Stones Cry Out

Jim Anderson considers my turning the Theodicy question around. He suggests that this, in essence, means this is the “best of all possible worlds.” Now I suppose that could be a charge put to an omnipotent Good God, that is if this is not a Panglossian utopia … why not? But my claim in flipping theodicy was weaker than that. Let me try to isolate more abstractly (or succinctly) the question I had posed.

1. God wishes the love of his creatures. Love cannot be coerced his creatures must be free willed.
2. Following Kass’ arguments in The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis from Genesis 1, creation is (and should therefore be) reasonable, that its workings comprehensible to rational creatures.

So, we have a rationally understandable universe in which creatures within it can do evil things if they choose. The ‘trap’ here for your omnipotent God wanting to prevent evil is the brute force approach is unworkable. That is if somehow an evil person, say SW (Snidely Whiplash), is prevented by deus ex machina or Rube Goldbergian coincidence every time he attempts acts of gratuitous violence they fail that this will make it impossible for a rational person to reject God.

Mr Anderson brings 6 points to bear.

1. His first point is one of imagination. He cannot imagine a rational universe with free willed actors without evil. He asks if his failure of imagination “imagine a world you can’t imagine” is a problem.
2. A “rigorously logical attempt will be confounded by the Butterfly Effect” … is an objection I don’t understand.
3. Point three (that there might be too much gratuitous evil in the world) argues that this is likely not the “best of all possible words”, a point I am not defending.
4. Point four reflects on point 3.
5. His fifth point is incomplete, considering that an “inversion of the Ontological Argument” might be necessary when considering the inversion of the Theodicy problem.
6. Is a self-directed ad hominem. That is, the evil in the world reflects really really poorly on us men and if it is indeed necessary it is callous to think that men have been, perhaps, constructed so that we were more naturally nice fellows.

This last point offers perhaps a clue as to where we might find a better universe, that is one populated by men less inclined to do evil?

The comments in his post trend toward mathematical thinking and I’ll offer one mathematical comparison. A school of mathematics is not happy with the method of proof by contradiction. A proof by contradiction demonstrates a fact not by construction but by demonstrating that a thing is impossible without really pointing to exactly why, i.e., by demonstrating that implications of a thing lead to a contradiction.

This “turnaround” of theodicy is perhaps similar, in that it suggests that assuming the opposite that is that a better universe is possible leads to a problem, that is our constructions of better universes have inherent contradictions, i.e., SW is magically ineffective.

Good morning.

1. Judas and a question.
2. On the bombings in Moscow.
3. Skilz.
4. A prediction.
5. Fun with numbers.
6. If you ever wonder how Mr Obama has been tied to sci-fi imagery … look no further.
7. Very light. Stupid light?
8. How? By selling them? No seriously, poor regions lacking any other financial means have nothing but their children for their retirement. Doesn’t that have to be fixed first?
9. The “Sandra Bullock” trade offered for consideration more abstractly.
10. A gay man considers Mr Phelps and a lawsuit.
11. Our congressmen … and this quote from Mr Obama “Mr. Obama with his characteristic empathy acknowledged there are ‘folks who have legitimate concerns … that the federal government may be taking on too much.’” Ya think? To bad he has no answer nor do his supporters.
12. I’m not sure that’s an April 1 post.

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#40.Russ Reid. Fundraiser b.1935

Follow the money. When you do in the evangelical sector over the last generation, following the money that it took to launch and support many of the great ministries and missions and projects of the time, the trail would take you to and through the offices of a fast-talking Californian with a sparkle in his eyes and many new ideas for funding mission: Russ Reid.

For many today, Russ Reid is the name of the firm, with little notice that it is also the man who launched the firm and remains a fascinating study. Russ Reid is the founder and leader of the first of the large fund development agencies that became partners with Christian organizations, using direct response fundraising to find support for their work. Russ said: “There is no shortage of money, only a shortage of well-articulated causes.”

Russ Reid has helped articulate a lot of causes.

Originally he had trained for the ministry, but finally realized that he was more of a marketing guy than a pastor. In the late 1950s he went to work for Word Publishing in Waco, Texas. There he learned all about direct response through book-of-the-month clubs and by marketing books through direct mail. Along the way, he noticed some wonderful organizations doing great work to help others, but they didn’t know how to tell their own stories, or how to raise money.

