Friday Morning Musings

[sturmy]

Friday morning on the way to work.
I’ve just been viewing scenes of modern slavery - men, women and children in parts of Africa, Asia, and yes in the West. Slavery is alive and well and arguably bigger than it was when officially sanctioned by western governments.
Seeing scenes like this are nothing new and I’m viewing them on my iPad on the comfortable train to work.

It got me thinking though of the notion that God created evil so that we can understand good, to create a contrast so we understand. Bollocks. To use a colourful word favoured by our friend Johnny.
Do we really believe this in the core of our being? Is this really where our philosophy and reasoning and scripture lead us?
And who are these people who benefit from this knowledge?
Is it the victims themselves? Not useful information for thousands of children who die in these circumstances each year (unless they are to be beneficiaries of this knowledge post mortem).
Is it for me as I take my comfortable journey and contemplate the meaning of life?Learning lessons at others expense.
Doubtful.
Is it for a watching Universe who in order to fully appreciate their idyllic lives lived out in ‘unfallen’ realms, to fully understand the contrasted glory of God and as a lesson to show God’s way is best and prevent sin entering creation again, as my SDA friends might purport when I meet some of them this weekend? Again, I say bollocks.

What’s the alternative, an Impotent God who has no power to work otherwise. Dualism - may the best man win?

I’m not expecting answers …

The problem of Evil…and what will I say this weekend to my kind and generous Agnostic neighbour to persuade him of a benevolent Deity?

Well, what’s triggered these Friday morning musings?
It was waking to the radio alarm this morning to more news of further evidence that’s continued to surface in the UK’s Jimmy Saville case, the disc jockey, who though slightly off- beat, brightened the airwaves of a Sunday morning, on Radio One, in my childhood, yet has transpired to be one the greatest cold blooded sex offenders of modern times.

Well back to my coffee and toast.
S

[alecforbes]

No easy answers for sure.
I continue to think there is some metaphysical impossibility as Tom Talbott says in an “…omnipotent being instantaneously creating a self-aware, language using, fully rational, and morally mature person capable of independent action…” This, impossibility then leads to the necessity of us being created in “…a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misperception…” which is responsible for our inherent tendency to sin. Of course much of “The Problem of Evil” has to do with “natural evil” and the apparent randomness in Nature with resultant pain and suffering in the natural world (which of course includes us humans.) I have to think that God allowing this and not intervening, again, has to do with metaphysical impossibilities we don’t understand. A philosophical exploration of this such as Talbott has done regarding the conditions necessary to create the kind of beings he describes above—and I think the two are linked in some way–would be very helpful. In the meantime, I take comfort in turning to the Father-- “Abba”-- that Jesus said he was like and not looking to or relying on the “omni” God of most theistic philosophers.

All the best

Steve

[sturmy]

Hi Steve thanks for your response,
You said

I continue to think there is some metaphysical impossibility as Tom Talbott says in an “…omnipotent being instantaneously creating a self-aware, language using, fully rational, and morally mature person capable of independent action…” This, impossibility then leads to the necessity of us being created in “…a context of ambiguity, ignorance, and misperception…” which is responsible for our inherent tendency to sin.

Yes, I think this poses a reasonable answer and following Tom’s logic seems to make some sense.

The sticking point for me is:-

1. This really negates the whole Adamic ‘fall’, but rather depicts an immature Adam who is created in this ambiguity and is almost set up to make wrong choices based on his immaturity and lack of experience and blamelessly misses the mark.
   This is good as far as it goes but then the rest of humanity following finds itself, then, either in a fallen state bound to fail ( but perhaps learn from the experience) or if not ‘fallen’ then the same ambiguity and individual immaturity as Adam’s situation and apparently equally inept and bound for failure.

2. This experience in order to bring us to fully rational, morally mature people capable of independent action (and responding to God in Love as autonomous beings) is little benefit to myriads of less rational creatures due to their perishing as children, having scrambled brains due to drugs, or whatever etc etc.
   And when is this mature state through experience and presumably eventual wise choices meant to occur?

As an aside: One can see the attraction and short step to the idea of re-incarnation from here - another step along the way to the ideal state.

3. At the end of the day is this any more satisfactory than the older view that God, in order to create beings with free will, had to allow the possibility of Adams poor choice. The only essential difference seeming to be (to me) that in the original concept Adam is a mature fully rational being who makes a poor choice and plunges the following human race into a spiral of sin and failure, and is to some degree blameworthy, as opposed to an immature Adam who is created with the strong possibility / inevitability of failure that is not blameworthy but is just experiencing part of the essential journey.

Not of course that the truth of the matter will necessarily sit comfortably with us, nor is an explanation that does sit comfortably guaranteed to be correct.

4. This scenario doesn’t seem to gel too well the restoration theme that seems to weave through scripture, to be restored is to return to the original state, or better.

But in any event, I begin to rant.
It was not really my intention to re-open ‘the problem of evil’ debate, interesting as it is. And you have reminded me that the recent thread by Tom on free will led to some interesting posts and it was my intention to read through them all again.

I think summarising, my Friday morning musing was really about how easy it is to come up with rational and seemingly acceptable theories and propose answers, but occasionally, evil stares us in the face and all the posturing seems inadequate, and banal.

And thanks Steve I appreciated the closing thought:
In the meantime, I take comfort in turning to the Father-- “Abba”-- that Jesus said he was like and not looking to or relying on the “omni” God of most theistic philosophers. Wise words indeed and will reorient myself to this again this weekend !
God bless,
Sturmy

[Bob_Wilson]

Sometimes I think the essence of healthy religion is that despite the mysteriously troubling reality of evil, we still choose to bet that love will win. Perhaps especially because, being convinced that love is an ultimate value, embracing the contrary alternative is too destructive and dismal for living the loving life that we deeply sense we are called to live. (i.e. the love that leads us to find a deep worth in others that should not be destroyed is mistaken unless evil will ultimately be vanquished). My old professor, Lew Smedes, would often say that he looked for good to triuimph only because he suspected that Easter really happened. Or as Steve well puts it, we choose to trust that Jesus is right about the existence of Abba, even though we don’t satisfactorily understand all the omnis of the apologetics folks.