Metaphysical paradox

The most vocal atheists sound dully redundant to me. If you can perceive differences in the atheist cant, I'd like to hear them.

Seems my "true" atheist is your "comfortable" atheist--neither needs to defend his lack of belief or to attack his neighbor for holding different beliefs.

'Proselytizing' atheists steeped in their own certainty are as tiresome to me as their religious equivalents. I was just suggesting the phrasing of your previous posts made it seem like you were accusing all atheists of similar foibles.

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

you can't prove it scientifically, but we assume that it does. Because, if we want to prove it in anyway, we would have to listen, and if we're listening, the tree makes a sound... Aha!

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Yeah I'm going to finish reading this thread when it's not five in the morning and I haven't slept. My eyes hurt

Resurrected! Man, has it really been a year? I was sure it was 4-5 months at most. Yikes.

Anyway, many thanks to Gol for reminding me of just where we were having this discussion about free will and how consistent natural disasters (and similar things) are with the idea of a benevolent God. I asked him about it because I've been thinking about this topic a lot more lately, and have been re-reading C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain, which is about this very topic. Not quite finished with it yet, but it's all fairly fresh in my mind.

Gol and I left off mid-discussion, though at what was sort of an impasse. Correct me if I'm misstating anything, Gol, but I believe it was left with me saying that there could still be many unknown causes and effects (and even justifiable reasons) for the disasters that befall us, and that God by definition must do things that are often mystifying to us. You, I believe, acknowledged both points as technically consistent, but found each of them ultimately too convenient to accept. Would you say that's a fair summary?

Assuming so, here are a few scattered thoughts on the topic that might be helpful. I've structured them a bit to make them a bit more palpable.

1. Love is not merely Kindness
To most people today, kindness is the highest virtue. Helping people without ever judging them, giving them what they want, etc. It even gets mistaken for love. But love and kindness diverge at a key point: in the flaws they tolerate. Kindness will ignore flaws. Love will not. Love may accept flaws, but it accepts in spite of them, and, to borrow Lewis' phrasing as well as his idea, "it can never cease to will their removal." If you love someone, you want what you really believe is best for them, and that's not always going to be a perfectly agreeable thing.

The upshot of all this is that people can't fathom the idea of a loving God who "allows" us to be hurt because they have a modern notion of love that equates it with kindness and comfort. It is the cookie before dinner, in other words, and not the stern reprisal, even if the latter is what we really need to hear.

This doesn't explain away all the tragedies of the world, but I do think it takes the edge off of them. If we equate kindness with love, the idea of a loving God seems impossible. If we recognize where they differ, it becomes plausible. It's a necessary distinction for any of the other arguments listed here to even gain an audience, which is why it's listed first.


2. Is pain bad?
On a base level this is counterintuitive, but I wonder how bad pain really is. At worst, I would characterize it as necessary. Some of the reasons are obvious: we learn from it, it often makes us better people, it helps us to know when something's wrong, be it physically or emotionally.

But, specifically, it humbles us. And this is where I must give proper credit to Lewis, because this is a far braver argument than I think I would have been willing (or able) to make on my own: perhaps we need pain to remind us of what we really are. Lewis has several excellent passages about this. Here's one (emphasis added):

I know this is true in my case; when something upsetting happens to me, I am far more likely to turn to God and to humble myself in various ways than if I achieve some sort of success. I am thankfully in the habit of thanking God for successes, as well, but it comes much less naturally.

If God is as good as I believe Him to be, then we have no hope of stacking up. And that means that God's existence is, on some level, a source of shame for us. And this means that we are all going to have a very strong natural aversion to being reminded of this. In many ways it is an unpleasant reality even for the most pious of people.

If we are left with any happy option that does not involve confronting our own brokenness, we would take it. If we could find real happiness outside of God, we would take it. If we could find contentment without our own stunning inadequacy before God having to see the light of day, we would take it. I do not think we would search and think and philosophize if there were not pain. I think we'd just sit and wallow in our enjoyment. The behavior of most people who inherit vast quantities of wealth is a pretty good testament to this.


