Presumption of innocence.
While the suspect might be guilty of heinous crimes like personally murdering innocents (the Flood), ordering genocide, letting billions of people die due to neglicence (suffering in world + omnipotence) and operating/tolerating a hell-like torture prison, we lack the following information:
- evidence regarding what happened (e.g. how do we know, who was killed in the Flood? was it realy worldwide? we just presume that innocent children were killed, but what if the regions effected by flood did not have innocent childrens anymore, cause they sacrificed all their children?; are Bible accounts upon genocide by Israelites accurate? who gets in Hell and why?)
- suspect’s motives for actions (e.g. was the Flood necessary because otherwise even Noah would have turned evil and then all mankind would have been lost forever, all future generations destined for eternal damnation?; desire to bring humankind to reject evil because evil will always end with eternal damnation?)
- suspect’s alternatives (e.g. how can he both be True, Just and Good and let those fallible humans near him? Maybe the alternative plans to the current one, aren’t that rosy either)
- suspect’s capabilities (e.g. we do not know, what omnipotence actually means? Why or why doesn’t it include snipping your’re finger making all evil vanish and upholding human freedom at the same time?)
- suspect’s psychology, social background, “upbringing”, etc. (What exactly does mean without beginning and end? Does this lead to any psychological situation with reduced culpability?)
No sane court would find someone guilty under that circumstances; instead further fact-finding would be required; if not possible, the suspect would have to be acquitted due to lack of evidence.
But especially the few known actions of the suspect would be weighted. It appears the suspect claims to follow some plan to right a horrible wrong, to uphold justice and mercy, although justice demands serious punishment, which mercy strives to avoid and to save billions of sentinent beings from a horrible fate.
That does not automatically justify anything, especially the killing of innocents, as the ends do not justify the means.
But it might mean that the suspect is in a tricky damn if you do and damn if you dont situation; what is right in such situation is very hard to determine and the best criteria whether someone acted acceptable in such a situation, is whether he puts all effort to select the least bad option, if he tries realy hard and then something, giving everything; if someone then selects a from his perspective best plan, which still doesn’t look that nice, one has to presume little or no guilt.
The suspect in this situation purposedly claims to follow such a plan.
And when someone thinks for the good cause he can subject people dependent upon him to some sacrifice, he should at least not be soft upon himself and try to take part of the burden himself; especially, what the suspect himself put himself through is a indication, what the suspect himself thought, is absolutely unavoidable for the least bad plan, and hence might truly have been unavoidable, cause it can be presumed that any sentinent being would strive to avoid own suffering and only accept it as far as absolutely unavoidable.
The suspect supposedly devised as part of his grand plan a for our standards rather bizzare plan to GET HIMSELF SENTENCED TO DEATH ALTHOUGH INNOCENT AND GET HIMSELF TORTURED AND HORRENDOUSLY MURDERED ALTHOUGH INNOCENT.
Hence, it has to be presumed that the suspect truly acted out of the belief that some not so nice plan was necessary to correct some serious problem and acted out of the belief that the least bad of potential plans unfortunately required suffering of innocents and seemingly tried to provide evidence and testimony for this written in his own innocent blood.
Based upon these rather limited and potentially unreliable information, i think any decent court would have to acquit the suspect at least due to lack of evidence and one has to continue to presume him to be innocent; at most, further questioning of the suspect might be necessary to fill out the blanks and maybe arrive at a true innocent verdict.
Though as a separate charge maybe a court would have to consider, whether the suspect acted wrongly by starting this whole thing by creating something from nothing in the first place. But for that part also facts are truly limited, e.g. how does universe creation work? is creating knowing good and bad things will follow better or worse than despairing “Better not to create at all, otherwise there will be suffering”?, etc.
