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]

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?

I actually don't think the ends justify the means. Or, that if they do, beings who must, for the sake of their own ignorance, behave as if there is a moral standard, cannot treat with ones who are smart enough to be rid of that restriction. There can be no understanding.

In the specific, I would not kill baby Hitler in his crib, because that's murder and something I mustn't do. In other words, it's a moral standard. I can't mix with people who don't have to carry that standard because then, we have different rights, and because I live by the standard, I live by rights. He ought to kill baby Hitler while instead, I must understand it as wrong. I must also, simultaneously, let him do it, because he's better than me and it's not wrong when he does it, due to his greater understanding. This makes me his slave, and that's not a good way to live, for anyone.

We can't live in a world where every time someone kills a baby in its crib, we have to scratch our heads and wonder if the murderer knew best. We need to carry the same standard. Increasingly our society is jumping on this idea that whoever knows best, ought to just do best, and if they have to run a bulldozer over the rights of any ignorant people in the way who aren't sure it is best, so be it. This is making society vastly worse. It's making society worse because there are bad actors who just want to get away with anything and everything, and they also can latch on to the catchphrase of, "I actually know best so let me trample you it's for the greater good."

And now we come to God. First of all I can prove he's a liar because no being can guarantee its own omniscience. Second of all, even if I couldn't, I have no reason to trust him - trust is earned. Third of all, he wants things that are antithetical to my sense of morality at their very core, after absolutely 100% honest introspection, and at this point I have to wonder if he deliberately cast me as a villain because he's one of these modern do-gooders who gets off on hurting me "justly" because I am what he made me or tricked me into being, and if so, I wonder why my life should be lived to please such a person.

Turning the other cheek is antithetical to me. Being unable to judge another person is antithetical to me. That it's not okay to ask that debts be repaid to me fairly, because God has already decided I've accrued worse, is antithetical to me. To me, victims ought to be defended, and told to stand up for themselves. Wrongdoers ought to be judged, because at some point, doing nothing because we might make a mistake, causes more harm than just accepting that we may make a mistake. And the idea that I can't demand punishment or repayment of debt because I one time picked my nose, or my parents had sex, or whatever else I'm prejudged for, is the absolute antithesis of justice. If everyone is really guilty then the bar is too high.

The guy the unforgiving slave shook for ten cents, should pay up. God can't forgive me for a sin against Bob.

[theophile]

Picture a garden that has become completely overgrown with weeds that are choking out all the other plants. You are the gardener looking down. What do you do? No different here.

You'd burn down the garden?
How about remove the weeds? Just the weeds? Does God not have the capability to remove the weeds without touching the fruits?

That's what God does: God removes the weeds. i.e., all the evil humankind, which is all humankind, apart from Noah.

God left the fruits / seeds of a new generation.

Again, it's an extreme case, like Einstein's thought experiments. (Nothing you said in your post does anything to what I said so far as I can tell.)

[theophile]

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?

I actually don't think the ends justify the means. Or, that if they do, beings who must, for the sake of their own ignorance, behave as if there is a moral standard, cannot treat with ones who are smart enough to be rid of that restriction. There can be no understanding.

In the specific, I would not kill baby Hitler in his crib, because that's murder and something I mustn't do. In other words, it's a moral standard. I can't mix with people who don't have to carry that standard because then, we have different rights, and because I live by the standard, I live by rights. He ought to kill baby Hitler while instead, I must understand it as wrong. I must also, simultaneously, let him do it, because he's better than me and it's not wrong when he does it, due to his greater understanding. This makes me his slave, and that's not a good way to live, for anyone.

We can't live in a world where every time someone kills a baby in its crib, we have to scratch our heads and wonder if the murderer knew best. We need to carry the same standard. Increasingly our society is jumping on this idea that whoever knows best, ought to just do best, and if they have to run a bulldozer over the rights of any ignorant people in the way who aren't sure it is best, so be it. This is making society vastly worse. It's making society worse because there are bad actors who just want to get away with anything and everything, and they also can latch on to the catchphrase of, "I actually know best so let me trample you it's for the greater good."

And now we come to God. First of all I can prove he's a liar because no being can guarantee its own omniscience. Second of all, even if I couldn't, I have no reason to trust him - trust is earned. Third of all, he wants things that are antithetical to my sense of morality at their very core, after absolutely 100% honest introspection, and at this point I have to wonder if he deliberately cast me as a villain because he's one of these modern do-gooders who gets off on hurting me "justly" because I am what he made me or tricked me into being, and if so, I wonder why my life should be lived to please such a person.

Turning the other cheek is antithetical to me. Being unable to judge another person is antithetical to me. That it's not okay to ask that debts be repaid to me fairly, because God has already decided I've accrued worse, is antithetical to me. To me, victims ought to be defended, and told to stand up for themselves. Wrongdoers ought to be judged, because at some point, doing nothing because we might make a mistake, causes more harm than just accepting that we may make a mistake. And the idea that I can't demand punishment or repayment of debt because I one time picked my nose, or my parents had sex, or whatever else I'm prejudged for, is the absolute antithesis of justice. If everyone is really guilty then the bar is too high.

The guy the unforgiving slave shook for ten cents, should pay up. God can't forgive me for a sin against Bob.

A few thoughts.

Whether the end justifies the means or not, the end we seek is an important moral category (I would argue the most important), and it should drive or at least inform what we do, including the standards or rules we setup as means to achieve it. Like, kill or don't kill, which can find meaning and justification in our end. (No matter what, even if unexamined, our actions are a means to an end, so better to be deliberate about it, and to ask what end above all we should serve.)