3. Truth and justice (American Way optional)
No, this isn't going to be "we're all sinners so we deserve whatever we get." This is about establishing truth. The following passage is on the same page as the passage above, and it's a slight twist on point #2 (emphasis added):
To drive this point home, Lewis uses a hypothetical man who double-crosses people in both his personal and professional lives and achieves great success this way. He revels in shallow, material things, and thinks himself cleverer and better than everyone he has tricked. He has what he wants and is thoroughly convinced that he is living the "correct" way, by looking out for himself first.

The question is simple: do you want this man to be punished?

I think almost everyone would. And if you're anything like me, it's the idea that he thinks it's okay that bothers you the most. You would instantly feel more sympathy with him if you knew he regretted what he'd done at all or had some doubt about the manner he's lived his life, even if he never quite changed his behavior as a result.

There's a part of all justice-loving people that just wants him to know it's wrong. That can't stand him skipping along, thinking what he's doing is okay without reprisal. The pain he deserves is not revenge, but truth. It is a wake-up call. It creates that doubt and the opportunity for reflection, because nobody can ignore pain.


4. Lucifer
I realize that for many people the invocation of Satan is right about the time religion starts seeming goofy to them, though logically there's no reason this should be the case and it's probably due more to silly depictions of the same than any problem with the idea itself. Regardless, it's a pretty elegant solution: bad things may happen simply because God isn't the only force capable of altering our circumstances, and suffering causes many people to question God's goodness or existence. The fact that we're having this conversation shows as much.


5. Entitlement
While I'm borrowing heavily from a much keener mind than my own with some of this, I did have a thought of my own while reading The Problem of Pain the other day.

I try to be in the habit of thinking about the argument I find hardest to answer against any idea I hold, and in the case of pain and God's alleged goodness one of the hardest contentions to answer is that of someone who has lost a loved one. Someone whose spouse or family member, for example, has passed away because of some disease or natural disaster, or something else that appears largely random. Their pain will likely last them the rest of their lives, and even perfectly valid arguments as to why this might have happened sound glib. If they insist that the hurt is too much for any loving God to allow (let alone inflict), nobody can really tell them otherwise.

With that in mind, I am about to advance an idea that may sound a little callous to anyone who has lost a loved one. I apologize if this upsets anybody; I'm just trying to explore an idea here. It isn't meant to belittle anyone's suffering, which I cannot measure, and will not try to.

While thinking about this type of loss, I realized that anyone mad at God for such a thing is making a pretty sizable assumption: they're assuming that the person they loved belongs to them, in a way. That, having found someone to love, they are therefore entitled to that person's presence. But we all know this isn't so, and most people who love another tend to regard (rightly, I think) their presence as a gift.

A fairer comparison then, if one were calling God to task, would not be "this person should still be with me," but "this person should not have existed at all." But who really thinks this about someone they've lost? Almost to a person, they remain glad they knew them. The loss, then, is not about receiving a bad event, but about not getting as many good ones as they hoped. It's about a gift that only lasts for so long, and not a belonging which was unjustly wrestled away from them. If we really believe the presence of our loved ones is a gift to us, then their absence, painful though it may be, can't be an injustice even though it feels like one.

I don't expect this answer to satisfy anyone who's had to endure this type of loss. I'm not sure I expect it to satisfy me if and when I must confront it. It's entirely possible my grief will lead me to dismiss my own argument in time.

It's not clear, however, which version of me will be right; will my grief enlighten me as to how inexplicable this kind of suffering is, or will it only cloud my judgment? There's no way to know. But sitting here now, of sound mind and body and with a sincere respect for how immense this pain must be, it seems to me that the presence of the people we love is a generosity, and not a possession, and that this truth in turn means that we have nothing to call God to task for, and that our grief quite probably could not be satiated by any answer God could give us, anyway.


Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. I'm still making my way through The Problem of Pain, and some of these thoughts can't be condensed very well. I'd be glad to reproduce more of the book for context, which makes all the difference in the world, given how subtle and delicate some of these points are.

I had issues with some details of the former IE the potential sin/human-action causes for apparently 'natural' suffering (inherited sin in the form of certain illnesses, human immorality playing a role in natural disasters etc), mainly on the grounds of lack of evidence. But certainly, within the big black box that is God's motivation, I'm happy to go along with the 'unknown vectors' and 'mysterious moralities' aspects of both args

Tough love in other words? Yep, seems all fair enough.

Couldn't you also make an argument here for physical deprivation (IE illness etc inhibiting or removing completely abilities enjoyed by unencumbered people) fulfilling a similar role. If so there's an added dimension in that it's no longer transitory (whereas pain often is). It reminds us of what we have in the world, but with a further reminder that we can no longer have it.

I'm not saying it discredits the principle that these could be God-given lessons to appreciate what has been created, to be humble, etc, but it is at these points that the argument becomes harder to see as a 'fair' lesson for the individual involved. You can put forward the argument that they benefit from a greater appreciation of other aspects of creation through having to struggle to fight harder to realise the good in the world etc. You could also argue that others can glean humbleness from both the individual's reactions and realising what they have personally. But what of those mentally damaged (sorry, have to bring out the big guns here) and so potentially incapable of appreciating their situation, yet capable of suffering (both in pain and/or incapacity).

I find this last circumstance a damning one. You've said previously that so long as they have free will in mind, if not in physical action, then this moral-lesson interpretation is still valid, yet it does seem there may be circumstances where individuals are incapable of that level of 'decision making'. The question then is, are they purely a lesson for others?

But our rich man exemplar can medicate against physical pain, eat and live healthily to avoid it, heal wounds with the latest contraptions. He can see the fact that his ill-gotten wealth facilitates him in doing this as affirmation of his path.

That said, God has provided plenty of ways to inflict pain, so I dare say one or two arrows from heaven will strike home

There is clearly something risible about the idea of Satan as the go-to guy for explaining why bad stuff in God's creation isn't God's fault. It's only when you fold him back into the mix and say he's part of God's plans (something which isn't put forward in the initial/Biblical idea as I understand it) that he becomes a less comically black-and-white creation of convenience.

It's interesting that you don't take recourse in the 'They're in heaven now, one day I will be too' line of placation that you could do here. (That's often the final straw for the agnostically inclined, as a belief in a potential creator is often an easier jump to make than belief in an unseeable afterlife etc).

This emphasis you're laying on appreciation is one of the finer results of religious thought to my mind (Even tho I still struggle with it in the extreme incapacity examples given above).

He has a very curly mind does Lewis. Cheers for shining your looking glass around these particular rabbit holes Interesting stuff.

Ahhhh, what's this? A reply eight months later! Sorry this took so long. I wrote it all today. Generally speaking if I don't reply in the first week I start to forget about discussions and then I forget where they even are, which makes it harder to do.

Anyway, here we go:

Fair enough. I will say, though, that the "inherited" illness is certainly the result of independent human action. And while there are many that appear random to us.

Also, regarding natural disasters: though we may never know what role (if any) we might play in them, I wonder if they pose much of a problem either way. I was listening to a lecture the other day that made a point I'd never really thought of: that pain caused by natural disasters can often be ascribed to human ignorance or carelessness (or both). If someone builds a house on a fault line and is killed in an earthquake, I don't think any of us would put that on God. We'd put it on the carelessness of the man. And while there are many natural disasters that we are not really careless towards (we don't always know where fault lines are, for example), those instances are the result of our sheer ignorance of things. I wonder if there are any deaths or pains from natural disasters that don't arise from either careless or ignorance of some form, in fact.

And, of course, most of the time we simply make calculated decisions. People who live in California know there are earthquakes and will be more in the future. They just decide it's worth the risk.

Yay.

Yes, you could make the same argument for people with significant disabilities. And while this is probably hard to swallow on some level, the same principles do apply. And we've all see, I'm sure, the testimonials from the loved ones of the disabled who talk, albeit sadly, about the surprising joy that their struggle has brought them. None of them would wish for it, I'm sure, but the ability to find a silver lining in the circumstances seems genuine, to me.