Russ had a vision—to start a company that would help nonprofit organizations make a bigger difference in the world. He founded the Russ Reid Company in 1964, and Word Publishing became his first client. Later he moved the company to Park Ridge, Illinois, and worked with small ministries as he got up and running. In 1966, Russ was able to get a project from World Vision. At that time, World Vision was conducting projects around the world on an annual budget of about $5 million (today they’re approaching $2 billion in annual revenue).

In 1972, as his work with World Vision increased, Russ decided to move from Chicago to Arcadia, California, near World Vision’s Monrovia headquarters. At that time, the way World Vision acquired sponsors was by speaking at churches and showing a film about the plight of children in the developing world.

Russ had an idea. He approached World Vision EVP Ted Engstrom and proposed that they film Art Linkletter traveling around the world and meeting these children in need, bring that film back, and instead of going from church to church, put it on television.

Ted Engstrom got approval from the board for this expensive, risky project, and reportedly said to Russ afterwards, “What will we do if this doesn’t work?” Russ laughed and said, “Ted, we’ll have the most expensive church film in history.”

It did work, beyond expectations, and the World Vision television specials were born–the first major television fundraising of their kind. Many of followed, and Russ Reid has been involved with many of them.

Over the last 40 years, Russ Reid’s little company has grown from one guy with an idea about helping people who help people, to what is now the largest agency in the world exclusively devoted to helping nonprofit organizations grow.

Russ says: “Giving life and health and hope to children in poverty, to the homeless, to people with cancer is significant work. It’s life-changing work. For me, it’s part of what gets me up in the morning, excited about coming to work.”

Good morning.

1. Arctic mineral rights.
2. Russia and Chechnya.
3. Contra self-esteem with no mention of Evagrius.
4. Progressives against poetry. Oddly enough however, he admits the term AD would be fine … which translates directly as “In the Year of Our Lord” to which he objects. What is it about progressives and their (selective?) dislike of poetry and metaphor?
5. And to pick on Mr Schraub a little more, yet again we find that self-named feminists can’t bring themselves around to criticising pornography qua pornography for its harmful role vis a vis women.
6. Being a young girl in the Afghan region.
7. Whining and kids these days. Back in my college days I remember being assigned to read War and Peace in its entirety over the one week Spring recess.
8. A Palm Sunday memorial you won’t see in the states.
9. Coming out.
10. The history of the student loan government takeover.
11. 3 new confessors.
12. Beam.
13. Washington’s inaccurate view of business. 
14. Economics and a video.
15. The loyal opposition and a call for a benefit of doubt.
16. John Polkinghorn.
17. Taxes and more on taxes. The second link is yet another big economic problem for raising taxes on “the rich” to pay for healthcare.

Saturday night my wife and I went to the symphony. One of the pieces we heard was Symphony no. 4 by Sergei Prokofiev. In the program notes, one of the things we were informed about this symphony was that it borrowed heavily from an earlier work a ballet entitled The Prodigal Son. Furthermore we were informed that the third movement borrowed from a section of the ballet which introduced (for sex appeal) a seductive dance by a female dancer/love interest, added to the story to increase popularity apparently. So when the the third movement came around, I was expecting seductive or melodic patterns that would fit a seductive dance. Yet I got a surprise. The third movement, to my ears, was quirky humorous and, well, goofy. To my minds eye, the exotic dance would feature a grinning minx with strident makeup, mismatched pigtails, a flouncy dress, and a puckish grin and attitude.

Here’s my point. While this is on occasion what I might find captivating and perhaps seductive … I think of myself unusual in this regard. I’ll freely admit, for example, in the Magic Flute, I’m more interested in the Popageno/Popagena love story than Tamino/Pamina story. What do you think of humor and puckish elements as part of seduction?

Theodicy is basically the question of how might a omnipotent good God permit bad things to happen to good or innocent people. This brings me to a question to which I have no good answer. Is there a better way of doing things than the sort of world in which we live? Qualities we consider the Trinitarian God posses include a notion that free loving relationships are of primary importance. God therefore loves us and desires us to love him. Love cannot be coerced but must be freely given. On the apologetics boundary, in discussions between those who believe and those who don’t, theodicy is pointed at as a discussion about whether or not God can exist or not given the existence of evil. But, this question can be turned another way. That is to ask given a God with certain properties does our world fit the expectations of the sort of world that God might create?

