God's Omniscience: Ends Justify Means?

[Purple Knight]

Question for Debate: Is Biblical morality actually an ends-justify-means morality, with the small caveat that you have to be absolutely certain of what the ends will be?

If so, this would explain God's special moral privilege. God, and only God, can do whatever he wants in service of his ends, not only because his goals are ultimately good, but because he alone can be absolutely certain he will achieve them. This would explain why mortals do not have the same moral privilege, and why we're not supposed to murder to achieve our ends. It's not because our ends are necessarily evil, but because, even if we have good goals, we can't be absolutely certain this act will actually achieve that goal. And isn't it inherent in the idea that "ends justify the means" that those ends must actually be achieved?

But here's a real doozy of a sub-question: Is it even logically possible for a being to know for certain if it is really omniscient? It knows everything it knows, but isn't the idea that this is all... fundamentally an assumption? Isn't it logically necessary that for any being, "I am omniscient," simply assumes nothing exists outside the breadth of its knowledge, when it always might? I exist in three spatial dimensions: Length, width, and breadth. I can't say there aren't four, or five, or twenty million dimensions of space, and critters flying around me in the "new upward" where I can't possibly crane my neck and look, but they can still reach down, and affect me. God exists in, what, 26 spatial dimensions? Can he say there aren't 27? It's possible to never have made a mistake. It's possible to never have got one thing wrong in your life. But is it possible to say this trend will necessarily, absolutely continue, with 100% certainty?

...And if it can't make that determination, that it is omniscient, with 100% certainty, doesn't that then cast its actions for the sake of its grand Plan, in the same light as any of our actions, when we do something horrid to try and achieve a better end?

[Purple Knight]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #28]

How to bridge this apparent contradiction?

What contradiction? That people should go along with actions but should have the right to speak and question anything?

It's an unreasonable expectation that every person has in their head a perfect map of right and wrong and when actions are right, and when to rebel against an evil government and start shooting people. What we can expect, is that people not be silenced. After that, the marketplace of ideas can sort it out.

[William]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #28]

How to bridge this apparent contradiction?

What contradiction? That people should go along with actions but should have the right to speak and question anything?

It's an unreasonable expectation that every person has in their head a perfect map of right and wrong and when actions are right, and when to rebel against an evil government and start shooting people. What we can expect, is that people not be silenced. After that, the marketplace of ideas can sort it out.

If so, then there is nether contradiction nor problem.

"The ends justify the means" = "It can sort itself out".

[1213]

Have you ever looking at a woman lustfully? Pluck out your eyes.

Go on. Take your God's own advice. What if you're an alcoholic? Do you cut out your stomach or your brain?

I think it only tells that something would be better, it does not mean it is what people must necessary do. One can stop doing bad things without cutting himself.

Except when he's flooding the Earth, right? Hardening the Pharaoh's heart? Telling his armies to kill all the men, women, children and livestock? Turning people into pillars of salt?

Did the babies he had killed have a chance to choose?

In Bible, if God kills someone, it is because the person is evil. I have no problem, if God kills people who are evil, because if the evil people would live eternally, they would make life eternal suffering for all. I don't think that would be good, but apparently you would like that.

[1213]

...
Really, you think that a society based on killing people we don't like is a happier society? ...

Some could think so and use utilitarianism to justify it. For example:

If there would be 100 people and 90 of them would be not happy because of the 10 and the 10 would be extremely unhappy because of the 90 existing, the 10 could justify killing the 90 by saying: "it ends their misery, and it also makes us happy. And the result would be much happier society".

[theophile]

What God wants is moral not because God says so (and because God is all powerful), but because the end that God seeks is one that we can stand behind, and join in on. It's more a path to objectivity through universal (subjective) acclaim, than it is anything intrinsic to the goal or ordained by God that makes it so.

I'm glad you admit this because I think this is the central issue and both 1) why I'm an atheist and 2) why I also feel I have an obligation to heed morality I don't agree with - because it isn't right for me to tear down that universal subjective consensus.

