Cryin’ wont help ya,
prayin’ wont do ya no good;
when the levee breaks
Mama you got to move
-Led Zeppelin, “When the Levee Breaks”
The Law of Indiscriminate Absence Of Protection
The Law [b]of an Indiscriminate Absence of Protection is a “law” of common understanding that functions as a “rite of passage” from childish or unrealistic belief about the world to a mature understanding of the nature of reality.
It states:[/b]
“That one is born without choice into a world where one is constantly at the mercy of inexorable psychological and physical forces that constantly threaten emotional suffering and death; where morality and moral gravity are besides the point in the face of death and universal vulnerability to death; where there seems to exist no supernatural or magical power capable of providing predictable and reliable protection from a heedless and uncaring universe that respects neither the individual nor those for whom the individual deeply cares.”
The philosophical notions of Absurdism and Existentialism are, in part, influenced by real-world observation of a seemingly indiscriminate absence of protection from natural and deliberate evils:
The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world beyond what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or “unfairness” of the world. This contrasts with “karmic” ways of thinking in which “bad things don’t happen to good people”. To the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a good person as to a bad person.
This contrasts our daily experience where most things appear to us as meaningful, and where good people do indeed, on occasion, receive some sort of “reward” for their goodness. Most existentialist thinkers, however, will maintain that this is not a necessary feature of the world, and that it definitely isn’t a property of the world in-itself. Because of the world’s absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd.
(Wikipedia: Existentialism, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism)
The “meaninglessness” in Absurdism, used in context of the world’s seeming blindness to and careless treatment of individuals regardless of moral nature, can be argued to be the “meaninglessness” of any philosophy, explanation, or outlook that denies or attempts to defy that there exists an indiscriminate absence of protection, as such views are rendered seemingly false by ‘real world’ evidence of LIAP.
For those with [b]Judeo-Christian beliefs, the insinuations of LIAP are significant, as the notion that God exists and protects those who love and depend upon him seems belied by the suffering, persecution, and death of those trusting God for their well-being.
Faced with the world that happens to exist, one is persuaded to ask:
-
If God exists, what kind of God are humans dealing with if God (and those humans who assume to “know” what God wants, or why God does this or that) if the faithful are not reliably and predictably protected from LIAP in the here and now?
-
Why are the faithful not protected from LIAP in the here and now?
-
Why shouldn’t the faithful be protected from LIAP in the here and now?
-
What should one pray to God for safety and happiness (for oneself and one’s loved ones) if the faithful are not protected from LIAP? Why bother?
5.[/b] Is God someone you can depend on to protect you and your loved ones?
6. Are there necessary conditions that must be met or proper rituals that one must practice before God predictably and infallibly protects one and one’s loved ones? If there are, what are they?
[b]It is important to note that Christians wishing to absolve God of any responsibility fo the existence of suffering, misery, and loss usually defend God from a safe distance from direct confrontation with situations insinuating the existence of LIAP. Many climb upon their “high horse” to defend the notion that God can do and allow what he wants and still be “right even when he’s wrong”. This type of defense, while perhaps objectively true, is easier made while one does not suffer.
Howver, LIAP is a BIG DEAL, and questions concerning God’s moral responsibility to the faithful becomes a REALLY BIG DEAL—to those who find themselves face to face with LIAP on a personal level.
A fictional example:[/b]
Hardcore is a 1979 film written and directed by Paul Schrader starring George C. Scott.
Plot
Jake Van Dorn (Scott) is a prosperous local businessman and ultra-conservative Calvinist in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A single parent, Van Dorn is the father of a quiet, conservative teenage girl, Kristen (Ilah Davis), who inexplicably disappears during a church-sponsored trip to California.
Eventually, Van Dorn learns that his daughter has run away and entered the world of pornography in Los Angeles. The search for his daughter becomes a bizarre odyssey into the seedy world of California’s pornographic underground.
The ultra-conservative and morally rigid Van Dorn becomes increasingly desperate and frantic in the search for his " lost little lamb" in the netherworld of Los Angeles’ red light district.
When Kristin is first discovered to be missing, Jake, in pride, refuses to entertain the thought that his daughter may have voluntarily deserted him. Nevertheless, Jake begins to internally erode. His values remain, but they nearly shatter under the strain as his torment increases. He is empty, gutted.
