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It makes little sense to speculate about the mind of God. Anyway...

If God wants to know if it will snow today in Bergen, I would imagine that there are 2 approaches to 'solving' this question

  1. God knows everything already. God 'fetches' the information from an infinite 'database'. This precise question (with attached information on the universe's current state) and its answer already exist there.
  2. God must calculate the answer, like an infinitely powerful computer. Given data (the universe's state at a particular point) and a program (the laws of physics + conditions to check for that return yes/no), God then 'runs through' the universe until a result is found.

Does .1. make any sense? I would imagine that for the answers to be there they must've been calculated/determined in some way, instead of being spontaneously available.

.2. would imply that, given the frequency with which God must think about an outcome, it is far more likely that we are living in one of those temporary universes in God's mind than the 'real' one.

This is why I think the distinction between 1. and 2. actually matters.

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  • Are you sure there're only 2 such mutually exclusive options you described?
    – Double Knot
    Commented Jan 31 at 19:30
  • The distinction matters in general (without considering physics) but is irrelevant in the face of Bell's theorem (and the Kochen-Specker theorem beyond it!) So, the relevancy is contextual.
    – Corbin
    Commented Jan 31 at 19:48
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    Make sense to whom? Creatures whose way is to parse, reduce and calculate? "God comprehends everything in His intellect by a single act of intuition, and similarly loves everything by a single act of His will", Aquinas. Whether it "makes sense" to us makes little difference, but we do get glimpses of what it might be like when we 'see' complex geometric relations without any calculation. Kant famously analyzed differences between discursive (ours) and intuitive (God's) intellect, describing the latter as having a super-insight of a creator into his creations.
    – Conifold
    Commented Jan 31 at 21:33
  • @DoubleKnot No, just 2 suggestions!
    – Doot
    Commented Jan 31 at 23:18
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    Actually if you mean a computable God I cannot think of any third option... If God is a constructive TM then due to halting problem there might be a ton of problems even this all powerful computer cannot decide within any of our finite time. If God has to fetch from an infinite database which has discrete rows, then how can God fetch all elements of an uncountable set such as the real interval [0, 1]?...
    – Double Knot
    Commented Feb 1 at 5:37

2 Answers 2

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God is omnipotent. God rains , God snows depending upon the conditions. God is omniscient in the sense that God already knows the outcome of life , which is death.

Whether tomorrow it will snow or not depends upon God and the conditions. God is the computer of consciousness. So , none of your approaches fits him.

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  • Indeed, I think I formulated this question poorly, in that I really just meant omniscience, like an oracle. I went with a god instead to simplify things, avoiding the issue of the oracle factoring in its own existence into its answer.
    – Doot
    Commented Feb 1 at 10:44
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Short answer: Yes!! It takes 'God' zero time to process.
And so if one uses the usual formula speed = distance/time, it works out to infinite speed.

If because I'm not sure this formula applies here.

Longer answer

About God I've no idea since I've lost His (Her/Its) contact details. But I saw a man — now deceased — who was generally recognized as saint, sage, God-realized etc.

About his reputation... its probably not relevant.

I will only comment on what I saw up close:

Zero Response Time

When I met him he was past 95. He died a few years later at 102. So physically he was old, shriveled, stooped over double, almost inaudible. And very very slow... in walk, in eating, in speech.

But on more careful examination, I noticed his responses were instantaneous. Usually it was very laconic – a sentence, maybe just a word. But at his most laconic it could be just the barest raising of an eyebrow. So slight that only the person who had to receive, got it. The others saw nothing.

Yet the response was ready before the person asking had even finished. Sometimes it was noticed, many times not. He never bothered to drive it in.

His 'Philosophy'

He was in no way an author, teacher, guru, philosopher, etc. Mostly if someone asked him questions on such matters he'd avoid or give a conventional answer.

On the few occasions when he would speak more personally, the maximum he'd reveal is: "God does everything".

And this brings me to the nub of your question

No Ego

I've read a lot about sages and spiritual personalities who had no ego. And always had the nagging doubt: Is it true? Or is this post-hoc mythologization?

This was the one man I've seen for whom it was obviously true: He was so obviously immersed in the truth of God does everything that he seemed to have direct processing-less access to the — as you call it — database of the universe-doers knowledge.

Since it was processing-less, it was instantaneous, or infinite speed.

Or to be more precise, in terms of Shannon's sampling theorem, his speed of responses was always faster enough than my observation/sampling speed, that it was observationally instantaneous.

What this implies for God... I've no idea since as I said I've no hotline to that person/being/entity.

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