Frank\'s Theology (General)

by dhw, Thursday, November 26, 2009, 18:46 (5288 days ago) @ dhw

Part Two-For simplicity's sake, let us confine the rest of the discussion to the human condition, which is what we both know most about. You say God is "aware of the ecstasy in every individual, which is 99.99% of existence." May I ask where you got that figure from? The people of Iraq, perhaps, or Afghanistan, Burma, Tibet, Palestine, Darfur, Sudan, Zimbabwe etc....those who are suffering from disease, deprivation, depression even within our own circle of personal acquaintances? Do you think that despite their pain they are 99.99% ecstatic, and believe life is "a bowl of cherries", and their suffering is to be dismissed as a "mere blip in the history of any intelligent species". You accuse me of limited perspective. At least my limited perspective encompasses those who are not as well off as myself, and it also encompasses the realities of the present as opposed to the grand perspective of your future scenario, in which "we'll all be happy billionaires" and "explode into Paradise on Earth" ... although "we" won't because "we" will be dead and buried.-You have in any case presented a distorted account of my attitude. I wrote: "the almost-but-not-quite-ultimate horror is that he can't do anything about it. (The ultimate horror would be that he enjoys it.)" I don't know why you have taken the parenthesis to be my "view". The whole paragraph concerns the implications of your theology. Of course there's no horror attached to the good side of life, which is why I pointed out that I was focusing on suffering and not on joy. The God depicted by you accidentally sparked off evolution here on Earth and can't do anything about what even you have called "the horrendous amount of human suffering" he has caused. That's an aspect of your theology which, together with what appears to be your almost flippant trivialization of suffering, I find thoroughly off-putting. But for your information, I am one of the lucky ones, I love life, and I appreciate this wonderful opportunity given to me, whether by God or by abiogenesis or by the rabble who live on Mount Olympus. -Finally, you wrote: "To illustrate just how incoherent your view is [referring to the hypothetical sadist God in whom I do not believe], if God was the cause of pain and enjoyed it, why wouldn't he have arranged the laws of nature to be 99.99% painful instead of 99.99% joyful?" Quite apart from your statistical fantasy, and "to illustrate just how incoherent your view is", one reason might be that until you asked this question, your God hadn't been able to organize pain or joy. Admittedly arranging the laws of nature is not quite the same as creating them out of nothing, but it'll do just as well, since it gives him the control and responsibility which you have been denying him in your theology for the last month. -(P.S. Is Matt all right? He's not usually this silent.)