"If there is no god, the universe and our experience of life is still amazing, mysterious, moving, etc. Life is praiseworthy in so many ways on its own terms"
I agree entirely. I was alluding to all the things in life which are so hurtful and so NOT amazing or moving: earthquakes and mudslides killing the innocent--thus the lack of justice or rational process.
I was referring to the thousands and thousands of wars: the killers in uniforms, and the killers in shorts and masks. I was referring to the poor, the sick, and the afflicted--those who need and those who wait. I was referring to ice ages, and polio, and mental institutions--and the fact of human ovens...and the hope and prayer for eternal fires to come.
I was talking about witches, and dying squirrels, and suns that explode. I was considering the fact of total separation of character and consequence--where food, water, connections and power buy life (sometimes)--while innocence and purity are just a box cutter, a baler, or a mud-slide from ignominious death.
"God would be everywhere improving everything a contingent, finite, self-absorbed, self-aware mortal individual undertook."
And He is not?
"In order for us to have this kind of existence, the possibility for something less than divine results is necessary, must be allowed to occur. That is how I think god would allow for the possibility of the existence of evil, misfortune, pain, etc., without being either unconcerned or incompetent."
Well, I wonder. You are not God, but you do not seem like a bad sort. I'm sure you are good-hearted and that you have a normal compassion for others and a desire for justice and rational consequence. Would you allow for the "possibility of...misfortune...", etc. to the same degree that our hypothesized God did? Would you make it clear both in nature and in human interaction, that power was the main prophylactic against early death, suffering, and misery? That people with power don't live in the path of mudslides unless it is their truly free choice?
Free choice--yes....but only within the reality of your reach and your grasp--regardless of whether you are compassionate or full of cancerous hate.
"Or perhaps one works all the harder to defy the callous unconcern of nature; in that way one might even compel her to defer to the products of mysterious mind, by making words and thoughts an unshakable monument to man's honesty about his condition."
Sometimes one is right without intending to be so. Perhaps this is an example. |
