A reader asks for my response to this passage from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion:
Incidentally, it has not escaped the notice of logicians that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent. (pp. 77-78)
We have here a standard New Atheist rhetorical trick: Take a simplistic objection to theism that has been raised and answered many times and present it to the unwary non-expert reader as if it were a devastating refutation that no one has ever been able to rebut.
As to the substance: Note first that for almost all theists, “omnipotence” does not entail the power to bring into being a self-contradictory state of affairs (e.g. creating a round square or a stone that is too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift). The reason is that there is no such power; the very notion of such a power is incoherent, precisely because the notion of a self-contradictory state of affairs is incoherent. God’s power would be limited only if there was some power He lacked. Since there is no such thing as a power to make contradictions true, His inability to do so is no limitation on His power. (And if an atheist insists that an omnipotent being would have to have such a power, that only hurts his own case. For that enables the theist to say, in response to any possible objection that the atheist could ever raise: “Since God can make contradictions true, He can make it true that He exists even though your argument shows He doesn’t!”)
Now, suppose A and B are logically coherent but mutually incompatible states of affairs. God, being omnipotent, can bring about either one. Suppose that in fact He wills to bring about A rather than B. Being omniscient, He knows that A rather than B is what He wills to bring about. Where is the conflict with omnipotence? Does His knowing that A is what He wills entail that He could not have willed B instead? No, He could have willed it; He just hasn’t. Does the conflict lie instead in the fact that He can’t will A and B together? No, because A and B are logically incompatible, and (as we have seen) omnipotence does not entail the power to generate contradictory states of affairs.
It seems that what Dawkins has in mind is a situation where God decides to do A at one point in time and actually carries out His decision at some later point in time. Since at the time of His decision He infallibly knows what He will do later on (given that He is omnipotent) it is not open to Him to “change His mind” and do something different at that later time, and thus (Dawkins concludes) He is not omnipotent.
There are two problems with this, though. First, even if this were the right way to think about divine action, Dawkins’ conclusion wouldn’t follow. For what he is saying is that God cannot bring about the following situation:
S: An omniscient being infallibly knows that He will bring about A in the future and yet does not bring A about.
And from the fact that God cannot bring about S, Dawkins infers that He is not omnipotent. But the reason God cannot bring about S is that S is self-contradictory, and omnipotence does not entail the power to bring about self-contradictory states of affairs. (Again, if Dawkins wants to dig in his heels and insist that omnipotence must entail such a power, that will only hurt his case. For the theist can then say “Sure God can bring S about, since, being omnipotent, He can even make contradictions true!”)
As it happens, though, this is not the right way to think about divine action. From the point of view of classical theism, anyway, God is immutable and eternal. He doesn’t “change His mind” because He doesn’t change at all. Nor is there any temporal gap between His willing and His acting. Rather, God is altogether outside time. We make decisions and then carry them out moments, hours, days, or years later. God isn’t like that. When He wills that A happen at such-and-such a point in time, we might have to wait for A to happen, since we are within the temporal order; but God doesn’t, because He isn’t. For Him, the whole created order – including every event at every point in time – follows from His one creative act.
This is extremely well-known to people who actually know something about the history of philosophical theology. Naturally, then, Dawkins and his ilk are unaware of it. Their conception of God is breathtakingly crude; they think of Him on the model of Ralph Richardson in Time Bandits, or perhaps (for you 1980s comic book fans) the Beyonder from Secret Wars. What is the point of arguing with such ignoramuses? There would be little point at all, except that the ignoramuses are breeding even more ignoramuses. As Dawkins’ example shows, being the reverse of omniscient seems entirely compatible with preternatural power – such as the power to make willful ignorance and bigotry seem like dispassionate, learned rationality.
Comments (17)
Can God change His mind, thereby changing what he knows, His state of omniscience? I can change my mind, altering what I know, and I'm not omnipotent nor God. So if I know what I'm going to do in the future that knowledge remains mutable.
Taken on a purely human level, which is what Dawkins' logician advisers seem to be doing, it appears that God is a determinist, not only for or on the temporal order, but also within and upon Himself.
An unhappy state, one He shares with all the rest of us fools wandering here and thither, unaware of our manipulated and dependent condition, reduced to being mere vessels for transporting our genes while academics signal our despair.
Posted by johnt | February 15, 2010 10:15 AM
Extra credit for the comic book reference.
