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fandomhigh2009-08-09 10:26 pm
Destiny & Free Will, Week VI [Monday, Period 4]
"Good morning, students," she said clearly. "Today we study the the 'omni' categories. Omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent."
"Omniscience is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a person, including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, and so on," she said, beginning to write on the board. "In monotheism, this ability is typically attributed to God. This concept is included in the Qur'an, where God is called "Al-'aleem" on multiple occasions. This is the infinite form of the verb "alema" which means to know. In the Bible, God is referred to often as "The Great I Am," among other similar names, which also incorporates His omnipresence and omnipotence. In Hinduism, God is referred to as sarv-gyaata," she pointed at the words on the board, "which means omniscient, sarv-samarth, or omnipotent, and sarv-vyapt, omnipresent."
"There is a distinction between inherent omniscience, which is the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known, and total omniscience, which is actually knowing everything that can be known." Ghanima smiled and tapped her chalk against the board. "It might sound like more semantics to you, but I promise, it's a very large difference."
"Some modern theologians argue that God's omniscience is inherent rather than total, and that God chooses to limit his omniscience in order to preserve the freewill and dignity of his creatures. Certain theologians of the 16th Century, comfortable with the definition of God as being omniscient in the total sense, to rebuke created beings' ability to choose freely, embraced the doctrine of predestination."
"Our second topic, omnipresence, is the ability to be present in every place at any, and/or every, time; unbounded or universal presence. It is related to the concept of ubiquity, the ability to be everywhere at a certain point in time. Some argue that omnipresence is a derived characteristic: an omniscient and omnipotent deity knows every thing and can be and act every where, simultaneously. Others propound a deity as having the "Three O's", including omnipresence as a unique characteristic of the deity."
"Omnipotence is where it starts to get a bit trickier," she said thoughtfully. "Belief that God can do absolutely anything can be thought to yield certain logical paradoxes. A simple example goes as follows: Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it? If he can, then the rock is now unliftable, limiting God's power. But if he cannot, then he is still not omnipotent. This question cannot be answered using formal logic due to its self-referential nature. Two excellent examples of this are the liar paradox and Godel's incompleteness theorem. This problem led in the High Middle Ages to developing the concept of mathematical infinity, and laid the basis for infinitesimal calculus."
"A good example of this trinity might be the animal transformations that seem to plague the island at times," Ghanima said. "Say, perhaps, I had a TA that turned into a bird, or a student into a rabbit or kitten."Not that it had ever happened. Really. Or that she had recorded this same lecture last year, with Reno as a tiny red chicken.
"One could argue that an omniscient god would, one, know of the student body's habit of thumbing their collective noses at destiny. He, she, or it, would also know of every thought a person has ever had, or ever will have. The omniscient god would know that being something cute and fluffy would be rather embarrassing for most students, who tend to think of themselves as fighters, and therefore rather fitting. Two, an omnipotent god could easily make someone a fluffy birdie, and finally, an omnipresent god would be able to enact it in the here and now."
"So, I would like you to pair up and discuss. What do you think is most important for a divine being that's writing destiny? Which of the Omnis is most compatible with the idea of free will? Which is the most incompatible? Do you feel omnipresence is part of the other two, or is it something that can stand separately. Can you be omniscient if you are not omnipresent? Team up, and decide."
"Oh, and anyone who missed last week? Please come see me at my desk after class."
[OOC: OCD UP!]
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