Jake’s brother-in-law Wesley (Dick Sargent of Bewitched fame) is deeply religious before and after the disappearance of Kristin. He is unsettled by Jake’s growing skepticism and wavering faith. But Wesley’s daughter is not missing; while he tactfully chides Jake for his waning faith, Ellen is safely at home, putting away dishes in the next room. While Wesley is pained that Kristen has disappeared, he is not affected by the disappearance in the same way as Jake, the father of the missing girl. He reminds Jake that what happened was God’s will.
Wesley: Jake, you can’t dwell on Kristin all the time. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand the Lord’s ways. He’s testing you. You have to have faith.
Jake: Would you? Could you, if it were Ellen?
[b]It’s simple to induce guilt or threaten eternal damnation for wavering faith if one is not personally affected by the very circumstances producing the turmoil that threatens faith. For real people personally affected by LIAP, it is rational to question the “goodness” of God and the practicality of one’s beliefs. Perhaps, in the end, faith remains steadfast—but direct encounters with LIAP will tend to shake previous reliance on God for the safety of oneself and one’s loved ones.
For example, consider the response from the father of a victim of the December 9, 2007 New Life Church shooting (the rampage ceased when the assailant was mortally wounded by church security guard Jeanne Assam) to a loaded question King asks during a Larry King Live December 10, 2007 interview:[/b]
KING: [b]Joining us now on the phone is Tom Johnson. His daughter Tiffany one of the two people killed early Sunday at the Youth With A Mission Center in Arvada, Colorado.
Tom, our sincere condolences on the loss of Tiffany.
How did you learn of this?[/b]
TOM JOHNSON, DAUGHTER TIFFANY KILLED SUNDAY AT MISSION CENTER: …I heard of it at about 2:00 – 2:30 in the morning Minnesota time from my wife. And she was being transported to the hospital, talking to the ambulance driver and telling – apparently telling the description of the assailant. And at the hospital, she passed away.
KING: Did she talk to you while in the ambulance?
JOHNSON: She did not.
KING: How is everybody dealing with this? How is your wife dealing with it? How are friends, how is the family?
JOHNSON: Well, initially, of course, Larry, the shock is pretty tough. And it still is, of course. And if it wasn’t for our faith and our friends, we wouldn’t – or I couldn’t make it through this. It has been a very, very difficult, difficult time for myself. My daughter was a – just a strong, vibrant, outgoing, loving and caring person. And all she ever wanted to do was help other people. And she, of course, was a missionary and went to different countries – Egypt and South Africa, etc. And all she wanted to do was spread the word of God. And she – that was in her heart, you know? And I guess the only thing that comforts me now is I know she’s there with God right now.
KING: This doesn’t shake your faith?
JOHNSON: It did initially and I was angry, Larry, to be very honest with you. Now, after thinking of it, I believe it’s more worldly things that happened in this situation. God, of course, doesn’t – didn’t create this. And I believe that something has to be done – I mean to be very honest with you, in my opinion, in the sense of the whole – I don’t know how to stop this. I’m not saying I have answers. I would like to know and talk to somebody who has answers to something so senseless as this.
The Requirement Of The Skeptic
Post-modern thought (implicit in generally unspoken mass opinion) holds that religious solution to the world’s problems is nonsensical, impractical, and impotent. The vaunted “power of prayer” and the benefits of spirituality seems to fail in the face of real, personal attacks by the Law of Indiscriminate Absence of Protection. The ‘real-world’ skeptic holds that religion and the supernatural should not be taken seriously unless they provide empirical evidence of predictable, reproducible, and reliable protection of the faithful from natural and deliberate evil.
Biblical Protection From LIAP
It is ironic, then, that the Bible contains MANY scriptures describing the predictable and reliable protection from LIAP—with many scriptures proposing an infallible but conditional protection from evil:
Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust (Psalm 40:4)
[b]“Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will protect them from those who malign them.”
And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times.
O Lord, you will keep us safe and protect us from such people forever.[/b] (Psalm 12: 6, 7)
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:15)
The Bible states, then, that God indeed violates LIAP for some. But is this protection arbitrary and whimsical (such that God happens to “be in the mood” to save one from x today but may feel no motivation to do so tomorrow?)—or is God’s protection as predictable and reliable as the effects of gravity? If sheer reckless whim is thrown out, what moral and psychological qualities must one possess in order to motivate God to protect one from direct confrontation with LIAP?
