Some Updates and Thoughts

The Delay. I've been away a while, obviously, and it's really been the fault of the new semester. I have one more class than I did in the Fall, but that's not quite what's keeping me busy. It's that I'm taking four literature classes and a 200 level French course - so I've got at least 60 pages of reading to do every night, with the occasional writing assignment (which come often, considering the volume of classes with involved writing elements), and all the while I'm studying French and trying to sound less and less like some stupid white kid trying to speak a foreign language. Certain words and phrases are coming along better than others. If it involves a "tr" or a "pr," then fuckin' forget.

Obama. What to say about Obama. Well, he's done better than anyone could have expected, considering what we all thought about his naivete with Congress and what we perceived as a steep learning curve. He's pulled only one punch thus far that I've noticed, and that was his refusal to call out the centrists on Capitol Hill for destroying a stimulus bill that was already too weak to begin with. But hey, before that he said "I won so stop bitching, GOP," "My bad, I take responsibility," and "Kobe Bryant is the best player in the world." And yes, he actually said that last one.

But where did Obama go wrong? Well, it came rather late into his Presidency, thus far - meaning a few days ago. He said, roughly, "Pass my stimulus bill or there will be catastrophe." Now, that's fuckin' bullshit, Obama, and you know it. Fear-mongering is never a good thing; it's always bad. If you have to use fear to further an agenda, then you should let that agenda slide, or, if it's the only way you can convince people of what you're saying, then fuck the people - they don't deserve whatever it is you're trying to push. So, please, no fear-mongering. Those ball sucking bastards for the last eight years gave us enough of that shit.

Philosophy. Another thing I've been pondering is probably more in line with what Philippi's been suggesting lately: some philosophy. Now, this is religious philosophy, and maybe he wasn't interested particularly in that aspect of philosophy, but that's what he's getting.

I've been thinking about the Grand Inquisitor's story, a passage (a long one, too) in The Brothers Karamazov (a book by Fyodor Dostoevski) where Ivan Ilyviecheksfiehfiejsl tells a story about Jesus coming back to Earth because he sees mankind suffering and wants to end it. Aside from not raising the question of why he waited so fuckin' long, the story talks about the central issue in Christianity, a question that all Christians need to answer before they continue putting their faith in whatever the hell it is they put faith in:

Why do humans suffer?

It's that simple (and complex) of a question. You can't be a Christian without answering this question. And if you "are" and haven't, you're a moron. But think about it: why do humans suffer? How can religion, Christianity specifically, account for the horrible horrors humans have suffered for, um, ever? In the story above, the Grand Inquisitor asks this very question, repeatedly, of Jesus, who says nothing. Eventually, Jesus walks up and kisses the GI and then leaves. The point is that love is the answer, and always will be, but that doesn't really answer the question, and I think Dostoevski knew that. He was just as confused as the rest of us. He was attempting to be a good Christian but had doubts, lots of them, because he's really fuckin' smart, and smart people read the Bible and wonder about a lot of things.

In 1981, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner attempted to answer this question and wrote a book about it called "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." His basic premise is that for humans to be human we have to have the free will to choose between good and evil. That, he sort of assumes offhand, is what makes us human. And for this to obtain, God has to let there be evil in the world; he has to let us choose for ourselves. Thus, bad things happen to good people because humans make bad choices. (Notice how nothing is ever God's fault? I've yet to see a theologian come out and say "Well, shit, guys, we never thought of it: a BAD god! Why, we never thought that was even possible!")

Aside from annoying the shit out of me, I think Kushner's got some problems. First, he assumes that free will is what makes us human, and I'm not so sure - about what makes us human, that is. He may be right, but being "human" seems to be so complex that to sum it up with a simple idiom about free will seems dissatisfying. And it also negates the very real possibility that we even have free will. Read up on determinism and see if you're not a little bit interested.

Second, he assumes that God has to be an inherently good figure, a premise for which there's little evidence. Of course, there's little evidence for the contrary, that God's an inherently evil figure, but that's the point: we got nothing. We've got a shitload of good things going on and a shitload of bad things going on: who's to say he's one or the other with any certainty? Who's to say he's even there at all?

And third, he assumes an omni-benevolent God that somehow gets around the paradox of watching bad things happen to humans while having the power to stop it. If a God is all-good, then he can never do anything wrong or evil or bad. Thus, he can't possibly watch us all suffer; it would go against his nature and his ability to do something about it. So belief in a God that's omni-benevolent seems difficult: God loves us unconditionally and can never do anything wrong and yet lets us shit on ourselves with reckless abandon.

In the scheme of things, this is just another paradox that theologians know about it, everyone one of them, but refuse to talk about it. Seriously, ask a pastor/preacher/religious-guy-waving-a-bible-in-your-face about some paradoxes involving God's perfections and he'll give you the run around - or better yet, he'll say we can only understand God analogously, and thus we can't know the answer to everything. But we can still put unconditional faith in God?


You might not be interested, but if we presume to know God analogously, then we might as well give the whole thing up: analogical predication can't work. Ask me later if you're interested in the ten minute explanation.

So this all gets us back to why humans suffer and how a Christian needs to satisfy the question before adopting supreme faith in God. Kushner's got some funky ideas that are easy enough to understand to get him on the best-seller's list but he doesn't really satisfy. His system would work, I suppose, if we consider God to be imperfect, to be one of us. Maybe he's just really powerful, but not ultimately, (WARNING: Latin phrase ahead) in extremis. He wants us to live and be free and so he watches us, like an ant farm, and intervenes occasionally but makes everything difficult to know and understand, even himself, and so we're left to wander to the world wondering if he's there at all.

That's a possiblity, and certainly one that's been entertained on occasion, but here's why it bothers me: if God is this way, just a watcher and an occasional actor with finite power, then why should I even care what he thinks? He's just me but with a bigger stick. He's another powerful politician. He needs to do something to get my vote, and until he starts feeding the poor and fixing that big hole in the middle of the world called Africa, I'm not voting for him.

Now, normally I would introduce another religious question and talk about it...and then another one...and probably another one. But I'm sure I'm the only one interested in this stuff. Hell, most Christians don't give a shit, so why should anyone else? Anyways, here's a photo for you.