Bill’s Comments on Theodicy

Bill Keezer was kind enough to send me a link to some of his own ruminations on matters theological. Here’s his take on the problem of evil:

God doesn’t violate his own rules of nature.This idea occurred to me about four or five months ago. I took the approach that if there were God, what must his nature be, and what could be reasonably said about it. First of all it seemed that it would lead to a horribly contradictory mess if God willy-nilly chose which laws of nature he observed and which he didn’t. In addition it makes him out to be an arbitrary and capricious Being, similar to Gods of ancient myths. This is assuming that he wrote the laws in the first place. It would also undermine any and all attempts at studying nature, if the rules under study could be altered at any time. Once the assumption is made that God follows his own rules of nature, then a number of things fall into place. Nature being generally deterministic with random elements and events (There is a whole world of discourse tied up in that phrase), both good and bad events will occur without a relationship to any one person or any group of people and their moral status. Hurricanes, tornados, flood, etc. strike good and bad alike, just as a wonderful growing season profits all farmers, not just the morally good ones. Another consequence is that reports of miracles that appear to violate laws of nature would fall into made up events, misconstrued events, mis-reported events, or the use of a law of nature undiscovered to date. Another consequence is that the physical world can be left to science, and religion can focus on what it is best suited for, dealing with the relationships between people and between people and God. The tools of Science are not generally suited to dealing with morality, and the tools of religion are not suited to dealing with science. Religion is concerned with what is inside the person, NOT what is out there. Out there is the province of science.

 

I was asked once by a good friend who is a lay minister, “If God doesn’t violate the laws of nature, is it because He won’t, or because He can’t?” At the time I passed on an answer because I had not thought it out that far. However, like others before me, I conclude that God does not because He cannot. I do not ascribe to an omnipotent (infinitely powerful) God. I tie my concept of God in with my concept of souls. God may be the totality of all the good souls acting in concert yet individually. In other words, as people have evolved and evolved souls, so has God evolved. In this case, God could be relatively omniscient (all knowing) compared to any individual or group of individuals, even though not absolutely omniscient.

More theodicy-blogging soon!