In a
fascinating article, “Mormonism: Is the Mormon Concept of God Problematic,” Wylie Breckenridge who is not a Latter-day
Saint, wrote a defence of Latter-day Saint theology in response to certain
arguments forwarded by Francis Beckwith’s essay, Philosophical
Problems with the Mormon Concept of God. While the entire essay should be
read, here is Lucky’s response to Beckwith on the topic of divinized persons
achieving omniscience:
Third Problem: Achieving Omniscience by Eternal
Progression
The third
problem that Beckwith tries to raise for the Mormon view targets the following
claim: a Mormon god is a being which progresses from having limited knowledge
to being omniscient.
Beckwith argues
that it is impossible for a being to do this. He argues as follows:
1. Changing
from having limited knowledge to being omniscient involves changing from having
a finite amount of knowledge to having an infinite amount of knowledge.
2. It is
impossible to change from having a finite amount of knowledge to having an
infinite amount of knowledge.
Therefore,
3. It is
impossible to change from having limited knowledge to being omniscient.
Beckwith seems
to be assuming, in the first premise, that being limited in knowledge amounts
to having finitely much knowledge. But these two things are not the same. I am
limited in knowledge (there are some things that I do not know), but I have
infinitely much knowledge (there are infinitely many things that I know – there
are, for example, infinitely many numbers x such that I know that x is even).
So one can be limited in knowledge without having only finitely much knowledge.
So when the Mormon view claims that some beings change from having limited
knowledge to being omniscient they are not thereby committed to claiming that
they change from having only finitely much knowledge to having infinitely much
knowledge. Moreover, it would be implausible for the Mormon view to claim that
before a being becomes a god it has only finitely much knowledge. After all, it
is pretty easy to have infinitely much knowledge – I gave an example above of
one way in which I have infinitely much knowledge; another way is this: I know
where my cup is, and because of this I have infinitely much knowledge – there
are infinitely many locations y such that I know that my cup is not at y. So a
charitable reading of the Mormon view would have them claiming that beings,
before they become gods, have limited knowledge, rather than
that they have only finitely much knowledge.
Let’s set aside
this first concern and grant that the first premise of the argument is true.
What about the second premise? Beckwith claims that it is impossible to change
from having finitely much knowledge to having infinitely much knowledge. In
support of this Beckwith says that it is impossible to count to infinity if one
starts at a finite number. Beckwith seems to be assuming here a certain picture
of how the knowledge in question is acquired: it is acquired in such a way that
the items of knowledge could be counted as they are acquired. But this is an
overly restrictive view. When I see that my cup is on my desk I thereby acquire
infinitely much new knowledge – there are infinitely many locations y such that
I acquire the knowledge that my cup is not at y. Moreover, this is an uncountable infinity
– there are uncountably infinitely many such locations. So the view of
knowledge acquisition that Beckwith seems to be assuming is overly restrictive.
On a less restrictive and more charitable view it seems quite plausible,
contrary to the second premise,
That a
being can change from having finitely much knowledge to having
infinitely much knowledge.
Beckwith thus
fails to show that there is a problem for the Mormon view in claiming that a
Mormon god is a being which progresses from having limited knowledge to being
omniscient. (Wylie Breckenridge, "Mormonism: Is the Mormon Concept of God
Problematic?" in Morgan Luck, ed. Philosophical
Explorations of New and Alternative Religious Movements [London: Routledge,
2012, 2016]; my thanks to Jaxon Washburn for making me aware of this work)