Tonight's homework is a bit of a tangent...still related to the ethical inquiries we've been pursuing, but not necessarily specific to any one of them. I just thought it was fascinating enough to share with you.
It's the P.o.E. (Problem of Evil) Project, sponsored by the University of Notre Dame. Click over to the "Project Overview" tab once you're there, and read their explanation of this supposed "problem."
HW: Post a brief comment here giving some short, thoughtful reaction to something you see on that site - a quotation, a shocking idea, a conclusion with which you agree...
Man is wicked and miserable. Everyone is aware of this from what goes on within himself, and from the commerce he is obliged to carry on with his neighbor. It suffices to have been alive for five or six years to be completely convinced of these two truths…monuments to human misery and wickedness are found everywhere – prisons, hospitals, gallows, beggars…Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.
ReplyDeleteI love this! This is absolutely correct! All we learn throughout of life is about the bads, like war and depression. Then we hear of the good times, which inevitably lead to inflations and more wars, or possibly end in mass death, like our friend the black plague. Then we kill each other over religion.
What kind of God can one infer from the sort of phenomena epitomized by the species on Darwin’s Galápagos Islands? The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror. . . . Whatever the God implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, He is not the Protestant God of waste not, want not. He is also not a loving God who cares about His productions. . . . The God of the Galápagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray. (David L. Hull, The God of the Galápagos. 1991. Nature 352:485f.)
ReplyDeleteI totaly agree with this, and I am suprised that a super-catholic institution like Notre Dame actually put this on their website.
Although I don't believe in god, I don't think that a mere mortal could understand his actions. While we might look at some horrible event and wonder why god didn't prevent it, it may have been according to a divine plane. For example, maybe a baby that dies in birth would have grown up to commit atrocities. For this reason, I don't think that we can ask why a all-loving god would harm his creations and from that question his existance.
ReplyDeleteI liked that this project is highlighting the flaws in moral ethics. Many moral ethics are based on the good and bad that we oursleves create but there are forces that are just evil without any influence. I think it's a good way of showing this side of society.
ReplyDeleteI agree with greg in that if all actions are controlled by God then there is a logical or moral reason behind it. And at times events like the baby do happen. Also, article is completely right about the reasoning of moral ethics and it's standpoint.
ReplyDeleteThe questions of how and why such evils exist in a world that, according to many, is created and sustained by a loving and powerful God have been collected under the name “the problem of evil.”
ReplyDeleteWhy would evil be created by god he is tryin to help people not makwe them into a evil image. Maybe if someone has went against gods word then evil might be put apon he or she. He also says something about a broken world, this doesnt mean that god is controling the evil within everyone, there just consequences for doing something morally bad. Its like karma do something bad it will bite you in the ass later on.
I'm interested to hear the findings of the project. I like how the project crosses many different subject fields, such as religion, philosophy, and metaphysics, and I think that the 17th century is a great time period to study.
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