Rosa asked:

What challenge results from the typical theist's attribution of omniscience to God? How can a theist
revise this attribution to avoid the challenge without undermining what matters most in her or his
conception of God?

Also, what is Anselm's version of the ontological argument? and what is Kant's objection to the
ontological argument?

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The most common objection to God's omniscience is that it conflicts with human freedom. What
omniscience means is that for any statement God knows whether it is true or false. So for example
take the statement, "Tomorrow, I will either go to the pub or stay at home". God to be omniscient
knows already, today, which option 1 will do tomorrow. He knows whether it is true that I will go to the
pub. And if God knows that it is true that I will go to the pub then I will go to the pub. But if it is true
today that 1 will go to the pub tomorrow where is my "free will to choose what to do"?

Here's the other side of the problem, If 1 an free then I can make it the case that God does not know
what I will do. Therefore God is not omniscient.

Of course the problem could be solved by denying human freedom. However most proposed
solutions to this problem tend to concentrate on another aspect of God, namely that He is eternal., or
exists outside of time.

If God does not exist in time, but rather sees everything all at once or timelessly them since He is
outside of time he does not have foreknowledge. God does know what free action 1 will take, but my
freedom is not undermined because the truth of me going to the pub tomorrow does not depend on
God knowing whether it is true today.

Another way to evade the problem is to deny the reality of the future. If the future does not exist then
there are no facts to be known. God cannot know what will be true in the future, therefore both our
freedom and God's omniscience is preserved. Our freedom because God does not know what we will
choose. And God's omniscience because there is nothing for God to know. God cannot know X if
there is nothing to know about X. There are many problems here about the nature of time and what it
means to say that God exists eternally. For a good discussion see Time, Change and Freedomby
Smith & Oaklander.

Anselm's Ontological argument is basically this: When we think of God we think of a being with
perfect attributes or in his words "something than which nothing greater can be conceived".

To conceive of God as being only an intellectual object is to say that God is not the greatest thing
which we can think of. Because we can also think of Him as existing in. reality. Anselm thinks that it is
a better state of affairs to actually exist than to be merely imagined. So tor God to be the greatest
thing we can conceive of we must conceive of him as really existing. If we do not think of Him in this
way He is not a being with perfect attributes.

Kant had about four objections to the Ontological Argument. The most famous one is to deny that
existence is a perfection. In fact existence is not a quality or attribute (perfect or other wise) of any
concept at all. Because the word "existence" or "exists" does not add any property to any concept, in
the way that "big" or "round" adds to our concept of the London Eye.

This is because once we have learnt a concept (in this case God or the London Eye) there is a further
question whether anything in the world actually corresponds to our concept, there may not be. We
have to go outside the definition of the concept and check independently of all our reasoning about
the features of a thing whether there actually is one. And this is an empirical matter that can turn out
either way. It is not one that can be settled a priorias a matter of definition.

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield