That's nothing- there are people who think they personally have a role in the outcome of sporting events. As in, they went to the bathroom which caused Rex to fumble. (That doesn't require any divine intervention.) Or maybe these people think god has a role in sports and also that they're god.
Well, it's completely uncrazy if you're the sort of theist who believes that God controls everything in detail -- if God controls the way leaves fall off a tree, he also controls the Superbowl. Anyone who's thinking that God is a Rangers fan, on the other hand, is a little off.
God better come through tomorrow night, if he knows what's good for him. Also, how come none of you so-called friends ever told me about Lupe Fiasco? This CD might never leave my player.
Well, it's completely uncrazy if you're the sort of theist who believes that God controls everything in detail
I'm not sure I'm ready to call anyone who holds such a belief, "uncrazy".
Some of my brothers' friends prayed for his pickup's cracked engine block. He looked at it the next morning, and lo! it was still cracked. There was probably some kind of bug in the prayer.
What makes it any crazier than any other sort of theism incorporating omnipotence? God's got the processing capacity and the attention span -- who am I, a mere mortal, to make judgments about the sort of things a deity is likely to find interesting? (Well, I admit that micromanaging air currents, or football games, seems really dull, but I figure my capacity for empathizing with God is weak enough that I'm not going to rely on it.)
6: Wasn't there an Onion piece: "God answers prayer of child with cancer; says 'No'."
It's weird that so many of these people seem to think that God doesn't fix football games because he's too busy. I mean, what happened to omnipotence and omniscience? My advice to them would be to send back their god and demand a refund.
What makes it any crazier than any other sort of theism incorporating omnipotence?
It just seems to me that "An all powerful God set the universe in motion" is lower on the screwball scale than "An all powerful God is making Rex Grossman throw interceptions".
It all depends on what you mean by "influence." Christianity, at least, believes that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but argues that that's compatible with free will, so God only "influences" the outcome in a sort of distant way. But these people seem to think that God plays a much more active role (note that almost 27% think God has a preference among the teams). That's pretty crazy; it's not even what their church believes, probably.
FYI: Another crazification factor ...
Haggard Now ``Completely Heterosexual'' By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS _DENVER (AP) -- One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is ''completely heterosexual.''
Revised Headline: "Haggard's rehab sets new record."
Revised Copy: "Breakthrough promises to ease prison
overcrowding."
Of course, "crazy" isn't really the right word. They have the same unsophisticated religious beliefs that the rabble have had forever, but for some reason we decided to let these people vote.
Christianity, at least, believes that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but argues that that's compatible with free will, so God only "influences" the outcome in a sort of distant way.
I'm not a Christian, but I think this is completely wrong. There are at least some versions of Christian orthodoxy that incorporate detailed divine control of everything that happens, which is reconciled with free will through some mechanism I don't completely understand.
The old "hard core" versus "soft core" determinism debate.
some mechanism I don't completely understand
It's called "double predestination," I believe.
I know about the Calvinists, for crying out loud--I will not have my years with the Jesuits forgotten!--but how many Calivinist are there in America?
re: 14
There's all kinds of elaborate stuff going on there. Calvinism, for example.
how many Calivinist are there in America?
More of them in France, certainly.
If you had a fast internet connection to the Divine, think how many football pools you can win ... you could even break the bank at Monte Carlo.
See? I told you it starts popping up everywhere.
But it's not a simple Calvinists (and there are lots -- aren't plenty of evangelical sects Calvinist in origin) believe in tight control by God, all others believe in a distant God who just set things in motion; I think Catholic orthodoxy is at least compatible with, if not requiring, divine control of everything that happens on a fine scale.
I get weird about conversations defining one set of religious beliefs as less crazy or more sophisticated than another -- generally, I don't agree with the assessment and don't understand the evidentiary basis for it.
The real question is, could there be a quarterback that sucks so much that even He could not propel the team to victory?
Actually, it seems like Catholics have a more 'nuanced'* view.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm
Although I'm buggered if I can work out precisely what that view is supposed to be.
* or possibly one obfuscated by 2000 years of accretions and sneaky Jesuitical moves.
They all seem pretty crazy to me. I certainly get tired of having to pretend out of courtesy that the Christian son o' god thing is any less loony than the Scientologist dead space alien thing.
10: "An all powerful God set the universe in motion" is lower on the screwball scale
Not really, if you consider that that clockwork spun off hemorrhoids. Our network guys could do better and they still trying to figure out why our pipes are clogging up with boxes and the internets can't get through.
Catholic orthodoxy is at least compatible with, if not requiring, divine control of everything that happens on a fine scale
Don't you put your weasel words in my Catholic doctrine. The Catholic God doesn't "control" anything; we have free will.
That still leaves everything that doesn't come under intentional human action, which is plenty to fix a football game: wind, coin flips, irregularities in the grass, and so forth.
The question isn't, "how many Calvinists there are in America?" it's, "do many American churches take a theology of salvation seriously anymore?" And if you can cook up a "yes" to that, you have to ask, "well, do they ask their congregations to take it seriously?" And I think in almost all cases the answer is no. The only believers I know who take their theology seriously are those who are explaining why they don't hold with Protestantism anymore, and have become Unitarians or the like.
I remember being really annoyed with my carpool mate when he described how his church lost their building. He said, "Well, we have a lot of praying to do." I suggested that they might be better served by looking at the real estate section of the paper.
That still leaves everything that doesn't come under intentional human action, which is plenty to fix a football game: wind, coin flips, irregularities in the grass, and so forth.
I'm going to defer to real theologians on this one: my understanding is that although God is in one sense responsible for all those things, and everything happens in accord with His will, he doesn't exercise active control "in time," as it were.
And it's not like everything is equally coherent once you slap the "religion" label on it; that's the point of all this doctrinal squabbling.
divine control of everything that happens on a fine scale.
Of course, when you (N.B. not Catholics!) identify what happens with what God makes happen, there's no more explanatory power in "God makes shit happen" than in "shit happens".
re: 32
I think a lot of theologians very much do take the view that he "exercise(s) active control "in time,"".
there's no more explanatory power in "God makes shit happen" than in "shit happens"
You're so Jewish. God loves you, you ingrate.
there's no more explanatory power in "God makes shit happen" than in "shit happens".
Not so! "God makes s**t happen" = "s**t happens for a reason, perhaps incomprehensible to us, but at least it's comprehensible to someone and isn't just the mechanisms of physics, chemistry, or genes."
God loves you, you ingrate*
*unless you're outside the elect. Then you're on your own. See you in Hell!
I think a lot of theologians very much do take the view that he "exercise(s) active control "in time,"".
Fucking theologians.
my understanding is that although God is in one sense responsible for all those things, and everything happens in accord with His will, he doesn't exercise active control "in time," as it were.
Once you're talking about omniscience and omnipotence, is there a meaningful distinction there? So God created the universe in such a fashion that gusts of wind would throw football game X to the home team, rather than miraculously altering the wind on the fly. Same effect -- the result of the game accorded with God's will -- and the first mechanism, given omnipotence and so forth, doesn't seem impractical in any obvious way.
36: Nope. Happening for a reason isn't the same as god micromanaging. Just because he has an overall plan doesn't mean that he's got to keep fiddling with the details to make it all come out.
39: Meaningful distinction = free will!
Once you're talking about omniscience and omnipotence, is there a meaningful distinction there?
Ahahahaha! (Which I mean in the nicest possible way.)
What I'm saying is that there's probably more written on this than on any other philosophical topic, but that just means you can believe whatever you want and someone smarter than you has already filled in the details.
So calling people who come down one way crazy or unsophisticated would be importing your own esthetic judgments into what is actually a respectable theological argument, if I understand you correctly.
"s**t happens for a reason, perhaps incomprehensible to us, but at least it's comprehensible to someone and isn't just the mechanisms of physics, chemistry, or genes."
Fuck this noumenal shit.
Also, ogged, you're gonna trust what the Jesuits told you about Protestants?
My coarse language in no way reflects my great esteem for the author.
The noumena are not, actually, my thing. I'm just saying.
So calling people who come down one way crazy or unsophisticated would be importing your own esthetic judgments into what is actually a respectable theological argument, if I understand you correctly.
Seriously, I would like to hear which theologians make arguments that would be compatible with believing that God has a preference in a football game. Let me batsignal Kotsko. Remember, you have to click the link for the batsignal to work.
41: Necessarily? My understanding is that under at least some conceptions of God, God is outside of time. This would seem to allow for both free will and the sort of micromanaging I'm talking about -- while God can't make you do anything, the decisions you freely make can be taken into account from the beginning of the universe, and those things God does control can be harmonized with your freely made decisions to produce results in accordance with God's will.
Also, ogged, you're gonna trust what the Jesuits told you about Protestants?
This is a good point.
Or you could just tell him we're having this discussion.
Or you could just tell him we're having this discussion.
Sometimes people blow off email, but they can't resist seeing who's linking to them.
48: Oh, that's just silly. Sure, thinking God is rooting for the Bears seems idiotic. Thinking that one team's victory rather than another's will have noticeable real world effects (different cars set on fire, etc.) that might fit into a divine plan doesn't seem idiotic at all.
49: That's not the same as saying that God's controlling everything in real time.
The big problem with the micromanaging theology is the problem of evil. Let's talk about death!
I don't know why I get so het up about theological arguments. Occasionally I worry that one of these days I'm going to snap and wake up Eastern Orthodox or something.
By analogy with the experience of Israel in the Old Testament, it is unclear who God will favor in a given football game. Assuming he has a chosen team, he may lead it to victory, or he may allow it to be pummelled for its transgressions -- even by a team that is objectively more guilty than the chosen team. Eventually, of course, the team instrumentalized in this way will get its come-uppance.
In the Middle Ages, it was established that God's foreknowledge, strictly so called, does not have causal power. His eternal decree of predestination does have causal power, but there is still a realm of contingent occurrences, which God knows as contingent -- that is, as things that could have turned out differently, even though they turned out a particular way. By contrast, God's predestinating will is immutable.
All of this is tied in with the problem of evil, which I can explain in more detail if people care.
55: What's the difference? That is, under the mechanism I describe, the team whose victory is in accordance with God's plan wins. If God is micromanaging in real time, the team whose victory is in accordance with God's plan wins. I don't see God having any less control over events one way than the other.
49: The apparent-to-us randomness of quantum physics events does offer god a way to mess with things locally with only finite lookahead required - in other words, if god wants a hurricane at time T, god can adjust the timing of the butterfly's wing beat at time T minus one month without any conceivable scientific experiment being able to notice something's wrong. The same mechanism can be used to deny humans free will, incidentally.
I'm an agnostic Deist, myself: I believe there's not enough evidence to conclusively say that god does or does not exist, that if there is a god, god is not particularly obsessed with humans, and that a god doesn't seem to be necessary except to answer questions like "why is there a universe at all?" and "what is consciousness, exactly?"
they can't resist seeing who's linking to them
God works in mysterious ways, but mostly through Technorati.
"what is consciousness, exactly?"
The universe's way of looking at itself.
Also, there are tons of Calvinists in America, in some form or other. Baptists, for example, are Calvinist. Congregationalists (UCC) are Calvinist, and Anglican official theology is highly influenced by Calvinists. Very few people beating the dead horses of the Reformation debates, of course, but they're still Calvinists.
