Seems like equivocation on the concept of justification to me.

Person

/ˈpəːs(ə)n/

Origin

Middle English: from Old French persone, from Latin persona ‘actor's mask, character in a play’.

I can see problems with the idea of God that you are describing, and that is if there is a God, and this being is a person, it would mean in a wider and deeper sense. You talk about the importance of the God as omnipotent but at the same time comparing this with the idea of being a good person, in terms of wishing to leave someone alone with their private thoughts.

Firstly, you are going by a colloquial sense of good and we cannot always assume that this is all inclusive. Secondly, if God is beyond us all, surely, God would understand the difficult nature of thoughts, so would not be completely judgemental. So, I think that you are trying to fit the idea of God into an anthropomorphic perspective. I think that these kind of problems though are some of the reasons why people do often reject the idea of God totally. There are two problems: the question of whether God is all powerful and, whether God is completely good. In trying to reconcile these problems with the idea of the existence of God, I believe that it would require an understanding of God as a source far beyond the scope of our level of thinking knowledge and understanding.

Where's your evidence? There's no equivocation.

I am not sure I follow you.
God is by definition good. And it seems reasonable to believe that this means God will keep himself ignorant of an innocent person's thoughts and desires out of respect for their privacy and dignity.
That generates a real puzzle given that God is also all knowing.
To resolve it I have noted that to be all knowing is not to know all truths, but to be in possession of all knowledge. And as God's attitudes constitutively determine what is and isn't knowledge, what God doesn't want to believe will not be knowledge by dint of God not wanting to believe it.

It seems reasonable, then, to conclude that God, being all good, would want to respect the privacy and dignity of innocent others and so would not make himself aware of all that others think and desire and intend. — Bartricks

I'm not sure that would apply to God. In the same way a child's dignity is not violated by the parent's knowledge of intimate details about the child, so also, a human being's dignity is not violated if God, our heavenly father, knows all our thoughts and actions.

If God were to have no knowledge of what humans get up to, he would be unable to judge and reward or punish us, and this would go against the principle of justice that upholds human society and the whole world.

Additionally, if everything is an emanation of God and God and humans are essentially identical, then the issue of dignity does not arise in God-human relations.

Hmm, but it seems unethical in the case of innocent adults. If I have access to someone's diary, I should not read it; nor should I watch people all the time - that's stalking and people are entitled to privacy and to be alone with their thoughts. We can conceive of situations where this is not so, but there will be extenuating circumstances in those cases. So in the case of children, this is because they already lack dignity and are incapable of looking after themselves and lack sufficiently developed powers of reason. So we can explain why it is morally fine to monitor children, but the explanation does not apply to those who possess reason and are capable of looking after themselves. It would be fallacious to infer that as it is moral to monitor a young child's every move, it is therefore moral for me to monitor my neighbour Jenny's every move.

Similarly, if I am innocent then it would be wrong of someone else to monitor my every move. That is, it seems that God disapproves of it. And so as God disapproves of it, we can reasonably suppose he doesn't do it himself. Not where innocent people possessed of reason are concerned anyway (so this does not apply to us).

Re us humans - I don't think what I have said applies to us in the same way, as the nature of our situation is such as to give us grounds to think we are not innocent. Nevertheless, a similar case can be made, where God does not know what happens to us here because he doesn't care (due to how we have behaved in the past), rather than to respect our privacy. I don't read Jenny's diary out of respect for her. I don't read Sam's out of indifference to him. God doesn't pry into the thoughts and desires of the innocent, I think, out of respect. God doesn't pry into our thoughts and desires out of indifference.

That doesn't preclude judgement, I think. For nothing prevents God from availing himself of the information later. Here and now God isn't interested in what we do. But there may come a time when he is and then he can find out exactly how we have behaved.

Re everything emanating from God - that's to pack more into the definition of God. God's omnipotence means everything that exists exists by the grace of God. But it does not follow that everything has its origin in God. Omnipotence does not essentially involve creating everything. But even if it did, I am unclear why that affects anything. If my parents have created me, it is still wrong of them to read my diary and monitor my every thought.

Re being identical with God - innocent people and God are not quantitively identical. God is a distinct person, as are we all. Are all innocent persons qualitatively identical with God? No, for God is omnipotent and omniscient and they are not.

