Great Throughts Treasury

"Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"The absolute demonstration of man’s mastery of fate and command of all condition - the victory of man - all men in this racial man, this elder brother of mankind in his triumph over sin, fear and death! But one thing had remained in my mind as necessary to prove to the mass of men to-day man’s absolute supremacy over death in all its forms as an attribute of his oneness with God, with Eternal Life, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice, Omniscience and Omnipotence." - Paul Tyner

"The wisest man may be wiser today than he was yesterday, and tomorrow than he is today. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Demanding security and certainty prevents peace of mind. No human has the omniscience to foresee everything. Always realize the unexpected can occur. Plan as much as is appropriate, but realize that regardless of how much you plan there will always be difficulties that you had previously not imagined. By expecting there will always be unexpected occurrences and accepting them, you will have much greater peace of mind than if you have unrealistic expectations of complete control. A person would be making a big mistake if he felt that the way to peace of mind is to obtain complete security from all risks... Uncertainty is inevitable... The demand for success is detrimental to peace of mind... Keep your focus on trying to accomplish with the best of your ability." - Zelig Pliskin

"There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as Justice. Most of the other virtues are the virtues of created Beings, or accommodated to our nature as we are men. Justice is that which is practised by God himself, and to be practised in its perfection by none but him. Omniscience and Omnipotence are requisite for the full exertion of it. The one, to discover every degree of uprightness or iniquity in thoughts, words and actions. The other, to measure out and impart suitable rewards and punishments. As to be perfectly just is an attribute in the divine nature, to be so to the utmost of our abilities is the glory of a man. Such an one who has the publick administration in his hands, acts like the representative of his Maker, in recompencing the virtuous, and punishing the offender." - Joseph Addison

"It doesn’t matter what the particular problem is for a person’s faith. Having an omniscient God concept solves it. It could be the intractable and unanswerable problem of ubiquitous suffering; or how a man could be 100% God and 100% man without anything leftover, or left out; or how the death of a man on a cross saves us from sins; or why God’s failure to better communicate led to massive bloodshed between Christians themselves. It just doesn’t matter. God is omniscient. He knows why. He knows best. Therefore punting to God’s omniscience makes faith pretty much unfalsifiable, which allows believers to disregard what reason tells them by ignoring the probabilities." - Kurt Baier

"But like the desire for eternal life, the desire for omniscience and absolute perfection is merely an imaginary desire; and, as history and daily experience prove, the supposed human striving for unlimited knowledge and perfection is a myth. Man has no desire to know everything; he only wants to know the things to which he is particularly drawn." - Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

"In this identification, however, we have to take into account also one essential difference. For a religious man the god is given immediately and primarily. In him, in his allmighty will, originates all life and all happenings in bodily as in spiritual life. Though he cannot be grasped by reason, he is, nevertheless, directly perceived through religious symbols and he puts his holy message in the souls of those who give up to him in faith [here Planck does not consider god to be a world order, since the latter, as far as I know, does not send any holy messages]. On the contrary, for a scientist, the only primarily given facts are the contents of his sensual perceptions and the measurements following from them. Scientists use the latter to approach, as close as possible, god and his world order, as the highest, eternally unattainable goal, with the help of inductive researches, [is this actually the sole goal of any scientist?]. If then, both religion and science, need for their activities the belief in god [does the science really need god – this is stated here for the first time, with no justification], the god stands for the former in the beginning, for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, god represents the basis, for the latter the crown of any reasoning concerning the world view. This difference corresponds to different roles played in human life by religion and science. Science needs man for gaining knowledge, religion, however, needs him for action [aha, and I had no idea at all till now, what is the religion good for!] ... Since we find ourselves amidst life and must ... frequently make instant decisions, ... in which we are not helped by long deliberation but only by a safe and clear guidance (Weisung), which we will gain from immediate contact with god [here again god cannot be identical with the world order, because the latter does not provide anyone with quick guidance] ... and if besides omnipotence and omniscience we ascribe god [we really can ascribe god anything at will?] also the attributes of good and love [I thought all the time that god has properties independent of us, but here I see that they are given him by people], then resorting to him (Zuflucht zu ihm) guarantees a man, who is in search for consolation, higher measure of reliable feeling of happiness. One cannot object anything against such an idea from the standpoint of science, since the questions of ethics, as we have already emphasized, do not belong at all to its competence." - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

"He who attains purity of heart by performing actions as an offering to the Lord and merges prakriti and all its effects in Brahman, realises his true Self and thereby transcends phenomena. In the absence of maya, both collective and individual, all his past actions are destroyed. After the destruction of the prarabdha karma he attains final Liberation." - Shvetashvatara Upanishad

"The being of a God is the guard of the world; the sense of a God is the foundation of civil order; without this there is no tie upon the consciences of men. What force would there be in oaths for the decision of controversies, what right could there be in appeals made to one that had no being? A city of atheists would be a heap of confusion; there could be no ground of any commerce, when all the sacred bonds of it in the consciences of men were snapt asunder, which are torn to pieces and utterly destroyed by denying the existence of God. What magistrate could be secure in his standing? What private person could be secure in his right? Can that, then, be a truth that is destructive of all public good?" - Stephen Charnock