39. Once you're talking about omniscience and omnipotence, is there a meaningful distinction there? (LB)
Actually, I think there is (a non-academic answer). Watching a toddler, for instance. You just "know" the kid is going to fall down and go "boom" but you hesitate to act because sometimes the kid needs to experience a few bumps. There is "knowing" and then there is choosing not to act. I think that may be the distinction. The Deist view, I think.
Technorati and email are but pale imitations of something called instant messaging. Perhaps you've heard of it, O.
Instant messaging is a Thomistic corruption, B.
Everyone needs to get this "strict micromanaging determinism" idea out of their heads. It's a very extreme view that few theologians have held. (I'm pretty sure that not even Calvin held it, because Calvin appears not to have been stupid.) Virtually everyone agrees that the human will is able to make real choices, that is, to cause its own choices, itself.
This is the reason that the Fall was able to happen -- again, the idea that God caused the Fall is unacceptable in orthodox theology because God cannot be the author of evil. When the will is in its initial state (what God intended), it is able to choose to remain in that state; once it chooses to fall away from that state (usually through presuming to go to a higher level -- as when the serpent tells Eve she'll be like God), it cannot regain that state on its own -- God must restore it.
So in the predestinarian scheme, God knows that human beings will fall (though not causing it), and predestines certain people to receive the grace of restoration, which by definition they cannot earn back. This is not the same as micromanaging the person's life so that they'll come to the point of accepting Christ, etc.
55. The problem of evil ...
Called "theodicy," often used as an argument to disprove the existence of God. But the clockwork view of the Universe accommodates it.
57 and 63 get at the important distinction. Foreknowledge is not causation. This was first argued by Boethius in the Consolations of Philosophy. Pace Swampcracker, this is not a Deist view. It is an established piece of Catholic dogma.
As Kotsko correctly points out, distinguishing foreknowledge and predestination also allows us two kind of contingency. Human actions are contingent, in that we could have acted another way. Other events might be contingent as well, like coin tosses. It may well be that the coin toss could have gone another way. On the other hand, God may have willed the coin toss, so that is is completely necessary.
In any case, it is pure hubris to try to discern which events are willed and which are contingent.
66. "when the serpent tells Eve she'll be like God"
Another thread ... the sin of pride ... and the theology of those who appoint Godhead to themselves ... and the Fall of Babylon as punishment. Yup ... sounds familiar, doesn't it?
I think a lot of theologians very much do take the view that he "exercise(s) active control "in time,""
As I understand it, Jonathan Edwards took the view that everything in the world is not only controlled in time by God, but that God recreates everything in the world ex nihilo every moment, and that there are no causes in the world other than God's will at that particular moment:
If the existence of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of God's immediate power, in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect, and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method.
[which he analogized to the way that:]
The images of things in a glass, as we keep our eye upon them, seem to remain precisely the same, with a continuing, perfect identity. But it is known to be otherwise. Philosophers well know that these images are constantly renewed, by the impression and reflection of new rays of light; so that the image impressed by the former rays is constantly vanishing, and a new image impressed by new rays every moment, both on the glass and on the eye. . . The image that exists at this moment is not at all derived from the image that existed at the last preceding moment
Trippy, huh? He'll make an interesting president.
I think the real question here is whether or not the free will of individuals has any effect on the outcome of a football game.
Agreeing with Kotsko again (also LB in 49):
Micromanaging is a bad way of looking at things, because at least since Augustine, God has been thought to be outside of time. His effects are in time, but he himself is not. Thus you can't say that God looked down at the coin toss and decided right then to influence it. All the necessary events in the world flow straight from his will.
What no one has said yet is the most important teaching of Christ and the Bible as a whole.
God is in everything and everyone.
That means God is both the winner, and the loser. For without Him, there would be neither.
I'm going to walk away from this thread before I join it, because I will end up giving the seminar I teach on the problem of evil in the comment boxes.
Just a quick note: saying "Christianity believes X about the problem of evil" is nearly false for all values of X, especially if the words "foreknowledge", "determinism", or "counterfactual" pop up anywhere in there.
And if you believe God controls all of your actions, yes, that includes Grossman's ability to sack himself. But if you believe God controls all of your actions, flocks of theologians are already on their way to beat you up for making them look bad, so don't worry about Grossman.
I'm impressed, Rob. At 230 years old, its hard for me to remember these things ...
whether or not the free will of individuals has any effect on the outcome of a football game
Fuck it. I'm throwing it downfield. Rex Grossman embodies the fall from grace.
71:Sure it does. The quarterback decides to call an audible, it was the wrong choice, the game is lost.
An important feature of free will is that it has to have effects in the universe. Otherwise we cannot learn. Our free will would be in vain.
Also, there can be other contingent events in the world besides individuals' choices.
73: The Bible is not the idiotic New Age tract that you picked up at the airport.
That means God is both the winner, and the loser.
God's more like the review booth official.
Jonathan Edwards .. early Pres. of Princeton U. Three cheers for JE ...
Very few people beating the dead horses of the Reformation debates, of course, but they're still Calvinists
If a Calvinist has none of the properties of a Calvinist, is he still substantially a Calvinist?
81: And does he make a sound if he falls in the woods?
Calvinists fall in the mind of God, not the woods. Heretic.
70. You also get hardcore versions of this idea in Leibniz and Berkeley, since in each case God is just mainlining the appearances straight into the individual minds.
77: It is not necessary that we "learn" from our exercise of free will. It is theoretically possible that we would've retained our initial state of harmony with God's will -- viz., the unfallen angels.
[Please note that I'm talking about this on the level of "what Christian theology teaches." And also that I'm pretty heavily influenced by Anselm on all these questions, since I've been reading him a lot lately.]