It will always sound glib, but certain virtues are only possible through tribulation. There is no pervseverence without something to persevere through. No bravery without something to fear. No long-suffering without, well, suffering.

Big guns, indeed. It is a very potent thought.

First off, I'd start by making a distinction between different levels of mental disability. Some probably don't require much explanation at all; I've met people with mental disabilities and most are plenty lucid enough for all the arguments advanced so far to hold together with room to spare. Even the ones whose minds were roughly akin to that of a young child are well within the bounds of all that's being suggested.

The more severe forms are trickier because at lower levels of mental accuity, I think pain is fundamentally different. I'm going to tell a short anecdote that might seem a little crude and possibly even disrespectful. I hope no one will take it that way; it is only meant to apply to major mental disabilities, and is only meant for illustrative purposes. Apologies in advance if anyone is at all upset by it. Still reading? Okay:

I was driving home from a poker game with some friends awhile ago with my wife and brother; it was cold outside (I believe it was close to Christmas) and we were stopping at a McDonald's to grab some food. Across the street we saw a stray cat wandering around. My wife felt sorry for it, as did I, but I think she was probably more disturbed because she thought about how it was alone on a holiday.

I pointed out to her that it was probably not as miserable as we think, because it has no conception of these things. Not just of holidays, but of circumstances. If you or I were struck by tragedy and rendered homeless, we would have the physical discomfort of lacking food and shelter and other things. But that would pale in comparison to the mental anguish over what had happened. And if we were homeless when Christmas rolled around, we'd probably feel even worse, because we would reflect on the significance of being alone at such a time. Our own examination of our pain would make it much worse.

The stray cat probably has pain and discomfort. But unlike a person, it only has pain and discomfort. It does not examine its pain, and I think this need to examine and consider our pain is the thing that turns it into actual suffering. Pain itself is more an annoyance, but genuine suffering requires an ability to analyze and bemoan one's pain in a way that I do not think a cat can.

Similarly, I feel that, the more impaired someone's mental abilities are, the less their suffering is to be like suffering as we know it at all. The kinds of mental abilities that turn mere pain into suffering are perhaps, mercifully, the same abilities that the most disabled individuals would lack, so that the less they could glean the kinds of "lessons" God might teach us, the less suffering (as we know it) they would actually experience.

Beyond that, it's hard to say without having experienced it directly.

Aye, I think so. Loneliness, certainly. And of course even the best care in the world is not without side effects. And even if the pain is dulled completely, it was there, and there is no way for him to ignore that it exists completely. The truth of it will still be known, even if he finds ways to hide it from himself most of the time. Every pill or IV is a constant reminder of it, and for the purposes of "planting the flag of truth," I think that works just as well.

I feel the risible part is probably born out of the fact that some people carelessly use it as a catch-all, rather than confront the tough questions of existence. But I think they just taint and "ruin" the idea for everyone else, so to speak. I think their careleness and moralizing makes a perfectly rational explanation sound lazier than it necessarily is.

As for folding Satan being part of God's plans: I actually do believe that. Not in the sense that God wants it, so much as you're not going to out-think an infinite mind. You can't do anything that He's not going to be able to turn on it's head and work to His advantage in the end. It's one of the perks of being God. Human experience is filled with bad things that people are able to turn to good in various ways (tribulation and suffering in general constantly do this), so I don't have any trouble thinking it can happen on a grander scale.

There's a great book (one of Lewis' fictional works and one of my all-time top five favorite books) called Perelandra, where the main character says something to that effect, basically mocking the idea that an enemy of God's can do anything that God cannot then turn on itself in some way.

Yeah, thoughts like these are actually when I feel a deep connection with religious thought. I may find certain explanations intellectually plausible or consistent, but the answers that account for and incorporate deep human experiences like pain and love and loss, rather than brush them aside as relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things, are the ones that I feel are really getting at something.

