A few decades back, it became popular in lit crit circles to speak of "the death of the author". A seminal text by Roland Barthes announced the point that once a book or text or painting has been completed and let loose in the world, then the author no longer controls its interpretation and meaning. Works of art exist independently of their creators--especially after they pass away--and the meaning of a text can no longer be constrained to what its author first intended. Intention passes away with the intender, and a new life for any poem or novel or symphony becomes possible.

Now I could make several points about this: How it affects biblical hermeneutics and theories of revelation, or how unfortunately obsessed with questions of the "origins" of things religious people continue to be, or how debates about the American Constitution and the Bible run parallel because people are obsessed with "the author's / founder's original intention".

But I resist.

Instead, I invite us back to consider the Gospel of John and its meaning today. As Dr Weiss points out, the death of Jesus inaugurates a new world. Everything depends on it, and the gospel is good news about the freeing of human life and meaning via the death of Jesus. The Christian lives in a world of pure possibility-- a state in which everything is transformed by love--because of the cross. In Barthes' language, "the birth of the reader comes at the cost of the death of the Author."

So here is the central text we all know so well: "God so loved the world that he gave his unique Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16. It means that the death of Jesus has freed the human race from all previous meanings and opened a new age of creation-by-belief. The powers of the past no longer control or determine how things are. Even the Torah, God's already-revealed will for Israel, cannot free the human condition, as its forms of death were substitutes, not that of the divine Son, whose death means the liberation of everything. Even the meaning of the death of Jesus is freed by the death of Jesus, and becomes uncontrollable in its meaning and power.

Roland Barthes short and scintillating work can be read here:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm

Graeme
Thanks for the Barthes reference--and analysis. It seems as if Jesus was the 'text' that the Gospel writers appropriated to themselves, and which they felt free to interpret any way they pleased. They certainly don't seem to have been overly preoccupied with the 'original intent' of Jesus.

Aage

...that depends on what the original intent was. Of course, if we allow the idea of incarnation or in-worldation or loved-world to be the theme of John, then the movement in the early Christian writers beyond the "original intent" of Jesus himself is not so strange. It is a further incarnation--or in-textualization / contextualization--of Jesus himself. Not in the sense that authority transferred to the NT writers (that places weight on the idea of author), but in the sense that all can become "readers" or "believers" of the Gospels.

But maybe the idea of Jesus "original intent" is almost opaque to us. No doubt there was much debate about what the divine intention in Jesus was--BECAUSE it was mysterious. I think John has an answer to this that keeps the tension between mystery and revelation in place: . The revelation in Jesus is frequently referred to as Light. IOW, it has no content itself, except Love/Reason/Light itself, i.e. in its ability to make all else clear. As C. S, Lewis once wrote, "I believe...not because I understand God but by him I understand everything else." (my poor paraphrase). I think this fits with the light / darkness imagery in John.

As for NT writers...and all subsequent Christian thinkers.... as you say"they felt free to interpret any way they pleased," well, yes, of course. But they way they were "pleased" is in the way of Light and Love. But that takes us square into Augustine.

Donna
The different accounts of the death of Saul in which he is killed by different people under different circumstances, is not quite comparable to the Gospel writers' varied accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus. In the case of Jesus, we're dealing with an historical character from Galilee who was executed by the Romans. In the case of Saul and David, we're dealing with characters that relate to history the way King Arthur and Robin Hood do. There simply is no historical attestation that any of these characters, as described, ever lived. Only literature--and/or faith--can make Saul the first king of Israel or King Arthur the king of Celtic Britain.

Still, your citing these differing (contradictory) accounts of the death of Saul is relevant because one gets the impression that the Gospel writers knew so little of the historical Jesus that he might as well have been a legendary character, as far as they were concerned. (Robert Eisenman in "James, the Brother of Jesus" even suggests that the best evidence for the existence of Jesus is the fact that his brother James, who is historically attested, is always referred to as the brother of Jesus.) To me the various stories about Robin Hood come to mind when I contemplate the Gospels. Since no historical record could contradict anything written about the Sherwood outlaw, each story writer was free to create their own Robin Hood. This, certainly, would account for the various contradictory stories about Saul and David.

Joselito:

I think your question is rhetorical.

Aage:

I like your suggestion that, in terms of Barthes, one may think of Jesus as the author and the gospel writers as his readers. That description from a literary point of view, I have maintained for some time in theological terms with Jesus as the revelation and the gospel writers as the human inspired recorders of the revelation. It is important, I think, to distinguish revelation from inspiration. According to John makes the point that Jesus did not reveal information, but life. I find that very helpful.

David JIB says: "Humanity cannot come to agreement on religious ideas without condemning the faith of another..."
= = = = = = = = =
Yes, the death of Jesus and the meaning of Christianity has been let loose on the world. It continues to propagate new meanings in different cultures--a process that is universal and without end. But any hope of "agreement" between religions, or among the branches of Christianity is a pious and unnecessary illusion. The truth and triumph of Christianity do not depend on it, for, if the incarnational view of John is correct, differences of interpretation among Christians cannot be a problem for belief, only for unbelief. (How so? Analogy: the varieties of grape are not a problem for those who eat or drink them, only for those who won't.) The Gospel is more about the Light that is now in the World, less about what is shone upon and the darkness that surrounds it.

As for the problem of the hundreds (even 2,000) of years of history... yes that is a problem for John's theology. This lacuna has let to many other theologies which attempt to address the dual situation of Christians. Augustine calls it the City of God and the City of Man.

Chris
While I reflect on your challenge, let me share a poem by the (secular) Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold called,
OM JEG VAR GUD (If I were God) in which he addresses human arrogance:

This I would say
if I were God:

Don't ram your spires
into my heavens

--they are the seat of my pants

Spires burn like fires.

(Slik var mitt bud
om jeg var Gud:

stikk ikke hull på
min himmel med spir.

– den er min buksebak.
Spir svir.)

Aage,

One wonders then what God thinks of orbiting satellites and space probes.

Yes, please continue to reflect. After decades of inquiry, I have yet to hear a valid, plausible alternative to "all of this."

Chris
The question is:" How can God simultaneously honor freedom and individuality and not have rebellious children hurting one another? Realistically, that is, keeping with the known laws of the universe."

I think the answer comes down to enforcement of the rules. That's what characterizes a well-run country. It's based on sound moral values, and it reserves the right to restrain and punish those who refuse to go along with these values. And he might want to provide our pharmacies with a cure for cancer (after all, he's sitting on the recipe.)

The age-old rap on God is that he does nothing to restrain evil. As far as outcomes are concerned, there is no measurable difference between God and no god. To believers this is seen as God respecting the free will of human beings, as if stopping a murderer's hand as he is about to bash in the head of a 7-year old child would be a violation of the murderer's free will--or the rules of a perverse game of free will. Adventists often add a wrinkle to the problem of theodicy by arguing that what's at stake is God's reputation. The way they see it, if God stopped the murderer in his tracks and then went on to show the jury the surveillance picture and a print-out of the perpetrators intentions, the jury might wonder if maybe the murderer was the good guy and God was nothing but a celestial tyrant. (The word 'preposterous' comes to mind.)

The SDA Great Controversy approach to explaining why God does not stand up for humanity, presupposes that his celestial creatures are slow-witted and have a hard time figuring out who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, so God better bash them over the head with thousands of years of suffering humans in the hope that he get his point across. But if the Holocaust was not enough to enlighten the minds of a morally obtuse universe, I have my doubts that anything will.

Better yet, Aage, why not write up your thoughts in an essay and publish here? Its a worthy topic and we can continue the conversation ... WDYT?

And here's s nippet of poetry from a great...

One religion or another--
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another--
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.

From "Hatred" by Wislawa Szymborska (trans. by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)
http://web.archive.org/web/20040105110142/www.certando.net/szymborska.html

Graeme
Somebody's got to have your back. Ultimately that ought to be God, if God exists. The dilemma of the religious person is that in terms of daily life nobody does have your back when everything else fails. You're just as likely to get melanoma and die at 38 as anybody else, or to be hauled out of a Rwandan sanctuary to be slaughtered for no reason than anybody else. Theodicy is all about God's failure to act: why don't at least you God have my back? At best you get a rain check, and that is not much when your two-year old is dying from cancer.