So, what properties do we think that a loving God who desires the free-willed love of his creation might possess? One might suggest that the following two qualities be present; that one might rationally choose to love Him and to rationally choose to not do so and that the creatures in that world be free to act against what He might wish. Furthermore observing that those creatures (us) that he has created are (nominally) rational, following Genesis 1 (and the Kass reading of the same) that it is good that the world in which we dwell be rational.

When one considers rape or murder of an innocent and natural disasters, those are typically the problems to which questions of theodicy are more clearly in evidence. These things occur in our world with regrettable regularity. So here’s the flip side theodicy question; that is, if you think theodicy inconsistent with the existence of a omnipotent loving Good God, how would creation differ if that was the case? Does a world in which natural disasters only strike the wicked allow for a person to rationally turn away from God? Does a world in which a rapist is halted by invisible forces allow that?

The claim is that theodicy is an intractable problem for the believer given the evil in the world. I think that this is not necessarily the case, but that those who object to the current state of affairs have failed to provide examples of a reasonable alternative world. Failing to do that means their theodicy objections lack force, that is they object to a state of affairs which may actually be exactly what is prescribed.

This song by Ross King was the special music last Sunday.  It asks some tough questions and points out some hard truths.  I knew I had to let folks know about it.

The words are below the fold, but they’re also displayed during the video.

"Clear the Stage", Ross King

Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. A discussion of the origin of a word.
2. Metal or paper? And no, in answer to a question a few days ago, (most of) my (retirement) investments are not in gold, but in index funds.
3. Considering federalism.
4. Calvin.
5. Abandon climate change.
6. Indifference and church.
7. How much luggage? How many passengers? Ice? Rain? 
8. Bush and Obama and their passover/holy week messages. What a weird exegesis of Exodus, btw. I wonder how that hermeneutic applies to Judges.
9. Employment. A map.
10. Why does any one read Yglesias? 
11. Mr Obama’s foreign policy.
12. On confession.
13. Tuesday of holy week, in the west. In the East, tonight the third and last bridegroom matins focuses on a comparison of the prostitute anointing Jesus feet and Judas betrayal.

Dan Brown is just the famous and perhaps the least competent academically qualified person to link Gnosticism with Early Christian theology. The popular notion is that gnosticism is a Christian heresy, that was suppressed and/or attacked an ultimately eliminated in conflict, irenic and not so much, during the early church. In my recent class on the New Testament, we were taught about the ideas of one of the leading authorities on Gnosticism, Birger Pearson who argues something different. Gnosticism was not a Christian heresy. It was a completely separate religion which in fact predated Christianity.

Gnosticisms primary beliefs include:

1. Belief in an overarching monadic God.
2. Creation was not performed by the overarching deity but by a demiurge, a lesser (demonic) deity. Material creation, being ruled and controlled by mostly demonic entities is not good.
3. The goal for the eternal mortal essences is to escape and transcend the material creation. The secret teaching and knowledge (gnosis) is how this is the method by which this is accomplished.

This is a different religion. Gnosticism was very syncretic. It brought in different and other religious traditions into their mythologies for their purposes.

Some striking differences between Christian stories. The archon (demiurge) creating and in charge of Earth was known as the “Child of Chaos”, the Fool, and/or the Blind God. Similarities between this and either the Hebrew unnamed God or the Christian Trinity are not slight. In the Garden of Eden story, in gnostic tradition, the villain of the piece was the God of the garden and the hero? Satan, the serpent.

Early Christian theologians contended against gnosticism, but not as a Christian heresy but as a competing but different religion.

On Sunday, President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan to visit the troops and speak to them.  They deserved a show of support, and I’m glad they got it. 

Good morning.

1. Razor advice.
2. Capacity for aid.
3. Hmmm. I had thought one of the striking differences in cycling and other sports is that the fans celebrate a 12th place finish for their guy. I had thought that a good thing.
4. Pain.
5. More on pain.
6. Freedom, taxes and the welfare state.
7. Terror on the Moscow subway system.
8. HRW and the Nazi claim.
9. Mr Pullman’s latest book.
10. A discussion of a political cartoon.
11. Recess.
12. Masculine beauty and a study.
13. A film.

My name is Jim and I am a coffeeholic. Yes I do love coffee, and although I enjoy the various combination drinks at Starbucks, I regularly enjoy a good, rich, dark roast.

Since I’ve begun working in environmental stewardship, I’ve been learning more about not just what makes good coffee, but what makes coffee good–as in fair and just, a positive impact on those who grow it, and gentle on the environment. But all of the labels–such as shade-grown, fair-trade, and bird-friendly–have been confusing to me, as they may be to you.

