In the monstrosity of God, He must know everything. That’s to say, God must be Omniscient.

For a finite human, knowing everything is just an abstract concept. One can’t really get one’s head around it. It may even be hard to consider it possible.
Complex subjects are best explained by discussing it at a simpler level. So let’s do this by looking at how a retail store knew a girl was pregnant before her father did.

Big Data

As told here, the story goes like this:
A store manager at Target was having a challenging day when an angry man demanded to see him for some inappropriate mail that was sent out to his teenage daughter. What was it? Some coupons for baby clothes and cribs. He angrily said, “Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager had no idea about the mail out but it certainly was from his company. So he apologised. In fact, he apologised twice by calling the father few days later.
Here’s the twist – during that phone call, the father said, “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

How did Target “know” she was pregnant prior to her father? Big Data. Their systems had tracked her spending habits and it fit the pattern of someone who was in early pregnancy. This triggered a mail out to offer her discounts on related purchases in the hopes of enticing her to stick with them for the rest of her pregnancy and early child rearing purchases (and hopefully there after).
How’s that for applied statistics and database processing?

In another example of big data use (arguably for a more beneficent cause), there are algorithms being developed to pick up drug side effects years before they traditionally are by analysing the comments patients share online.

This is just humans playing with big data. God being omniscient? Trivial.

Related:  The Personal Cost Of Omniscience.

Image: Helix Nebula A.K.A The Eye of God from the European Southern Observatory