An all-powerful God could certainly ensure that a person who is meant to die will die. An all-powerful God could also remove free will or limit the choices available in a given circumstance if he so chose.
God's says I give you free will except where it interferes with what I want to do. God is certainly within his right to do so but it that kind of defeats the purpose of giving us free will. Our will is not free when it becomes inconvieniant for him.
From our perspective, God does things that if a person without omniscience were to do them would be immoral.
I don't know what you mean by the sentence that I've put in bold. Please explain.
Sorry, I worded the statement awkwardly. I'm stating from our perspective god does immoral things. From our perspective, it does not matter what gods motives are because they are unkown to us. We only know what we can know. And I don't think being omniscient disqualifies you from being immoral.
Since you will not respond to these issues further (understandably) I will only state my brief replies with the following.
Not really, but here are some quick synopses of some of the possibilities:
One answer had to do with the idea of "middle knowledge." This means that God doesn't know directly, but can predict what you will choose to do of your own free will.
Seems like a cop out to me. If he can't know something directly that means he does not know something which means that he is not omnicient.
Another answer was that omniscience simply means the ability to know anything that is knowable, just as omnipotence means the ability to do anything that is doable. Since it is simply a logical absurdity to know something that is unknowable (such as the result of a free choice) God doesn't actually know what the result will be, but is still omnipotent. This is logically equivalent to the question of whether an omnipotent being can make a boulder larger than it can lift. The answer is that the concept of lifting the unliftable is simply a logical absurdity, and therefore is not something that an omnipotent being would be required to do.
That is only if you define foreknowledge of our choice a logical absurdity. I don't understand how that can be a logical absurdity. The absurdity is only there if you say god is omnicient and can't know what our choice is (in order to preserve the notion of free will under the concept of an all knowing god.) It's a false dilema.
Another is that although God CAN know your future action, he can choose to restrict his knowledge in order to allow for free will. In other words, God's knowledge and your free choice are mutually exclusive, but under God's control.
Another cop out. There is still apart of god that knows since if he's omnicient. He just chooses not to act upon that knowledge.
Another answer had to do with God operating outside of and being unlimited by time. If the timeline of the universe is established in a single instance (actually timelessly) then it is possible that the choices we make are free, but that God can then examine the timeline, essentially peeking into the future, and determine what you will do of your own free will. This would essentially mean that God knows what you will do by simply observing it (just as we can know what occurred in the past by observation).
Then god can still know all your choices in advance. Since he can take that knowledge with him back to a point in time before you made the decision. If you mess with time you have to accept all the paradoxes it implies.
Theres still the issue of god's big plan. Especially if he does not allow free will to affect that plan. Any choice we makes which that goes against that plan is negated in favor of the plan. So the free will we exercised in making that choice becomes meaningless and the end result is the same as if we made the choice god wanted us to make inorder so that his plan remains intact.
It's possible that natural disasters truly are random and God doesn't specifically control them. So why would a benevolent God put something like that into motion? Possibly because without them, we would have no incentive to do evil, and therefore no freedom to choose to do good despite the temptation to do evil. So, it is possible that random suffering leads to a greater good.
I'm not seeing your point. How does a natural disaster provide us with an incentive to chose or do evil?
Again, I agree it would suck for the victim. And whether or not God exists, there is no doubt that suffering sucks for the sufferer.
That said, it is possible that the suffering is entirely random. It is also possible that it's not random and that God makes a choice as to specifically which lives will be ended to produce the most good.
If the "most good" is related to the human species having free will, you cannot say that one life is forfeited for another, but rather that some lives are forfeited for free will (which benefits us all). It can also be argued that were no lives forfeited and free will therefore were not to exist, that it would be a fate worse than death for us all. In that vein, those whose lives are "forfeited" also benefit from others before them forfeiting their lives, and that death and suffering are a small price to pay for free will.
It only matters to us if we believe that we have free will.
I don't see how we can have actual free will (in god's perspective) if god is all knowing and has a plan that he does not allow our actions to affect.
If this is the case then free will has no value to god as something that is worth allowing people to suffer for. It's only to perpetuate our own belief in our false sense of free will.
Only his plan is what matters to him. And if he wants his plan to come to fruition and not allow us affect that plan (lest it reaches an outcome he does not want) then god cannot allow us to have true free will. Whatever choice we make is nullified so that the plan progresses as he wishes.
Nature does not value the individual as important compared to the whole. If god feels that way also then the greater good is more important than the well being of the individual. That kind of puts a damper on the whole personal god idea.
It can be argued that "the ends don't justify the means" is not an ideal, but a necessity due to our limitations (limitations that God doesn't have). It would not be an example of our holding ourselves to a higher moral standard -- it would only be an example of our holding ourselves to a different moral standard due to the fact that we cannot know the full consequences of our actions.
The spirit of the statement implies that the outcome or ends is a good outcome.
The statement says that it makes no difference if the end is a good and just end, doing bad things to get to that end does not justify the bad things you did to get to that good and benevolent end.
It doesn't matter how good and beneficial the results of the action are.
It does not matter wether we know what the full consequences of our actions are or not.
I disagree. Theft is generally immoral, but in some circumstances not stealing would be more immoral.
well that can be seen as a rationalization.
But the act itself is still considered immoral. Just in certain situations the immoral act can be overlooked.
In a court of law, it's called "extenuating circumstances" and people are often held to a less severe punishment or completely absolved of any wrong-doing based on extenuating circumstances.
Yep. that's called "overlooking the immoral act inlight of the circumstances"
Yea. it may be an argument of sematics but there you have it.
If God is omnibenevolent, he would be compelled to follow the more benevolent picture regardless of the saying.
-Bri
yea, but the statement implies that the outcome or bigger picture doesn't matter. The moral value of the acts affects the moral value of the outcome.
But if you run into logical problems with omnicience, you'll have the same logical problems with omnibenevolence. In fact with omni-anything.