Speaking of that, God could at least provide humans with enough of his vast medical knowledge to create medication that would take out malaria and cancer and all other diseases. That would not even impinge upon the freedom of humans, although it would deprive the morally obtuse universe of an object lesson intended to teach them--some day--that God's way is better than Satan's. Right now God could have provided us with prescriptions for all these ills that marinate the world in suffering. But as far as daily life is concerned, God and his inverse mirror image, No God, are equally passive. Both are letting the two-year old die and the praying Rwandans to be massacred. To do the job of God I would need a serious mental upgrade, but already now I can see that those prescriptions would be high on the agenda, those and a brigade of Clarences to help people along. And oh, I would send my Flying Seal Team to get Satan. If the occupants of the Universe are so slow of mind as to not have figured out by now that Satan is the bad guy, I would recall them and upgrade their mental and moral software, and I'd apologize profusely for the poor craftsmanship the first time around.

I'll stop there. I'm no more qualified than Jim Carrey to play God. I appreciate it's not an easy job, yet the current occupant of the Universal Throne could do better. He and his alter ego, No God.

Aage,

First, you didn't answer Graeme's four questions. Would you, please? They start to get at the dismal, intractable options God has here.

To your points:
1. "Somebody's got to have your back." Yes, God does have my back. God also asserts I must adapt to the universe--the universe will not adapt to me. It's a mature perspective. If I'm a believer and I dive off a bridge, I will die. Moreover, if someone else dives off a bridge and lands on me, I'll die then, too. Sin is both a random destroyer and a servant of terrific fidelity to universal laws, including physics and the eternal laws of relationships such as forgiveness, acceptance, and sharing (grace). Moreover, freedom is sacred to God. God would rather have us free than have us safe--or "saved," for that matter. Otherwise God would force both.

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality" observes T. S. Eliot. Would I have God reverse natural laws at my whim, abolishing the law of gravity if I fall, dismissing E=MC2, and reconfiguring molecules if I mash into a maple? What on earth could we count on? Like a parent giving too much license to a child, continuing to shield and "bail out" bolsters irresponsibility and becomes the ultimate act of sabotage. The wonder to me is not that God does not act but that God does act. I freely admit I don't know how prayer works. Somehow prayer enables God and ennobles me.

2. "God could at least provide humans with enough of his vast medical knowledge to create medication that would take out malaria and cancer and all other diseases." Really, now? God has already given some life-sustaining principles before, of course, in the Original Testament. They were and are misused, perverted, ignored, and ridiculed. We have adequate medication NOW to "take out malaria," but it won't happen. Human greed, hate, sloth, and egoism have triumphed for centuries. Cancer (my father died of lymphoma thirty years ago at age 58) is primarily the outgrowth of a chemically poisoned/saturated environment and the effects of stress on human psychoneuroimmunology. Both could have been prevented by loving others, following conscience, and trusting God; both will be absent on the New Earth.

3. "Letting the two-year old die and the praying Rwandans to be massacred." In Where Is God When It Hurts?, Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand collaborate to show how pain is in many senses a gift. They write, "We could (some people do) believe that the purpose of life here is to be comfortable. Enjoy yourself, build a nice home, engorge good food, have sex, live the good life. That's all there is. But the presence of suffering complicates that philosophy. It's much harder to believe that the world is here just so I can party when a third of its people go to bed starving each night. It's much harder to believe the purpose of life is to feel good when I see teenagers smashed on the freeway. If I try to escape the idea and merely enjoy life, suffering is there, haunting me, reminding me of how hollow life would be if this world were all I'll ever know."

I believe God hasn't come back to start over because God wants to "save" as many as possible, not to prove that He is right to a dense universe. (My chapters "Why I Don't Pray for Jesus to Come 'Soon'" and "Why Jesus Comes Back" [which was published online by Spectrum] are in Swimming Against the Current.)

4. God doesn't always get His way. Jesus didn't always get His way (asking three times to be spared the agonizing separation). I address this in some depth in the chapter "Freedom's Mortgage Payments" in Searching for a God to Love. (Have you read it?) In brief by analogy, when I bought a house I got mortgage payments. The bank actually owns "our" house, and we must make payments to the bank. Understand, it is not my desire to make those payments. We make them because they come with the territory, the house.

The "house" God has bought is freedom, human free will (as logician Alvin Platinga eloquently lays it out). The mortgage payments on the house are the sufferings that result from our choices. The powers and principalities of darkness are the bank--the "ruler of this world" as Jesus calls him, but hastens to add the title of this post, "Don't be afraid, for I have overcome the world." Someday, God will buy back the bank.

Forgive my sermonizing tone; I don't know how to rebut your points any other way.

Thank you for thoughtfully responding.

What a aricature of socialism. Socialism is to Amirica what Catholicism is to Adventist. Totally misunderstood and mischaracterised, but with te half truths considered as lies.

the conversation is on clue - the big questions are What is God like, what is law like and what does God do to people who "break" law. Therein lies religion.

And Styrra - definitions are important in conversations.

Aage

Actually, it does not presuppose anything about God, but about the responsibilities of humans. I am asking the same kinds of questions Plato asked in the Republic, which did not presume much theologically about the ordering of human society. So I'd still like to hear your answers "as if" they were simple but serious questions.

I iike your idea of surveying countries and picking the best... doubtless Norway and Australia would be at the top ;-)

I have a close friend who is chairing an international symposium on the the topic of "Religion, Spirituality and Education for Human Flourishing Symposium" or in Morocco next week. Check it out http://www.ghfp.org/Portals/0/documents/GHFP_AOC_Sym_Announcement_190911...

Beth
Well put. I agree completely.

Graeme
Let me insist on my point. Whether morality is what God is or an arbitrary code that God invented after due reflection, we'd still be faced with the fact that the laws of morality would already be in place, if God exists.

It should not be necessary for humans to hammer out ethical systems by consensus building or coercion if there is a God who reveals him or herself to us. The reason why Hammurabi and Moses and Pericles had to step up to the plate, was that God hadn't.

In the opinion of Martin Zender, he feels that the doctrine of man's free will is of all, the most distructive doctrine

http://www.martinzender.com/books/free_why.htm

Here are some things I would do if I were God, aside from Aage's suggestions (which were more noble because they deal with the problem of evil - mine deal with the hiddenness of God). I don't think they violate any of Chris's criteria; although I still don't accept those criteria as necessary for God anyway.

If one of my followers sincerely asked to know my will, I'd let them know what it was. I wouldn't leave them guessing, floundering around, making bad decisions, even after they had pleaded with me to know what to do. They would still be able to decide not to do it (assuming they have free will), but at least they'd know.

For just one minor example, when the GC voted on allowing commissioned people to lead conferences, I believe that the vast majority of the people voting sincerely wanted to follow God's will on the topic. I assume most of them prayed about it. And yet, we end up with a vote that looks suspiciously like God wasn't letting people know what his will was. Not because it didn't go the way I think it should of, but because there were so many people voting either way - both thinking they were following God's will. If God was actually involved, I would think the vote would be much closer. Even those who initially were going to vote against God's will would of, after asking, known what God's will actually was. They didn't.

This happens really every single time more than one person tries to find out the will of God collectively, let alone individually. Why should decisions made by those sincerely asking the will of God be indistinguishable from those made by people who weren't?

I'd also answer the prayer of those trying to be better people and I'd help them be better people. I'd do it in a way that is distinguishable from people who became better people without my help. I really don't know why God doesn't answer that one very well. What's the downside of making those who are begging for help into better people?

Something else along those lines and a little more personal. If someone was pleading with me to not let them lose their faith, I'd figure out some way to help them with that so they didn't. That would be nice.

My apologies for leaving the conversation; I just returned from Seattle and The One Project. Btw, I believe the Original Testament is an exceptionally incomplete picture of God. Jesus is the most accurate, most complete picture of God. If you wish to pick God apart, pick on Jesus.

"Flew eventually must have found flaws with the parable since he became a theist before dementia took him in its embrace." Ah, I was wondering what excuse would arise when the world's most-famous atheist found God. Yes, of course. That must be it. Although his treatise detailing the rationale for his conversion is remarkably lucid for one in the throes of dementia, eh?

"A brilliant sociopathic scientist" or "a deity with limited powers" could both be labels assigned to any mature, responsible parent. What parent doesn't allow her child to learn from trial and error? Which of us desires to control our children so that they can never hurt others? Human beings hurt others most with our words--those spoken and those unspoken. To control this hurt, God would then have to control our thoughts, even our "unwilling" thoughts. Are you really open to that? Really? Wars are waged to prevent such a poisonous and coercive milieu.

"If one of my followers sincerely asked to know my will, I'd let them know what it was." And then, of course, we have strictly individualized inspiration. "God told me this" would have to suffice, I suppose, because there would be no way to check it out. But in the real world, we write things down when they're important--for purposes of verification and comparison. Yes, we can disagree on the import and interpretation of the writing, but therein rests a call to trenchant discernment and maturity. "Just give it to me now" smacks of immaturity. Also, thankfully, God does not jump whenever we whistle. At that point She/He becomes a dyslexic pedigree of God.