74: This whole idea of strict determinism only comes up in a scientistic worldview -- thinking of a chain of causality on the model of a machine. The scientistic worldview that underwrites this false problem of "determinism" does not appear to be in accord with contemporary science -- or even early 20th-century science. How we got the idea that the universe is like a watch is beyond me; it's actually a pretty shitty watch, if so (did anyone read the article on atomic clocks in Harper's a couple months ago?).
did anyone read the article on atomic clocks in Harper's a couple months ago?
Yes, and it was fascinating.
You know what will really tip your little red wagon; considering that if indeterminism is the way the universe runs, you can generate the same problem for free will that you do with determinism.
85: I thought you needed to say something about learning from the consequences of our actions in order to explain why God doesn't let us exercise our free will and then rig the universe so that our mistakes don't actually hurt anyone. Standard example: God could have let Hitler be an anti-Semite but prevented him from getting enough power to actually launch a genocide.
87: This is why all sane people are compatiblists.
79: that is exactly where i find fault with the major religions. God is not a separate entity, a third-party observer.
That's a quasi-Augustinian view. A sin without consequences is like leprosy; you don't feel the pain, but the damage is done.
91: It is really a lot easier to talk about "The Christian view of X" if we stick with the major elite theologians. Otherwise, it will turn out that "the Christian view of X" is incredibly stupid.
Fate, chance, choice ... the drama takes many forms. Great discussion, folks. Time for lunch.
88: For orthodox Christianity, evil introduces a "rogue element" into creation that is not in accord with God's intentions and that is not even strictly thinkable (you can find this in Augustine, Ps.-Dionysius, Anselm, etc.). God's will is supposed to triumph ultimately, but sometimes the thought is that God lets the evil build up to its maximum level to show how evil evil really is -- for example, there were many early theologians who held that God chose the precise time he did for the incarnation because the post-Augustus Roman Empire was the maximum of human evil (which, at the time, was arguably true).
The idea of God "rigging the universe" to limit the effects of evil seems to drift toward the idea that God "intended" for their to be evil -- as does the "pedagogic" concept of evil (learning from mistakes, etc.).
I would be much more comfortable with the idea of God if omnipotence wasn't in it. Honestly, doesn't it seem like juvenile overpraising whose full implications make no sense?
94: "There," you.
Also, isn't there an argument that God's intention is not the issue?
(I'm obviously in a mischievous mood today)
Probably. It goes like this. After God created the world and saw that Adam and Eve sinned and it led to bad things, he said 'well, basically, I all *meant* was to have a good world b/c that's what a good God would want.'
92: Sort of. But you can pick some pretty fun fights just with Catholicism, nevermind those crazy Calvinists and their predestined dead horses. Toss the Jesuits the problem of middle knowledge and see what happens!
94: Privation! Privation!!
Heh. I was thinking more that if we've got omniscience and omnipotence, god pretty much just *is*, as are all the things he "causes". So intent, as we understand it, is really just not the issue.
99 to 97. I think I'm on about the necessarily linear sense of time implicit in the idea of intent.
Also, 100?
I'm going to quote you next time I teach Milton.
I think the face-raping part goes well with the fall of the morning star, personally.
You probably meant another quote.
Talking about God's "intention" is kind of anthropomorphizing.
And in terms of God "responding" to evil, the whole Incarnation thing is the most obvious candidate -- but I find theologians to be more appealing when they argue that God intended to become incarnate all along even if the Fall hadn't happened, that it wasn't a "Plan B" hatched after Adam and Eve sinned. Karl Barth is the most creative along these lines -- he also argues that Calvinist "double predestination" only applies to Christ, who was damned and saved. (This kind of thing is much more compelling in the context of Barth's own writing, which creates a kind of "atmosphere" that comment boxes can't really evoke.)
103: All of it.
104: But, but . . . we're in god's image! He *is* anthropomorphic! Ahhhh! Confusion!
The universe's way of looking at itself.
Sentience: the mirror God uses to look at Her own hoo-hoo.
98: The concept of "evil as privation" seems to me to be one of the coolest and most challenging concepts to come out of Christian thought. (Especially in Pseudo-Dionysius and in Anselm's treatise on the fall of the devil.)
There's an essay in the Norton Critical Edition of Paradise Lost about Milton's chaos -- one of the first critical essays I ever read, and I still remember it as being extremely brilliant.
It's really pretty astounding, especially when you realize not just how powerful a piece of the solution it is, but how well it fits into the rest of the Christian metaphysical structure.
All right, you two, explain to us lay people.
I thought you were Catholic, B. What is it that you're wanting them to explain?
This privation thing.
I'm Catholic, but I'm shitty at it. Surely this is obvious to even a casual observer.
Evil does not have a positive existence -- it's a lack of good. Specifically, when a free rational being rejects the good, a kind of spurious pseudo-creation takes place that has no positive reality of its own but nonetheless produces real effects, distorting the good creation through a kind of parasitism.
The possibility of evil is inherent in free will -- if the will didn't have the option of "falling," then it would not be fully free. Nonetheless, evil is never necessary, and when it does happen, there is, strictly speaking, no possible account that can explain it. It is completely a-rational, not in the sense in which God is "beyond all reason," but in the sense of being below reason and explanation.
112: And this only applies evil as in human-caused bad things. It doesn't apply to things like juvenile leukemia, which is actually a part of God's plan, and therefore good.
It's hard to explain this briefly without trivializing it, but I'll give it a shot. So, one of the things we might think about God is that God continually sustains the universe, or that God is continually creating everything that exists. God stops doing whatever God is doing, everything poofs out of existence.
So, we might wonder: if God's creative power is needed to explain everything that's going on, then doesn't that mean if I do something evil, God is creating evil? Shouldn't a good God not be in the business of creating and sustaining evil? Why doesn't God just stop sustaining evil things, if God's creative power is needed for them to happen?
