John Pieret today highlights some apocalyptic exegesis. Anyone remember the booklet 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988? If not, don't worry, this generation is going to have its own version.
First Things reflects on theodicy and yet more natural disasters.
Vridar continues responding to Wright on the resurrection.
The Bad Idea Blog points out Ken Miller's response to Expelled.
There's also time to watch LOST, and Battlestar Galactica, and catch up with Doctor Who!
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What is it about theodicy, sophisticated or crude, that leaves me so cold and horrified? I give David Hart credit for not trying to celebrate depravity and death as part of a rich and wondrous tapestry, but I can't bring myself to then overlook the flaws in his alternative.
He scoffs at atheists who find such things incompatible with the idea of a good God, saying that they just don't get it.
So, what don't they get? That suffering is not God's fault... somehow. And I guess that's the part we can't get: I suppose we must simply assume, say, that the antagonist in the torture film Saw meant no harm by his deadly traps, but they were merely corrupted by some inexplicable force on their way to the gulag, or maybe its all the fault of their intended victims for not understanding the true purpose of the devices, or having the correct solutions in a timely fashion.
A world merely "fallen" from some disrepute and lack would merely be a sloppy mess. But that is simply not what we have. And if creationists have a hard time understanding how an eye evolved, then I likewise have a very difficult time understanding how to nudists eating fruit somehow resulted in the design of as intricate a machine of torture as malaria or river blindness, all quite apart from the intentions of the master designer (or even a master who employs the "devil may care" device of evolution).
Or perhaps I am meant to think, as I think Hart implies, that it is all "ultimately" meaningless: perhaps this suffering is merely a distracting illusion compared to imminent grace!
But you see, I have a hard time understanding how one can have it both ways. Either suffering is a real evil that we do and should feel a moral compunction to reduce, or it is, now thanks to our "enlightenment," ultimately meaningless thanks to whatever unintelligible theological doctrine we're tossing at the issue this week. In that case, it makes little sense to concern oneself with it. Once the play is revealed to be just that, a play, there's no more reason to leap on stage and try to save Hamlet from his untimely fate. You can't completely undermine the core of moral feeling and then continue to demand that we act out the pointless part as if doing so would continue to demonstrate one's character.
And in the end, what is more ridiculous than someone certain that he knows the purposes of God and the ordering of the entire cosmos? How does he know how bad things came to be, or what God's place and responsibility in all of it is? Is he really willing to stake his moral judgment on the belief that the cosmos is exactly how he imagines it? Let the infants burn and drown all they want before he dares let the spectacle challenge his beliefs one iota?
Am I being too harsh on Hart here? You tell me.
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