"I'd also answer the prayer of those trying to be better people and I'd help them be better people. I'd do it in a way that is distinguishable from people who became better people without my help." Fortunately, God does help people to become better people, although God is more gracious than we. As the parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:28-31 attests, even those who say "I want nothing to do with God" can live godly lives, open to conscience and God's Spirit without acknowledging such, and will be neighbors on the new earth. Yes, and some who say "I'm working for the father" won't be there. As their lives attest, they have not accepted the grace of God.

It does seem to me that when God starts over ("hell" simply denotes the end of suffering, a means of beginning again), pride and hatred cannot be allowed to raise their loathsome heads. Otherwise we have this dark, demented life starting up again. All who populate such a renewed, forever-free planet/universe do so after accepting the Eternal Guest Pass--which makes them humble, and thus teachable. We have many lessons to unlearn. And we shall enjoy learning to forgive, accept, and share (grace) for eternity.

"If someone was pleading with me to not let them lose their faith, I'd figure out some way to help them with that so they didn't. That would be nice." Beth, I feel your pain and the pain of many of my students with similar lament. Faith is another name for trust. Obviously, there are infinite things and ways we should not trust. I'm so glad I lost my faith/trust in many spurious things and pursuits.

Whether it's fashionable or not, I continually urge everyone to look to Jesus, who pulled me out of the slough of despond. Jesus, who pleaded with His Daddy three times not to let Him go through with the excruciating suffering of separation, yet from love went forward with "nevertheless" for me and you. Jesus, who endured the bugs and blisters and spittle and slaps of injustice. Jesus, who included every last misfit into His kingdom--"whosoever will." Jesus, who beckons me to grow up, to let go, to be deep and brave and fun.

In the beginning and in the end, I trust Jesus.

Chris
Do you think you could condense your apologia for the status quo? In a few succinct points, why are we living in the best of all possible fallen worlds?

Alright, my sincerest apology to Dr. Weiss but I'm going to expound since you asked for us to make our case about why God could do better - assuming there is a God that is loving, powerful and intervening in the world, if even rarely.

Here are two examples of the problem of evil and the problem of the hiddenness of God.

Say you have a quick treatment for molesters that takes away their desire for children. It leaves everything else about who they are intact, but they no longer want to rape five year olds. Now say some molesters have come to you begging for the treatment. Do you give it to them? Or do you tell them, "I'm sorry, it would be wrong for me to give it to you because it would be interfering with your free will to choose to rape five year olds. It is more important that I protect that, then it is for five year olds not to be raped."

God has that treatment (according to Christian theology) but doesn't give it, even when asked. That is the reality of the world we live in. Maybe you are able to justify that in your mind somehow but I can't. And yes, there might be a few cases where molesters, after much psychological work and the effects of aging, are able to lessen their urges somewhat. Most don't though, even after asking for help. If you want to point to the few cases of those who were able to somewhat lessen their urges as evidence of God, you have to accept that the majority of those who don't are also evidence of God not helping. God could cure those who ask, but doesn't.

BTW I'm using the most extreme example here - I think one could make the ethical case for giving them the treatment even if they didn't ask. Or even if it did change who they were slightly. But that just complicates things because really God doesn't even do it when people ask and certainly has the ability to do it in a way that keeps intact who they are (assuming that is what is going to happen to make us ready for heaven anyway.)

Another example.

Say your adult daughter is dating a guy and comes to you sincerely asking for your opinion on marrying him. You happen to know that this guy has been arrested for domestic violence in the past against other girlfriends, and is a meth user. She has no idea. Do you tell her? Do you not give her the information because it would be mind control to tell her? Or do you tell her that you gave her a book a long time ago (that was full of conflicting information), and that will have to suffice - she can figure it out from there?

God (again according to Christian theology) knows the character of those we want to marry. So why doesn't he let us know - when we ask - when we are making a huge mistake? Why doesn't he tell us what his will is regarding so many decisions? Why do so many people sincerely ask to know God's will and then come up with utterly different answers (like the GC vote I mentioned before)? Why is it better for God to encourage us to ask and then not let us know, then it is to just let us know? It is not mind control to simply give us the information.

And yes, again, there are a few examples of people who asked and then felt like they knew for sure God's will. I think most will agree that usually they ask and then do the best they can, hoping it's right. And ultimately, they do not end up making any better decisions then those who don't ask God what his will is.

Again, the reality of the world we live in is that God almost never communicates to us in ways that are clearly understood. I can't think of a good enough reason for that, assuming there is a loving, powerful God who intervenes in the world.

Elaine, even Jesus had his bad days, especially in Matthew.

Matthew 18: 32-35
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

So Jesus said God would do the same thing to those who didn't forgive? Torture those who didn't forgive? You have to forgive because if you don't, I won't forgive you and will torture you?

I think people just assume Jesus is the sum total of whatever we think is good. If you really read what he said though, he said some eye-brow raising things.

Chris
If I were to summarize the debate--and I too would apologize to Dr Weiss for doing it here--I would call it in Donna's favor: Donna 2, God 0. To me, all attempts at explaining why God plays hide-and-seek with humans, and why he doesn't interfere to alleviate ignorance and suffering, amounts to arguing that God wills the status quo, that he is bound by certain rules from interfering in human affairs (except when he isn't bound by these rules).

It would be better to walk away from it all and declare it a mystery than trying to talk about free will, the vindication of God, etc, since none of these make any sense. And when it comes to the all-important 'free will', what'll be different about the Christian Heaven? How's free will going to be enhanced or diminished by reintroducing a perfect world? And how come the Bible is totally uninterested in any philosophical debate about free will, if it is what explains why God and his alter ego, No God have adopted the same modus operandi.

Christians at times accuse non-religious people of playing with the deck that nature has handed out instead of the cards that carry the insignia of God. Secular humanists are said to base ethics on whatever is instead of a divine mandate. Since homosexuality is a part of the human condition, humanists accept it as one definition of being human. Christians and Jews and Muslims see themselves as having a superior moral standard, one handed down by God himself, one which says that 'what is' is not necessarily good. But when it comes to apologetics, Christians agree that 'what is' is good.

The attempt of Christian apologetics to make God look good is an attempt at reverse engineering the sordid reality we call life so that it will accommodate the Biblically supplied data about God. In this way we come up with one dubious theory after the other to explain the inexplicable: why is it that a good God has such an appetite for other people's suffering, and presumably for his own. A second set of holy scriptures as far as apologetics is concerned, is nature, the status quo. The reality of suffering humanity is apparently a revelation about who God is. Some might object and say it's not a revelation of who God is, but who Satan is. That would be like trying to draw a distinction between Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hoss and whoever had the power to shut down the entire camp on day one but who didn't. In real life there was nobody from outside the Third Reich that had the power to do so, and the same seems to be the case as far this world is concerned.

And for anyone who thinks that the Great Controversy theme helps with the things we've been discussing, I'd say this.

The story goes that by not intervening to help suffering (except for the incarnation which will help us out eventually, but doesn't do much to relieve suffering now), God is showing something wonderful about his character. Satan is showing how awful he is, while God is supposed to look better in comparison by being so respectful of freedom.

If you see a kidnapper start to drag a child off and you are perfectly capable of stopping him, what reflects better on your character? Pointing at the kidnapper and saying, "Look how awful he is. I wouldn't do that. Someday I'll do something about him, but right now I won't because I think his freedom is more important than the child's freedom."? Or would it reflect better on your character to stop the kidnapper?

Yes, you'd still come out looking a little better than the kidnapper if you didn't stop it, but I wouldn't trust you with my kids. I wouldn't consider you a responsible, loving, or particularly useful person. I wouldn't want your comfort or your promise to "suffer alongside me." I'd be giving you an earful that if you can do something to reduce suffering, you do it, especially when it is as easy as it would be for God. You don't just sit on your hands and show up later to offer solace to the grieving parents.

No wonder the other worlds are taking such a long time to figure out who the bad guy is.

We know that God does not intervene to stop suffering (but, even worse, promises to someday - just not for a few thousand/million years and counting) and so we are left trying to explain the unexplainable. I agree completely with Aage - the more one tries, the worse it gets. There is no reason good enough that we would accept from even another fallible human being, let alone God. The best we can do is throw up our hands and say we don't have any explanation, but we still believe in a good God anyway.

Or we throw up our hands and say we think the evidence is against a good, theistic God, but we'd love to be wrong. I can understand either.

It is such a relief in many of life's situations to lower one's expectations. We too often expect perfection and seldom find it.

For all this world's problems and our own personal one's I have found that to blame anyone or anything is useless, which is why I like the serenity prayer to sccept what I cannot change; have courage to change what I can, and have wisdom to know the difference.