As to the baby Hitler thought experiment, I find it very hard to reconcile killing an innocent with the end that God calls us to or that I believe in, so I would tend to agree with you there. IMO, the baby and animal killing we may see in the bible is not necessarily a destruction of innocence, but rather we have to wrap our minds around an even more extreme case of evil / sin, of how utterly pervasive and corrupting these can be, where even ones such as these are no longer clean. Or even unborn generations, as impossible as that sounds. It's like taking evil / sin to the power of infinity in its effect, or a train to the speed of light (per Einstein) -- i.e., it's not a realistic situation or one we're actually likely to see.

(The fact the bible relays such extreme cases is to explore the full range of moral possibilities, and while it may open the door to a baby Hitler that is already irredeemable and should be killed, I don't think the circumstances of Hitler's origins or the certainty of his fate would ever meet what would need to be an incredibly high bar to make such a judgment.)

Last, on not judging and the other Christian practices you find antithetical, as well as your inability to trust God:

First, I don't think God ever claimed to be omniscient in the way we think of that term. That's a later theological application. And you absolutely shouldn't just do anything that God says in the bible. I don't think that's the kind of faith / trust that is called for. Rather, like I said in an earlier post, you should do it because you truly believe in the end that God seeks and agree that the action / means called for is the way. Put otherwise, the paradigm is Israel, or one who wrestles with God. Not one who blindly follows.

Second, I don't think we're meant to do the things you find antithetical because we've "already accrued worse" as you put it. All that does is situates things in a larger game of tit-for-tat justice where everything has a price and must be paid. Rather, these things are meant to break open such a system entirely, and reorient it to God's true end. You may not like it even after honest introspection, but the end that God seeks is a world filled with life, where all kinds of life can flourish and be. That can't happen when we're all indebted to each other, or when we hold grudges against each other, or when we propagate violence on each other. The idea is to move towards a whole new political economy here, one much freer than the one we're still in.

[boatsnguitars]

Picture a garden that has become completely overgrown with weeds that are choking out all the other plants. You are the gardener looking down. What do you do? No different here.

You'd burn down the garden?
How about remove the weeds? Just the weeds? Does God not have the capability to remove the weeds without touching the fruits?

That's what God does: God removes the weeds. i.e., all the evil humankind, which is all humankind, apart from Noah.

God left the fruits / seeds of a new generation.

Again, it's an extreme case, like Einstein's thought experiments. (Nothing you said in your post does anything to what I said so far as I can tell.)

Why did God, in the story you are referencing as if it's real, remove the weeds? What were the weeds? Sinning people? Are you suggesting people don't sin anymore? Are you suggesting God removed all evil, so there is no more evil?

[William]

[Replying to boatsnguitars in post #54]

Why did God, in the story you are referencing as if it's real, remove the weeds? What were the weeds? Sinning people? Are you suggesting people don't sin anymore? Are you suggesting God removed all evil, so there is no more evil?

[Replying to theophile in post #53]

I don't think God ever claimed to be omniscient in the way we think of that term.

Perhaps too, God didn't do what the story in the Bible claims God did?

It appears "the weeds' remain, yes?

Unless one has doubts that the story isn't true, in which case, the question being asked, becomes redundant as a question that needs to be asked by those who don't believe any God did any such thing.

[boatsnguitars]

Yep, seems God just murdered a bunch of people, then his followers looked at it and called it Good.

[William]

Yep, seems God just murdered a bunch of people, then his followers looked at it and called it Good.

Or God did not, and people are just claiming God did.

[theophile]

Picture a garden that has become completely overgrown with weeds that are choking out all the other plants. You are the gardener looking down. What do you do? No different here.

You'd burn down the garden?
How about remove the weeds? Just the weeds? Does God not have the capability to remove the weeds without touching the fruits?

That's what God does: God removes the weeds. i.e., all the evil humankind, which is all humankind, apart from Noah.

God left the fruits / seeds of a new generation.

Again, it's an extreme case, like Einstein's thought experiments. (Nothing you said in your post does anything to what I said so far as I can tell.)

Why did God, in the story you are referencing as if it's real, remove the weeds? What were the weeds? Sinning people? Are you suggesting people don't sin anymore? Are you suggesting God removed all evil, so there is no more evil?

To be clear, I don't think biblical events like the flood ever happened as such. But that doesn't mean the scenarios and teachings they setup aren't valuable.

In this case, the weeds are anything that is oppressive to life, so sinful human beings. i.e., Genesis 6: "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become," such that "the earth was corrupt and full of violence."

As to why God did it, it's as I've been saying: God's end is a world filled with life, where every kind of life can flourish and be. That can't happen under such an order.

[theophile]

[Replying to boatsnguitars in post #54]

Why did God, in the story you are referencing as if it's real, remove the weeds? What were the weeds? Sinning people? Are you suggesting people don't sin anymore? Are you suggesting God removed all evil, so there is no more evil?

[Replying to theophile in post #53]

I don't think God ever claimed to be omniscient in the way we think of that term.

Perhaps too, God didn't do what the story in the Bible claims God did?

It appears "the weeds' remain, yes?

Unless one has doubts that the story isn't true, in which case, the question being asked, becomes redundant as a question that needs to be asked by those who don't believe any God did any such thing.

Weeds regrow. So even if the story was real, I don't think the presence of wicked humans afterwards would in any way refute it. We're always susceptible to a fall. The flood doesn't change that.

[boatsnguitars]

Yep, seems God just murdered a bunch of people, then his followers looked at it and called it Good.

Or God did not, and people are just claiming God did.

Which is the scariest thing. It's like choosing, of all characters, Sauron to worship and build multi-billion dollar pedophile centers (aka churches) to use to rule the world.
I'm sure Christians don't see it that way. But I don't think the Orcs did, either.