I once put up a series of posts (in response to a WSJ article by David Bentley Hart on the Asian tsunami) entitled "Does Suffering Have Meaning?" One of Zippy's contributions to that conversation went as follows:
If we are a bit careful about distinguishing "greater good for God" from "greater good for me" then it seems pretty clear that God has brought about greater good for me - starting with my own existence - from suffering. I don't think the phrase "greater good for God" means much of anything, but it is fairly straightforward to talk about "greater good for me." So again, God's permissiveness with respect to evil is a manifestation of His mercy and love for me (and the rest of y'all, and every child actually conceived who will ultimately enjoy eternal life too, of course).
That is part of the point: it is better to have been conceived, died horribly in a tsunami, and spend eternal life in the Beatific Vision than it is to never have been conceived at all. Bill is right: I think that this "God doesn't make a greater good (for us) from suffering" proposition is essentially nihilistic.
Part of the trouble with the problem of evil is that it tries to start from God's point of view, not our own point of view. But building a tower to Heaven in an attempt to be exactly like God will always result in a confusion of our language: in an inability to say anything meaningful at all. Speaking as ourselves, for ourselves is another matter entirely, and it could not be more clear: God has brought about greater good (for us) from suffering...
A corollary is that evil doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with God. Literally. The fact of evil (I won't say existence of evil because that will freak out the evil-as-absence crowd) is an insult to God, at least, again, from our perspective. But it is an insult that He tolerates, and indeed has directly endured Himself personally by becoming one of us -- for our sake.
Later, when I used it in a Sunday Thought, his assessment was: "Part of the problem with my approach to the PoE is that it doesn't provide any human comfort. It does I think make a complete hash out of the anti-theistic claims it is intended to address: that is, as an arid logical argument it shows conclusively that the complaint is inherently nihilistic, in my view. But an approach to the PoE that provides no human comfort is clearly missing something essential."
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In the original post, Zippy had referred to the rightly revered Thomas "Acquinas":
Me: ...Btw, are you familiar with a spelling of "Aquinas" of which I am ignorant?
Zippy: The basic problem is that I am just barely literate, and have a subconscious but very strong tendency toward creative spelling. It might even be a result of my inner child rebelling against the conflation of formal symbols with meaning; if so, I need to hunt the little bastard down and kill him.
Another time, in 2007, I said...
"Oh, and in the last sentence to your last comment you misspelled 'misspelling'."
And said he...
Yeah, but are you supposed to use a hyphen in "anal retentive"? :-)-----------------------
Over at W4 once, Jeff Culbreath and Lydia McGrew offered, free of charge, a few recommendations as to how we might effectively deal with Islam. Commenter Rob asked, "Jeff-- While you are busy closing the mosques, will you also be closing the synagogues, which are every bit as non-Christian?"
Zippy answered for him: "Personally, that wouldn't be on the table as policy for me until Jews started crashing airplanes into skyscrapers."
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Zippy wrote a lot about the morality of voting in what he called "mass market democratic elections," the substance of which is moderately complex and not suitable for summarization. But his own resort on such occasions is rather neatly summed up thusly, by him:
With an election approaching, the usual round of "pick the lesser of two evils, if you don't you are yourself doing evil" arguments are starting up again. What I generally do on election day - and will continue to do unless by voting I can actually choose something good - is spend an hour praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.---------------
And I can't remember where or when I found this one:
In the particular case in question I thought the objectionable thing was what was being taught to children, not how it was being taught. But upon reflection... even true ideology has the tendency to place abstract truth above the actual incarnate world. And that is backwards in terms of priority, turning the truth into a lie: truth at bottom isn't about What, it is about Who.----------------------------
A commenter at Zippy's, concerning the Problem of Evil:
"It seems that your arguments about self-contradiction (or in this case, nihilism) keep bringing in God-dependent variables."
Zippy -
The POE is an assertion about God. Discussion of bicycles necessarily entails "wheel dependent variables.
Another commenter, some time, somewhere:
"Even if you don't buy that, it does appear that fascism and communism, which caused most of last century's barbarism, have been culled out."
Zippy:
So as long as you aren't the wrong sort of untermensch -- say an unborn child. (That sound you hear is modernity patting itself on the back with a curette).-------------------------
I think it is important to point out that a man acts nobly toward all women, even the basest whore, since women are that mysterious cradle of creation to which by nature we owe provision and defense.http://wluse.blogspot.com/2007/05/drive-by-posting.html
and at http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/05/feminist_autocracy_1.html#comment-395
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In the comments to this post:
The problem with reading your blog (as well as your book), Bill, is that sometimes it is just too real, and too painful for being too real. And it brings close, too close, the thing that I have been, and the things I could have been, and the thing that I could become.--------------------
God help her father. (And her mother too, of course).
St. Anthony, if ever there was a time for the charism of finding that time is now.
Me: Whatever you could have been, God made something better of it, and He won't let you go gently.