This relies only on each individual and leaves no room to blame or thank either God or the Devil, for we cannot know whether each exists or has any role in life's events. If it makes some people comfortable to believe that God answers SOME prayers and not others; that Satan has charge of whatever God has given or allowed him, so be it. For a non-believer, I am completely comfortably and serene, having lived some 87 years and never once have I seen an instance where either God or the Devil could be identified as the cause of any circumstances. Humans cause many and what we call "natural disasters" are far beyond our control. Trying to decide who caused our misfortunes is a total waste of time. Even if we could know, what good would it do?

Chris
According to Christian thinking the day will come when God no longer will sit on the sidelines, twiddling his metaphysical thumbs. When he starts over again, the implication is that he is not going to allow evil to reassert itself. He will pull out the bug zapper and that'll be that. According to this way of thinking, he can safely do that because the slow-witted inhabitants of the Universe will finally have figured out that he is the good guy, and that any zapping of evil doers is justified. But apparently we're not there yet. Although Jesus praised those who were able to embrace spiritual realities by faith and didn't need to probe reality with their finger, like Thomas, the absolute faith of Christians in the goodness of God still can't be trusted. He can't stop the child molester because the believer just might believe that the molester was the good guy and God was the bad one.

I can make no sense of this kind of thinking. To me, it's simply an attempt to make theological lemonade--an extremely tart one at that--from a mountain of lemons.

Chris,
Thank you for your kind words. I too appreciate your willingness to dig into these difficult things without using the intellectually lazy methods of distortion, straw men, and labeling. Since you are a communications professor, I think you can agree that conversations can be redeeming.

I have a couple of responses and I hope that I don't muddy things by trying to make them all at once.

First I would comment that you are making a reasonable argument for deism. There are some decent arguments for why God can't intervene at all in our world (though that still calls the loving part into question.) Part of the difficulty theists have with the problem of evil is that they argue God does intervene all the time. Would you agree that God does help make us better people at least some of the time, especially when we ask?

So I see theists in a bind here. One the one hand, they claim that God helps people become better and they assume (but cannot demonstrate) that this happens in some way that is more than would have occurred without an intervening God. IOWs, God adds something to what would simply occur without God, and, as a result, people can become better then they would have been had God not been directly involved. My point is, so why doesn't this happen in ways that would matter the most? (Or even in demonstrable ways - there would be a good argument for the existence of God.)

By asking your when question, I think we are just circling around the point I keep trying to make but might not be very well.

Why should anyone believe disobeying God is devastating if we can count on God to continually and forever bail us out—even when we don’t ask?

I'm not asking why God doesn't make the calories magically disappear after I eat a whole pan of brownies, even when I ask nicely. I'm not arguing that God should continually and forever bail us us for things we are responsible for, especially when we don't ask. I'm asking why God doesn't cure the molester when he asks nicely and we humans are not capable of doing it ourselves - among many, many other examples. Just because there is a line beyond which one could make the argument for excessive interference, doesn't mean no action is correct (and especially when you are still arguing there is intervening.)

Now your how question.
If God stepped in to stop or start everything, He/She would be stepping on our ability to grow in godly ways.

I've always hated this one. Really hated it because it sounds so reasonable and logical on the surface until you actually think about what it means. God allows children to starve to death so that you and I can learn how to be better people. How can that possibly be ok?

Not to mention that even if a group of people were able to become nicer and more loving, there is still so much bad that happens in our world that is just not our fault. Again, no one is arguing that God should always step in and take over where we should have stepped up. But there is an awful lot that happens in our world that we have no control over and no matter how godly we become, the world is still going to be a mess.

Then there's the added problem that Christian theology says humankind overall is just going to keep getting worse. Suffering will increase, not decrease, so it's not like the fact that some humans are learning to become more godly is going to do much to relieve the suffering anyway. Maybe those godly humans will have benefited from interacting with all the suffering people and animals, but, like I said before, I think it's rather appalling to think that is why God doesn't do more to relieve it.

As I mentioned earlier, “Human beings hurt others most with our words--those spoken and those unspoken. To control this hurt, God would then have to control our thoughts, even our ‘unwilling’ thoughts.”

I can't agree with that either. I think the world would be a better place if we fought with words instead of torturing, raping, and murdering each other. Wouldn't be perfect, but would still be an improvement. Right now we do it all.

I would finally add that the core question is not why a God who is loving, powerful, and directly involved, acts in the ways we see in our world. The core question is whether the evidence points to some sort of being who is loving, powerful, and directly involved in our world. Given the evidence, the Christian God is not the best explanation for what we see in our world. The concept might represent our sincerest hopes and vision, but the most likely explanation, given the evidence, is that there is not a being who is, at the same time, loving, powerful, and intervening. In fact, if you only get rid of the loving requirement, things fit much more easily. That seems to be everyone's favorite part though. . .

"In fact, if you only get rid of the loving requirement, things fit much more easily. That seems to be everyone's favorite part though. . ."

Yes. After all the postulating, there remain two words:

"Jesus wept."

"They claim that God helps people become better and they assume (but cannot demonstrate) that this happens in some way that is more than would have occurred without an intervening God."

Demonstrate? What about the centuries of countless changed lives (including mine) after a commitment to God? Alcoholics, sex offenders, liars, slackers, craven disciples, crack heads . . . the list is endless.

"How do you know the water was turned to wine?" the critic asked. "Were you there? Did you taste it?"

"No, I wasn't there for that miracle," the Christian admitted. "But I was there when He turned my beer into furniture."

You may lightly skip over the immense, intractable questions surrounding When? and How?. But let's be clear: Not answering those questions doesn't mean you have answered those questions.

A vast difference exists between admitting, as I have in Searching, "I don't understand exactly how God 'speaks' to us, how He honors our personal freedom and yet accomplishes His designs, or why some obviously good answers don't occur, and some obviously bad requests seem to gain positive responses"--and saying God is not demonstrably working in the world.

As I basically asked Bogdan before his sad meltdown, "What for you would be 'adequate evidence' of God's involvement?" And please don't say, "All the world's problems go away." If your child disobeys and misbehaves, that doesn't prove that you are not his/her parent or that you aren't working diligently to redeem your child.

That 11-year-old girl I mentioned who will be raped 20 times today in Mumbai? Here's the other side of the story. A Christian organization called Tiny Hands International, based here in Lincoln, began in 2006 to fight human trafficking. They made meager inroads until 2009, when they began to wholly dedicate themselves and their ministry to prayer.

Since then, they have intercepted an average of 140 girls a month, saving them from lives of unbelievable torture. At the border stations between Nepal and India, THI uses volunteers from local Christian churches 24/7 to stop the traffickers.

At Union College, our Amnesty/Tiny Hands International Club raises thousands of dollars for this cause, and two of our students have gone to Nepal to help. (See www.tinyhandsinternational.org)

You can call me "humanistic" (as was done recently on another blog site) ;) but I believe that's God working to "overcome the world."

You may lightly skip over the immense, intractable questions surrounding When? and How?. But let's be clear: Not answering those questions doesn't mean you have answered those questions.

I don't think I treated the how and when questions lightly. Since initially we were discussing how a loving, powerful intervening God could do better, I think I tried to show why the answers you suggested were inadequate for me.

But ultimately I was just trying to make the point that the most obvious way to answer them is to say that there probably isn't a loving, powerful, intervening God. The questions get much more difficult when you assert that there is. The burden for answering them is on the person who asserts that there is that type of God.

Aage,
I agree. Kierkegaard's approach would have some more appeal to me if it didn't so obviously end up badly in so many cases. Not to mention that it only works if there really is a God. If there isn't and you choose that approach, you are even worse off because then no one is doing the thinking.

Chris,

After further reflection, I realized I could and should address your how and when questions more than I did.

In answering them, the best model I can use is a parenting model. I'm a parent and generally I'm loving, powerful, and intervening. I respect the fact that my children learn best from a variety of methods, including trial and error, and I know that I can stunt their moral learning by intervening too much.

However, I also know that there are limits to any one child's freedom. I discipline because learning works best in an environment where you feel safe and where discipline is intentional. I don't worry about my children loving me less because I prevent them from hurting each other. I don't worry that I'm stifling my son if he tries to hit my daughter and I stop him. I recognize that he might not be capable of any other behavior at the time and so I am doing the right thing in helping him stop. I help him when he cannot help himself because that helps him learn that it isn't ok to hit. I also recognize that even if he was capable and chose differently, his right to chose his own behavior does not trump my daughter's right not to be hit.

