The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil
Choosing to take that approach is one thing. But actually being able to reconcile or resolve conflicts regarding where one stops and the other begins, is another thing altogether. Not only that but grasping in turn where genes stop and memes begin. And where I stops and we begins. And where we stop and they begin.
And it’s not just a question of lowering the discussions to subjective assessments, but also in including the subjunctive components in turn. The emotional and psychological me intertwined in the more primitive parts of the brain. And not always consciously.
After all, one of the most important functions of God is to make all that go away. As long as He knows where it’s all been, where it is now, and where it’s going, we can just go along for the ride. As obedient souls.
Still, from my point of view, the New Atheists are no less entangled in the components of my own moral philosophy. Whether God or No God moral narratives. The fact is that the intellectual contraptions promoted by all sides here have got to take words like “moral hazard” and “good” and “duty” out into the world as we know it from conflicting sets of political assumptions about the “human condition”.
Which is basically why someone like me takes flack from them all. I’m not arguing for God or No God here. I’m arguing for a fractured and fragmented self unable to sustain any really substantive moral commitment at all.