Augustine (and other people's) answer is to say that while evil is certainly real in our everyday life, evil isn't an existing thing. Evil is a lack (a privation) of good. God only creates and sustains things that exist; evil doesn't exist any more than the hole in the donut does. So God's off the hook for the continuous creation of an evil thing; strictly speaking, there isn't a thing there.
If that's all there was to it, then it would be a very cheap answer. But what this privation idea makes room for is the idea of free will. When we choose to do evil, we are refraining from bringing about good things (that God would then sustain/create/etc.)
That's a problem, but it's our problem, and to the extent that God values our free will, he can't force us to do good things. (He can create more donuts, but can't get rid of the holes.)
Ah, okay. I'm familiar with the "evil is inherently negative" thing; on thinking about it, the "lack of good" explanation, which seems at first glance awfully wimpy, starts making more and more sense.
Evil distorts all of creation (cf. Romans 8). It has its own quasi-existence beyond the immediate effects of any one particular choice -- this is most obvious in the case of institutionalized or systemic evils, but it can also extend to things like disease (cancer caused by environmental factors).
This isn't necessarily a satisfying explanation, particularly in terms of an individualistic outlook that wants people to get what they "deserve," judged one-by-one -- but I think that the Christian explanation is compelling insofar as it takes seriously the reality of human solidarity and inter-connectedness and the ways that can have evil effects.
But I don't think volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, etc., can be explained adequately in this way -- the default stance would be to say that they're not evils properly so called, but that seems to be a cop-out.
115 was to Adam; Cala's post does a nice job of fleshing out the donut hole.
So to speak.
It doesn't apply to things like juvenile leukemia, which is actually a part of God's plan, and therefore good.
Eh, you don't have to go that far. You can trace the cancer to the effects of someone else's pissing in the pool of creation. Or you can take disease as a privation of health (but you don't have as easy of a free will response, unless you want to say, 'well, you know... demons.')
post does a nice job of fleshing out the donut hole
Block that metaphor.
No, no, B, the donut hole doesn't have any flesh, that's why it's a hole.
Scary, pointy fangs? Horns? I can think of all sorts of things wrong with demons.
118: I don't think that every evil has to be the direct result of a malignant will -- evil has cascading effects once it "exists."
But one must not discount the explanatory power of demonic forces.
Scary, pointy fangs? Horns?
Anti-semite!
Rex Grossman embodies the fall from grace.
I'm thinking the interceptions aren't so much about God caring about the game. It's God trying to steer Rexy back to his true destiny...slow pitch softball.
No, it definitely can be indirect. Like dropping ink in a glass of water; it all becomes tinged with the ink. ("Ink" is the new "piss.") But sometimes it seems implausible.
I can explain the natural evil of Katrina, maybe, by saying that hurricanes by themselves aren't evil, but the sins of greed, sloth, and pride that let us leave poor people in an area that we know will get hurricanes without fixing the levees or busing them to safety creates the evil. Maybe that's sort of plausible.. except that pretty much the entire planet is hostile for humans... and it seems less plausible when it comes to diseases.
120: That was kind of the point.
I can see letting disease be a privation of health, or even understanding the idea of disease as "evil" being a selfish and short-sighted (though perfectly understandable and human) way of looking at the universe. A little less so with the "acts of god" thing on a big scale. And yeah, yeah, if my baby dies in a storm or of a disease, it's still a dead baby, but still.
What about poor widdle baby bats with broken wings who fall into pits of guano seething with roaches that gnaw the wing, and who cannot be extricated????
You really do need demons to make the thing work. The only drawback!
You can get away with making a theodicy without demons, but it means you leave behind the free will model at some point.
The problem of evil is the reason I don't believe in God. I mean, if you work real hard, you can explain a lot of bad things, but in the end, it still looks like the fundamental forces that shaped the universe don't give a rats ass about humans or human values.
Supposing now, that this person were brought into the world, still assured, that it was the workmanship of such a sublime and benevolent Being; he might, perhaps, be surprised at the disappointment; but would never retract his former belief, if founded on any very solid argument; since such a limited intelligence must be sensible of his own blindness and ignorance, and must allow, that there may be many solutions of those phenomena, which will for ever escape his comprehension.
But supposing, which is the real case with regard to man, that this creature is not antecedently convinced of a supreme intelligence, benevolent, and powerful, but is left to gather such a belief from appearances of things; this entirely alters the case, nor will he ever find any reason for such a conclusion"
a kind of spurious pseudo-creation takes place that has no positive reality of its own but nonetheless produces real effects, distorting the good creation
in Wesley Crusher hyperspace.
Adam (or rob), do you know of a good, introductory philosophical treatment of the problem of foreknowledge? Something suitable for beginning college students.
134: That just says that the argument from design can kiss my ass.
130: The roaches, too, must eat. And if the world became overpopulated with bats, then they'd begin to starve.
133: Join me, and get around the problem by developing a shallow theology in which god is just the name we give to the combined ideas of creation itself and that which we find good.
Sort of the cheery version of John Lennon's theology?
The problem of evil is the reason I don't believe in God.
What happened to the response that we're not capable of judging whether any given thing or event is good or evil?
Some undergrads rolled their eyes and said "Oh, come on. Getting murdered? Bad. Eating cake? GOOD."
Or more seriously, if the answer is 'we just can't understand God's mysterious reasons and we're not sure what's good and bad', it creates some other problems. What's the relationship between God and human beings supposed to be like if we can't even trust our intuitions on what is good and bad? How are we supposed to interpret the duty to love each other if we can't reliably tell good from evil? How can we be called to be moral agents, etc.?
139: I don't think that response is really available. Doesn't pass the "Oh, come on" test, as Cala points out.
137: That kind of theology drives me fucking nuts, as I think we've discussed many times.
133: I think I may have.
what do you need demons for?
136: I'm not in a good position to say, because I actually make the undergrads read The Consolations of Philosophy. I have to walk them through the tricky bits on the problem of foreknowledge, but the general story of the dialogue resonates and it fits with the rest of the structure of my introductory course (all dialogues, all historical.)
136: Not familiar with the introductory literature, sorry.
143: It's my goal in live to annoy, Adam.
137: I actually agree with your sentiment. I decided to call myself an atheist, though, when I realized how far that sentiment was from what most people mean when they ask "do you believe in God?" (also see 143).
146: Yeah. It's not that I don't want to challenge them, it's just that I can't find something that doesn't jump right into medieval analyses of counterfactuals and God's relationship to time and jesuitical interpretive worries when I'm still trying to get them to get the problem straight.
136: the problem of evil and the argument from design are two sides of the same coin. They both are about asking: "what kind of mind would create this world?"
Doesn't pass the "Oh, come on" test, as Cala points out.
It's not so easy to dismiss, if you make it a kind of consequentialism: "Yes, this bad thing happened, but only to make possible this better thing, etc." You know, best of all possible worlds stuff.
138: Well, that "Imagine" song is awfully pretty. . . .
149: What most people mean isn't my problem. Also, you're a philosopher: can you articulate the Lennon/Manson theology in a way that will keep Adam from hassling me?
Anyway, why does God have to be good? I know he is in the Christian tradition, but the problem of evil doesn't seem like a problem for any possible religion.
152: Right, and then you're back to the problem of god, cruel fucking bastard who killed my baby in order to preserve the spotted owl.
Yeah, the ancient Greek and Roman gods could get pretty mean.
the problem of evil and the argument from design are two sides of the same coin. They both are about asking: "what kind of mind would create this world?"
A mind too fine?
Two sides of the same d20. It's open to Phlio just to reject Cleanthes' empirical project, and I think he's completely right there: if you just wandered into the world, you'd think this place was created in the dark by a blind drunk. But it's not quite the same question, if we're not limited to natural theology reasons for believing in God.
I'm functionally agnostic these days, but I have to say it's not at all due to the problem of evil.
142: How are we supposed to interpret the duty to love each other if we can't reliably tell good from evil?
That's why we have Ayatollahs. Rabbis, Priests, Shamans, and Oprah. She, at least, is articulate.
153: I generally gravitate to Spinoza for this sort of thing, but I haven't actually worked through it in a while.
154: It isn't for any possible religion. You can always just reject the goodness (or omnipotence or omniscience) of God and be done with it. It's really only a problem for the Christian conception of God, but well, there's a lot of them and some of them invented the Jesuits.
It has been a long time since I took this class, but from what I remember we puny humans cannot fathom God in his entirety, and so morph him into a reality that we can understand, but this leaves big gaps in our knowledge. Further, humans are prone to error, even in receiving Divine instruction, i.e. the Bible, Quran, etc. Anything made by human hands even though Divinely inspired is therefore human, and fallible. Claiming infallability of human made objects, texts or whatever is idol (idle) worship, a big no no. God wants us to love him, but will not force us to do so, but he could if he wanted to. Nature is not evil, it just is.
"How many Calvinists does it take to screw in a lightball?"
"What? Only God can screw in lightbulbs!!"
But how many angels can screw in the space of a lightbulb?
I've long thought that the "contingent" distinction has failed to keep up with modern science, and that the Jonathan Edwards-like view in 70 is much more compatible with quantum mechanics.
That is to say, the "contingent" idea rests on the notion that without God's intervention there is some system of rules for the world to move by on. In a Newtonian world this makes sense. The billiard balls are rolling, and God just chooses not to mess with them, and stuff happens based on people's choices.
But in a quantum mechanical world, there's no rule for determining how the waveforms break down under observataion. So how is it decided which happens? Enter God, natch. So it doesn't make any sense to talk about what happens in the universe without God to pick what outcomes occur (constrained only by following certain probability distributions over the longrun). This is quite like constant ex nihilo creation, but it's not so far off either.
This theory also has the feature of explaining how all miracles are consistant with science (they all just have very very low probabilities).
165: And can they have sex with people?
133, 155: Anthropic principle. That your human baby lived at all is testament to how much work god did in the first place to make a universe wherein human life is possible.
167: I hate to keep coming back to this question -- no, wait, I love coming back to this question: Does a pedophile who never molested a child in life get to nail the cherubs when he gets to Pedophile Heaven?
168: Ah, but what with this "made in his image" and "rule over all creation" stuff, you can't make "your baby died for a Bigger Purpose" compatible with "your baby's not worth more than a spotted owl, you selfish asshole."
Getting back to Milton, evil is defined as the perversion of good; in other words, God creates something good, then along comes the spoiler (Satan). The character of Satan ("Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven") is the ultimate Che Guevarra revolutionary.
(back from lunch, Tai'd one on)
170: Obviously not. He's cleansed of his Impure Desires.
171: You can reconcile that if you want to bend over backwards far enough, but that sort of thing is why I lean Deist.
167: Lot certainly thought that angels could be raped by men in Genesis 19. Though Lot may just have been wrong on this point.
173: Is he also cleansed of his bitterness about it?
172: Ah, but the idea that Satan is the modern hero isn't quite so simple. The entire point is that you're *supposed* to sympathize with the devil; doing so is evidence of our fallen stature.
Plus, Satan isn't a revolutionary. He *talks* like one, but that's because he's a liar. The better to rule in hell thing is said to the crowd and popularly understood to mean a kind of democratic rule--but that isn't what actually happens.
176: How could you be bitter about not wanting to fuck babies any more? Once the desire is lost, so is the desire to fulfill it, or retain it in any way.
178: I think he'd be bitter about having been created with an urge that he knew he must not yield to, if he discovered that the creator could, apparently, remove the urge without changing his essential nature, and that he'd lived my entire life in this state of anxious conflict just because the creator wanted to see what he'd do. Of course, you can say that creator can remove that bitterness as easily as the pedophilia.
Also, you're a total goatfucker for saying "how could you" instead of "how could he" and thereby implying that I'm a pedophile.
There is, of course, a school of thought (Apokatastasis) that holds: All of creation will be redeemed in the end, including all evil and Satan himself.
They rhetorical "you," baby.
Fucker.
181: Your Jedi mind powers are stronger than you know -- I wrote the whole first paragraph in first person instead of third before I realized what you had me confessing to.
Adam, "presuming to go to a higher level"? What does that mean?
I have a huge problem with the Christian story of the fall. Much of Christianity seems like an attempt to exonerate God for the problem of evil and death at the expense of other human beings. Evil exists, we die? Don't blame God--it's Eve and Adam's fault for not doing as God says. But don't worry, if you obey God he'll fix everything in heaven.
Maybe it's because I don't believe in demons but the idea that death and disease exists because of evil actions of beings with free will making an evil choice by "presuming to go to a higher level" gets it backwards. Sexual reproduction, chance, the possibility of death, are necessary parts of evolution. Without them creation wouldn't "get to a higher level"--but this isn't creation's fault. The process by which new forms of life are created implies death. Free will implies the possibility of evil.
What is Eve supposed to have done that was so sinful? She disobeys God's orders--but how does she know that God's orders were right? According to the story she apparently lacked knowledge of good and evil until she ate from the tree. They had free will as for as volition to obey or to disobey, but that's a child's free will.
So one member your creation disobeys you, entirely predictably, and suddenly it's all doomed and perverted and has lost the capacity to truly do good? If an omniscient, benevolent God created people with free will, I don't think it was because he hoped and relied on us never using it to disobey him.
I prefer the idea--which I heard from one of my Jewish relatives; it may or may not be a mainstream Jewish view--that it's simply a choice with consequences, not all of them bad. If not for the fall Cain never murders Abel; on the other hand [insert hokey list of the good acts of achievements of humanity that never happens]. None of us are ever born; we never meet and fall in love with our spouses; etc. etc.
And that's more generally where I have a theology that converges with the beliefs of people who call themselves atheist....To extent I believe in God He isn't all powerful--or rather, has voluntarily limited His power in a way that was necessary for creation to be something more meaningful than his puppet show, which creates the possibility of evil. So you reconcile belief in God with the existence of evil at the expense of believing in heaven and at the expense of believing in direct divine intervention on earth....God starts to look and awful lot like "the combined ideas of creation itself and that which we find good."
182: Denial is the surest sign of repression.
They are good at opening jars that just won't budge, and reaching things off tall shelves.
At least, that's what I use mine for.
183.
Kath, perhaps another way to look at the creation story is at the level of myth and symbolism, not something to be taken literally. Gaining knowledge is like gaining consciousness of ourselves within the context of a seemingly dark and imperturbable Universe. A starting point.
I don't have a problem with the story itself at the level of myth and symbolism; it's fascinating. I have a problem with a specific interpretation of it that seems pretty prevalent in Christianity.
185: I like my sexual partners to talk dirty, which leaves the toddlers and the animals, at least, safe from my predations.
189: Kids are the most uninhibited dirty talkers around.
184: Without daemons, no web servers. Also, this.
190: Go pee your pants, bitch.
this place reminds me of a college dorm sometimes...(in a good way)
193: Everybody better quit having sex in the showers, then.
Lets look at Saint Anselm's Ontological Argument ("Aw, shucks, do we have to"): "God is that being that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Since the Ultimate Being must exist in reality as well as in the mind, then God must exist."
Variation: "George Bush is the greatest of all presidents in American history. Since the greatest president (in order to be truly great) must exist in reality as well as in the mind, then ..." And so there were WMDs in Iraq, and George sent his avenging angels and saw that this was good.
On second thought, Kath, I can appreciate your reservations.
194: Everybody better start having sex in the showers.
Just so you don't have sex in my office.
194: not to mention stop creating the moral vaccuum that leaves students without the most basic guidelines for proper behavior.
re: angels in sockets, demons, and pedophile heaven...
"I feel we'd do better to clear the slum of entities and be done with it."
bloated ontologies, and so forth
197: For some reason, that story is twice as funny after having met Scott.
I actually hadn't read the updates until just now. Actually it looks like things got ugly there for a while.
On the other hand, now, as a result of the internets, I keep expect to see students copulating, no matter where I go on campus.
Has anyone proposed installing a little bweepy MIDI version of Wilco's "Theologians" as a site theme? Maybe to play when you roll-over the Crooked Timber graphic?
Of course, the singer rejects theologians in the song, but I think a state of gratitude at being mentioned even in rejection is a pretty good place to start, theme-wise.
In other upthread news, Elvis Costello had the best gloss on John Lennon's "Imagine": Was it a millionaire / who said "Imagine no possessions"?
193: Everybody better quit having sex in the showers, then.
>Dan Gelernter, class of 2009, is co-editor of Critical Mass, aimed at "collegiate conservatives," and called the episode "a new chapter in the story of Yale's continuing descent into the depths of moral degradation."
I wonder which crazy person's crazy kid that is.
Why would having sex in the shower cause it to overflow anyway?
193.
"I wonder which crazy person's crazy kid that is."
Author of the Linda Kernal? Or the geneticist? Be kind, there's been enough heartache for that family (one was a Unabomber victim).
If you ejaculate in the shower a lot, the spunk will block the drain. This can come either from masturbating a lot or having a lot of sex.
It's unlikely that the Unabomber was wrong about everything.