If my teenaged son picks up a knife to stab a sibling, would I say, "Well I told him not to kill. He is choosing not to listen and so now I have to let things play out so the other siblings can see how tragic the consequences are when you disobey."? No for a lot of reasons, but the first being, I am privileging his right to kill someone over the other sibling's right to live. I would stop it if I could because that is what loving, powerful, intervening parents do. And I'd do it no matter how old he was.

We parents are not perfect and somehow we still manage to figure out how to intervene in loving and powerful ways. In fact, we recognize that to not do so is being a terrible parent. By intervening when appropriate, my kids learn that I care enough to help them be better people, that I'll protect them while they are learning so they are still around to learn, and I'll provide quick, effective consequences when the natural consequences aren't enough. I think if I can figure out how to do it, even as imperfectly as I do, God could manage it. Asking God to rise to the level of even imperfect parent isn't too much to ask.

So to be more specific, God could stop someone from killing someone else and tell them clearly, "I can't let you do that because I love you and I love the other person too much to allow that to happen." Both the would-be killer and the potential victim would learn something much more powerful than what is learned if the killing goes through. It only sounds ridiculous because it is so different from how our world really works and we are so used to making up excuses for why God doesn't do that.

Chris, beautiful work. Surely the result of "eating the bread of heaven" that Dr. Weiss discusses. True Quality, by any standard.

Maybe the pet God of our Western concepts bears no resemblance to the Creator, in which case, it's our conceptual framework that needs a major overhaul.

I think we have a nature-of-reality problem, as I said on the Adventist philosopher meeting thread.

But there is no doubt that the domesticated Pet God makes a great whipping boy/straw man. :)

Will we keep knocking down our strawman Domesticated Pet God until we succeed in blowing up the world?

Well...at least we can comfort ourselves with having been right...as the environment and social fabric collapse....

Maggie,
How do you think the Creator differs from the Pet God?

The world is not a sterile wasteland. There is life and growth. Spring is three weeks away. The primroses and hellebores are in bloom already in my yard..... another cycle around our star.

In my work in the O.R. I care for those nearing death as well as those who will go on living. One can be overcome with despair. I have come to find, we need each other more in that there will probably be no cosmic rescue. All of humanity is of one tribe and we are in the same tree of life with all genera. We need to learn to share and to have portion control. We need the entire biosphere. There are good days when we can run and stand alone and there are bad days when we need each other. I hope we can learn how to live together.
Cheers

"Pray, where did we get those values?"

Data... shelves and shelves, stacks and stacks of old data, mountains of new data in the last 200 years.... and pretty good brains for storing and processing it.... and a discontent and desire to know.

"You think we, collectively, are not about to decimate the earth and each other, though?"

Only a hope, like Sting sang ~25 years ago toward the big threat of the time, "I hope the Russians love their children too."

The April 28, 2011 issue of the Adventist Review carries an article by Dr. Norman R. Gulley entitled:
"Who does the Choosing? Scripture's Take on Predestination. On page 16 the editors have added a sidebar--"A Doctrine must never be based on one text or passage." Obviously Dr. Gulley doesn't but the article confutes Clavinism and Predestination. So Calvinists base a serious portion of their soteriology on a passage in Romans. Unforunately, Adventism generally bases its Eschatology on one passage in Daniel.

Fortunately Dr. Gulley doesn't. His closing paragraph begins with the sentence: As I gaze at Christ on the Cross I see the imcomparable and ultimate sacrifice. Implicit is his view of inaugural Escahatology at the Cross. The Alpha phase if one could be so bold. He avoids falling into an editorial trap.

I would add--see that wasn't so difficult was it.

Now over to us, do we see the 'Finished Work of Christ" or shall we look for another? Tom Z

The Libraries?
Like you, a metric ____-load of education. I'm not alone, nor have I figured this out on my own. This view is closest to what I can call truth. I could be wrong.

Hope and faith?
In the '50s and '60s in LA we had weekly sirens warning of missile or plane attack. My sda-ism upbringing also was full of red alert button pushing alarms for the end of days. One gets emergency / alarm fatigue. I have no skill at prophecy and don't know how/if the human race will end, hopefully we'll get to keep evolving but extinction is in the deck of cards. I have no hope or faith in sky hooks. But I do know of the existence of cranes. May be we can ratchet ourselves up off the plain of megeddo, take a look around, see we're all fully armed and only partly sane and decide to lower our guns and tongues. Thus, the song I mentioned.

I now understand and follow what you mean by wasteland. Well, there are many people like us. Talking about it and working for the future are human traits too. In the present, there are many sick to tend to. And science is fun.... Botany, zoology, astronomy, geology.... a lot to enjoy. What do you think?

Please understand - I'm not putting forth the old argument that atheists or agnostics can't have genuine values, or that their values are derived from religion.

So, do you love your children because that's the rational thing to do? Why don't you just take them to the pound or something when they are messy, annoying and ungrateful? Are they really worth the effort and expense in any rational sense?

I think we're stuck circling around the same old boring & futile questions about God because those are the only askable questions within the philosophical box we're currently in.

What does beneficial mean? Care and compassion create a drag on the ecosystem and economy. Why privilege the infirm over the economy?

Was giving into the expedience of helping Hitler slaughter millions in any fundamental sense wrong? From a materialist sense, he got rid of a lot of people who were not contributing to society, the retarded, the mentally ill. How could that possibly be "wrong?"

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=declaration&section=main

Materialism only privileges the fittest to survive.

It seems clear to me that secular humanists are getting their ideals somewhere else and, in that sense have "overcome the world" in some way akin to a transcendent view.

That's why I say that "overcoming the world" need not be discussed only in religious terms positing an invisible God.

Save the infirm. They have experienced pleasure and pain. They help us understand who we are.

Jettison the theologians and philosophers. They have no value. ;-)

I believe, maggie, you are required to take a penalty for proving again the veracity of Godwin's Law. It's been 22 years. May be the penalty rule is no longer in force.

I'm pretty sure we discussed these points at Thanksgiving time.... and above. Are you not making any progress?

PS We could afford lavish care and compassion on us all if we'd stop making bullets.

DL -no law says you have to give me a serious answer. :)

Klutz, as a cat tamer, you are subtle, but not malicious.

Beth, thanks for your thoughtful response. I am completely comfortable with what you describe as seemingly "cold," as I'm perfectly willing for this to be an evolutionary scenario, and there is a lot of scientific reasoning to support that stance, of course, which sounds compelling to me, though my knowledge base is small, I admit.

But it seems to me that we've transcended nuts-and-bolts evolutionary processes by many orders of magnitude, which makes me very curious.

Cont. (Have to post short blurbs on phone or editing gets whacky.)

Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity :

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/fragility/

Dr. Weiss, I really *do* believe all this is about Jesus & overcoming the world! :)

Beth - thank you for the correction - I looked it up and the animation does definitely give the wrong impression about the genetic Adam & Eve. Interesting.

Regarding optimism, I'm hoping that we can start to see that our very survival depends on empathy, and that the belief becomes self-reinforcing as more people adopt it, in place of believing the propaganda that our survival depends on war.

But we're philosophically boxed in a subject/object perspective currently, which makes empathy seem like something nice to engage in occasionally, but certainly not something pivotal to science and society, and, indeed survival of the biosphere and ourselves, which I believe it is.

I don't think spirituality is airy-fairy - to me, empathy is spirituality. It's a very earthy, bodily, feeling sort of thing, which I wouldn't call irrational...maybe prerational and indispensible even for doing science.u

Without empathy one

Abraham Maslow: I certainly wish to be understood as trying to enlarge science, not destroy it. It is not necessary to choose between experiencing and abstracting. Our task is to integrate them.

Chris - so glad you're back!!! And, by the way, I passionately hope you watch The Help and join that discussion!

As it happens, I just now paused reading the chapter "Breaking the Galilean Spell" in theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred because I had a sudden impulse to check in on Spectrum.

Can't really discuss in cell phone soundbites, though.

Later....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465003001

Elaine, if you send money to charities to help people across the sea whom you will never see, and whose suffering need never impact your life, then you have overcome the world, red in tooth and claw.

Why would you, or anyone else, even care what happens to those people?

As Chris said, it is a fundamental question.

Maggie,
Yep evolutionary psychology is not always science at its finest hour, even on a good day. It is full of interesting philosophical musings, but only in the baby stages of narrowing down those musings into actual findings.

Chris,
Maybe we are at an impasse here but I'm not sure what else to say. Would God healing child molesters that ask be making a two-sided triangle? Would it be violating free will too much or would it put God in some sort of contradictory impossibility? I guess I don't see how. Yes there are situations that could be impossible for God. There are situations that a free will honoring God can't violate. I've acknowledged that. I just don't see how any examples that I've been arguing would fit that. Are you saying that they do, or are you just making a general observation that there are situations that would violate God's free will code?