Posted by CJ | February 15, 2010 10:15 AM
Since God is perfect, what would he change his mind to? Something less perfect? Why would god want to change his mind to something less perfect and therefore, unworthy of him? Dawkins is wrong precisely because God is unitary and there is one perfection in him, not different possible higher or lower states of perfection.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | February 15, 2010 12:38 PM
Masked Chicken, treading on tricky ground I admit, but does God hold ideas or conceptions, if so why may not these be changed. It is not a case of higher to lower perfections, but a change in concepts. If God has will why couldn't that will be changed, or again is God an auto-determinist?
I'm not saying that God has to or should, though the power to change would seem to inhere in a Supreme Being, temporal necessity aside.
Remember, I mention that the logicians/Dawkins ascribe inconsistency and weakness to God, applying academic logic to One for whom it doesn't apply.
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Posted by the catholic 50 cent | February 15, 2010 3:26 PM
Ok, I admit I laughed a little at that one.
Posted by Matt Weber | February 15, 2010 3:48 PM
(And if an atheist insists that an omnipotent being would have to have such a power, that only hurts his own case. For that enables the theist to say, in response to any possible objection that the atheist could ever raise: “Since God can make contradictions true, He can make it true that He exists even though your argument shows He doesn’t!”)
LOL I LOVE IT!!!
Posted by Graffight | February 15, 2010 5:43 PM
From the point of view of classical theism, anyway, God is immutable and eternal. He doesn’t “change His mind” because He doesn’t change at all. Nor is there any temporal gap between His willing and His acting. Rather, God is altogether outside time.
Exodus 32 verses 9-14 shows God did change his mind at the behest of Moses. So if God is Pure Act, what does it mean to also say that God is immutable and eternal?
I will grant for the sake of argument that classical theism is not opposed to evolutionary biology, which is obviously what concerns Dawkins, yet I don't grant that God does not generate or contain contradictions. One of the first books of Church law was paradoxically called the Concord of Discordant Canons.
Posted by Step2 | February 15, 2010 5:54 PM
"Since at the time of His decision He infallibly knows what He will do later on (given that He is omnipotent)"
Sorry, had a couple of beers before reading this excellent post, so I might be mistaken, but shouldn't the last word be "omniscient"?
Posted by Hugh | February 16, 2010 2:54 AM
Exodus 32: I liken that somewhat with the sacrifice of Isaac - was God testing Moses to see how Moses would stick up for his people? A proto-Christ in a sense, who ultimately sacrifices His own life to stick up for His peeps, as undeserving as we are? Seen from our perspective (ie., that of Moses, perhaps) it looks like He is changing His mind. But from God's perspective, is He? Did He know, being outside of time, that Moses would plead on his people's behalf? Is God's "repenting" of His decision a description from our perspective rather than a disclosure of His internal thought process?
Posted by c matt | February 16, 2010 12:13 PM
Plus, this objection is entirely too anthropomorphic. God doesn't observe reality like a TV show, with a beginning, middle and end; He is eternal and exists permanently "now". God doesn't "already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence"; omniscience doesn't mean perfect foresight along a path, but that's the only way finite Man can understand it.
Posted by Respectabiggle | February 16, 2010 12:57 PM
Omniscience is a department of omnipotence.
Posted by Kristor | February 19, 2010 6:08 PM
Yeah, but it should have been "omniscient." I'll correct it...
Posted by Edward Feser | February 19, 2010 7:15 PM
Step2,
The short answer is that those passages are not to be taken literally. (God doesn't literally have a footstool either, BTW. Or feet for that matter -- other than the second Person of the Trinity in His human nature, of course.)
Posted by Edward Feser | February 19, 2010 7:18 PM
Dr. Feser,
Of course I don't have a problem with dalmatian theology - or advanced dalmatian, when the spots move around. Although I will say this isn't a passage that readily lends itself to a poetic reading like many others do.
Along a similar line, the ritual of appeals to God through prayer, sacrifice, and so forth depends strongly on the notion that God is attentive to those appeals and at least occasionally intervenes supernaturally. Since classic theism views the whole natural order as sustained by God that is another way of saying that God alters His own actions regarding a particular group or entity, which necessarily requires that God's will has changed because of divine simplicity. I suppose you could say that God knew He would receive those appeals and therefore knew He would change His own act/will, but that looks suspiciously circular to me.
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