Not quite the full, riveting, in-depth (and hopefully concise) post I've been intending. Another filler.
I've spent half the night cleaning my study/BatCave, and found some of my lecture notes from the Philosophy of Religion class I took earlier this year.
I'll just preface this by saying I tend to be a little irreverent, and frequently found myself in the company of my good friends Clairebears and Megan (the former cynical, the latter staunchly atheist), and we tended to share our thoughts quietly and surreptitiously. And in my defence, the lecturer (with the entirely appropriate name of John Bishop, a friendly gentleman reminiscent of a marginally unfocused Stephen Fry) actively discouraged extensive note-taking in favour of mulling over the issues raised in an attempt to comprehend them. A surprisingly easy task for anyone that's studied much in the way of religion, philosophy, or Western history.
Lecture 5: The Argument from Evil
Can God make an argument so circular even He cannot bear it?
Argument: God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omni-benevolent. If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, there would be no evil.
Evil exists, therefore God is not all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good.
Rephrased Argument: If God is omnipotent and omni-benevolent, how is it that McLeod's Daughters exists?
Answer: Perhaps God is all-knowing, all-powerful, but a total flake?
Perhaps God is merely a mendacious cunt?
Perhaps God is all-good and all-powerful, but for whatever reason, chooses to allow (or cause) suffering to exist, for a higher good, for example.
What could be so good to allow a necessarily evil to exist?
Can't have Easter eggs without the Christian appropriation of Pagan festivals.
Good: Music
Necessary evil: Hanson
Megan (or Claire): Why does the Vatican have a lightning rod?
Me: To stab the devil in a giant Mecha duel
Ordered World Theodicy: evils exist as inherent operation of an ordered cosmos...
Image: cute little bunny sat beneath a falling tree
Poor Mr. Bunningsworth falls victim to an ordered cosmos...
Me: Note: Lecturer frustrated with tutor
Megan: LOL! Tutor is a DICK
University, it's so enlightened!
Ooh, am I now famous? :-D
ReplyDeleteYes, it was me that asked why the Vatican has a lightning rod. I still don't understand that.
And dear gods that tutor pissed me off so damn much. It was satisfying to see even the lecturer was getting frustrated with him though.
I have to say I never quite understood why an ordered cosmos necessarily had to be ordered so as to include evil (at least in as many forms as our cosmos does). What makes evil (especially evil such as extended suffering) inherent to an ordered cosmos?
Yes, you are indeed now an Interwebrity... insofar as featuring in my blog means anything. If you want to gain more popularity you'll have to leak a sex-tape and bargain with that to feature on crappy reality television.
ReplyDeleteThe lightning rod on the Vatican is an intrusion of sound reasoning on an organisation that normally trusts in authority and faith.
Yeah, the tutor was, well, a little bit naff. Did he mark the stage 3 essays? Because I did stupidly well with my review of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, it was the final exam that somewhat let me down in comparison (all those interruptions from those loud-ass Law students my GOD!). But yes, so funny and gratifying to see the STFU look on the lecturer's face when the tutor kept flapping his gums. Inflated sense of self-worth, that man... he followed the Dark Side of Philosophy, the sort that takes Critical Thinking exclusively so he can have more complex ways of calling people idiots.
The Ordered Cosmos thing... you may be extending it a bit far. It's a counter to the claim of naturally occurring evil, which is to say, accidental or non-malicious suffering. In much the same way as the Free Will argument is meant to counter the claim of human evil.
The point being argued is that the world functions with these natural laws that are intelligible, laws we can understand and use as our framework for guessing cause&effect, the very thing that allows us to exist consciously outside of the immediate reality of any given moment. You see smoke seeping in under your door, you see an orange glow in the keyhole, you extrapolate further that behind the door somewhere is a fire, you consider the issue and conclude that fires naturally spread (prior anecdotal evidence and an understanding of fire you gained during intermediate or high school), you take action to avoid burning to death. This is possible because of the ordered cosmos. It has laws, and if you fall foul of the laws, it's still better than arbitrarily suffering because existence is entirely unintelligible.
Kinda like a Greek saying one of my classics teachers many, many years ago was fond of, roughly boiling down to there being no fortune or justice, only consequences.