You have already said that God helped you and others be better people. Why wouldn't that also create the same two-sided triangle that prevents God from helping the molesters? If helping you become better is fine, why wouldn't helping them also be fine?

Beth, why should anyone care if child molesters heal, and what is the meaning of "healed," if you don't mind my asking?

I'm pretty much on board with the humanist values that I linked to the other day, but why should they matter?

For the record, I don't think it's important that you, or anyone, "believe" in God. There is no way to prove the existence of God. End of discussion, as far as I'm concerned.

I really hope we can learn to create healthy individuals, families and societies, though, before we bring eons of evolution crashing down.

Beth,

The nature of the human brain comes into play. The nature of "curing" is a complex, labyrinthian thing, subject to a million unknown prompts, guides, ruts, motives, and furnishings.

Here are some "cures" I'd like to see:

My faulty memory
My anger against past wrongs (super memory, there!)
My tendency to think first about myself
My propensity to easy laziness
Any deceptive thoughts

If I ask God, should He/She cure me right now? Some of these could ultimately lead to heinous behavior.

What thinkest ye?

Why should we not conclude that God heals those he wishes, and rejects those he does not think, or wish to be healed. Is there another explanation?

Those "vague, impossible to prove" claims that "God made me a better person" can be claimed by many except not crediting God. How can it possibly be shown that God is responsible?

It's all the "God talk" that is such a turn-off to logic and enters the arena of another world where subjective belief is all the evidence needed.

BTW: one of the most important books I ever read and which most strongly influenced me was Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." If everyone followed this advice we would eliminate most of the problems in this world--that, and obeying the ancient Golden Rule.

Chris mentioned Ravi Zacharias - I was trying to find my book by him just now. I think he was the one who said atheists' values are either borrowed from religion and the culture it forged, or are just fractured. I grappled with that, and I don't accept it completely, though we are all colored by culture.

I think he also said we can't reason well without God, and there's actually some truth to that, as I mentioned earlier regarding Jung.

I also was immersed in a church that emphasized Francis Schaeffer's teachings:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Should_We_Then_Live%3F

There's a lot that could be said about that...but it's late & I need to pack for trip...back later....

Oh it's late and I'm tired but I have to say I like what you said, DL. Real things are their own coin, aren't they?

We can trust our guts on that, can' t we?

And I want to add that myths help us relate the parts to the whole. Did you know that Joseph Campbell was friends with George Lucas? Interesting, huh?

Did you ever see Lars and the Real Girl?

Maggie,
I don't know if what we value has any "real" value. If I understand what you are getting at, it's along the same lines of whether anything really has any meaning apart from what we give it.

I would say probably not but that doesn't bother me much. I'm ok with knowing it is up to me to try and make my life meaningful to myself and to others.

It bothers me even less to think that there might not be some ultimate value system behind the one we've struggled to come up with. If there is some grand system, it has been very poorly communicated to us.

We are still left to figure out whether it's right or wrong to invade someone else's country and take their land, or be a gay man in love with another, or insist women submit to their husbands, or value the lives of animals, or beat your slave so long as he doesn't die. We just keep muddling through, and I think we're managing to at least improve our value system over time, even if we haven't figured out how to always live up to it.

And I would add too that stories and myth have been a big part of how we have managed to do that I think.

Ah! Oh! Ooo! Mmm amen!

Chris,
So what you are saying then is that God can't cure anyone right away because that would be benevolent thought molesting even if they ask? I disagree for reasons I've already presented, but I'll give up and go with it for sake of argument.

If someone claims that God did suddenly take away their craving for crack, or their depression, they are mistaken because that would mean God is thought molesting? Instead, their cravings or depression were somehow lifted by some other source apart from God?

I think you are trying to have it both ways. God doesn't cure anyone right away because that would be thought molesting, except when it happens and then it is evidence of a loving God.

You have stated that God helps people become better and I'm assuming that means that God adds something specific to the process of getting better that wouldn't be there if God wasn't involved. What would that be? If it can't have anything to do with influencing our thoughts, what is it?

Beth, now you're going for the jugular! I'm anxious to hear Chris' answers.

Maggie, you're right: there is an underlying assumption that everyone on Spectrum believes in the same God and his capabilities. Perhaps we should first clarify our various assumptions before tangling with what God's responsibilities are.

In any discussion the topic (God) should be defined as to its meaning. Otherwise, we are all talking of our opinions of an abstract concept and will never be able to adequately converse. Reading the many comments on this thread it is obvious that no two are speaking of the same identical god. Some believe he has limited his miraculous powers; others believe that while he doesn't always use those powers he may choose, from time-to-time to do so. Others believe He has a "stand-off" attitude and merely observes and watches his creation.

Shouldn't it be the object of any discussion which leads to any reason to exist, that the term "God" is defined?

....."If there is some grand system, it has been very poorly communicated to us. ".....Beth

and the devils also in the details!!! look at just one of the conundrums the poor goatherders had to navigate for the new moon festival:

this is what Moses says to do:
(CEV) Numbers 28:11 On the first day of each month, (the new moon festival)
bring to the altar
...2 bulls,
...1 full-grown ram,
...and 7 rams a year old that have nothing wrong with them. Then offer these as sacrifices to please me.

no, forget Moses, do what Ezekiel tells you:

ez 46;6 bring
...6 lambs, (not rams)
...(1) bull, (not 2), and
...(1) ram to be offered as sacrifices at the New Moon Festival.
There must be nothing wrong with any of these

doncha wonda if the priests who may have written these regs didn't want to eat roadkill goats or aged and infirm mutton. I also wonder what anti psychotics the ancients may have had to help overlook if not make sense out of the regs and incense?

hemp?

Beth, now you're going for the jugular!

Yikes, I hope it's not coming across like that - if so I apologize to Chris and any other readers still hanging on.

Elaine, regarding "defining God," that is what I was talking about when I spoke about our Domesticated Pet Gods.

We are immersed in a mystery about which we know next to nothing. To speak of defining God misapprehends the scale of what we're dealing with, it seems to me.

I don't mind not calling it God, but I don't think we can escape calling it mystery.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

No personal "jugular" attacks perceived here. (And if there were, after eight years and 400 issues at Insight, no worries anyway;)

Some distinctions on having it both ways:

1. Should God intervene when we don't ask? Aage mentions Sodom, whose chief sin was her "pride, surfeit of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49). Imagine if that were the litmus test today. How many in the U.S. would be spared?

But then there's (as I continually maintain) the clearest manifestation of God--Jesus--who rebukes His disciples for wanting to rain fire down on enemies; who claims His Father makes the sun shine on the unrighteous; who loves everyone, everywhere; who uses kindness to bring us to repentance (Rom. 2:4); who "desires all to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4), "not wishing that any should perish" (2 Peter 3:9).

I concur, we can't have it both ways. We can't wish the proud and selfish to be dealt with against their will and yet malign God for dealing with the proud and selfish against their will. Sometimes I too want God to "intervene" (whatever that actually means) against people's will. But again, “At what point should unsolicited interventions subside or cease?”

2. Everything matters—trivial or otherwise. Aage argues, “while God can help you with guilt and trivial things that atheists do on their own, like finding lost keys and parking spots or the right house, he can't do anything that really matters, like protecting your children.”

This, of course, is specious generalizing. Nobody knows if God has in fact “protected our children” dozens of times a day. And protected from what? From reality? I prayed and pray that my children would confront reality, be educated by reality, embrace reality, adapt to reality. While I pray for “safety” for them [more on that later], I sincerely don’t wish for them to be insulated and “protected.”

Our smallest thought matters, ultimately. The most “trivial” crack in the concrete leads to the crumbling and ruination of the dam. Much like the false dichotomy of secular and sacred, trivial and important are also deceptive constructions. In this life, the urgent is rarely important and the important is rarely urgent.

So does God step in with every trivial crack, patching and smoothing everything over? Or should He/She just let the cracks grow naturally and step in every time just before the deluge descends? Who would ever give a dam about the cracks?

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have God continually bail us out with virtually every thought and have God value our freedom, individuality, and responsibility. It’s simply not possible.

