Things God Doesn't Know

Among the attributes of the Christian god is omniscience.

'Omni' means all, and 'science' is gotten from the Latin word 'scientia' meaning knowledge. Omniscience literally means all-knowing. It refers to the property of knowing all, of having unlimited knowledge.

So, we're told that the Christian god is omniscient, which means he should know everything, including things that are virtually unknowable to us humans.
However, is this the case?
Using examples from the Bible, I'll be showing how god doesn't live up to his alleged omniscience. The Bible writers, especially those of the old testament, almost certainly did not see god as being omniscient; because they don't depict him that way. Many of his actions and statements are those we would expect from a being with limited knowledge.

Like in Genesis 1:1, we're told god created the heavens and the Earth. If we take "heavens" to mean the universe, this would mean that the Earth and the universe were created at the same time, if this was the case, the Earth would be the same age as the universe. But this is not the case. The universe is 13.6 billion years old and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's a difference of more than 9 billions years. The universe and most stars (including our sun) had formed before the Earth formed, unlike what the Bible suggests.
So god didn't know that the Earth isn't the oldest thing in the universe, and wasn't formed at the same time as the universe itself.
In Genesis 2:20-23, we're told of how god created woman as an absent-minded afterthought, after he realised that none of the other animals were suitable for Adam. So god didn't know initially, that the man he created would need a mate (despite creating other animals "male and female").

In chapter 3 of Genesis, while walking in the garden, god calls out to Adam and asks "where are you?" Unless we explain this away as god playing hide-and-seek, this would mean god didn't know where Adam and Eve were hiding.

Also, Genesis 6:6 describes god regretting his decision to make humans. When humans feel regret, it's because we didn't know better earlier; we wish we had done things differently. But what does regret mean to a being that has all knowledge, including foreknowledge?
So according to Genesis 6:6, when god created humans, he didn't know we would become so evil. Add that to the list of things god doesn't/didn't know.

In Genesis 30:37, Jacob creates different patterns of lamb fur by having the animals mate with rods in front of them.
Presumably, Jacob (and by extension, god) doesn't know that that's not how genetics/biology works.
Also, in many parts of the old testament, god tells the Israelite men to get circumcised. This is an important part of Jewish tradition, even today. Whereas, today we have appropriate sterilised equipment for circumcision, we have good reason to assume that ancient people did not.
Which means that the circumcision carried out by the ancient Israelites would likely have taken place under unhygienic circumstances, involving reused and unsterilized cutting instruments. This sort of circumcision is associated with a high risk of infection and complications, and even death, but god insisted that they do it anyway. God apparently didn't know that this practice at such an uncivilized time would have been quite harmful to the men. Or maybe he just didn't care.
In the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, starting from verse 13, god lists the birds that are unclean for the Israelites to eat and in verse 19, he includes bats.
Bats are mammals, but the all-knowing god of the Bible doesn't know that. He seems to think that anything that flies high is a bird.
In the same chapter, verse 23 describes some insects as having 4 legs. All insects have 6 legs, but again, god doesn't know that.
In Deuteronomy 1:10-11, god, through Moses tells the Israelites that they (the Israelites) are now as many as the stars in the sky and that god will make them even a thousand times more numerous.
God didn't know that there are trillions of stars, because the Israelites definitely weren't up to a trillion.
In Deuteronomy 22:13, we're told that if a young woman gets married and her husband accuses her of not being a virgin, her parents are to bring "proof" of the woman's virginity, i.e the stained bedspread, to the elders of the community. If it is found that the man was lying, he will be chastised and will have to pay the woman's father and will also be forced to stay with the woman forever. On the other hand, if the man was right about the woman not being a virgin, the woman will be brought to the door of her father's house and stoned to death. Ignoring the obvious misogyny in this passage, it states that proof of a woman's virginity has to be found, if not she'll be stoned to death. As mentioned earlier, this proof required would have been blood-stained bedspreads.
The problem is, not all women bleed on their first time having sex. In fact, as many as 63% of women don't bleed during their first sexual intercourse. This means that more that half of those virgin women who got married would not have been to produce the "proof" of their virginity and therefore would have been stoned to death. God would have known this if he were omniscient.
God's ignorance of women's anatomy probably led to the death of many women; so much for an all-knowing god.

Still in Deuteronomy 22, reading from verse 23, we're told some laws for handling rape. Verses 23 and 24 say that if a man lies with a woman in the town, both of them shall be put to death. Why? Because the woman didn't scream and because the man violated his neighbour's wife. And in verse 25, it says that if this encounter happens "out in the country", only the man will be killed. Because the woman may have screamed and they was no one around to hear her.
According to these verses, it seems that their criteria for determining whether a sexual encounter is rape or not is whether the woman screams. If she screams, it's rape; if she doesn't, then she wanted it or liked it and therefore, it's not rape. This seems reasonable at first glance. After all, a woman who is being raped will scream and fight, right?
Wrong. This isn't always the case, many rape victims don't fight or scream, they oftentimes become paralysed. God would have known this if he was really all-knowing. But because he didn't know this, many women would have been killed alongside their rapist because they experienced tonic immobility.

And about the coming of the son of man, Jesus, in Mark 13:32 says: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Jesus says he doesn't know when the day or hour will be, only god the father knows. Isn't Jesus god? Sure, he isn't god the father, but Jesus was/is god incarnate. If that is the case then why wouldn't he know when the second coming is? Especially since he's the one who would be coming.
Now, that's weird.

All these examples make you wonder where Christians got the idea of an omniscient god from, because it clearly isn't supported by their own scripture. The Bible does not describe god as being omniscient.