#theodicy

[girls--complex]

[queenlucythevaliant]

For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

Dorothy Sayers on the Incarnation, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged" (emphasis mine)

[mayapapaya33]

(40:36) Wow Brennan is REALLY not pulling any punches in this campaign is he? Damn. The real world parallels are real world parallel-ing. I'm not gonna say anything too specific because I don't feel like getting yelled at on the internet at the moment but... a section of a religion that believes that a certain group of people needs to die before the end times can start... hmm where have I heard that one before? Rings a bell.

Also his philosophy schooling is really showing itself here. I hear you dropping those SAT words mister. lol.

[straynoahide]

tolkien meta: the melodic structure of the ainulindale, arda's endgame, and the doom of men

so basically this is about what one can learn and connect to the rest of the legendarium's lore from the ainulindale, and also peer into tolkien's psyche as a side effect i guess. expect excessive theology or more fun imo philosophy of divinity and lengthy tangents about melkor, the nature of evil and theodicy

a small disclaimer - this touches thorny topics in philosophy like the problem of evil, the nature of redemption/salvation, death...

this isn't about my beliefs but presenting and reflecting on tolkien's own within the history of ideas. i acknowledge anyone who reads this also has their own, and can agree or disagree with tolkien. my views may seep in unintentionally but i try to go deeper than that.

pd: I write Eru/One/God indistinctively on purpose. it's for rhetorical emphasis, not so much out of (default cultural) christianity.

part I - introduction (in this post) part II - the themes/structure, discussion part III - discussion (cont): themes of arda and life part IV - discussion (cont 2): theme of the children part V - discussion (cont 3): aftermath/second music

Introduction (i rec reading even if you're versed in the lore)

for those who are not so familiar with parts of the legendarium but still interested in a deep dive, the ainulindalë ("song of the ainur") is the creation myth of tolkien's world.

i rec just reading it if you haven't even if it's after reading this. it's quite beautiful and unique and it's brought admiration even from ppl who study that kind of thing professionally about real cultures. i'm not given to flattery but idk just check it out.

so anyway, the ainur, spirits born from the One creator's mind directly, sang under (or despite) His direction and the melody (both harmony and discord) that resulted, is the history of the world.

by the world we have two concepts here, the entire universe (eä) and the planet (arda) 'earth', of which middle-earth is a later-stage continent. the music itself was a creative process that the ainur partook in before knowing the full implication of their singing.

God showed the ainur the vision of what their music had created and when they saw the world they wanted to live it, to dwell on it and experience it.

God granted this but said they had to remain in it until the full music, the full story had played out.

this includes everything that happens in the Silmarillion, the LOTR movies and sequels/prequels, the TROP series, games, etc, and in some stages of Tolkien's opus, our own world (WWI, WWII, etc).

the Discord refers to the rebellious effect of Melkor on the music as much as his part of the music - the dissonance born from his part's coexistence with the rest of the melody that is in harmony, and takes a 'life of its own'.

this is not unimportant, but i'm not going to discuss it at any point. i will point out here that it has been argued -controversially- by some people to be relevant in compatibilizing or explaining otherwise difficult-to-reconcile lore points that deal with "non-Melkorian evil". this is about things like Ungoliant or the nameless things 'whose mention darken the light of day', whose in-world origins are unclear.

on a broader note, this represents two very different intuitions about evil and divinity (Tolkienian v Lovecraftian, we could say). these are difficult to compatibilize and more than Tolkien's psyche, represent ancient tensions within monotheistic religions themselves, i think. so within Tolkien's world, which has an Abrahamic/monotheistic god, you still find traces of Lovecraftian horror.

all that follows is about Tolkienian evil (meta) i.e. Melkorian evil (in-world), that is uncontroversially and explicitly under the governance of the One, although non-Melkorian evil is a fascinating subject.

[jayhashands]

'talk to me' hurt very bad

gotta figure it out somehow

so have this comic

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

how do you keep your faith even while such horrific things are going on in palestine? i've been a christian all my life and i understand that the question of why god allows suffering is one that people have always been asking, that we can never really know the answer to, but it's just so hard for me to see things like this, all of these innocent people being terrorized and murdered in such evil ways, and understand why god can't stop it from happening. in church we pray for both israel and palestine and it feels so pointless, and just makes me frustrated that i can't actually do anything to stop this. especially knowing that even bethlehem, the place of jesus's birth and home to many palestinian christians, is being attacked and churches are being bombed. it seems pretty clear that the people committing these atrocities are never going to open their hearts and stop, and the world leaders who would have the power to make them stop either don't care or directly support them. i do not want to believe that god doesn't exist, or that god would just sit by and watch all of this happen if it were possible to stop it, but it's such a struggle at times like this. i feel like it shouldn't be and like i should've had this figured out by now. it's okay if you don't answer this, i just love your blog and have learned a lot from it over the years, and am incredibly saddened by the state of the world right now.

Hey there, anon. I feel with you and stand with you in your struggle. I also gently suggest you work on letting go of the sense that you "should" have this figured out by now. Firstly because learning to release myself from "shoulds" is something my therapist taught me and it's been super helpful for showing myself love; secondly because I believe it is deeply, deeply faithful to ask these questions, to demand to know where God is in the face of evil — not just once, but continuously across our lives.

If at any point we think we have it "all figured out," if we think we've reached a fully satisfying solution to the problem of how a good God could "let" evil things happen, we're more likely to be numbed by fatalism or become complacent in the face of injustice. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (may his memory be a blessing) put it when asked why God lets bad things happen to good people,

“God does not want us to understand, because if we ever understood, we would be forced to accept that bad things happen to good people, and God does not want us to accept those bad things. He wants us not to understand, so that we will fight against the bad and the injustices of this world, and that is why there is no answer to that question.”

Ask the questions. Bring all that you feel — your grief, your confusion, your frustration, your doubt, your fear — to God. Study and pray and converse with others.

And while you're doing all that, and accepting that it'll be a lifelong exploration, act.

Let your love, your words, your actions be the divine response to injustice — because for whatever mysterious reason, God chooses to act through us, through all who follow Their call to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly" (Micah 6:8).

___

So yeah, I can't tell you why God doesn't just jump in and stop the evil, why God seems to limit Their own power to intervene (or even to lack that power to begin with), why God respects our free will even when we misuse it to such great harm (though you can see the bottom of this post for places to explore all those questions).

But I can tell you where I believe God is in the midst of all the questions, all the loss, all the suffering — and that's not on some lofty throne indifferently observing our pain; God is right there in the midst of that pain.

Where is God in the face of hate, violence, death? God is co-suffering with us, shouldering the burden with us.

In Exodus 3:7, God says They don't only see the enslaved Hebrews' misery, don't only hear their cries, but that They know the people's suffering — an intimate knowing, as of one who experiences it themself.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that when humanity fails to welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the oppressed, we fail to do those things for him — for he identifies so intimately with all whom the world calls "least" that he is one with each and every one of them.

So I don't know why God doesn't just fix everything, dammit! — it's the first question I'll be asking Xir when I die, because wtf!!

But I do believe, and I do draw some comfort knowing, that God does not leave us to suffer alone. God is one with the oppressed; God shows ultimate solidarity to the oppressed; and God acts with each of us who act for and with and as the oppressed.

And the good news in the midst in this horror is that there are things that all of us can be doing to act in solidarity with the oppressed!

Our efforts truly are making a difference. Politicians and whole governments across the globe have been startled by the resistance to pro-Israeli propaganda and solidarity with Palestine. The change is slow, but our protests are making an impact. Palestinians have been asking that we keep protesting, boycotting, educating, spreading the word. Because it is helping, slowly but surely.

As long as Palestinians refuse to give in to despair, we too must continue to fight. Palestine will be free. We will not stand silent as genocide occurs.

Boycott as many of the companies named by BDS as you can. Notice that they're focusing on a narrower, more targeted group of companies than some of the enormous lists people keep sharing — that's to help us avoid becoming overwhelmed! So boycott what you can from their list; these are the companies directly contributing to Israel's violence. And spread their list to anyone you can.

If you live in a country with a government that has yet to join the call for a ceasefire — and especially if you, like me here in the US, live in a country that is actively funding/otherwise supporting Israel's violence — call or email your representatives to demand a ceasefire.

Resistbot can help make that easy, in the US at least.

Educate yourself about the history of Palestine and Israel. It's important so that you can recognize lies and propaganda, and also so you can speak knowledgeably about the issue with others. It's also important because understanding and simply bearing witness are two big things Palestinians ask of us. You don't need to know everything, but know enough to bear witness, to remember the loss, and to debunk bullshit when you see it.

Here are some places you can get educated — link to free ebooks; article on current events; article with current perspectives from Gaza; and I've been reblogging news & resources as I see them over on @a-queer-seminarian

Post about what Gaza is going through on social media!! Don't let the fight die down! Talk about it with friends or others you think might be swayed to join the fight if they had the information that most media stations are failing to report on.

Stand up against Islamophobia in all forms.

Stand up against antisemitism in all forms. As Christians, this includes recognizing and uprooting supersessionism in our biblical interpretation, our liturgy, our hymns, etc. It also means learning about Christian Zionism.

One of Israel's primary arguments for the "necessity" of its oppression of Palestine is that Israel is necessary because nowhere else on earth is safe for Jews. They're right that nowhere else is safe for Jews; but they're wrong that Israel is safe for Jews — an settler-colonialist state, a war zone, a state that requires every civilian to serve some time in the military, is not safe for Jews either. But as long as they can point to the antisemitism rampant across the globe, they can use that as an argument. So to counter Israel, and much more importantly to stand in solidarity with Jewish people across the world, don't let antisemitism go unchecked.

Join in protests in your area. Follow Jewish Voices for Peace or Jews Against White Supremacy for info on such events.

Link to places to offer fin.ancial support

Want more ways to act? Check out https://www.palestineaction.org/

___

There is no easy answer to the question of suffering — but even so, it can be helpful to explore it deeper, to examine what conclusions others have drawn over the eras. If you want some resources for your wrestling, here are some:

This post goes into the basics of theodicy, the "the intellectual effort to jerry-rig three mutually exclusive terms into harmony: divine power, goodness, and the experiences of evil"

Then there's my #theodicy tag where I put all posts / links about this issue

I also have a long-ass YouTube video diving deep into "the problem of suffering"!

___

I hope this response brings you comfort and courage, friend. Don't be afraid of questions, of grief, of concern — let them galvanize you for the struggle. Solidarity forever <3

[jcalexandrewrites]

The "problem" of evil isn't a real problem! 🤓

Read my fantasy novel, The Light Prince: Grail, available on Amazon in paperback and e-book.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus#Epicurean_paradox

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy#Reasons_for_theodicy

Theodicies are developed to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil.

In science, when an idea is falsified, it's either thrown out, or withdrawn and revised. In theology, you invent an entire bogus domain to pretend it's still true. Theodicy is that domain. The entire reason it exists at all is because the Problem of Evil shows the god claim doesn't work, but they won't admit it.

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

[mark-gently]

It would suck to be God's lawyer. No way He's beating the allegations.

[randomnumbers751650]

So, I finished watching Ideon a few days ago and one thing that I thought to be really unique is how Ideon is a theodicy or has elements of a theodicy. Just to let you know, a theodicy is a question on the problem of evil: if God can and wants to prevent evil, and if God is good, then why does evil exist? It should be noted that a theodicy doesn’t necessarily require that God exists or not (I know actual economists and political scientists who unironically call their disciplines theodicies), because questions on the origin of evil are things that are with humanity since immemorial times. Also spoilers for a 40 year old show.