[b]In the end, either LIAP is an inescapable (save through death) and inexorable force of nature, or it is violated arbitrarily or predictably by a power that manipulates the physical laws of the natural world.
The Bible is filled with violations of LIAP and individuals who enjoy protection from LIAP (Jonah, Elijah, Moses, Peter, Paul, etc.). If one takes the existence of God and his conditional protection from LIAP as a given, one can examine the qualities possessed by the protected and compare them to qualities possessed by the “unprotected”.[/b]
One can thus deduce the moral factors activating God’s protection, by comparing the differences between a biblical figure stated to have enjoyed God’s protection in the scriptures and a ‘real world’ individual who failed protection.
1. THE FIRST CONTESTANT
This is the charred corpse of a 6-year old female, “Star”—a victim of the Branch Davidian Compound fire set April 19, 1993 (after a 51-day siege of the frightened men, women, and children trapped in the compound by the BATF, FBI, and local police). Despite the fact that her real name was “Star”—to avoid confusion with the stellar object we will call her: “Hannah”.
2. THE SECOND CONTESTANT
The second contestant in our study of why one individual receives protection from LIAP while the other does not is the Apostle Paul of the New Testament of the Bible.
It is crucial to analyze the conceivable moral and religious differences between Paul and Hannah by comparing the factors (based upon biblical descriptions of the nature of Paul) enabling Paul to qualify for protection with the conceivable ‘real world’ nature of Hannah before her death. The comparison may reveal why Hannah failed to qualify for protection from fatal confrontation with LIAP.
Three Theories Of The Motivation Behind God’s Willingness To Protect—Or Not To Protect—Those Who Look To Him For Protection
[b]Below are three theories. The first proposes protection from the LIAP that is granted regardless of the moral nature of the beneficiary. The second and third propose that a level of moral goodness (and religious knowledge or faith) is required before one qualifies for predictable and reproducible protection from LIAP. Hannah and Paul can be compared—morally and religiously— to determine whether or not:
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It is the level of one’s natural moral instinct that is responsible for one’s success or failure in acquiring God’s protection.
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There exists a supra-moral (independent of or beyond natural or coerced morality) knowledge, faith, or imposed existential predicament that qualifies one for protection—with the moral nature of the individual tangential to qualification (i.e. the person must at least be non-sociopathic in order to gain supra-moral protection).
Paul, unlike Hannah, achieved protection from LIAP according to the Bible:[/b]
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted: “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
And:
Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live. But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.
(Acts 28: 3-6 NIV)
What did Paul have going for him that Hannah did not? The moral and religious difference between Paul and Hannah does not factor in God’s motivation to protect according to the first theory, but it factors quite a bit in the second or third.
1. The Theory Of Arbitrary Whimsy (“If I Feel Like It-Ism”)
[b]Is protection from LIAP achieved only through random chance, in the form of an arbitrary whim of God to save a person because he happened to “feel like it” at the time? Would God have let Paul die from the snakebite if the campfire incident had occurred the next day? A week earlier? The following week?
Would God have miraculously saved Hannah from the tanks and incendiary devices of the FBI and ATF (or, perhaps, from the suicidal Branch Davidians themselves) had he wanted to do so at the time, but (by chance) did not wish to do so at the moment of truth? [/b]
[b]Did God perceive Hannah only as an object whose pain and suffering does not matter? Did God perceive the suffering and death of Hannah “necessary for a greater good”? Is Hannah merely an expendable and insignificant person whose fiery death God felt no obligation to prevent?
It is possible, perhaps, to solve the Riddle of Hannah (and other “not-so-evil” persons in the ‘real world’) by comparing Hannah (and everyone else by proxy) morally and religiously to the Apostle Paul. It is in this comparison that one will discover the qualifications enabling protection for Paul but not for Hannah.[/b]
2. The Theory Of Moral Meritocracy
mer-i-toc-ra-cy /mer-e-ta-kre-se/ noun,
plural –cies [merit + -o- + -cracy] (1958)
1 : a system in which the talented are chosen
and moved ahead on the basis of their
achievement
[b]Is God’s protection from LIAP available only if one climbs the “corporate ladder” of a God-imposed Moral Meritocracy?
A common staple of Christian thought is that it is the presence or absence of unfeigned moral goodness that decides whether or not the individual receives favorable treatment from God. God hates the evil and loves the good, thus it is believed that humans that are more “moral” than others should receive greater material reward or protection from suffering and death— both in this life and the hereafter.
But experience reveals that suffering occurs to even the most moral people on the face of the earth: children.
To what extent, then, must one be “good” to warrant the protection afforded to Paul and others in the Bible? Must one possess complete absence of predatory and sexual impulse? One could argue that Hannah/Star met this requirement, being only 6 years old and raised in a Puritanical (if a reputedly sexually flawed) environment. In Paul’s miraculous conversion (and later baptism), was he supernaturally stripped of predatory and sexual impulse on the spot?
Judging from Paul’s letters, Paul morally evolves to the point that predatory and sexual impulse shrinks to barely intelligible levels or ceases to exist. Moral evolution to this extent, incidentally, is one of the greatest pre-death/pre-afterlife aspirations of the Christian. Paul’s zealous love for Christ and the gospel eventually consumes the dark side of his human nature.
Paul’s cosmic knowledge (derived from personal instruction from the resurrected Christ) and his advanced moral nature (growing from his obsession with the gospel and his marvel over the true nature of Christ) arguably places Paul higher in the Meritocracy than Hannah, but is Hannah at fault for her lack of spiritual knowledge and inexperience of the risen Christ?
Paul (as Saul of Tarsus) was at his (naïve) worse (in his zealous persecution of Christians) when he first encountered Christ in a vision on the way to Damascus; Hannah was never so terrible and deliberately murderous, yet she never enjoyed the privilege of meeting Christ and the receipt of spiritual education and protection from LIAP (which would have saved her from fiery death).
Given this, one can rule that it is something other than success in a moral meritocracy that qualifies one for infallible protection from LIAP, given the moral disparity between Hannah and Paul before Paul’s conversion.
Unless Paul underwent an instantaneous supernatural removal of his predatory and sexual (selfishly lustful) nature upon Christian conversion—
(Is there instantaneous supernatural removal of the dark side of human nature upon conversion to Christianity? If so, what type of Christianity or Christian process enables this removal? Given the sin of ‘real-world’ people claiming Christian salvation, what, then, are Christians doing wrong to fail such “purification” upon repentance and belief?)
–it follows that Paul was only a little more than Saul of Tarsus at the beginning of his new life in Christ. If true, then Saul/Paul was arguably morally inferior to Hannah/Star after his conversion (for a short time).[/b]
3. The Theory Of Correct Faith
If one rules out conditioned nigh-perfect moral value and behavior and the arbitrary whim of God as cause behind protection from LIAP, then all that remains is supra-moral qualification.
According to religious doctrine, the human being is capable of seizing, following Stephen King, a “power line into the infinite” through faith. Faith is defined in the Bible as:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
(Hebrews 11:1)
According to the Bible, faith is the channel or bridge linking man and God, and it is the one thing that motivates God to demonstrate his power at an empirical level:
But without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
(Hebrews 1: 6 NIV)
Faith is also, arguably, the only ability that garners one favorable treatment from God regardless of one’s current moral nature (provided one is not currently behaving in a predatory manner).
[b]When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Jesus said: [/b]
“Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
[b]The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
Jesus said to the woman, [/b] “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”
(Luke 7: 37-39; 44-50 NIV)
Jesus forgave the woman of every sin she ever committed (up to that point?) simply on the basis of the woman’s pre-crucifixion faith in Jesus—a faith she possessed regardless of the woman’s current moral nature and past misdeeds. Thus, it is faith in Jesus [b]that is the supra-moral quality allowing access to God (regardless of current moral nature and past sin).
(However, one can argue that the type of faith that God favorably responds to is not accompanied by predatory behavior or used to successfully perform predatory behavior)
In Christian belief, eternal favor from God and eternal life requires post-crucifixion faith in Jesus. All Christians claim to possess this faith. The Bible goes so far as to state that access to Heaven itself[/b] is gained simply by possession of a simple, heartfelt belief:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved.
(Romans 10: 9 NIV)
[b]There it is, in a single verse: the Saving Belief that grants eternal life, eternally favor from God, and eternal invulnerability from the ravages of natural and deliberate evil.