3. “God can't cure anyone right away because that would be benevolent thought molesting even if they ask?” Yes, Beth, this is the most perplexing question, even to believers in God. To be clear, “if they ask, “ then God’s response isn’t benevolent thought molesting, at least to my thinking. (!) Yet I agree, as I have written, “I don’t understand why some obviously good answers don’t occur.” Here’s what helps me.

a. Richard Foster reflects, “For me, the greatest value in my lack of control [in prayer] was the intimate and ultimate awareness that I could not manage God. God refused to jump when I said, ‘Jump!’” We see this in Jesus’ refusal to perform miracles in front of Herod. It wasn’t vain pride that made Him refuse but because acquiescing would forever enshrine the false, idolatrous notion of a domesticated, tame Being, a Celestial Vending Machine—where we, in fact, are God.

b. Jesus’ prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” allows the wiggle room God deserves, especially with absurd or selfish requests. Most of life is conditional to some degree—people pray for contradictory answers, and God cannot always honor both requests, though He/She is amazingly resourceful and creative.

Often God takes an indirect route to answer prayers. The mother of Augustine prayed all night that God would stop her son from going to Italy because she wanted him to become a Christian. While she was praying, he sailed away to Italy, where he converted to Christianity. Naturally, his mother believed for a time that her prayers had gone unheard. As with any healthy relationship on earth, a friendship with God is characterized by mutual freedom.

c. I want to always retain my anger and my loving, redemptive battling against injustice. The oft-misquoted 1 Thess. 5:16-18 reads, “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.” It doesn’t say “give thanks for all circumstances.” James Hilt points out, “Thanking God for evil as well as good presumes evil also finds its source in Him. This is a terrible distortion. God should not be thanked for anything of a fallen nature—anything that finds its source in this planet’s rebellion against God. This includes accidents, health problems, natural disasters.” In all circumstances, I can know that nothing, neither disease nor discouragement, devil nor death, will be able to separate me from the love of God.

d. God can and does cure right away, as demonstrated by Jesus. The question is, Why not more often? For me, that’s where loving trust comes in. I love and trust God more than I love and trust my best earthly friend. Am I willing to give my earthly friend the benefit of the doubt? (Yes.) Am I willing to believe that God is acting in every plausible way, as demonstrated in the life of Jesus, to bring about hope, love, freedom, joy, and peace? Am I willing to consider all the points I listed above? If I am to remain God’s friend, and keep Him/Her as mine, like any deep, nourishing friendship, I can’t both trust and distrust the core of my friend’s intentionality and action. I cannot have it both ways.

Thanks Chris for what has been a stimulating and respectful conversation. I'm going to leave my part of it for now.

Best wishes with the Mumbai work you are a part of. I'm grateful there are people doing it.

I hope your children knew that you were human, and not God. Is God no better than humans? It would be hoped so.

And further, given the impenetrable complexity of the universe, of which we can scarcely credit ourselves as having scratched the surface, is it really rational to conclude that if we have dismantled Iron Age conceptions of God to our intellectual satisfaction, we have thereby banished the possibility of a Creator?

In our present model, the staggering amount of evolution which has taken place since the Big Bang is going to force us to teleological explanations sooner or later, surely leading to our positing a set of laws 'higher' than the current laws we call fundamental. Darwinian explanations do not suffice for the astonishing increase in complexity within time frame we currently posit. And that's just the complexity we're aware of.

Again, I don't care if anyone "believes" in God, but dismissing a Creator on the basis of the Scriptures of any religion, or because of lack of scientific "evidence" for God seems like tunnel vision to me.

Something is afoot in the universe which is beyond our conception at fundamental levels. The processes are transcomputational.

I call it God. You can call it mystery, or "the scientific frontier," if you like, but I'm unconvinced anyone has ever, or will ever, have an intellectual handle on it sufficiently to dismiss the possibility of there being a larger intelligence at work in the universe.

But if the God-of-the-gaps argument is insufficient, so too is the scientific frontier argument.

Saying "science just hasn't figured that out yet" suffers the same infinite regress as "God did it" arguments, it seems to me.

It also seems to me that one has to be in a similar state of mind when saying either, "This, and precisely this, is how God is," or, "There is no God," namely a state of omniscience.

In hope of not sounding like an audio clip on the final circling groove of a vinyl LP, endlessly repeating, I add once again agreement with and appreciation for the comment by A.R. above. Thanks, everyone, for allowing my strident opinion. I retract the statement regarding jettison of anyone. :)
Cheers, dl

Oohh...I'm a bad, bad poster, Beth! And worse, unrepentant. :/

And now I'm going to be really annoying:

OUT THERE?

I'm not talking about "out there," Beth....

....."I call it God. You can call it mystery, or "the scientific frontier," if you like, but I'm unconvinced anyone has ever, or will ever, have an intellectual handle on it sufficiently to dismiss the possibility of there being a larger intelligence at work in the universe.".......Maggie

but, but, can't we dismiss the concept of an ANGRY God who got so po'd at his children that insead of punishing the guilty He used great "intelligence" to massacre them all in a flood.....including innocent animals, unknowing children, and birds and reptiles?

and left behind layers of evidence around the world which proves it did not happen that way?

but He DID leave potential evidence that one of His favorite long term, cyclical pastimes is celestial bowling with wandering space junk.....
http://users.tpg.com.au/horsts/crater.html

and here comes another one....next year....
http://rt.com/news/paint-asteroid-earth-nasa-767/

(Maggie...still waiting for your snail mail)

Honestly Maggie, I don't think any of us know what we're talking about. We do get periodically entangled in these issues, and it can be fun and even enlightening, but really, what can we know? Maybe more than we know. (Try making sense out of that).

It does become annoying when various ones of us quote God - "and God said..." No, somebody said, God said. Remember the "bicameral mind"? My head is still spinning - what is it - 4 or 5 years since we did that one? For some reason it popped into my mind as we're trying to discuss God even though I don't remember if I understood any of it at the time.

What amuses me is that we give God, the creator of everything, a human physique and place words on his lips. It's something like imagining Van Gogh made up of tiny specks of paint, so that when he washed his face it would all run down the drain.

The artist is separate from his art, even as he's very much part of it - not in the paint; or the wood; or in the stone. So what is it that gives us such a powerful picture of the artist? How does the spirit of the artist get into all those fabrications? Since He's not "out there," where?

Hey John,
The "eternal pessimist".

Most disease is man-made; and had Adam stuck to the fruit and nuts (the permissible ones) he probably wouldn't have ulcers and high blood pressure. Are there tornadoes between the Tigris and Euphrates - maybe just west of Eden :). Since Jesus ate fish, I guess we can allow the eagle a mouse or two, even before Adam ate the apple. And, those giant vacuum cleaners may be God's way of cleaning house.

Seriously, what do we know about any of this... Like you always say, sitting around the fire at twilight is a good time to dream and answer unanswerable questions. No, I think we give ourselves too much credit. We look at the universe with a magnifying glass that fits neatly in our shirt pocket.

Speaking of tragedies, Bob just called on his way to work. We found a mouse in a live trap under the kitchen sink this morning. As he had let it out on the edge of the woods, the poor thing had became a hearty breakfast for the community crow! Knowing Bob, he's going to be worrying about this all day. Years ago, we caught another mouse trying to carry a large nut through the vent in our fireplace, only to have it drop on the grate below, each time. Bob let that one loose near a gas station down the road. The next morning, as he went into the station to pay for gas, he noticed the bags of chips were missing on the bottom half of the display. He asked the attendant what had happened and was told a mouse had gotten into the station during the night and had torn into the bags on the bottom half. I guess the moral of the story is - stuff happens - even under the watch of a loving God.

John, I'm sure you will dismiss the concept of an angry God just as soon as you are ready, and not a minute sooner, just like everyone else. I wouldn't rush you for the world, and if you never do, that's fine too.

I believe in tbe principle of religious liberty.

Sirje, I am so with you in the spirit of your musings, and the mouse stories are great.

Muse forth!

BTW, Science Channel this morning talking about the singularity being the biggest problem in cosmology (duh) so now we can solve that by branes colliding in the multiverse.

As I was saying earlier, it's turtles all the way down.

http://www.google.com/search?q=images+turtles+all+the+way&hl=en&client=m...

The good news is that we can create universes - the scientist said so!

I've always sais we know more than we think we do...and less....

Sirje,
Your tenderness to invasive rodents would make the Buddha envious. :)

Maggie,
Your tenacity to this issue is peerless. You could make millions riding bulls at the rodeo. If it is turtles all the way down, does it imply gods all the way up, or is that what you mean? The universe is expanding and we see evidence for the CMBR. It was smaller and denser and is getting bigger and less dense. Stars are born and die and give later generations the periodic table of elements. Is there something beyond? I'm open. Even Dawkins is only a 6.5/7 atheist.

John,
I'm convinced along with you, the world is ~4.5B yrs old and signs of changing life goes back 3.5B. All branches of science support this. Genetics clinches it, even if all the other evidence is dismissed. We are primates.

I dig the song from the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life sung by Eric Idle. It ends....
...so if you're ever feeling very small and insecure, just remember how unlikely is your birth.
And pray that there is intelligent life somewhere up in space, because we're bugger-all here on earth.