In Ideon, as they learn more and more about the power of the Ide, the Giant reveals itself more and more of a god. In fact, it is called a god in mid-season episodes, but they stop that after a while, probably the writers thinking it might be too much on the nose. But still, the characters are constantly debating why Ide allows that, if Ide is testing them, if Ide is good or evil, since it is orchestrating the meteor falls. A curious thing is that we have Ide’s perspective just once, with Bes’s dream – it wants to survive – and the rest of the discussions is what humans believe to Ide’s will to be, like as if they were some sort of amateur theologians.

In the end, they conclude Ide is trying to kill them because it deemed them unworthy of salvation due to their inability of stopping the cycle of war, but, again, this is their interpretation. And, in the end, Ideon is finally destroyed…but it was already established it had infinite energy, so it is kinda certain that it just allowed itself to be defeated.

Ideon is a story of how war is hell, using a super robot in a real robot story. It portrays conflict escalation, hypocrisy of ideals of honor in an environment that gives power to petty people, capable of selling their comrades for a promotion, or committing war crimes without any tactical advantage – it’s kinda obvious the Buff Clan is based on Imperial Japan, while humans seem to be inspired from Star Trek’s idea of federation – and, above all, the process of dehumanization: it starts with a sense of technological pride, impulse by miscommunication, which constantly evolves into incapacity of recognizing the other as anything but insects, and overall mutual hatred. It ended with parents disowning their child, a father trying to kill his daughter for a frivolous reason such as “blood purity” and what essentially was an attempt to make a human sacrifice to Ide (with Sheryl). No wonder, Ide decides that enough is enough, its patience wouldn’t last forever. The series goes out of its way to show that humans and buffs brought that to themselves.

Personally, I don’t think Ide is evil. I feel it genuinely wanted for humans and buffs to live in peace. The way it cares for children isn’t just because it’s an amalgamation of children from the previous civilizations, but because it genuinely likes them and see them as symbols of hope (or else it wouldn’t protect and support the adults as well) or innocence (when it protected the giant worm children). I could tell when Sheryl attempted to sacrifice Lou to make Ide work, it was beyond pissed off, to the point of destroying their homeworlds and colonies. This is why I don’t buy Ide was setting up a trap to kill both species, it could’ve done any time. It still preserved the ones in space, using the last of hope that they could solve their differences, but its hope drained with every advance, so if it wanted to destroy them, it wanted to make clear that if it was destroying them, it wanted to make them understand why before doing it.

In spite of that, Ide still loved life, including the lives of humans and buffs until the end. When all of them die in the final moments of the movie, they all reunite and, upon seeing the greatness of the universe, they can see how petty and a waste of time their squabbles and wars were. So, Ide had Messiah to guide them to a new planet, to restart the cycle again, hoping this time they would learn the lesson. In spite of Tomino showing a bleak pessimism throughout the series, I feel the end is optimistic.

[apenitentialprayer]

The Suffering God

In all religions, a question mark has been set against the omnipotent and serene gods by the sufferings of men. But only in Christ does the concept of a suffering God appear. […] Only in Christ does it become clear that we can put God to death because he has put himself in our hands. Only since Christ has God become dependent on us. Christ did not identify himself with a calm spectator of all our troubles. Christ, by his teaching, life, and death, made plain the helplessness of God in the world; the suffering of unrequited and unsuccessful love. [...] That God in the world has been, and still is, mocked and tortured, burnt and gassed: that is the rock of the Christian faith which rests all its hope on God attaining his identity. This pain is inextinguishable; this hope can never be taken away. What Christians share in common is 'their participation in the sufferings of God in Christ. That is their faith.' In this faith they know that God is helpless and needs help. […] He put himself at risk, made himself dependent on us, identified himself with the non-identical. From now on, it is high time for us to do something for him.

- Dorothee Soelle (Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology After the 'Death of God,' pages 151, 151-152). Bolded emphases added.

Man of Sorrows, by Theophilia

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of the Problem of Evil

The philosophy of the problem of evil grapples with the existence of evil and suffering in a world that is often characterized as being created or overseen by a benevolent and omnipotent deity. It raises fundamental questions about the nature of God, the origin and nature of evil, and the compatibility of divine attributes with the reality of suffering.