But even if we have two qualitatively identical people - twins Mark and John - it would clearly still be wrong for Mark to read John's diary and monitor his every move and vice versa. So I don't see that qualitative identity does any real work in making morally permissible what would otherwise be wrong.

~~

Another great contribution from Ffee Pie.

~~ — Banno

Yeah, plus blah, blah… suppositions… invisibility disorder…

Engage philosophically with the OP if you dare, or go away.

For a true proposition to qualify as an item of knowledge it needs to be justified. For a true proposition to be justified is for there to be a normative reason to believe it. — Bartricks

Epistemic justification is not the same thing as moral justification, at least prima facie. You have a sort of is-ought problem here.

I dissent from most of the assumptions in the OP but you seemed to want to offer these as given which I'm happy to follow. It's fun to look at validity anyway.

Also I'm interested in how and why people select the 'omnis' that they do. I'm used to the idea that there are three: omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. I don't normally bother with omnibenevolence as that follows from G's omnipotence anyway, although that depends on a theory of the good, namely that the good is that which is willed. Why do people, you in this case, often skip omnipresence?

Is that Banno passing over in silence what cannot be spoken of? Or did he just delete a post?

More generally, I'm not sure God is too bothered about dignity. You need to have pride for that don't you? Maybe They understands that people have pride, and don't want to be watched, and so in Their Mercy They don't Watch. I think we need to use capitals more for the non-binary God so as not to mock Them too much. But you need Eyes to Watch. But God has no Eyes on pain of being visible and spatio-temporally Located. Jesus could do some watching but only a few people for a short time. So for God to do some Watching, it would have to be in some other way. Oh, Theology is hard.

deleted.

Another great contribution from Ffee Pie. — Bartricks

Ffee Pie? I thought it was Britney ... :wink:

It would be fallacious to infer that as it is moral to monitor a young child's every move, it is therefore moral for me to monitor my neighbour Jenny's every move. — Bartricks

In the case of a human monitor, sure. But, presumably, there is a difference between a human and God? If God is our creator, sustainer, etc. then he is like our parent, which is why he is actually referred to as "father" in religious texts.

I like Britney. But Banoffee pie? No, I've always found it somewhat sickly and dense.

But, presumably, there is a difference between a human and God? If God is our creator, sustainer, etc. then he is like our parent, which is why he is actually referred to as "father" in religious texts. — Apollodorus

But you're appealing to a religious doctrine, not a conceptual truth. A person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent is not necessarily our creator (indeed, we seem to have independent evidence that we have not been created - free will). Sustainer, yes - that follows from being omnipotent - but not our creator (unless there's an argument that shows why omnipotence involves having created everything).

But anyway, even if God did create us, I don't see why that would change anything. Assuming my parents created me, is it okay for my mum to read my diary or film my every move? No, that would be disrespectful.

To take your example of children: why is it (sometimes) okay to monitor them? Becasue we created them? No, because they don't yet have the dignity that monitoring them would otherwise undermine; and they don't yet have powers of reason sufficient to make respecting their free will something we ought to do, and so on. Those are the kinds of consideration that justify monitoring, not 'being the creator of...'.

Incidentally, I should add that I am not arguing that God does not know what 'we' get up to - for we are not innocent, so the argument I am making does not apply to us.

However, though I am not a Christian, a quick read of Genesis tells me that God doesn't know where Adam is - he tries to find him. Why would he try to find him if he knew where he was? Thus clearly there are things God does not know, if Genesis is to be taken literally. Which is as one would expect, given that God considers Adam to be innocent at that point and thus would not pry and monitor him.

But anyway, that's all by the by really, as the philosophical point is that an all-good person wouldn't avail themselves of all truths, and thus would not know all truths. And my point is that this is entirely consistent with being all-knowing. Being all-knowing and knowing-all-truths are not equivalent. Thus God can be all knowing without knowing all truths. For being all-knowing involves knowing all items of knowledge, which is not necessarily the same as knowing all truths.

Epistemic justification is not the same thing as moral justification, at least prima facie. You have a sort of is-ought problem here. — bert1

Relevance? Justifications are made of normative reasons. There are different kinds of normative reasons, including epistemic and moral. But all of them are made of God's favouring attitudes (what distinguishes a moral reason from an epistemic reason is its basis - so an epistemic reason is a reason to believe a proposition on the basis of its truth).