Good night everybody! You've been great! I'll be here all week! Try the cutlets!

Sure enough, my husband called, still smarting about the mouse. I think what happened was that the crows have feasted on our mice before. I can just see them lined up on the telephone wires along the road, telegraphing the position of my husband's car.

Seriously, those crows are a wonder in God's creation - smart. One species in Madagascar, I think, fashions twigs into tools in order to fish out bugs imbedded in tree crevasses. One experiment tested their memory by imprinting the parents with a face wearing a mask. Years later as the young crow, having been tagged with a device, was confronted with the same mask went nuts at the sight of it. Some form of communication had been occurring between the frightened parent and the fledgling.

OK, enough musings about crows.

DL - it's y'all's fault. If you'd stop saying interesting things I'd get bored and go away. :)

John, as the good Rabbi said on TV this morning, 'Israel' means "he who struggles with God." If that is so, you are surely a modern-day Israel.

Sirje, you know how to pick your men - what a mensch.

I guess we could study one species of crow for roughly...forever....

...because Poe placed them at the scene? OR, Alfred Hitchcock sealed their reputation back in the 60's. OK, probably not. I give up.
Oh wait, I just checked with "karnak" of the cyber world (Wikipedia) and it says that crows have been associated with death and the dark "underworld"

So, Bob called and said he's going to have to get out his bb gun and start shooting crows. Is there an an irony here ....

The upshot is that crows are smart; and mice are dumb. Aren't we related to mice somehow - that's why they use them for medical experiments, don't they?

I have to do something else now.

they also feed mice to what used to be the smartest animal in the kingdom...so smart, that it was able to deceive Eve. but now they all have been consigned to "eat dirt"..... (a slither of snakes?)

mega eurekas!!
there's a whole "google of answers" here.
http://www.word-detective.com/2009/02/22/murder-of-crows-etc/

and "turtles all the way down" here:
http://theolarch.tripod.com/turtle.html

Say hi to Mr. Mouse Mensch....

It must be about protecting the helpless...awww....

Guess I also had H. pylori (as yet uncomfirmed) but when a stomach ulcer perforates, you know you've got a real problem--resulting in going to sugery at 3 am, and after a dozen or more doctors had prodded, x-rayed and palpated, and no diagnosis; it was a mystery to them until then.

Now, tell me that if one is a vegetarian and doesn't do all the "no-no's" we Adventists have been taught, that such problems won't occur, especially in disguise. Where and when did H.pylori originate?l Or AIDS? Hepatitis? So many diseases that supposedly were never in the Garden. If microevolution is so prolific, why is macroevolution an impossibility?

Did God turn over to the Devil the ability to produce all sorts of diseases? Where did the original cells come from before mutation? So many questions, so few answers.

I like mice. I like crows. I'm sorry they carry germs & do bad things sometimes. Just like us.

Sirje, I thank you & your husband for the compassion.

Elaine, I'm so glad you're better. That sounds like a very frightening medical emergency to go through.

Elaine, I'm so glad you're better also - take good care of yourself! (I'm sure you do...it's just the shist factor here on earth!)

Hey - I'm still riding this bull of "overcoming the world" & I think y'all are nicely on topic!

dl, thanks.
They're the result of good advice ; )

iow, should one drink boiling water to kill 'em?

hardly.

so I can't settle the warm beer vs cold beer controversy. But I'll be more careful exchanging saliva now that I think of it..... there was a blurb on the net about sick pets transferring pathogens while kissing their owners........ gonna have to teach my girls to gargle.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1748566245143&set=a.1748565885134...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406072915.htm

Maggie...thanks for the broccoli....which my "girls" and I do get with our rice, beans and occasional recycled bovine or Big Franks.....thanks also for reminding me to visit SciDaily more often, cause today's link confirms more of the "shiva hypothesis" of the universe cyclically "impacting" earths otherwise natural processes.....

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120305160814.htm

there has been controversy over why North Americas mammoths and large animals disappeared some 13kyo..... which the above gives evidence for the extraterrestrial option.

PS: my German father-in-law used to say the same thing as your Grosse Mutti.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by Sirje Walkowiak - Sun, 03/04/2012 - 18:56

"Remember the "bicameral mind"? My head is still spinning - what is it - 4 or 5 years since we did that one? For some reason it popped into my mind as we're trying to discuss God even though I don't remember if I understood any of it at the time. (...)

The artist is separate from his art, even as he's very much part of it - not in the paint; or the wood; or in the stone. So what is it that gives us such a powerful picture of the artist? How does the spirit of the artist get into all those fabrications? Since He's not 'out there,' where?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Really good stuff, I think, Sirje. Also what Graeme said here:

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by Graeme E Sharrock - Fri, 02/10/2012 - 06:19

A few decades back, it became popular in lit crit circles to speak of "the death of the author". A seminal text by Roland Barthes announced the point that once a book or text or painting has been completed and let loose in the world, then the author no longer controls its interpretation and meaning. Works of art exist independently of their creators--especially after they pass away--and the meaning of a text can no longer be constrained to what its author first intended. Intention passes away with the intender, and a new life for any poem or novel or symphony becomes possible.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Greig said a similar thing here:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by Joe Greig - Wed, 12/21/2011 - 07:32, Day Break On The Jabbok: Talking to Myself

I believe an artist or a poet may create a work of art, but one can never say it is finished. As it is viewed or read by those inspired by it, subtle images and new meanings, hidden by the paint, stone, or words, are continually brought out of the artistic matrix.

http://spectrummagazine.org/blog/2011/11/04/day-break-jabbok-talking-myself

---------------------------------------------------------------------

So all that puts me in mind of Carl Jung's Transcendent Function, which I'm sure others know a great deal more about than I.

Does what Dr. Greig calls "the artistic matrix" exist? If so, then, as Sirje asks, "where?"

Does "new life" really come into being through art, as Graeme suggests?

Can it all be reduced to the epiphenomena of neural processes?

Then why, pray tell WHY, does it seemed to be patterned "outside" us, in the greater universe?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Krista Tippett: "Uncovering the Codes for Reality."

I'm Krista Tippett. This is On Being — from APM, American Public Media.

Sylvester James Gates Jr. is a professor and director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland. I interviewed him once before, years ago, for a program on Einstein's ethics. We talked then about the inspiration he drew from Einstein's little-remembered passion for racial equality.

James Gates spent part of his own childhood attending segregated schools, but he went on to become the first African-American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university.

And his work on supersymmetry — a feature of the universe that might help illustrate string theory — is part of the greatest controversy in physics since Einstein. How to explain the fact that the universe seems to follow different rules at its highest levels and its smallest levels? String theorists suggests that deeper than atoms, deeper than electrons, behind quarks, filaments or strings of vibrating energies animate all the richness and diversity of the cosmos.

Transcript:
http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/codes-for-reality/transcript....

Listen:
http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/codes-for-reality/

Check out them adinkas!

Sirje, maybe being amazed is the beginning of being defragged, and maybe we don't have to wait for pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by:

Physicist Dr. Gates: Quite frankly, I oscillate. It feels as though one makes a discovery of something that was already there. It often feels that way. It's almost like the equations are trying to tell you a story. It's a little bit what I hear about when authors discuss how they work, that when you write a character, then the character at some point begins to take over and begin to determine …

Ms. Tippett: Right. They come to life.

Dr. Gates: Right, come to life, and then gets you to tell the story that the character wants to tell. This sense of finding the mathematics that was already there is very similar to that, I think. That we discover these things, but there's something that seems to be pushing often. I mean, when you do the calculations, it's as if there's an imperative to follow a path and that this path then tells you the deeper story that the equations are trying to get out for us.

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/codes-for-reality/transcript....

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Sirje said: Some thoughts on reality - there isn't any way of knowing what we're about on our own.

_______________________________________

My point exactly: it appears that we're not "on our own."

But I seriously question your use of "outside force," and that Jesus is "stage right." :)

But I seriously question your use of "outside force," and that Jesus is "stage right." :)

OK, what seems to us to be "outside" of our experience. Or, it might just be "phase" two of a process. I sure can get carried away by the analogies sometimes. :)

I was thinking of us "strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage", and God coming on the scene to carry us over to "Scene II".

But it is silly to be constraining God to TIME or PLACE.

As Dr. Weiss quoted, "If anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him."

In him.

Or, is the human Romantic impulse an expression of the Jesus story in its many facets.
"WAS" Jesus a Romantic? So, I question your use of "was".

You could not discover the limits of soul (psyche), even if you traveled every road to do so; such is the depth (batun) of its meaning (logos).
--Heraclitus