Divine Omniscience and Experience A Reply to Alter

According to one antitheist argument, the necessarily omniscient, necessarily omnipotent, and necessarily omnibenevolent Anselmian God does not exist, because if God is necessarily omnipotent it is impossible for Him to comprehend fully certain concepts, such as fear, frustration and despair, that an omniscient being needs to possess. Torin Alter examines this argument and provides three elaborate objections to it. I argue that theists would not accept any of them because they con ict with traditional Judaeo-Christian doctrines concerning divine attributes. Torin Alter1 attempts to undermine an argument against the Anselmian notion of God, according to which God is necessarily omniscient, necessarily omnipotent and necessarily omnibenevolent. The argument states that if God is necessarily omnipotent thenHe cannot be omniscient because suchnecessary omnipotence precludes Him from having the experiences that are needed to acquire certain concepts.2 Alter provides three elaborate objections to this antitheist argument, all of which are, he claims, `consistent with the principal divine attributes' (pp. 47, 48). However, in the following, I demonstrate that even if Alter's objections are cogent, they are inconsistent with attributes that are traditionally ascribed to God, and hence Judaeo-Christian theism is not saved. 1 The Antitheist Argument The version of concept empiricism upon which the antitheist argument rests can be formulated as follows: 1. Torin Alter (2002), `On Two Alleged Con icts Between Divine Attributes', Faith and Philosophy 19, pp. 47 57. 2. This antitheist argument is most notably introduced in David Blumenfeld (1978), `On the Compossibility of the Divine Attributes', Philosophical Studies 34, pp. 91 103. Alter also examines another argument in the same vein: God cannot know what it is like to have an evil desire, because He, who is necessarily omnibenevolent, cannot have an evil desire. Since this argument is parallel to the argument at issue, I set it aside in the main text. Variations of these arguments are discussed in: Richard Francks (1979), `Omniscience, Omnipotence and Pantheism', Philosophy 54, pp. 395 399, Patrick Grim (1983), `Some Neglected Problems of Omniscience', American Philosophical Quarterly 20, pp. 265 276, Patrick Grim (1985), `Against Omniscience: The Case from Essential Indexicals', Noûs 19, pp. 151 180, Patrick Grim (2000), `The Being That Knew Too Much', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47, pp. 141 154, Norman Kretzmann (1966), `Omniscience and Immutability', Journal of Philosophy 63, pp. 409 421, John Lachs (1963), `Omniscience', Dialogue 1, pp. 400 402, John Lachs (1963), `Professor Prior on Omnisceince', Philosophy 37, pp. 361 364, William J. Mander (2002), `Does God KnowWhat It Is Like to Be Me?', Heythrop Journal 43, pp. 430 44, Yujin Nagasawa (2003), `God's Point of View: A Reply to Mander', The Heythrop Journal 44, pp. 60 63, Yujin Nagasawa (forthcoming), `Divine Omniscience and Knowledge De Se', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, and Marcel Sarot (1991), `Omniscience and Experience', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 30, pp. 89 102. c ©May 3, 2003, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows: Yujin Nagasawa, `Divine Omniscience and Experience,' Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 3 (2003), section number.