That is what I figured. I guess you will just have to miss out on the brilliant way in which I resolve the entire dilemma, totally deconstruct Cantor’s pedestrian notions, and integrate not only Wittgenstein’s critique, but also Heidegger’s insight with Joseph Smith’s soteriology…

Too late.

It was not my intent to stir up controversy over the ontological status of “infinity” and its corollary metaphysics (or “anti-metaphysics” as it were). The post was about God’s foreknowledge and the apparent dilemma represented in the question: Can God know the biggest number?

Geoff threw down the gauntlet with “God can’t know the biggest number because it doesn’t exist to be known.”

[Thank you for allowing me to recap].

But there are at least two senses in which the biggest number “doesn’t exist” to be known. The first is the sense in which there actually exist “infinite numbers” (and things to be numbered) stretched out in a [linear] metaphysic of time/space, the “end” of which not even omniscient God can reach. In this sense, the “biggest number” dilemma is just a restatement of the old can-God-create-a-rock-so-big-even-He-can’t-move-it dilemma.

But as with the “too-big rock” dilemma, the resolution is the same: the problem is at least partially semantic and typically requires us to examine anew what we mean by “God’s omniscience” (or even to recast epistemology entirely). That is what I take Geoff’s resolution to be: “the idea that God does not know the future exhaustively.”

On such a view, God’s so-called “foreknowledge” must be altered into something different, and lesser, than what we previously thought it was. Indeed, taken to its extreme, this argument renders God’s “knowledge” effectively and practically no different than man’s: God is just guessing the best He can just like us, which alters God into something different, and lesser, than what we previously thought He was.

An alternative that can preserve God’s omniscience (and foreknowledge), in the sense in which we seem to mean it in order to continue to have confidence (faith) in Him, is to reconsider what we mean by “infinity” (or the “too-bigness” of the rock). That invokes the second sense in which we can say the biggest number “doesn’t exist” to be known, and acknowledges a legitimate question over the ontological status of “infinity” as well as the linguistic valence of numbers and theoretical mathematics.

Am I adding anything interesting to the dialog with this? I don’t want to waste anyone’s time with my obtuseness or verbosity…

Traditionally philosophy distinguishes between actual infinities from potential infinities. Most reject actual infinities although some think they exist. When Einstein rejected the universe as infinite he was talking in expanse (although interestingly Einstein was a Spinozist in philosophy but Spinoza accepts actual infinities in things like attributes). The exception is that until atheism became the dominate intellectual position God was considered infinite.

In any case it seems odd, especially in a religious context, to simply reject infinity. Interestingly it seems like a robust concept of actual infinities was the default LDS position. It seems logically entailed if one thinks intelligences are individuals and uncreated and there is an endless set of creations. Of course there are alternative readings of LDS theology although one can debate how well they engage with Joseph’s own texts.

PS — Nice job with your performance of the philosopher-citing ritual. That ritual always makes me chuckle when I see it (especially when names are dropped without any accompanying concepts) but I know folks like to do it as a quasi resume in these sorts of settings.

My name is Riley and I approve of this message.

In terms of time alone, unless the universe sprung forth out of nothingness, it certainly is already of infinite duration. And unless the universe has some sort of transfinite death sentence such that it is going to vanish into nothing, the duration of the universe will certainly approach infinity even if it is not already infinite.

To me the claim that infinity is a myth makes about as much sense as making the same claim of the number three.