My point is that to know a proposition is to be justified in believing it. And as such, God can be all knowing without knowing all truths, for not all truths will have justifications if, that is, God does not favour himself believing them.

. In this way, then, God can make himself ignorant of what innocent people think, desire and intend and yet remain all-knowing. For it remains the case that he knows all items of knowledge. — Bartricks

A noble way to look at God's omniscience and how it relates to privacy but a coupla points that seem germane.

1. If it's not WYSIWYG then people, everyone, are/is pretending.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts [...] — Shakespeare

It's all for the cameras, putting on a show so to speak. Given this God would need to know what goes on inside our heads - someone has to know who we truly are, right?

This ain't really much of an issue because in medicine, patients routinely disclose personal information to doctors as this might contain vital clues to an illness but, the doctor is legally bound to respect and uphold patient confidentiality.

Original sin declares us all as sick. God's the doctor. We must tell fae of our deepest and darkest secrets if we're to ever become whole in body, mind and spirit. Omniscience is just that in a way, right?

2. This is a more intriguing possibility. Who says there's any information in our thoughts? In other words, does what goes through our minds constitute knowledge?

After all, it could be that thoughts = no thoughts = nothing/zip/nought/nada. Nothing there for god to know!

I'm afraid I do not know what you're saying.

Original sin declares us all as sick. God's the doctor. — TheMadFool

That's bible stuff, right? I said God is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person. I said don't pack more into it. You're packing more into it. I don't care what the bible says. It is not a work of philosophy.

A good person wouldn't want to know all truths about a person. God is all knowing. Are those compatible? I am showing that they are. For if God does not favour himself believing all true propositions about you, then those true propositions are not items of knowledge. That would be a case of there being no knowledge there for God to know, rather than there being 'nothing' there for God to know.

Problems for my thesis: if God's will determines what we have reason to believe, and God does not favour himself believing some things about us, then surely that means that those beliefs are beliefs that none of us have any justifying reason to believe? And so we would have to say that innocent persons cannot know all manner of things about themselves. They could have true beliefs about some of their own mental states, but those true beliefs would not qualify as knowledge, for they would lack justification (if, that is, these beliefs are of the kind that God doesn't want to have).

My reply is that I think, at the moment, that this is correct (for if we say instead that they are knowledge because God approves of the way in which they were acquired, then God would not be all-knowing, for there would be items of knowledge he does not possess). But it is not really problematic. For we could still ask in respect of such beliefs whether they 'would' be ones God would favour us believing 'if' he were not concerned to respect our privacy. And that could be known - that is, we could know that 'if' God didn't want to respect our privacy, then a belief formed in that manner would be justified.

Another problem concerns truth itself. Knowledge has several ingredients, one of which is belief in a true proposition. But what's truth? Surely by the same logic that says God must be the determiner of what we have reason to believe, God must also be the determiner of truth as well? Yet if God determines what is true, then God's desire to respect our privacy would result in the relevant propositions not being true. That is, if God wants to respect me by not acquiring true beliefs about some of my mental states, then she would have to hold off making those beliefs true (for how could she make them true without herself believing them to be? In which case, she would be violating my privacy). And so now all of those beliefs of mine - beliefs of the sort that God would not want to disrespect me by knowing - would not even be true, let alone justified.

At the moment I am inclined to bite this bullet as well and argue that it is not really a problem, just a labelling issue. For the propositions themselves - such as the proposition "I am thinking of a cake" - would still exist. A proposition does not have to be true in order to exist. So it is just that these propositions would not be true. We could nevertheless say of them that they 'would' be true were God not concerned to respect our privacy. And that proposition could be true and justified.

That's bible stuff, right? I said God is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person. I said don't pack more into it. You're packing more into it. I don't care what the bible says. It is not a work of philosophy. — Bartricks

Why reinvent the wheel? Why waste a good idea? Good in the sense appropritate for the occasion.