A post on coffee and community at the Flourish Blog is very helpful in sorting out how individuals and churches can make coffee hour a truly redemptive time.

On the church coffee hour, it reads:

The church coffee hour is already a ministry—a time of fellowship, connection, and service for people who need the love of God and the love of our brothers and sisters. Drinking conscientiously-produced coffee and tea simply extends that ministry to brothers and sisters we may not be able to meet and greet, but who are no less deserving of love and justice. When this service is viewed as a ministry, and not just a perk or an expectation, options open up for making it work.

Check it out.

Good morning.

1. In the President’s words … apparently backtracking is a theme.
2. That’s what we need in a recession.
3. Tanning beds and the new bill.
4. 10 books meme noticed … at Volokh.
5. Ice.
6. Power napping.
7. Faith … and the stage.
8. Fixie at Wal-Mart?
9. A very cool biking video, dreams of the ordinary man or something like that.
10. Handouts continue … deficits are no concern I guess.
11. Those Healthcare lawsuits.
12. Kiss your (retirement) money good bye.
13. Talking race.
14. On the phase in … and avoiding the obvious point that the really onerous parts of the bill needed to be postponed until after certain election cycles were past.

Good … afternoon.

1. Independence day.
2. On being a foreigner.
3. A Gitmo grad.
4. From our Government motors.
5. Considering Sophocles.
6. While I too think I “know what you mean“, I think what you don’t mean is what is true, i.e., safety is not possible.
7. Salvadore Dali-bike.
8. How to shut up a professional ethicist … sort of.
9. The “GOP” is “deeply unserious” about addressing … hmm, I’d say that’s an unnecessary qualification. Politicians are unserious about most matters, healthcare being just one of them.
10. The “tea leaves” are not hard to understand. The missing piece is that cricket races (polls) are almost universally meaningless.
11. On the defence of detainee lawyers.
12. We need more of this.
13. But what we will get is this sort of thing … in healthcare … in spades, which has already happened in that Congress has exempted itself and their aides from the healthcare legislation.
14. 64 “teams” … who will win?
15. Just say no? For those who claim this HC bill will not affect healthcare innovation … how will a “medical device tax” spur innovation and improvements?

A blog I used to write was just a collection of quotes I liked.  Early one was this one:

"Smokers don’t impose health care costs on society; governments that insist on paying for smokers’ health care impose health care costs on society." — Sasha Volokh, from The Volokh Conspiracy blog

(This was done while the Volokh Conspiracy was still using Blogspot.  They’ve moved to their own domain and the old one has a completely different kind of blog on it, so sorry, no link to the original post.)

It is, of course, a more wordy version of "Guns don’t kill; people kill" saying, retasked to a new subject.  Sasha’s version was written in 2003.  Seven years later, it takes on a new meaning.

I was reminded of this quote when I read this post from Bruce McQuain.  He talks about the easy slide from Nanny State to Bully State, and how the opposition go the health care bill is and always was based on freedom, and what happens when government is given a bigger and bigger share of the freedom in this country, for whatever the good intention.  He quotes a report from the Institute for Public Affairs that lists a series of assumptions governments make when they take over health decisions.

Most of the health care burden is driven by disease that results from lifestyle decisions.

Most of the health care burden is therefore, in theory, preventable.

The cost of most lifestyle-related disease is not recovered from the individuals with such diseases or from the industries whose products contribute to these diseases.

Individual autonomy cannot be the paramount value in health care.

Individual choice as a basis for health is ‘too simplistic’.

Individual freedoms may have to give way to the coercive power of the State.

Interventions, including coercive actions, to change behaviour may proceed in the absence of evidence of their effectiveness.

Individuals have a clear responsibility to refrain from lifestyle decisions that lead to disease and, consequently, treatment can be denied to those who refuse to change their behaviour.

With the passage of the health care reform bill, we’ve already slipped about halfway down this particular slope.  Never mind smokers, Sasha, the official nationalization of this sector now means that all sorts of bad habits are guaranteed to affect everyone in the country because the government insists on it.

And this is different from insurance companies charging more for smokers or young drivers or people who sky dive.  Insurance companies can’t make these choices illegal; they can only charge you more for the higher risk you are asking them to take on.  The government, however, has far, far more power at hand.

It’s about freedom, and it’s being eroded away.