can god forget?

Question

if god can't forget then he is not omnipotent and if he can forget then he is not omniscient

don't say that he could forget if he wanted to but chooses not to - because in that case he could never rule out the possibility that he did indeed once choose to forget something - its just that he now cannot remember it.

doesnt this mean it is not possible for a being to be both omnipotent and omniscient

are these good reasons not to believe in the christian god. Why should i believe him to be omnipotent and omniscient - when it is clearly impossible for him to be both?

Answer 1

Er....

...what was the question, again?

Answer 2

Omnipotent must mean that He has perfect control over his faculties. If He could not forget, His memory would have a certain amount of control over Him. Anything that is in His memory could, perhaps without warning, pop up to engender whatever feeling that goes with them - a bit like us. Therefore His ability to select certain bits of information for complete and irrecoverable deletion and keep others perfectly clear in his mind for all time is a sign of His omnipotence, not an argument against it.

Answer 3

just because God is omnipotent doesn't mean He can do everything. logically if God is omnipotent, He can't not be omnipotent, can't make something so heavey he can't lift it. God doesn't forget. If someone offends you, you might not forget about it, but you will choose to look past it and still befriend the person. that wasn't so hard was it?

Answer 4

I agree with April. He forgives but doesnt forget.

In general, 'omnipotent' means he can do anything not against His nature and excludes illogical things like lifting a rock bigger than He can lift. The Bible says "God cannot lie" yet maintains "Nothing is impossible with God" ruling out things contrary to HIs nature.

In any case, it would seem more than fitting to call a God that made the universe in 6 days as omnipotent.

Answer 5

Things like this don't really serve any purpose, other than to convince ourselves that we've somehow stumbled on some logical device that makes us think that we've delivered the coup de grace in the theological debate battle. It makes the same mistake as fundamentalists do: it concentrates on attributes of god (constructed by our human thought system) and then uses the same mechanisms (logic) of the human thought system to try and disprove them. It makes no sense except if we stay in the realm of perceptions and images.

Answer 6

God is sometimes omnipotent, sometimes omniscient and sometimes he forgets. Believe it, he is all these things at the same time

Answer 7

Forgetting belongs to the realm of those governed by time. God would not be God if he were limited by any dimension, including time, which is one of the four dimensions that limit humans. Therefore your question does not make sense - it is a "red herring" question. This is a common error made by those seeking answers to philosophical questions - the projection of human limitations on a being that is by definition limitless. Your head will hurt if you keep doing that.

Answer 8

Sure he can. He seemed to forget about his omniscience when he went about creating us.... If he hadnt, he would have seen that we would screw it all up and cause him to have to send his son to die for us. But he didnt. So, either he isnt omnisicent, or he forgot about his omniscience. Or, he doesnt exist.

Good argument. Flower obviously doesnt understand what Omni means..... you cant sometimes be omnipotent. Either you are, or youre not. Not sometimes. Thats ridiculous.

Answer 9

had to look up what omnipotent and omniscient meant. all powering, having great power for the first and knowing all things for the second. from omni to omnium-gatherum in the dictionary universal,of all kinds,powerful,present everywhere, collective and unique are discribed. yes, if he can forget he seems to not know all things. but if he cant forget i understand him as being "all powerful"? is he supposed to be omnipresent?(present everywhere). if so he has the power to forget or remember?

Answer 10

Could it be that your definition of "forget" is incomplete? Yes, to forget something means being incapable of remembering something.

According to dictionary.com, forget also means "to omit mentioning, leave unnoticed, to fail to think of, take no note of, to neglect willfully, disregard, to cease or omit to think of something."

I know people hate to hear this, but we are not meant to understand the divine mind. Can a being ever completely understand its own creator? Just because our limited minds and limited vocabulary cannot adequately define God, does not mean that He is not who He says He is.

Answer 11

People sometimes complicate things as you have just done. Christianity has a simple message which is Love one another and our Father in Heaven. If you ask for forgiveness for sin then the slate is wiped clean-the sin is forgotten.