While reading my scriptures tonight, I came across Moses 1:6.
>[There] is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.
After reading this verse, I was left wondering about what it means for omniscience. I have always believed ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù or maybe have always been taught ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù that omniscience means to know everything, to have a knowledge of everything. God’s omniscience meant that his brain was full of every fact past, present, and future.
This idea was further supported by the popular belief that humans use a small portion of their brains. Thus if we are resurrected and have 100% brain usage, we could store everything needed to know all things possible.
Now, after reading the above passage, I wonder if God’s omniscience is actually somehow having everything before him somehow. He doesn’t have every tidbit and fact and possible scenario in his mind, for example, but somehow has it all before him. Like a magic television or a giant crystal ball.
I wonder.
I stumbled across this post while reading some other blogs about “The Mormons” but was intrigued by it. I don’t think I have ever thought about this passage in this context, but it brings to mind two possible interpretations of the word present. One meaning close to him, or in his presence. The other meaning being present, as in time, past, present, and future. I think this scripture refers to the latter meaning, that god is not constrained by human conceptions of time, so it is as though everything that we think of as happening in the past or future, to him actually happens in the present.
Oh, and about the “humans only use a small portion of their brains” it really is just a popular belief as you stated. Recent science, specifically fMRIs show that humans really are using all of their brains. How much potential they have is a question still up for debate, but we do use the whole thing.
Of course, “present” has more than one meaning: It can mean in the same place of course, but it may also mean in the same time.
So is God seeing past, present and future all at once? Are the past and future all present to Him?
I think so. My comments from March 2006 on the “Pre-mortal Works” and “Is God Out of Time?” threads explain why.
How about this:
I don’t think the scripture I quote above is necessarily referring to time. It specifically says “all things”, implying, in my opinion, that it is literally all things. Perhaps all stages of time, but I do not believe the scripture is saying past and future are the same as present are, as Capt. Obsidian’s scripture does.
So you think it’s saying, “Everything is here with me” but not also saying, “Everything is now with me.” That’s reasonable enough.
I wonder why, in light of the verse in Alma quoted above, people have made such a terrific fuss when I expressed the belief that God knows the future. But perhaps that’s getting off track.
Re: your “crystal ball” comment, I think that idea may not be as far off as it seems: See D&C 130:6-10 (which, by the way, gives further explicit support to the doctrine that God does, in fact, see and know the future).
(That’s funny. Usually a scriptural reference gets linked to the online scriptures at LDS.org, but the one above didn’t. Maybe that’s because I spelled out “Doctrine & Covenants” rather than “D&C.”)
I picked up the habit of saying “Doctrine and Covenants” rather than “D&C” while I was training in the MTC. A general authority speaking there reminded us that it’s a good idea to avoid any confusing reference to the abortion procedure called dilation and curetage — known casually as “D&C.”
I was thinking of that scripture when I made that comment.
(Yes, my understanding is the automatic linking works for abbreviated verse references. I say it “Doctrine and Covenants” as well, but abbreviate it as D&C. And dilation and curettage is rarely used as an abortion procedure any more. In fact, it’s so rare that your comment was the first time I have ever heard anyone refer to it as an abortion procedure. The only persons I have known whom had a D&C done, had it done because of excess tissue after a miscarriage.
I didn’t mean to oversimplify; I know it’s used for other purposes.