# The first-person perspective of knowledge, sin, and God's omniscience



## Confessor (Nov 16, 2009)

One aspect of knowledge which is unattainable is a first-person perspective of other beings. For instance, we as humans can use sonar to navigate the ocean and can therefore understand to some extent how bats use sonar as their main means of getting around -- but we can never understand what it would be like to have sonar in the first place and utilize only sonar. Likewise, there is a certain first-person aspect of sinning, such that only the sinner really knows what it is like to commit the sin he just did. He has knowledge of his sin from a first-person perspective.

The rub of this is that, in order to possess this knowledge, one must actually commit the sin. Therefore, there is a dilemma: either God does not know something (what it is like to sin), or He sins. Either He is not omniscient, or He is not sinless.

This is actually one of Michael Martin's (an atheistic philosopher) arguments against the existence of an omniscient, sinless God. But I just recently understood it (although I hadn't even read the argument in about a year), so I would appreciate some insight.

How does his argument fail? I have a hunch the answer is very simple -- having to do with the facts that omniscience (perhaps) refers to "third-person knowledge," and that subjective knowledge of sin is not a desirable attribute and therefore would never be ascribed to God in the first place -- but I would nonetheless appreciate the words of friends.


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## ChristianTrader (Nov 16, 2009)

Confessor said:


> One aspect of knowledge which is unattainable is a first-person perspective of other beings. For instance, we as humans can use sonar to navigate the ocean and can therefore understand to some extent how bats use sonar as their main means of getting around -- but we can never understand what it would be like to have sonar in the first place and utilize only sonar. Likewise, there is a certain first-person aspect of sinning, such that only the sinner really knows what it is like to commit the sin he just did. He has knowledge of his sin from a first-person perspective.
> 
> The rub of this is that, in order to possess this knowledge, one must actually commit the sin. Therefore, there is a dilemma: either God does not know something (what it is like to sin), or He sins. Either He is not omniscient, or He is not sinless.
> 
> ...



What does it mean to ascribe sin to God? Sin is something done against God. Sin/Evil is not some standard outside of God.

CT


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## Confessor (Nov 16, 2009)

ChristianTrader said:


> What does it mean to ascribe sin to God? Sin is something done against God. Sin/Evil is not some standard outside of God.
> 
> CT



It seems an odd solution to say that God, try as He might, cannot sin simply because He cannot act against Himself. Normally God's sinlessness is conveyed in the sense that He is too _good_ to sin, that He necessarily chooses away from sin, not that it is outside the scope of His power.

In any case, I'll just change the first-person action from sin to lust. Does God know what it is like to lust? Assuming not, what does this imply about omniscience?

Or even better, think of it in terms of Jesus. Does Jesus know what it is like to lust? etc.


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## ChristianTrader (Nov 16, 2009)

Confessor said:


> ChristianTrader said:
> 
> 
> > What does it mean to ascribe sin to God? Sin is something done against God. Sin/Evil is not some standard outside of God.
> ...



My point is that the definition of sin or righteousness has God at the center of it. The definition is not, "someone falls down and goes boom". If that is the case, the question starts to lose coherency. 

I think Martin also has a problem dealing with infinite knowledge. Infinite knowledge is not just more knowledge than we have. It is a different class of fish. Or put another way, for something that we have to experience to know, does that imply that someone with infinite knowledge also has to experience it to know.

CT


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## CharlieJ (Nov 16, 2009)

I wonder if the "problem of other minds" really applies to God. It's a problem for humans because other people's qualia (qualitative states of consciousness) are hidden from any sense we have. We can only generalize from external signs (crying, widened eyes, a red face) and from our memories of our own qualia. So ultimately, there can be no absolute empirical confirmation that our qualia match others' qualia, or even that other people experience qualia. On an empirical basis, then, assuming that "sin" is a real quale, nobody knows what it is like for anyone else to sin; we can only experience our own qualia.

Now, God doesn't sin, and thus doesn't have any "sin qualia." So, no, He doesn't know what it is like *for Him to sin*. That doesn't even really make sense. However, I don't see any reason why God wouldn't know our qualia exhaustively. So, God would know what it is like for us to sin, and that, I think, is the main issue.