I can point out that this is not (in my opinion) a good hub for consensus, that we have alternatives that give everyone a voice, but if everyone agrees and I don't, and even a bad consensus is better than no consensus, in the end, when it comes to actions, I must do what is moral according to everybody else.

What I would like to understand is why you think that God's end / goal doesn't provide a good hub for consensus. Why you feel you don't have a voice in it? My sense is folks too often conflate God's end with God's mind (if God even has a mind). They focus too much on the latter, and as a result find both to be inscrutable, or even arbitrary, based on the apparent disconnect of words and actions throughout the bible and history. Not to mention 1000's of years of theology that positions God so far above us.

God becomes a dictator in such a view, and there is no real room for any other voice (to your comment). But to me, this takes the wrong focus, and causes us to get lost in the means. The focus should be on God's end, not God's mind or isolated words / actions, and this couldn't be clearer (IMO), especially when we home in on seminal texts like Genesis 1 where it is first and most purely enacted. (Put simply, a world filled with life, where all kinds of life can flourish and be.)

We should treat God as subject to this end, i.e., wholly devoted, and we should treat subjection to God as us similarly acclaiming and making ourselves subject to it. (Again, not because God says so, but because the end itself compels us). As such, we have voice both in the end itself, that it should be the end, and in the means to achieve it. (God is no more a dictator here than in setting the end in the first place, I don't think. Hence why so much trouble getting there, both in the bible and the real world.)

So to put my question otherwise, or more fundamentally, it would be how you characterize God's end such that you can't get behind it, let alone see it as a viable hub of broader moral consensus?

[TRANSPONDER]

...
Really, you think that a society based on killing people we don't like is a happier society? ...

Some could think so and use utilitarianism to justify it. For example:

If there would be 100 people and 90 of them would be not happy because of the 10 and the 10 would be extremely unhappy because of the 90 existing, the 10 could justify killing the 90 by saying: "it ends their misery, and it also makes us happy. And the result would be much happier society".

A construct like that on paper might look as though it was valid, or at least a spurious validity forced on the Other side, but it ignores so many things. Like for instance #The 10% is not happy? Let's find out why and improve their situation". That really didn't occur to you? "I would be happier if those people weren't there" Maybe, but if you were the 10% the 90% would be better off without, it would be valid to do away with you? Even I, a secularist, wouldn't not entertain such a thing. Either you are psychotic in thinking that is a valid proposition, or you are dishonest in suggesting that is how secularism thinks.

Cue - probably, utilitarianism forced on secularists to be convenient to atheism-bashing. it is self -serving, like insisting that atheists are nihilistic. Rather it is Theism that is Nihilistic, regarding this life as worthless and meaningless unless there is a promised afterlife. Similarly, Theist utilitarianism seems probable - we must eliminate atheists, not because it makes life better but because that is what God wants.

[boatsnguitars]

...
Really, you think that a society based on killing people we don't like is a happier society? ...

Some could think so and use utilitarianism to justify it. For example:

If there would be 100 people and 90 of them would be not happy because of the 10 and the 10 would be extremely unhappy because of the 90 existing, the 10 could justify killing the 90 by saying: "it ends their misery, and it also makes us happy. And the result would be much happier society".

Not for the majority who are dead. Not for the few that might have had loved ones killed. Not for the remaining people who wonder if you will decide to kill them too. And not for the killers, who have to wonder if people will kill them in their sleep to avoid them doing the same.

Again, you have such a poor understanding of ethics because you've been taught there is a Divine King that establishes morality by fiat, and not that we have to figure out how to co-exist.

Your answer is completely in line with Yahweh flooding the world and commanding genocide: you think these are good things, if they result in the happiness of a few people. That's not the only calculation. Whether it makes God happy, or a minority happy at the moment, or if it makes a majority happy at the moment isn't the only calculation to make in Utilitarianism.

Even if you were to establish that killing 90 people to make 10 happy - AND you had proof that it would, long term, be a better solution overall, there are still factors to consider: like are there other means? This is the part you are missing. Your next ploy will be to come up with such a specific and restricted hypothetical like: "If the ONLY way to make society happy, long term, and there are no other options, would be to kill 90% of the population (Like God flooding the world) - then it's justified under Utilitarianism!"