A good person wouldn't want to know all truths about a person. God is all knowing. Are those compatible? I am showing that they are. For if God does not favour himself believing all true propositions about you, then those true propositions are not items of knowledge. That would be a case of there being no knowledge there for God to know, rather than there being 'nothing' there for God to know. — Bartricks

Your argument nested in My argument

1. God's omnibenevolent [God's definition]
2. God's omniscient [God's definition]
3. If God knows what we think then, God hurts us [privacy]
4. If God hurts us then, God isn't omnibenevolent [premise]
5. If God's omniscient & Stuff that we think is knowledge then, God knows what we think [premise]
6. Stuff that we think is knowledege [assume for reductio ad absurdum]
7. God's omniscient & Stuff that we think is knowledge [2, 6 Conj]

[Your argument starts]
8. God knows what we think [5, 7 MP]
9. If God knows what we think then, God isn't omnibenevolent [3, 4 HS]
10. God doesn't know what we think [1, 9 MT]
11. If God doesn't know what we think then, God's not omniscient [premise]

Ergo,

12. God's not omniscient [10, 11 MP]
[Your argument ends]

13. God's omniscient & God's not omniscient [2, 12 Conj]

Ergo,

14. Stuff that we think isn't knowledge [6 - 13 reductio ad absurdum] including this argument! :rofl:

Agrippa's trilemma!!! :chin: Descartes' deus deceptor (Cartesian skepticism). Skepticism on steroids!

Remember that God's definition can't change. If God is no longer omniscient then why stop there? He may well not be omnibenevolent (you lose your case) or omnipotent but then we're no longer talking about God.

What on earth are you on about??

God is omnisient.
God is omnibenevolent.
God is omnipotent.

I'm not denying any of those. Don't you understand what I am arguing?

I am arguing that God wouldn't access certain truths about us. Thus there are some truths God does not know.

I am arguing that that's compatible with being all knowing.

Again: God is omniscient, meaning he possesses all knowledge.

God does not know some truths.

That's consistent. That's what I am arguing. Being omniscient doesn't essentially involve knowing all truths; it involves having all the knowledge there is to be had.

What on earth are you on about?? — Bartricks

:rofl: It got too technical. Sorry, my bad! It doesn't matter because it wasn't as good an argument as I'd hoped.

Let me see...

You're saying God doesn't know some of our thoughts because God's omnibenevolent and wouldn't want to violate our privacy but he would still be omniscient.

It's a dilemma.

1. Either God knows our thoughts or God doesn't know our thoughts.
2. If God knows our thoughts, God isn't omnibenevolent.

3. If God doesn't know our thoughts, God isn't omniscient.

Ergo,

4. Either God isn't omniscient or God isn't omnibenevolent.

You're taking the dilemma by the horns and saying premise 3 is false. It's possible and also true that God doesn't know our thoughts and yet God is omniscient.

The only way God can not know our private thoughts is if fae doesn't get inside our heads. Fae has to be like normal people - only taking verbal or physical information people are willing to share. The moment God can read minds (telepathy), all bets are off because before I decide that a certain thought is off-limits for others, I have to think it. In other words, God would already know the thoughts we want to keep from faer prying eyes. Hence, God mustn't read minds.

If so, God simply can't know any of our thoughts be they those we want to share or those we don't want to share. Our brains, assuming that's the organ that thinks, carry a sign, God and people not allowed.

I can't say that I'm really convinced though.

I tend to think that violation of dignity is commonly associated with condescension or being exposed to ridicule, etc. But if God is good and, moreover, if he is not a person but just pure intelligence, etc., then I don't think the issue of violation of dignity needs to arise at all.

Don't pack more into the definition than that. — Bartricks

That's quite enough packing, I believe.

But it is surely clearly wrong to watch other people 24/7 and to peer into their minds and read their inner most thoughts? There are lots of ways to disrespect people, but that certainly seems like one way.

So, it seems God disapproves of it - disapproves of snooping in that manner (assuming our moral intuitions about this are accurate and thus provide us with insight into God's will). And it is reasonable to infer on this basis that God himself does not engage in that kind of activity. It does not have to follow, for what God disapproves of in others, he may approve of in himself. But it is reasonable to suppose that if someone is clearly very much opposed to others snooping on each other, that they would be opposed to themselves doing so too.

Obviously there are limits and there's much that it is not disrespectful to know about someone. But there are things it seems unethical to pry into and access, even if one can. And thus it is reasonable to believe that a perfectly good person would not pry into those areas and thus would not know our - or rather, an innocent person's - inner most thoughts and feelings.

That then generates the puzzle: how can one be both all-knowing and not know a large range of truths? (To which my solution is to note that being 'all knowing' plausibly means 'being in possession of all knowedge', which is not equivalent to 'knowing all truths')