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## au5t1n (Nov 16, 2009)

We should resist the urge to compare the way God knows things to the way we know things. It does not follow that if we cannot know sin without doing it, then God can't. God is a unique being with eternal qualities that we have never experienced. His knowledge is unlike ours.


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## JTB (Nov 16, 2009)

The only thing that you know in first-person sin that some other person doesn't know is related to yourself (and not to the sin). Since God knows you completely (whereas other persons do not), He also knows the thoughts of your mind in your act of sinning, and the thoughts of your mind as a result of having sinned. That God knows all of our thoughts does not make him culpable for what we are thinking and doing upon that thinking that is a transgression of or want of conformity to the Law He has established.

Your atheist has not understood the distinction between Creator's complete determination and culpability for sin being based on our creaturely liberty.


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## Confessor (Nov 16, 2009)

CharlieJ said:


> Now, God doesn't sin, and thus doesn't have any "sin qualia." So, no, He doesn't know what it is like *for Him to sin*. That doesn't even really make sense. However, I don't see any reason why God wouldn't know our qualia exhaustively. So, God would know what it is like for us to sin, and that, I think, is the main issue.



I think this is the important distinction I was looking for. I was asking too generically, Does God know what it is like to sin?, without specifying _whose_ first-person perspective of sin He would know. It is reasonable to say that He understands what it is like for us to sin without sinning; and it is false that He ever could sin in the first place, so it would be ludicrous to say He's not omniscient by the fact that He doesn't know what it's like for Him to sin -- that'd be akin to saying that God doesn't know what a square circle looks like and is therefore not omniscient. The proposition involving what it's like for God to sin is not an object of knowledge in the first place.

Thanks Charlie!


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## MW (Nov 16, 2009)

Confessor said:


> The rub of this is that, in order to possess this knowledge, one must actually commit the sin. Therefore, there is a dilemma: either God does not know something (what it is like to sin), or He sins. Either He is not omniscient, or He is not sinless.



A philosopher should know the basic law of identity and non-identity. God knows what is not Himself. "He is righteous," 1 John 2:29. "All unrighteousness is sin," 1 John 5:17. Therefore sin is other than conformity in righteousness with Himself.


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## steven-nemes (Nov 17, 2009)

Omniscience doesn't mean knowing everything. That's about as good a definition of omniscience as being able to do anything is a good definition of omnipotence, which it isn't.

Omniscience means knowing all truths.


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## a mere housewife (Nov 17, 2009)

armourbearer said:


> Confessor said:
> 
> 
> > The rub of this is that, in order to possess this knowledge, one must actually commit the sin. Therefore, there is a dilemma: either God does not know something (what it is like to sin), or He sins. Either He is not omniscient, or He is not sinless.
> ...



Here is something I had filed that Dorothy Sayers quotes from Charles Williams, who evidently quotes from Aquinas, in part quoting Augustine_ -- _which if I understand correctly is in keeping with what Rev. Winzer is saying:



> It was . . . declared by Aquinas that it was of the nature of God to know all possibilities, and to determine which possibility should become fact. "God would not know good things perfectly, unless He also knew evil things . . . for, since evil is not of itself knowable, forasmuch as 'evil is the privation of good' as Augustine says, therefore evil can neither be defined nor known except by good." Things which are not and never will be He knows "not by vision," as He does all things that are, or will be, "but by simple intelligence." It is therefore part of that knowledge that He should understand good in its deprivation, the identity of heaven in its opposite of hell, but without "approbation," without calling it into being at all.
> It was not so possible for man . . . To be as gods meant, for the Adam, to die, for to know evil, for them, was to know it not by pure intelligence but by experience.


-from _The Mind of the Maker_

(Sayers illustrates this with the way a good author knows which is the 'wrong' word for a certain place in a piece not by having to write it into the piece, but by its identity as that which is not the 'right' one -- the one he does write in. It's a very limited illustration, and is only meant to convey something of the difference between knowing a_ negation_ by pure intelligence, and by experience -- a bad author uses the wrong word because he doesn't actually know the right one. Experience of evil involves imperfect knowledge of good, while absolute knowledge of good entails non-experiential knowledge of its identity 'in its opposite'?)


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