Duh! It's the ONLY option! There are no other means.

But, look what you've done - you've equated Divine Command theory with Utilitarianism!

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #28]

How to bridge this apparent contradiction?

What contradiction? That people should go along with actions but should have the right to speak and question anything?

It's an unreasonable expectation that every person has in their head a perfect map of right and wrong and when actions are right, and when to rebel against an evil government and start shooting people. What we can expect, is that people not be silenced. After that, the marketplace of ideas can sort it out.

If so, then there is nether contradiction nor problem.

"The ends justify the means" = "It can sort itself out".

In a way, instinct, innate and ilearned, can handle it. The 'sorting out' has already been done,so to speak. But there is still a lot of discussion, reasoning and modification to be done. It won't do itself.

[TRANSPONDER]

...
Really, you think that a society based on killing people we don't like is a happier society? ...

Some could think so and use utilitarianism to justify it. For example:

If there would be 100 people and 90 of them would be not happy because of the 10 and the 10 would be extremely unhappy because of the 90 existing, the 10 could justify killing the 90 by saying: "it ends their misery, and it also makes us happy. And the result would be much happier society".

Not for the majority who are dead. Not for the few that might have had loved ones killed. Not for the remaining people who wonder if you will decide to kill them too. And not for the killers, who have to wonder if people will kill them in their sleep to avoid them doing the same.

Again, you have such a poor understanding of ethics because you've been taught there is a Divine King that establishes morality by fiat, and not that we have to figure out how to co-exist.

Your answer is completely in line with Yahweh flooding the world and commanding genocide: you think these are good things, if they result in the happiness of a few people. That's not the only calculation. Whether it makes God happy, or a minority happy at the moment, or if it makes a majority happy at the moment isn't the only calculation to make in Utilitarianism.

Even if you were to establish that killing 90 people to make 10 happy - AND you had proof that it would, long term, be a better solution overall, there are still factors to consider: like are there other means? This is the part you are missing. Your next ploy will be to come up with such a specific and restricted hypothetical like: "If the ONLY way to make society happy, long term, and there are no other options, would be to kill 90% of the population (Like God flooding the world) - then it's justified under Utilitarianism!"

Duh! It's the ONLY option! There are no other means.

But, look what you've done - you've equated Divine Command theory with Utilitarianism!

I think maybe he has because the idea must be based on the idea that absolute knowledge that the deed should be done for the common good and only God would know that. The problem with humans doing it is that no god is telling them so they are merely being misguidedly evil.

But that is just what you get when religious fanatics think their god is telling them to such things. Humanists know they can't be so sure so don't come to such conclusions.

[alexxcJRO]

But here's a real doozy of a sub-question: Is it even logically possible for a being to know for certain if it is really omniscient? It knows everything it knows, but isn't the idea that this is all... fundamentally an assumption? Isn't it logically necessary that for any being, "I am omniscient," simply assumes nothing exists outside the breadth of its knowledge, when it always might? I exist in three spatial dimensions: Length, width, and breadth. I can't say there aren't four, or five, or twenty million dimensions of space, and critters flying around me in the "new upward" where I can't possibly crane my neck and look, but they can still reach down, and affect me. God exists in, what, 26 spatial dimensions? Can he say there aren't 27? It's possible to never have made a mistake. It's possible to never have got one thing wrong in your life. But is it possible to say this trend will necessarily, absolutely continue, with 100% certainty?

...And if it can't make that determination, that it is omniscient, with 100% certainty, doesn't that then cast its actions for the sake of its grand Plan, in the same light as any of our actions, when we do something horrid to try and achieve a better end?

No being can know everything because no being, however creative or perfect, can verify that its own knowledge is complete.
A more powerful being1 could make another being2(which is extremely powerful being-practically omnipotent) to create the universe/multiverse/omniverse and make it ignorant of this. Being2 would practically be omniscient except not know
that it does not know that being1(a more powerful being) created it.