In one of my posts, entitled "More moral and religious eqivalence plane talk," I quoted a news report:
Pope Francis said fundamentalism is "a disease of all religions", including the Roman Catholic Church, as he returned from a three-nation tour of Africa in which he preached reconciliation and hope."Fundamentalism is always a tragedy. It is not religious, it lacks God, it is idolatrous," the Argentine pontiff told journalists on the plane back from the Central African Republic...Francis said Islam was not the only religion to suffer from violent extremists, such as the ones behind the deadly attacks in Paris which were claimed by the Islamic State. "We Catholics, we have a few, even many fundamentalists. They believe they know absolute truth and corrupt others," he said, adding: "I can say this because this is my Church."Me: What in the hell is he talking about?
Zippy:
He’s talking about all those Catholic fundamentalists who are blowing up buildings and beheading the infidel in the name of Christ.
There are a few, even many of them, as long as we don’t think we know the absolute truth about the meaning of “few, even many”.
Here is a comprehensive list:
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To this post Zippy replied:
The cussed incoherent shallowness and constant spouting of insults from this man do not inspire optimism. One of the ‘understandable oddities’ of the situation is that vast numbers of people think of him as a compassionate man of the people precisely because he is always denigrating and insulting the self-absorbed promethian neopalagian oppressor-untermensh, who he is careful not to identify too specifically but who represents everyone who upholds (however imperfectly) tradition, discipline, objective standards, etc. Insulting the right people signals compassion, and modern people buy it because hating the nasty backward traditional oppressor is what unites modern people. Despising the right people means love.---------------
I’d almost rather have a Borgia pope with mistresses and children.
I could be wrong, and would be very happy to be wrong, but I expect him to officially devolve ‘pastoral discernment’ to the local Bishops’ conferences – to impose ‘pastoral’ independence from on high under cover of synodal collegiality – so that the Kasperite heresy and other heresies can formally take root in places like Germany with ecclesial impunity. The actual content of the synod discussions and documents don’t matter, as long as there is some tautological acknowledgement that different situations are different, constant pronouncements from Francis himself that openly stating general truths in a context of the particular reality of mass dissent is mean spirited, and pro-forma acknowledgment that decorative moral doctrines up in the sky with no practical implications ‘in reality’ remain untouched.
What is especially ironic is the implication that constant thunderous preaching by Catholic priests on the wickedness of divorce and ‘remarriage’, contraception, abortion, etc is ‘not reaching people’ — as if that kind of preaching were the status quo in Catholic parishes around the world as opposed to as rare as a black swan. Who is actually disconnected from reality on the ground, again?
Of course I think this – this papering over of the truth by ‘pastoral concerns’ – has all been done before (see usury). Benedict’s choice to resign was personally difficult for him, I am sure, but will have far reaching implications for the future of the Church. Modernity is probably going to get the Church it deserves, not the Church it needs; and Benedict’s personal choice may have been the turning point, God help him.
And, to a commenter who thinks that "nuking a civilan city that civilians should have left is equivalent to nuking empty buildings" -
Anyone else gonna challenge this? Beuller?-------------------
From 2012: "Non-participation in the blogosphere is remarkably peaceful, in no small part because I am not forced, by the bizarre distant intimacy of the format, to form low opinions of various people I hardly know."
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From a 2005 Christmas post:
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Bill.---------------------
Two comments:
Q: Why is divorce so expensive?
A: Because it is worth it.
Second, one of the reasons I argue as uncompromisingly on the torture issue as I do is because of the immense pleasure it brings my mind to even consider pulling the fingernails out of an Al Qaeda operative with a pair of pliers. You can infer what you will about other topics that I discuss. >:-)
In that same thread, another commenter says:
Merry Christmas, Bill—missed the 25th but, to the Real Christian, isn't every day Christmas?Zippy:
Hey, this torture controversy is a load of old hag spittle. Judicious use of torture is necessary during wartime (and should be permissible, IMHO, if the cops KNOW the perp knows where the kidnapped girl is buried alive—ala Dirty Harry).
Every bit as much as judicious use of contraception and abortion are necessary during a population explosion or an AIDS epidemic. Apparently the Catholic faith, and in general the principle that we may not do evil in order that good may come of it, is "a load of hag spittle".Commenter:
...Btw, did I hear you imply that having marital sex for pleasure instead of for procreation is wrong? Were you equating contraception with abortion? With torture? Pal, you gotta talk to more women....Zippy:
If by 'instead of' you mean 'intentionally ruling out the possibility of', then yes, you did indeed hear me say that.--------------------
Me: I just approved a comment of yours, which you left on March 13. I never saw it. I never even think to look at that "pending" link. Apparently if there's more than one link in a comment, the spam filter gets indigestion. I'll be on the lookout from now on.
Zippy: "Oh, that’s OK, even I don’t usually hear what I say. Probably the great majority of comments everywhere would be better off left in moderation. Commenting is like Scotch, best in moderation."
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