This takes care of the afterlife, but what of the favors and protection afforded to Paul and other prophets of the Bible? These enjoyed pre-death/pre-afterlife violations of LIAP seemingly absent from the ‘real world’. Something is missing from the equation of Romans 10:9 in terms of lack of comprehension of what the verse truly means. Perhaps it is semantics, in the end, that separates those afforded protection from LIAP from those that are not.[/b]
My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
(Hosea 4: 6 NIV)
[b]The Saving Belief is presumably shared by Paul, other prophets of the Bible (enjoying protection from LIAP), and ‘real world’ Christians failing protection. Many Christians in the here and now claim to possess the same faith as Paul. But are the powers and abilities enjoyed by Paul and others in the Bible in existence in the “here and now”? If not, what type of faith do biblical Christians possess that ‘real world’ Christians do not? Is the “truly correct doctrine” of the gospel in the semantics of English translation of scripture?
This “correct doctrine”, wholly distinct from the “Christianity” taken for granted today, may be found by conceptual analysis of the very gateway to Heaven itself: the biblical verse containing the Saving Belief.[/b]
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved.
(Romans 10: 9 NIV)
If one were to discern both the obvious and hidden connotations of Romans 10:9, at least two interpretations would arise. The first is the obvious “on the surface” interpretation:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead [the resurrection of a physical body and consciousness
from a previous cessation of function of the body and brain] thou shalt be saved.
The second interpretation is far from obvious. One may accuse the second interpretation of clever imaginative “spin” or construal—but perhaps it is knowledge derived from inspiration or revelation from God:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead [That God raised Jesus from the dead through physical (or ‘virtual’) resurrection AND “raised Jesus from the dead” in the sense that Jesus is “raised” within a mental counterpart of the conscious experience of the sinner—in Christ’s sacrificial assumption of the sins and identities of all humans—within his mind while dying on the cross AND “raised Jesus from the dead” in the sense that Jesus is “raised” (the mind of Jesus is made to be partially known and experienced) within the “dead” (non-Christ human minds)—leading to a psychological and moral evolution of the “dead” into an eternal subjective union with Christ] thou shalt be saved.
Protection or lack of protection from LIAP, then, may in the end depend upon the presence or absence of the correct type of Christian doctrine—resting in the semantics of scripture, revealed through inspiration or revelation from God. At the end of the day, it is a matter of “getting it right”—with lack of protection from LIAP implying that the wrong faith or incorrect doctrine is selected (a consequence of misinterpretation).
Paul And Hannah: Endgame
If one rules out the Theory of Arbitrary Whimsy and the Theory of Moral Meritocracy in explanation of Paul’s protection from LIAP and the absence of protection for Hannah, the difference between Paul and Hanna (and by extension all ‘real world’ individuals or “Hannahs” failing protection from LIAP) is ultimately explained by the Theory of Correct Faith.
[b]A natural worry remains: is the Theory of Correct Faith and its selective protection inherently unjust? Is it as much a theological Darwinism as the “Get saved now before time runs out” Darwinism in Fundamentalist Christianity?
Is Hannah (and by extension all who do not possess the correct faith) left out in the cold or “thrown under the bus” because of ignorance?[/b]
“…My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge…” (Hosea 4:6)
Is it Hannah’s fault that her young mind did not learn the Correct Faith in the nick of time, or would not have grasped the concept had it been brought to her attention? Is it the fault of ‘real world’ Christians and churchgoers that the Correct Faith is missing (or “hiding in plain sight”), as a result of inadvertent or deliberate misinterprestation of scripture?
How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ
(Romans 10: 14, 15, 17 NIV)
Fortunately for those not protected by LIAP, the Bible indicates (or is interpreted to indicate) the absence of a theological Darwinism that goes “all the way through” to eternity:
This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
(1 Timothy 2:4)
[b]Fundamentalist Christianity seems to ignore the deeper implication of 1 Timothy 2:4, replying that although God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, God is to be disappointed by those failing the Saving Belief and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Personal Savior. But one can argue that God’s omniscience presents a problem for the notion that God is capable of surprise and disappointment; particularly disappointment by the future actions of the pre-damned (those whom God foreknew would fail to accept Christ and face condemnation to eternal hell).
Universalism (an alternative Christianity that states that God will, in time, save all men), on the other hand, holds that God is not disappointed or surprised by future action and that any desire of God is infallibly fulfilled. What God wants, God gets.[/b]
"From the beginning I revealed the end. From long ago I told you things that had not yet happened, saying, “My plan will stand, and I’ll do everything I intend to do.”
