God, physical pain, injury, sorrow, injustice .... and beauty

Below is an excerpt from a letter to a bro,

I think you make a great point and do so in very few words, and I appreciate that:

1. God does not seem (to you) to be just, given natural and man-made disasters
2. God instead seems ironic, given the same disasters.

You make an excellent reply, and it deserves a reply.

Here is my initial attempt.

God has indeed created a world in which disasters, both great and small naturally take place, but in doing so God has not been unjust.

Could God have created a physical world in which no such disasters occur? Perhaps yes. In fact, it may be the case -- if we live in a multiverse -- that such a world may exist. I don't know, nor do I think that anyone else who walks this earth can know.

I do notice, however, that the world in which we exist... with all it's pain and sufffering... is beautiful when considered as a whole.

I note, furthermore, that a world in which no such pain and suffering existed would be a world without evolution (which I consider quite beautiful as a whole, even though parts of it are ugly). BUT a world without evolution would be a world without Leo White. And since I love the fact that I exist, I am therefore really glad that this world, with all of its problems, exists. God can make all the perfect worlds that He wants, as long as He also makes (and continues to sustain) this Leo-friendly, (and a you-friendly) world. Even though it's a world that has a history of development that is inseparable from those processes that cause suffering, I am glad that it IS the world that it is.

This world as a whole is beautiful, even with all of its problems. And what is MOST beautiful about it seems to be human freedom. We have the opportunity to exercise it marvelously, especially in the face of suffering. The moral beauty of things like risk, courage, perseverance, faithfulness, patience, heroism can occur only in the face of our vulnerability to suffering.

I would dare to add, however, that any adequate response we may have to the difficult aspects of this world draws its strength from Jesus Christ. For His passion and death and resurrection... gave this world (with all of its problems) a transcendent meaning. Consider how he took one of the worst injustice anyone has ever suffered and used it as an opportunity to express love as beautifully as it has ever been said. And in His resurrection He has triumphed over death in a way that gives us hope. Further discussion of this topic may have to wait for another day. But I note it here to make it clear that a complete response to the problem of suffering is a faith response, not a merely philosophical one.

One possible objection would be that be that this talk of beauty is a diversion from the question of divine justice/ irony. By "irony" I understand you to be saying that even though are supposed to be just, it seems that God is unjust. Consider the infant born with severe health problems. Great suffering, but no ability to respond to it in a way that would display any kind of moral beauty. Just (apparently) pointless suffering. Hence the following question: "Sure, some suffering makes moral beauty possible, but couldn't God have excluded POINTLESS suffering from this world?"

Well, that objection deserves to be addressed. But before I try to do that, I'll run the rest of this by you....

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others. But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and may eventually go out of existence. The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual. The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being. In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...

The Human Question

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