I’m giving a talk this afternoon as part of SUNY Fredonia’s Spring Symposium in Arts and Humanities. The title of the symposium is “The Human Response to Adversity.”
The title of my talk is “Natural Disasters and the Existence of God”. I’m posting my presentation slides here, so the audience (and anyone else) can view them later.
Here they are.
Was this “Natural Disasters and the Existence of God” talk recorded? If so will you post it on the site and when? Please respond via email. Thank you.
Jordan,
They were video taping it. I’ll check with the person in charge of that and see if I can get a copy.
FREE WILL ARGUMENTS MAKE NO SENSE
The concept of “freedom” seems to do nothing for the problem of evil. If “freedom” is such an essential quantity why is it that so few of us have it at all? We all submit to the vagaries of birth and culture, genes and environment. European missionaries to Africa wrote home that the Africans had “no rythymn” because European culture only knew classical music, not the multi-layered drum beats that the Africans played. Europeans thought that Chinese opera had no subtly and that it was merely noise. So culture even helps determine what we THINK we hear in a musical piece. A baby raised without verbal contact in a closet with food slid under the door would “choose” to become animal-like, and would not learn to speak any language at all. So how “free” are any of us? We are defined largely by our culture from birth and by those around us, and then we enter that culture and help to define others and redefine ourselves in great big feedback loops. Is there “libertarian free will” within those huge feedback loops? (Does “libertarian freewill” even make sense at all? If it means being able to make a completely different decision in exactly the same circumstances when the clock is turned back perfectly to that same initial point, then it means nothing more than unguessable will, kind of like spinning a wheel of fortune. You never know what’s you’ll get. But that’s nonsensical. Better to be part of a huge natural feedback loop system which at least makes logic and logical connections possible. The greater the learning, via studying written history and extension of the senses via instruments like telescopes and microscopes, expands a person’s mind and helps them make better choices, not absolutely free ones, but more well informed choices which is what we want, not “libertarian” free will. And humanity has come along in exactly that directly, far from the choices made by a sand dollar or even the latest model orangutan.)
Secondly, is God “free” to do anything other than good? If God cannot do evil, then how “free” is God? Or, do human beings have the ability to do something that God Himself cannot do?
Will there be “freedom” in heaven and hell? If freedom is so important then will it be stripped from the occupants of heaven and hell for all eternity? If not, then will the occupants of heaven and hell be put into such an overwhelmingly controlling environment that they will never think of doing bad or good, respectively? In which case what’s the use of freedom if it’s overwhelmed by environmental circumstance in both places?
And if all things were created directly and solely out of the perfect will, power, wisdom, goodness and love of God, then by what miracle of miracles did imperfection and evil arise?