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....

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ]. Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man's sin, but human death.

The Human Question

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