The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.
On the other hand, you may imagine that my aim here is to suggest that evil and suffering can only really be broached and understood from a first person subjective/subjunctive frame of mind. The alleged existence of God simply configures it in the direction an omniscient and omnipotent frame of mind. And to a mind said by many to [ultimately] be “loving just and merciful.” What of human evil and suffering then?
But the discussion is only “lowered” here to the extent it can be demonstrated that in fact there is a “higher” frame of mind from which to approach it. At least in accepting that there is no objective moral font that mere mortals can turn to to resolve conflicting goods there is at least the possibility that “moderation, negotiation and compromise” can be sustained as the “best of all possible worlds”.
Okay, but what doesn’t change from my own perspective is that this “connectedness” can involve an enormous amount of pain and suffering. And the part of our consciousness that “engages” in connecting to it reacts from a subjective/subjunctive point of view. Out in a particular world understood in a particular way. And this is applicable to both the believer and disbeliever. It’s just that the subjective assessment of the believer allows for the existence of a transcending entity into which questions of this nature can be subsumed. God or the “Universe” becomes a way in which to make it all objective.
And around and around and around they go. As though one can actually establish that either a belief or a disbelief in God could be assessed [by philosophers or scientists or theologians or anyone else] as creating a greater “moral hazard”. And it’s a “live debate” from my own frame of mind because conclusions seem only able to be derived from the perspective of one or another subjective point of view.