dr square! Can’t wait to watch this one (:

[markcostello]

01:19 "I want to give you an idea of how complex god's knowledge actually is"

Apparently Apologetics Squared has at least as much knowledge as god..

[catholicpenguin]

Being omniscient means that God knows all true propositions and believes no false ones. From what I can tell, K sub outknowledge is not a proposition but is just the knowledge of all God's outknowledge. So in a way we're talking about the center of all God's knowledge. I don't see why this knowledge must either be out or inknowledge, why can't K sub outknowledge itself just be the set of all outknowledge?

[thomasecker]

While I did find this video fascinating, I do have one gripe with changing the definition of omniscience from knowing all thing to knowing all true propositions. The problem I find with doing this is that it undermines God's Sovereignty and Authority, as it implies that God in His Wisdom cannot know all things. To quote pastor R. C. Sproul, "If things happen in this world outside the sovereignty of God, then that would simply mean God is not sovereign. The reason I brought up the question of atheism is because if God is not sovereign, God is not God. It's that simple. If God is not sovereign, God is not God. And if the God you believe in is not a sovereign God, then you don't really believe in God. You may have an idea of God. You may have theoretical theism. But bottom line, for all practical purposes, it's no different from atheism because you are believing in a God that is not sovereign."

To imply that God cannot know all things, therefore, is implying that God is not sovereign over a key element of reality, and therefore, isn't Lord of All, at all. While I do agree with the solution provided at 14:56, I still find this change to the definition of omniscience to create more problems for the faith that it solves.

[dane]

What 'Squared CANNOT know _is_ what _God_ can, or CANNOT know. Know that!

[geomicpri]

@Apologetics Squared Great video! Love your stuff! At first, the idea of God “not being able to know” something really annoyed me, because I want to say God is an absolute perfection. I don’t like Josh’s “God likes to leave Himself a bit of mystery” theology. But what about this idea…
Just as God is the Uncaused Cause, God must also be the Unknowable Knower. I hold to Divine Simplicity, so I believe that God’s knowledge of a truth is synonymous with His creating that truth, i.e. God’s Knowing = His Creating.
So the question of “who created God? Did God create Himself?” which any theologian knows is silly, can be paralleled with question of God needing to know Himself. It’s not that God is “unable” to create/know Himself, it’s that it simply doesn’t mean anything. “The Unknowable knows Itself” is actually a meaningless word string.
So Epistemic regression is no more a valid objection to Omniscience than Causal regression is to God’s Omnicausation.
What do you think?

[kylecorcoran]

God knows all. Even a sparrow that falls on the ground but it doesn’t leave gods knowledge. He knows it all. So your wrong on this. God can know everything at the same time.

[scottdemarest]

Although I am agnostic, I’m a fan of this channel. While I find all these logical arguments to be fun, I don’t think that human logic alone can be used to prove anything about the real world. I only believe that we can know things via experiments, and even that knowledge isn’t absolute. The universe just may not make sense to us. I guess I’m a bit of a pessimist in that regard. My point is that these sorts of arguments aren’t the kind of evidence that would convince someone like me. To convince me of there being supernatural elements to our world, I’d need some unambiguous, concrete evidence like directly, electronically measuring a man turning water to wine for example. Do you believe that human logic can actually reveal truths about the real world?

[CH-ekbm]

If God is omniscient, can he learn?

Edit: also, I thought the paradox was with out-knowledge, whereas Josh's solution deals with awareness, soI don't see how it's valid
At the end of the day, I've always wondered why God should be bound by logic in the first place. If He's really God, shouldn't he be able to override logic (theoretically, at least, even if that isn't in His nature) or else logic is God, not Him.

In addition, I've always wondered why God should be considered literally omnipotent or omniscient. I get that there's that verse in Mark that says "for with God, all things are possible", but I don't see why we should take it absolutely literally. I don't see why he should be able to do absolutely everything.

[chipan]

The thing about knowledge is that I would say that it's not naturally in a propositional form. You may put it in a propositional form by putting it into words, but in its natural state it's more in the form of information (and this would be true of our knowledge as well as God's knowledge). So when you express this information in the form of a proposition, you could express an infinite number of propositions from a finite amount of information. So you'll notice that even though you can take any proposition and create another proposition which references that proposition and do this ad infinitum, you're not actually increasing the information content. So with this in mind I would say that whenever you create a proposition about a proposition it may result in a contradiction... But also whenever you create a proposition about a proposition you're not referencing any new information and therefore this means God's knowledge is no different whether he creates such propositions or not. So if the creation of such propositions results in a contradiction, then the problem only lies with the act of creating the proposition rather than with the information content of God's knowledge.