A dear friend said, “Do whatever assuages your pain. It’s very real I know.”
I focused laser like on her assertion that pain is not subjective but “very real” and replied, “How do post-modernists explain away pain if there is no such thing as (objective) truth?”
After meditating endlessly in my hospital bed between morphine injections on whether or not pain is real my mind eventually drifted to also contemplate whether or not evil exists. If evil exists and is not merely a social construct, would that not point to intelligent design?
If evil does exist and there is no God, how would evil come into being through the evolutionary process?
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Why do atheists put so much effort into attacking intelligent design, something they ‘know’ does not exist? What the specific aspect of an evolutionary process that compels them to suppress, inhibit, and dissuade believers from their pursuit of the meaning of life?
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Atheists are not espousing a particularly intellectual theory in my opinion if they can’t understand that the evolutionary process can fit in nicely with the concept of intelligent design.
As you know I am a Deist and I could never put a ‘label’ on my beliefs until I started reading some of the personal writings of our Founders. There is plenty that Deists and Christians share in common. We both believe there is an intelligent design but Deists believe that it is less important to worship the author and more important to understand the ways and means of nature and follow the moral imperatives of commandments #6-10. This is perhaps a more pragmatic and less spiritual way of achieving the same goals- peace, harmony, and happiness. 🙂
Be tolerant of me y’all because I am way out of my league here discussing a topic best left to Nanda and Hyp!
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C’mon in, Liz, the water is wide – and fine…Glad you’ve found the orienting-point for your spiritual-moral compass! Having a descriptor often helps bring stability in the daily exercise of living-out from the place where we’re centered. 🙂
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Thanks Nanda. I’ve been fortunate to understand my spiritual-moral compass always.
No “born again” or any of that. As a matter of fact, our family minister spoke with my parents about me at a young age after a summer of Bible school and said, “She’s not buying into the parables or “the Word.” She’s managed to develop her own sense of ethicaI values and you should let her be. She’s on the right path however she chooses to travel it.”
Experience is key. The day-to-day all-American values I were exposed to were critical. The most important lessons I ever learned were these and all Christian based:
Live a clean, honest life. Treat people with kindness and respect. And we can’t forget about the infamous Protestant work ethic!
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Good on ya!
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“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Isaiah 45:7:(KJV)
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It’s my understanding that it is heresy ( the dualistic heresy, like Manichaeanism) to believe there is any creator, any deity, other than God. He made everything there is! Nothing exists, nothing happens, that He doesn’t will and create. And so Isaiah tells us.
So from that arises the problem of theodicy: if God is all good, and He’s responsible for EVERYTHING, how come there’s so much bad stuff in the world?
Somewhere I read the universe only makes sense if God is all good, but NOT all-powerful, or, if God is all-powerful but not all good.
Of course at this point people argue that evil came from MAN, from our SIN. To which I say:
Who made US?
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Valid questions all. My simple-very simple- explanation is that we were put on Earth with many gifts and it was left to us to take advantage of them. Some of us did (Western Europe) and some of us didn’t thus the huge disparities between wealth and lifestyles.
I personally think many cultures who were advanced and mighty (Aztecs, Ming Dynasty, Egypt) faltered because they failed to adapt to changing conditions.
We Americans did in fact- and I think this would make a fascinating book. (I’m thinking author Arthur Herman for all you historians.)
Why were we not only able to protect our civilization but expand and grow and create such a powerful and good force for the world? How did we get so lucky to attract people like the Founders?
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(ET, what was the Stegner novel you recommended? I have readCrossing to Safety…I’m between boox now,)
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His most famous: Angle of Repose.
I must ask you; What did you think of Charity and the ending?
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I just reread the ending. (I remembered about the two couples, but not the entire thing.)😢😢😢😢😢 I kinda like Charity, Mrs. Dalloway on steroids! I identified with her hospitality and her attachment to her property. (I didn’t reread the entire thing, so I may not have in mind certain aspects of her relationship to Sid.)
But I don’t think the ending is realistic. I think after a long marriage, your spouse is the ONLY person you would want with you at death.
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That was my beef with the novel as well but at least Stegner created some interesting characters.The book also gave me a glimpse into the world of academia and made me glad I went into business! 🙂 At least those ruthless NYC Wall Street types didn’t hide their intentions; you knew they were going after you and I thought that was just fine.
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As I recall, the ending of “Crossing to Safety” – and everything about Charity’s reactions/relationship to her husband – irked me to the nth degree. It’s so foreign to my reality that I wanted to throw the e-book, just to knock sense into both of them. 🙂 Liz may remember this from a shared virtual book club experience eons ago.
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I had the same reaction but the characters and their idiosyncrasies interested me so I enjoyed the book. Angle is (spoiler alert) far more depressing but again, Stegner has no rival in his ability to develop intricate characters. He was a master.
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I read the book at a time when personal experience contradicted fiction in no uncertain terms, I must admit. I wonder what Stegner might’ve/could’ve done with a more positive, yet still complex, set of reactions. He was a master of character and motivation, for sure.
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Hyp, “sin” – the ability to *choose* to stand athwart the Designer and Maker of All, saying: “no”, is a corollary of human freedom; because of the presence of autonomy, the Designer and Maker self-limits, since He doesn’t want robots. He loves us enough to respect us when we turn away; and to welcome us back infinitely-often. (That’s my training and experience, at least. 🙂 ) Bp. Robert Barron – and others, in recent years – likens our attraction to sin to an addictive process; an interesting analogy….
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ST, post-modernists, imho, are between a rock and a hard place (nihilism X self-masochism) and either don’t know how, and/or don’t want to get out of it: “Better the Devil you *know*, than the Devil you don’t.” I’m not sure whether they’re trying to dissuade others, or to *persuade* themselves, honestly.
This inertia afflicts all of us, at times, and it takes the tenacious effort of friends – in particular – to call us/bring us out of it. (Family can’t always take on the mission – because a loved one’s pain hurts *them* too much.) I’ve been richly blessed in this regard, as well.
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Perhaps Lewis’s “The Problem of Pain” might be good to visit once “Mere Christianity” gets wrapped up in the next few weeks?
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I read, in some book of his that he prayed to be able to bear Joy’s pain for her and he did. She became pain free and he was in agony.
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Wow! (This book’s copyright is 1940, btw.)
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I never knew that, that is so beautiful
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My little brother broke his arm when he was 9; my mother was crying her eyes out, and she kept saying “I wish this had happened to me and not you”. Robin was with his sister who was also around 9 when she fell and knocked a tooth out; he told me that all he could think at the time was that he wished that it had happened to him and not her; he would have been 11 or 12 at that time.
People can be so incredibly good.
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