Re: ****ny Happy Caliphate

: John Schilling <schillin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: Actually, "mysterious ways" is the normal strawman response by people
: who don't feel the need to listen to the actual response.  I'm not sure
: I've *ever* heard that phrase spoken in earnest.

Of course that specific phrase isn't spoken in earnest.
But a surprising number of answers boil down to "God's doing the right
thing, but I don't know why".  Of course, *initial* responses have to
do with various motives God has for this and that.  But explore the
implications a while, explore why those motives wouldn't satisfied by some
alternate action, and you eventually get (or I have most often gotten)
"just have faith" or "it's one of the mysteries" or "trust that God has
a reason for it", "God has a plan for everything" and so on and so on.

Mind you, I'd restricting this to discussions where the existance or
motives of God is advanced as an actual *explanation* of something.
Like "God's design explains why animals are well adapted to their
environments" or "God has immediate control of all natural phenomena,
and will (eventually) punish people he disapproves of explains why
so-and-so died of aids" (or the word trade center was attacked,
or any number of other things), and so on and on.  Panda's thumb?
Not sure... must be a reason for it.  That guy led a virtuous life,
but died following a transfusion?  Trust that it's God's plan.

When God is invoked as an *explanation* for something, and God's motives
for arranging things *this* way instead of *that* way are discussed,
the "well, we mortals just can't fully comprehend" is fairly often the
essence of the answer.  Case in point:

: The issue is further complicated by the issue of Free Will, or have we
: forgotten what happened the *last* time God created a Perfect Place for
: humans to live Happily Ever After?  Create perfection, let a few billion
: people meaningfully decide what to do with it, and it may not be so
: perfect any more.

Of course it is.  So complicated that, gosh, it appears mysterious.
We mere mortals can't anticipate things on that scale, but trust me,
there's some reason God decided Free Will is a good idea, the enforcement
mechanisms against sin aren't very effective locally, He doesn't just
say hat He means, yada yada yada.

: And the flip side of that, if we're still talking specifically about
: Christianity and Islam, is the question of the afterlife.  It may be
: logically necessary that Perfect Eternal Happiness is contingent on
: some sort of quality control and/or training of the residents, less
: they go and mess it up for one another. 

Yep.  It *may* be so.  Not sure.  It's kind of mysterious.
More complicated than we mere mortals yada yada yada.

: Bottom line: it's a seriously complicated question, to which a lot of
: seriously smart people have devoted a lot of thought, and the results
: do *not* trivialize to secular atheism vs.  "mysterious ways". 

Of course it doesn't.  I'm not trying to claim it does.  I'm simply
pointing out that invoking God as an *explanation* of physical phenomena,
or even trying to figure out what His motives are, quite often ends up
with a note that God is much smarter than any human, so there.

If you want to read the mind of God, I expect that examining the physical
universe will work a bit better than speculating about His motives.


Wayne Throop   throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   http://sheol.org/throopw