Today I was chatting with a friend of mine who is an Elder in a Jehovah's Witness's Kingdom Hall. Luckily him and I are able to get into heated discussions about Religion with no hard feelings.
Well he was trying to explain to me their concept of how god gave them free will. How god gave us the ability to make choices for ourselves, and we can choose to do either good or bad.
That's when; I asked him if god is omniscient.
He replied; Yes, he is all knowing and all powerful.
That's when I told him; Well then you don't have free will.
He told me; Of course we do. god gave it to us.
I said; Then he isn't omniscient or omnipotent then.
He asked me; How do you figure that?
I told him; Well omniscience means All knowing, Knowing everything. So god would have to know everything you are going to do in advance of you doing it. And since he knows your actions in advance, your only option is to do what he predetermined for you. On the other hand if you do have free will, then your god is not omniscient. And if he doesn't have the power of omniscience then he's not omnipotent or all powerful either.
Well that's when he started up the verbal song and dance routine that the christians love to do when you let them paint their selves into a corner. He tried telling me that there are different meanings to omniscience and all knowing in the context of the bible. You know, the old "You're taking it out of context" routine.
So I asked him; What is the definition of ALL? What is the definition of Omni? When did they change "All" to mean almost? I always thought All was the opposite of Nothing.
Thats when he told me condescendingly that I needed to look it up in the dictionary.
So I popped into the house and googled omniscience.
Here's what I got;
omniscient - 4 dictionary results
Spelled Pronunciation [om-nish-uhnt] –adjective
1. having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.
–noun
2. an omniscient being.
3. the Omniscient, God.
Origin:
1595–1605; < NL omniscient-, s. of omniscie-ns, equiv. to L omni- omni- + scient- knowing; see science
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
om·nis·cient (o(m-ni(sh'?nt) Pronunciation Key
adj. Having total knowledge; knowing everything: an omniscient deity; the omniscient narrator.
n.
1. One having total knowledge.
2. Omniscient God. Used with the.
[Medieval Latin omniscie-ns, omniscient- : Latin omni-, omni- + Latin scie-ns, scient-, present participle of sci-re, to know; see skei- in Indo-European roots.]
om·nis'cience, om·nis'cien·cy n., om·nis'cient·ly adv.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
omniscient
adjective
infinitely wise [syn: all-knowing]
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Omniscient
Om*nis"cient\, a. [Omni- + L. sciens, -entis, p. pr. of scire to know: cf. F. omniscient. See Science.] Having universal knowledge; knowing all things; infinitely knowing or wise; as, the omniscient God. -- Om*nis"cient*ly,
I handed it to him and told him; Here's four different sources that say I'm right.
He looked at that and said; Well OK, then I won't use Omniscient anymore.
That's when I handed him a printout from
www.watchtower.org the Witness's official site with this gem;
"GOD is fittingly described as omnipotent and omniscient—almighty and all-knowing. Yet, when attempting further to describe God’s greatness, some add a third term—omnipresent. They believe that God is present everywhere simultaneously."
"While none of these descriptive terms are found in the Bible, the first two are clearly supported by Scriptural teachings. (Genesis 17:1; Hebrews 4:13; Revelation 11:17) God is indeed omnipotent, and he is omniscient in the sense that nothing can be hidden from him."
I told him; Then you're going to have to write the Watchtower and tell them to stop using it too.
At that point I figured I had given him enough to chew on so I took pity on him and changed the subject.
So tell me, Did I do a bad thing??