Key aspects of the philosophy of the problem of evil include:

Existence of Evil: Philosophers examine the existence of evil and suffering in the world, including natural disasters, human cruelty, and personal suffering. They analyze the various forms of evil and the impact they have on individuals and societies.

Theological Implications: The problem of evil raises theological challenges to traditional conceptions of God as omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnibenevolent (all-good). Philosophers explore the tension between the existence of evil and the attributes commonly ascribed to God in religious traditions.

Logical Problem: Some formulations of the problem of evil present a logical challenge to the existence of God. Philosophers argue that the coexistence of evil and an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God is logically incompatible. They seek to demonstrate that the existence of evil renders the existence of such a God logically impossible.

Evidential Problem: The evidential problem of evil acknowledges that while the logical problem may not conclusively disprove the existence of God, the prevalence and intensity of evil raise serious doubts about the likelihood of God's existence. Philosophers examine the evidential force of evil in undermining belief in a benevolent deity.

Responses and Theodicies: Philosophers and theologians have proposed various responses and theodicies (justifications for the existence of evil) to reconcile the problem of evil with the existence of God. These include free will defenses, soul-making theodicies, and appeals to divine mystery or higher purposes.

Empirical and Experiential Dimensions: The problem of evil is not merely an abstract philosophical puzzle but also an existential and emotional challenge for individuals grappling with personal suffering and tragedy. Philosophers consider the empirical realities and subjective experiences of evil and suffering in human life.

Implications for Religious Belief: The problem of evil has profound implications for religious belief and existential questions about the nature of reality, morality, and the human condition. Philosophers explore how different responses to the problem of evil shape religious faith, moral outlooks, and existential attitudes.

Overall, the philosophy of the problem of evil engages with deep theological, moral, and existential questions about the nature of the universe and humanity's place within it, challenging us to confront the reality of evil while seeking meaningful responses to its existence.

[queenlucythevaliant]

Just to clarify my thoughts (since I've had a number of people ask me about it) re: Job and cursing God. There's a big difference between cursing God as used in Scripture and how we generally would think of cursing at God today.

Cursing someone, in the Bible, has a lot of depth to it. It's not just saying "screw you " in anger, it's got a sense of forsakenness to it. It's the opposite of a blessing, a removal of blessing. If the blessing is presence, your face shining on the person you're blessing, then a curse is absence. In some translations, Job's wife tells him to "renounce God and die," which I honestly think makes a lot more sense to modern ears.

Job says a lot of unpleasant things to and about God in his anger and grief. So do the Psalmists. A number of the Prophets. So can we. God can take it if we come to him with honest expressions of our emotion, including those not-so-nice ones directed at him. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting mad at God and saying, "How dare you, you bastard" when you suffer unjustly. You can say much worse, I think, without sinning, though I don't feel particularly inclined to give examples. But as long as it's an honest expression of your heart, I think you're doing exactly what prayer is for. You're presenting him your heart with an open hand. He can use that. Opposite of love is not hate but indifference, etc.

Job doesn't renounce God. Neither should we. But I think when you're truly suffering, you're gonna have those feelings toward God either way. He'd rather you address them with him directly than try to avoid them. Cursing at God in the modern sense is actually a great way to keep the relationship strong and not end up cursing/renouncing him in the Biblical sense.

[mayapapaya33]

Brennan with these fucking puns. Veguit priests huh? Ok Brennan, I see you. Veguit / Jesuit ugh. (40:36)

[straynoahide]

re: misotheism

reposted with permission from @richardsphere

I genuinely asked this to know what you meant, so this post is not meant to be either a exposition of my own worldview, nor a polemic against those ideas. I instead wanted to make points about misotheism that are meant to be thought provoking, exploratory, or challenging assumptions that I notice.

mean technically, im an agnostic misotheist. There is probably really no way to put my complicated feelings on the matter of the universe, existence and/or divinity in truly simple terms. So this is gonna be a confusing ramble, but im gonna do my best. To start with the Agnostic part: I dont know wether a god (or multiple gods) exists for sure. They might exist or they might not, and if they exist its none of my business. If somehow, you proved to me definitively the existence of a creator, I would worship them no more then I would thank my Father for fucking my mom and bringing me into being as a product thereoff. He did that for his own reasons and I dont have to thank him for making me without my consent. (I know the analogy is somewhat crude, but its the best way I can put it into words).

