Boy Meets World

I normally don't reply to comments in separate posts, but this is worth a post in itself--not because of the comment so much as the questions it raises. The comment was in response to an old post, "Everything Happens for a Reason." The comment, from regular visitor PDS, goes like this:

Rob: my point was going to be that you are being unfair [to God] because your post (implicitly) expects God to create a perfect world. Once He rids us of tsunamis, does it not logically follow that He must (in order to be a "loving God") rid us of all tornadoes, flooding, droughts, etc. This argument against God knows no logical bounds, until a perfect world is created. This is a point taken up and addressed much better than I can by Robert Nozick in his book The Examined Life.

An excellent point, but that’s why I included the caveat, "You can’t give God credit for doing good while giving him a pass on doing evil. Unless your god is limited (or limits the scope of his actions) and nature runs its course independent of him." (italics mine) I don't see how, with that caveat, I've implicitly been unfair to god: I gave him an out.

I wouldn't, for example, argue that god doesn't exist because the world isn't perfect. The world is perfect, as Leibnitz argued and Voltaire misunderstood. Unfortunately, it's not perfect in any meaningful human sense. Our notion of perfection is an anthropomorphic projection of our desires onto flinty "reality," which consistently frustrates those desires. Outside of extreme technological intervention which is not available and may never be, a "perfect" human existence is impossible (it's almost as abstract as "being"). Thus "perfection" is by definition perpetually beyond our grasp and, for that reason, simultaneously the most alluring and galling concept of all.

My use of the word "perfect" to describe the state of the world was nothing more than poetic license. The world is "perfect" in that it lacks nothing; it is a self-perpetuating whole responsible solely to itself, a whole of which we are a part.

I would not argue that god doesn't exist because the world is fraught with suffering. I would argue that god doesn't exist because there is no evidence that she does.

I could go on, but I'll leave further points for a later post, when I finally get around to discussing Intelligent Design.