So, God sort of sees all of time played out right before time begins, you making your own choices. He knows you will make these choices (along with everything else that will ever happen), so he becomes omniscient, then starts the time-ball rolling? Is that kind of what you mean, Gaudere? Sort of that the separate “time” that God lives in is malleable, and he can see our choices before, after, and while we make them, because he can sort of decide to stand at the end of time at will and look back upon our lives? However, it is only malleable because he is God (and omnipotent), and time, for us, is linear?
That’s not a bad argument, indeed…I still see some sort of vague flaw in it, but I can’t figure out what at this moment. Or maybe I’m just tired of thinking right now!
The Kyberneticist, whose demonological research I admire ;), seeks my answers to this:
Uh, yeah. The world is full of challenges, disturbances, and so on. If you accept its being created by God, He put them there. Point taken. But you see, I don’t buy a difference between “natural effects” and “God’s will” in the sense of what He’s fated for the world. And yes, given that we’re thriving in a relatively benign world where the occasional catastrophe does indeed happen but where life finds a relatively comfortable home, He is looking out for us. Again, I draw the metaphor of a Father allowing a maturing child to “test his wings” rather than protecting him from what might hurt him…warning of what might kill him or permanently injure him but allowing him to climb the tree and perhaps fall and break his arm, to ride the bike or skateboard even though he’ll fall off and get road rash, etc. That was His metaphor, and if you apply the “kill or permanently injure” to the moral realm and allow the rest to stand, given that He has said not to fear bodily death but rather the death of the soul, then maybe it’s not too horrible a metaphor to work with.
I have a good friend who, in the 13 years I’ve known him, has parlayed an old truck, $300 in the bank, a moribund master’s degree, and part ownership in some ramshackle housing into over $6,000,000 through intense perseverance and native skill. For much of that time I worked with him. (He’s now closed his business and is living off what his capital is earning him, seeking spiritual depth, at least partly in Eastern mysticism. And I’m proud of him for it.) What I’ve learned from him was that he would listen to my arguments and objections on the projects we worked on, but make the final decisions on what would be done and what not himself. And, amazingly, when he gambled on something I wouldn’t risk, it usually paid off, and when he was cautious where I didn’t see the need to be, hindsight proved him right in being so.
In short, it wasn’t what I knew but what he knew that turned the trick for his successful business. And I extend that thinking to God and me. I don’t know what He has in mind. I do know that I can trust Him. And therefore, I don’t worry overmuch about these problems, but do trust Him. That for me is not a copout to “mysterious ways,” but the acceptance of expert authority. Who knows more about the world than its Creator?
And one quick and final point on this: without Chicxulub, we wouldn’t be here posting this stuff. It’d still be dinosaurs from sea to shining sea.
Here’s where I jump to the “I don’t know” answer. When you have design questions, you don’t ask the PR flack, but the Architect. You’re right on the idea that praying for supernatural intervention against the unexplained terrors of the world is likely superstition we need to get beyond. It does not demand that there be no God, just that the rather childish conception of Him implicit in that superstition is invalid. And almost any Christian can give you examples of “answered prayer” where a request for help was fulfilled from a improbable but natural source – an unexpected check sufficient to cover the rent came in the mail, somebody happened to drive down the dark country road with the skills to fix your stalled-out car, and so on. If you accept the idea of a God interested in His creation but tending to generally, if not always, work through natural means, then they are indeed “answered prayers.” That they have natural explanations does not refute their nature as answered prayers, just as realizing that a rainbow is suspended water droplets and not Iris’s the Huntswoman’s bow does not make it any less beautiful a sight.
Well, I do consider viruses as living, particularly DNA ones. That they grow and reproduce only within living cells does not make them non-living but fits the definition of an obligatory parasite. Though you didn’t bring up AIDS, it’s probably fitting to bring it in here. And my take on that is that find a cure for it’s a worthy goal to bring us to a more mature and humanitarian attitude: here’s an incurable disease that is understood to primarily attack groups that have traditionally been looked down on: gay men, drug users, the promiscuous, hemophiliacs, Haitians, native Africans. (And please, nobody, challenge that grouping on the basis that new trends in who it attacks debunk that list: I’m talking public perception at this point: who Wildest Bill or a MPSIMS-only poster might say comes down with AIDS. Thanks.) If people can overcome their prejudices and work to find a cure, and in the meantime find compassion for those dying of it, then atheist and believer alike could agree that we’ve grown some in a direction we ought to be going.
Perhaps. You’re welcome to if you like. I have some partial answers that suit me. I don’t have all the answers and never claimed to. I think there’s some questions here that need answering. And I suspect that we may not be asking the right questions.
And one final point: according to Jesus, we who follow Him are supposed to do “mightier works than I” – the idea that God might just be putting the burden of fixing the world’s problems on the people He created with the skills, knowledge, and will to fix them may have more to do with what’s going on (or not going on, as in divine intervention stopping the volcano from killing people, for example, than anybody, believer or not, would like to admit.