I think you've done very well and this has many of the intuitions I share regarding misotheism and misotheists. When theists speak of "faith crises", sometimes they face similar philosophical questions, potential answers, doubts, etc., because these have plagued human beings forever. So I think theism and dystheism are closer in terms of a worldview and epistemology than non-theism.

In fact, historical misotheistic thinkers or polemicists against misotheism have been religious figures. These are sometimes incorporated into scripture (I'll get to it later), with one very salient example, that is in fact one of my favorite parts of the BIble.

I think most people who are real-world misotheists are always strongly agnostic. The emotionally crushing realization of misotheism with also a certainty in a monotheistic god would probably be too much of a 'heavy burden', too, well, maddening. A bit like cosmicism or Lovecraftian horror.

There seems to be an antinatalist undercurrent, the mere mention of consent to be born suggests it is a meaningful category, but that is not obvious. It's like when you speak of determinism and free will in philosophy and you posit the idea will is not meaningfully free because our brains are subject to natural laws (an anti-compatibilist view of the free will problem). What is it like to consent to be born, to consent to exist? "Consent" is defined already within a particular type of material, biological, mental and even developmental existence when there is enough complexity. So from that follows also that the idea of gratitude or thanklessness to sources of origination (parents, gods, etc) are not inherently absurd. You can be thankful even if you did not consent to be born. Do you however feel that existence is not something to be thankful for? That's the antinatalist undercurrent.

I also believe that, if they were to exist, all evidence in the reality of the world we can observe is that the nett sum of any such divinities (allowing for polytheism) is not only "unworthy of worship" but probably outright deserving of scorn. That is not to say I disallow for the existence of some degree of "benevolent divinity", but i think of that more like you'd think of the Hellenistic Hestia then the Catholic notion of an All-powerfull god. A single shred of genuine goodness surrounded by indifference, cruelty and outright malice so outnumbered that they're rendered largely irrelevant? That i can believe in. But the notion of a "Benevolent nett-sum-divinity" was disproven long before i was even born.

Mhm. Yeah. You praise a good god and you indict a bad god, from a system of moral values. What are those ethics based on? Ancient Greek thought already proposed a paradox called the Euthyphro Dilemma which goes like this: "Is 'Good' good because the gods declare it, or are the gods good because they have properties that are already ontologically good?" Though they phrased it more abstractly with "gods love good bla bla".

The paradox's purpose is to illustrate that if the divine declares morality into being, then it is arbitrary; if morality is already primordial to the divine, that merely acknowledges or follows it, then the divine is superfluous. You seem to follow here the part of the paradox that goes, "Gods are good [or bad] bc they have certain properties". So in your view, divinity is superfluous altogether. It's like a government's relation to morality, a 'cosmic government', they can be either good or bad 'rulers', but they don't create nor define moral goodness, and instead are merely subjected to it.

This way of thinking is incompatible with Abrahamic monotheism and so cannot represent a fruitful polemic against it, however. While it can in fact represent polemics against polytheism. Monotheistic ideology, imo a true revolution in the history of ideas, which began within the Ancient Israelite religion (in the form of yahwism growing apart from Canaanite polytheism), identifies goodness with divinity. Divinity is goodness.

Therefore, goodness is the ultimate reality. Misotheism is its most pessimistic therefore within the monotheistic framework: divinity is evil. Evil is the ultimate first-order value. Why, though?

If someone made this universe, best case scenario (to me) is that they did it by accident. Because only malice or incompetence could explain the reality that we inhabit, and the manner in which the fundamental observable laws that govern it seem to me, to be almost tailor-made to cause, inspire and incentivise cruelty and suffering. So I dont know wether gods exist (and even believe that on some level, something must). But if a (colletcitve of) creator/spirit/god(s) existed. I neither trust nor like them. #i really hope that makes sense#im not the best at words#The universe is cruel and uncaring#Darwins laws thrive on predation and cruelty#And Newton demands nothing but a slown drawn-out and inevitable loss#So why should a creator of said universe be trusted loved or worshipped?

