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?

[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?

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.

Sure, as a story, it makes sense. Myths are always quite hyperbolic. And, there is certainly value in cautionary tales, especially when these tales are primarily told to educate young people who rarely live past 40 and you need them to understand the general ethos of the tribe.

[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.

Sure, as a story, it makes sense. Myths are always quite hyperbolic. And, there is certainly value in cautionary tales, especially when these tales are primarily told to educate young people who rarely live past 40 and you need them to understand the general ethos of the tribe.

Which goes back to my original point on the OP: the end justifies the means insofar as we're in such an extreme situation that extreme means are called for. Otherwise, all hope is lost. The fact that it's a hyperbolic myth doesn't change that.

[boatsnguitars]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

[theophile]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work as a strategy?

[boatsnguitars]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work as a strategy?

Well, did it actually get rid of sin?

[theophile]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work as a strategy?

Well, did it actually get rid of sin?

Well, point in time it did. But no, it didn't get rid of the possibility of sin. I don't think that was the objective though.
Nor do I think that would be possible without similarly compromising the end goal. e.g., God would have had to wipe out humankind entirely. In which case, not all kinds of life would be included at the end and there would be nobody to help God achieve it.

[William]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work as a strategy?

Well, did it actually get rid of sin?

Well, point in time it did. But no, it didn't get rid of the possibility of sin. I don't think that was the objective though.
Nor do I think that would be possible without similarly compromising the end goal. e.g., God would have had to wipe out humankind entirely. In which case, not all kinds of life would be included at the end and there would be nobody to help God achieve it.

The implication there is that this God is doing an experiment which it does not know the outcome but still has an ideal outcome which it is of the opinion, can be achieved.

It also implies that if the Noah character did not show himself a willing entity who could "hear/understand" that the God existed and what the God wanted to achieve, the God would either have admitted its goal was not obtainable under the circumstances, or tried again from scratch.

All in all, this God-Concept is rather like a scientist who believes that it can achieve things, through learning what can and cannot be achieved given the materials in which to do so.

No less part of the machinery, for that.

One can easily imply a myriad of ideas re things going on behind the "scenes" re that. For example, the idea that the God is a gifted student assigned/taking on a task most difficult, in which a great many others are interested in the ongoing results...

[theophile]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work as a strategy?

Well, did it actually get rid of sin?

Well, point in time it did. But no, it didn't get rid of the possibility of sin. I don't think that was the objective though.
Nor do I think that would be possible without similarly compromising the end goal. e.g., God would have had to wipe out humankind entirely. In which case, not all kinds of life would be included at the end and there would be nobody to help God achieve it.

The implication there is that this God is doing an experiment which it does not know the outcome but still has an ideal outcome which it is of the opinion, can be achieved.

It also implies that if the Noah character did not show himself a willing entity who could "hear/understand" that the God existed and what the God wanted to achieve, the God would either have admitted its goal was not obtainable under the circumstances, or tried again from scratch.

All in all, this God-Concept is rather like a scientist who believes that it can achieve things, through learning what can and cannot be achieved given the materials in which to do so.

No less part of the machinery, for that.

One can easily imply a myriad of ideas re things going on behind the "scenes" re that. For example, the idea that the God is a gifted student assigned/taking on a task most difficult, in which a great many others are interested in the ongoing results...

I may not use 'scientist' to describe it (a scientist pursues knowledge whereas God pursues life -- more like a gardener), but I do think God very much makes hard calls without perfect knowledge, and we have to do the same. I think assigning God omniscience in the classic sense completely obliterates how God actually works. (Same with concepts like omnipotence.)

[William]

[Replying to theophile in post #68]

I may not use 'scientist' to describe it (a scientist pursues knowledge whereas God pursues life -- more like a gardener), but I do think God very much makes hard calls without perfect knowledge, and we have to do the same. I think assigning God omniscience in the classic sense completely obliterates how God actually works. (Same with concepts like omnipotence.)

I agree about the "Gardener" aspect, perhaps alongside the "Scientist" in that sense of "learning to be".

I also agree about the strange omni-concepts which I don't think the stories of the Bible convey or even mean to convey.
I think there is a conflation between nature (as a real experience) and super-nature (as a concept) and this is where mis-information arises re the "God-Creator/Creation" concept.
For example, while the Bible conveys the idea that God knows the number of hairs on each head, this could signify that God is way more connected to what is going on in nature than any/all humans, at least at this local....so "compared" with humans, God appears to know - if not everything there is to know, certainly everything that needs to be know re that local.

But an entity still learning things as it goes along.

[boatsnguitars]

Wholly disagree. As a story, it makes sense. As an actual strategy it doesn't.

Why doesn't it work as a strategy?

Well, did it actually get rid of sin?

Well, point in time it did. But no, it didn't get rid of the possibility of sin. I don't think that was the objective though.
Nor do I think that would be possible without similarly compromising the end goal. e.g., God would have had to wipe out humankind entirely. In which case, not all kinds of life would be included at the end and there would be nobody to help God achieve it.

So, there are people alive today that are sinning - just like people back then who were sinning, but God decided to kill them and not all the people since who have sinned? He never gave them a chance to repent? Sorry, it's not a good strategy - as evidenced. As a story, it's easy to reduce it to a simplistic message, but as an actual strategy for management (or whatever god thinks he's doing, if he exists)

Wouldn't the lesson be: God is a jerk? That's what comes across to me. God is a jerk, not smart and has no plan.