Saturday, November 23, 2013

The Leap of Faith: Omniscience and Omnibenevolence

Is the omnipotent also omniscient? That is, does omnipotence imply omniscience? An omnipotent being can do all possible things; knowing something is a possibility, thus, an omnipotent can know things. This means that an omnipotent being must have a mind, otherwise it could not know anything. So, omnipotence is at least consistent with omniscience. However, since the omnipotent has a mind, it can have desires and if it desires to know something, because it is omnipotent, it knows it ... but this presupposes specific desires above and beyond omnipotence and therefore doesn't allow the derivation of omniscience from omnipotence. What does this all mean? It means, I believe, that a leap of faith is required to get from omnipotence to omniscience.

If something is omniscient, is it omnibenevolent? If the Platonic principle of Ignorance, which states that evil is only done unintentionally (when a being acts contrary to what is good they still believe they are acting in the interest of what is at least good for themselves), is true then a being which knew all truths would necessarily only be capable of doing good.

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