Okay, so this is the observation. Because there is evil and suffering in the world, the problem of evil. One thing I notice also though, is the constant conflation between indifference and cruelty. These are fundamentally not the same. Indifference is mindless. Cruelty is either mindful (sadistic) or careless (neglectful).

For instance, a volcano or wild animals behaving as wild animals are amoral and therefore I don't think you can say they're cruel. You can feel them as cruel, but most of the world is not filled with 'cruelty' in that sense; most of the natural world is inert, mindless matter.

It is true most of the universe seems barren of successful life and civilization, but I don't think we can actually have a frame of comparison to say whether 'existence' in general (cosmos, multiverse) is fine-attuned towards life or towards lifelessness. What are we comparing to, in proportion, we cannot make percentages when we don't even know the possible range of existence, when science and our intellective limits still place a barrier for us to compare the "known unknowns" with the "unknown unknowns".

Maybe all the cosmological constants need to be at very precise ranges so that things like the curvature, age, etc, of the universe at least has old-enough, hot-enough stars, for one (1) planet with water and carbon-based life, and it is in fact, fine-attuned towards Earth. Maybe there are millions of civilizations and we just haven't realized yet (Fermi Paradox), and millions of types of abiogenesis. Maybe we are a cosmic colony through panspermia.

But, misotheism often has psychological and not philosophical explanations. You're speaking of the universe when probably most of these perceptions, negative emotions, feeling of disproportion, etc, are about the human world, i.e., societies, and human history. People are cruel instead of kind. But are they also not kind, or whatever your ethics place as opposed to the negativity of cruelty and suffering?

And do you really have a conviction that history will not play out in a way in which one defeats the other? How? Is the fact one act of evil has occurred enough to prove misotheism? Could a world without evil even exist at the same time as free will, if you believe in that? Is evil to be declared triumphant already? Can we avert it?

Misotheism would entail a world where cruelty is divine. Actually, I've been exploring this concept in speculative fiction. It's quite twisted. One thing is whether the divine is good or evil, or both, but another thing seems a different question- can we defy the divine? Is this part of free will? Is this an intentional part of free will if the creator exists?

The thing I was mentioning about Scripture dealing with misotheism- providence or 'theodicy', the justness of the cosmos from its creators' governance and morality; and misotheism, are explored in the Book of Job. It is a narrative framed in a way that makes a man lose every reason to believe in goodness, and offers him choices, and others make predictions about those choices based on their idea of what goodness and theodicy are. Have you read it? Total rec.

[tonreihe]

“What is further important is that, through all this exploration, the reality of the Christian existence itself, which is tragically torn between forgiveness and judgment, suffering and victory, and despair and joy, becomes clarified in the life of Christian faith. Our existence is represented by Holy Saturday. As best represented by Steiner’s famous passage we mentioned above, nothing can be said on Friday, the day of great suffering itself. We cannot even afford to try thinking about the meaning of such suffering. On Sunday, nothing needs to be said. Great joy overwhelms the memory of the suffering in the past. Therefore, any decent ‘theodicy’ project, or the earnest questioning of God and search for meaning in suffering, belongs fundamentally to Saturday. This is why we have been hesitant to accept in its totality the kind of ‘theodicy’ which simply claims that even the worst suffering of hell can be redeemed by Christ’s descent into hell (as suggested by a few scholars regarding this subject). If we do not appreciate the waiting in silence, which is the real unique point of Holy Saturday, which is ‘tragic’ waiting in silence characterized by hidden but undoubtedly present victory, there may be no point in discussing the significance of Holy Saturday at all. We could simply stop at the foot of the cross, the horror of which is itself great enough to encompass the worst human suffering.”

—Riyako Cecilia Hikota, And Still We Wait: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of Holy Saturday and Christian Discipleship