(Isaiah 46:10 God’s Word Translation)
If true, then cessation of biological existence is not the end, as God continues to educate and reason with the unfaithful beyond the grave, opening the mind of the unfaithful to the true nature of reality through revelation as the individual navigates the landscape of the mind of Christ.
An (seeming?) injustice remains, in terms of the pain and suffering of non-sociopaths not protected from LIAP, regardless of the compensation of Universalism. This flaw in the goodness of God (if the goodness of God resembles “goodness” as understood by human beings) is the ultimate “sticking point” in theodicies attempting to solve the Problem of Evil; see the ILP thread: Are We Ruled By An Evil God? (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=166101)
The “injustice”, however, may only be a pseudo-problem, if God ingeniously created a false evil world, in which God replaces subjectively experiencing victims of natural and deliberate evil with philosophical zombies or “bots”:
[b]Non-player characters or “bots”
Some of the people in a simulated reality may be automatons, philosophical zombies, or ‘bots’ added to the simulation to make it more realistic or interesting or challenging. Indeed, it is conceivable that every person other than oneself is a bot. (Like Solipsism) Bostrom called this a “me-simulation”, in which oneself is the only sovereign lifeform, or at least the only inhabitant who entered the simulation from outside.
Bostrom further elaborated on the idea of bots:
“In addition to ancestor-simulations, one may also consider the possibility of more selective simulations that include only a small group of humans or a single individual.[/b] The rest of humanity would then be zombies or “shadow-people” – humans simulated only at a level sufficient for the fully simulated people not to notice anything suspicious. It is not clear how much [computationally] cheaper shadow-people would be to simulate than real people. It is not even obvious that it is possible for an entity to behave indistinguishably from a real human and yet lack conscious experience.”
(Wikipedia: Simulated Reality, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality)
[b]The Riddle of Hannah (“Star”) is ultimately solved, in the end, if the Hannah that perished in the flames of Waco was only a zombie or “bot”.
If true, the actual consciousness of Star is abducted to an educational “sub-paradise”—wherein the non-sociopathic unfaithful is taught by the Judeo-Christian God the true nature of things, with both the simple and the intelligent “coming to a knowledge of the truth” in their discovery that an afterlife exists and that they now traverse the unknown in the mind of Christ. [/b]
“To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.”
(Isaiah 42: 7, 16 KJV)
CONCLUSION
[b]We will never have an answer to the question of whether or not God feels a moral obligation to or responsibility for the well-being of those he creates; but if there exists a future abolition of LIAP, one may infer that a moral obligation exists. If it exists, it may be that LIAP is, and has always been, nothing more than an incredibly elaborate illusion (the Dream or Simulation Hypothesis).
Regardless, worldwide skepticism of the existence or power of God requires at least a modicum of evidence of reproducible violations of LIAP in the absence of a verifiable and public theophany (the visible appearance of a Deity).
Fundamentalist Christianity is not interested in convincing the skeptic, as it holds that human existence is a Darwinian time bomb deactivated only if one comes to possess faith in Jesus in the nick of time (before physical death). There is no intention of God, according to Fundamentalist Christianity, to reason with or to convince the skeptic beyond the deadline of biological existence. [/b]
In the theological Darwinism of Fundamentalism, one either “adapts and survives” (comes to possess faith and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Personal Savior) or one remains maladaptive [b](failing to experience faith and accept Christ as Lord) and is punished for this maladaptation by damnation to eternal hell.
“Don’t believe (despite the fact that a little empirical knowledge might have aided faith)? Into the fire with you!”[/b]
[b]The alternative doctrine of Universalism, on the other hand, eschews this “Survival-of-the-Fittest” philosophy. It recognizes the rationality of the skeptic and cynism in the face of LIAP and proposes that God respects the concerns of the skeptic, enabling the skeptic’s salvation through a (Christ-mediated) “open door policy” wherein the skeptic reasons with God (and is reasoned to by God) in afterlife exchange leading to final epiphany of knowledge and truth.
As a matter of fact, Jesus accepts faith that comes upon empirical verification, implying that an empirical “crutch” is necessary to aid those not blessed with God-given non-empirical faith, which is held in higher regard.[/b]
“The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves…”
(John 14:10, 11 NIV)
And now, a moment of Zen… (borrowing from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart)
“But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night, an angel of God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me.”
(Acts 27:22 NIV)
THE END