If you ejaculate in the shower a lot, the spunk will block the drain.
If by "a lot" you mean "a bucketful," maybe, but typical volume is something like one or two teaspoons worth.
Some people's Southern drawl is just that thick, Ogged.
I would have blocked my shower drain by now if that were the case.
Still with the lust in the heart, Mr. President?
207.
Gee, Ogg, at least you got all fingers and toes, or do ya?
I just clicked on my own damn link. Holy fuck am I tired. (And mildly disappointed. "Finally, it happened to someone else! What? Fuck, still me...")
Everybody needs something to be famous for.
I prefer the Photographical Argument: I took a picture of God, therefore He exists. I needed a fucking wide-angle for that one.
215, Anselm:
Any lens would do; perhaps no optics are even needed. An interesting digression ... got no work done at all today.
I think we should challenge the undergrads to a profs v. students sex contest. I bet we'd win. I suspect them of bullshitting about how much sex they have, just like they do about having done the reading.
I'm not sure about that. I got married on the cusp of the "hooking up" culture in a very "hooking up"-type town, and if it's evolved at all, I haven't got a chance. (That said, if it's an endurance contest, well then, we win hands down.)
I suspect them of bullshitting about how much sex they have, just like they do about having done the reading.
Hey, I always do the reading.
Oh, you mean here? We'd win, hands down. (Wait, does Adam count as an undergrad? I mean, he should, not having taken his exams and what not. You know: "If you ain't A.B.D., you ain't one of me.")
If you ain't A.B.D., you ain't one of me.
I beg your pardon, Run PhD.
aren't plenty of evangelical sects Calvinist in origin
Not only the fundies! My parents' church and the church of my upbringing, UCC, is a Calvinist sect.
No, that'd be stacking the deck. But given how many undergrads I know who gripe about never getting laid, I'm still betting we'd win.
And if not, we could just seduce our students.
Do even of us have students right now? Because seducing other people's study just sounds, I don't know, skeezy.
Do even of us have students right now? Because seducing other people's study just sounds, I don't know, skeezy.
"study" s/b "students," and that second post should be "Fuck fuck fuck I wrote 'study' instead of 'students.'"
Only odd of us have students.
Isn't seducing other people's students generally considered marginally more ethical than seducing one's own?
My fingers, they betray me! (Seriously, I can't type for fuck today.)
229: Actually, seducing students at all will get you shunned...unless you're otherwise hot shit and land them a fan-fucking-tastic position they wouldn't have landed at an institution where they wouldn't otherwise have been considered.
FTR: 226 should've read "do either of us even have students." The permutations of my error, they are breathbreaking.
Fuck ethics. Win at all costs, says I.
You might ask: how, if you're seducing students, would you win? Wouldn't the undergrads also be able to notch their bedposts, or enter you in their day planners, or however they keep track of shit these days?
Easy. We *share*. That, or we sleep with the grad students, who are by and large even more desperate than the undergrads.
230: Yes, but wouldn't that effect be greater if they were your own students, as opposed to some other students over whose education you have no direct influence? Note my use of "marginally."
230, 232: Manifestly untrue. You can get in trouble if people gripe about it and file complaints. Otherwise, not so much.
You might ask: how, if you're seducing students, would you win?
I was going to ask that, but then I figured you'd find some way to Jesuit yourself out of it so I didn't.
Jesuit, my ass. Exploitation's the way to go here.
Head...spinning...must...keep...conversations...straight.
(Or should I just gay it up? If I had a nickel for every time I asked that...)
Doesn't matter, Scott. It's a conquest contest. You can do boys, girls, or both.
Don't fall for it, B; he's only "gay" in the sense that he has sex with women.
How would the scoring work in this contest? Number of partners, number of encounters, what?
Awesome...I'm a hit in West Hollywood. I dance and get doped and dance and throw up everywhere then sleep with my face on a table covered in hot coffee. Like I said, I'm a hit!
(O/T: I think I just got banned from Feministe. I'm not sure why, but I'm getting a "You can't access this website, turd!" screen. I posted this earlier in the afternoon, but I doubt that's enough to get me banned. Think they tried to ban that Rob guy posting all around, slipped and banned my address instead? Also, I've never been banned before. Is weeping an appropriate response?)
240: I've shared a hotel room with Scott. Twice. Nuff said.
241: Either. God knows we're going to have the advantage of you lot if the goal is to get repeat engagements. There's something to be said for being familiar with the basics.
242: Write to Jessica or whoever and ask her.
I would, but I can't access the website (through the tears!) to get the address.
Nevermind! I found it. Now, back to the unethical sex contest...
243: No, really, that's not 'nuff said.
Does 240 + 243 = unequivocal proof of gayness?
grad students, who are by and large even more desperate than the undergrads.
I know THAT's right. I mean, that's what the other grad students in my program used to say.
248: Scott, your gay panic is unbecoming.
247: Nosy.
250: I'm actually quite secure in my masculinity...
...except, you know, when I share a hotel room (twice!) with an attractive woman and not consummate the reservation, if you know what I mean.
250: You misspelled "inquisitive".
251: To not consummate the reservation once appears accidental; twice appears deliberate.
253: Are you trying to get me in trouble? (And if so, with whom?)
251: But you did get to help me with the corset.
You're welcome.
P.S. Still not gay, but not sure about this Hamilton fellow, who really seems to want to hear about me naked.
257: Bi, actually, but mostly starved for entertainment.
Email me and offer a bribe and I'll tell you the whole sordid story.
Email me and offer two dollars/cubits less and I'll tell you the whole story.
There, see? I'm getting the entertainment now and not paying a thing.
261: I'll tell the whole truth. Including, you know, about UnfoggeDAfterParty.
I think the less jargony term is "bi-phobic."