I also think that the idea of entitlement needs to be addressed if one is to really objectively discuss the idea of God these days. The modern person is likely to place (to borrow Lewis' words again) "God in the Dock." That is to say, to put God on trial from the get-go. To adopt a posture towards God that one might adopt to a piece of missing physical evidence, a stance which I don't think there's really any rational reason to adopt. It's similar to the idea of having a loved one "taken" from you. In both cases, you are starting with the assumption that the world just is, and working backwards from the fact of physical reality and regarding everything else as an intruder who must account for themselves. To God, I imagine it would sound like a child strutting around and acting like he owned his parents' house. As if the food and shelter he's been given are, well, a given, and not the result of someone else's magnanimity.

He does, but relatively speaking he's one of the less frivolous writers. He writes more like a straight logician, I've often felt, when he writes about God, at least compared to some other authors around or a bit before his time.

If you like curlier minds (and curly hair, for that matter!), I would highly recommend G.K. Chesterton. You may already be familiar with him, but the more I think about it the more I realize he is right up your alley. Whimsical, loves paradox, and his arguments are more about the feel of existence and likelihoods than mere rational inevitabilities. Lewis is a bit more "if X then Y," which I personally find very compelling. But Chesterton is more about the shape of things, more about what "fits" the general feel of human thought. Lewis' apologetics is more science, and Chesterton's more art.

Orthodoxy is the first book I'd recommend (of his non-fiction, I mean; his fiction is pretty brilliant, though). I'm about 40 pages into The Everlasting Man right now.

But yeah...he's tailor-made for you, I think.

I don't get the 'certainly'. You can't be saying that all inheritable diseases owe their inception to a moral human choice in the past - as you've no evidence for that. Are you saying then that the choice to procreate (& therefore spread the inheritable disease) is the human component?

(NB this is made trickier by genetic conditions that skip generations - & indeed those that only manifest when both parents are [often ignorantly] carrying recessive genes)

I don't see how ignorance can play in a 'free will' discussion (which I kinda thought this was centring on - with emphasis on its interplay with God's 'wrathful' side?).

Of course we're frequently ignorant of the vicissitudes of nature - but where then the moral input that you suggest is occuring?

Seems flat out arbitary to me in this conception of it. We get the pain, and it's due to our ignorance? (I get here that you must be thinking of the 'fallen/flawed humans' model to make this fit into a moral paradigm. For a non-believer it seems fairly unsatisfying tho, I must say. IE we all fit into the category of 'the ignorant' - hence no choice - no chance to make a call between good/evil etc. On these occasions we all hear the gameshow 'fail' buzzer of doom, irrespective).

I've often wondered in these examples whether it is truly more painful/anguish-ful to perceive pain as we do as a human adult, compared to say a baby (as the comparison I prefer over animal, as it seems slightly easier to guess at their conceptions). The one thing that makes me think the baby might be worse off while in pain is that it might not be able to conceive of the pain's end - or if so, only vaguely. That seems a deep world of anguish indeed - to think the pain might be its permanent state.

That's a nice sliding scale in theory, but I wonder if it's always so neat?

I agree it's ultimately a moot point. Even more so for the free will aspect I was pushing at. Science suggests at times that some extreme comatose cases are incapable of any conscious decision making at all etc - but I can't think of anyway you could preclude that they mightn't be able to make at least one 'moral call' in their head - even if only subconsciously. And that could satisfy the principle of 'internal' free will.

I think the folding is the only way it can possibly make 'logical' sense. And in the sense of God wanting it IE wanting evil to juxtopose good, as you've defined previously. I can see an argument for the Devil having his own head, and God not prescribing his actions per se, but still surely he must endorse what happens implicitly, in terms of him being 'a benevolant god who has provided evil for our own good'.

Only that conceptualisation, to me, makes it a logical affair. (At least as far as internal logic goes )

Agreed, in that this emphasis on 'thankfulness' is a beautiful side of many religious viewpoints. (If I were to be petty, and I am , I'd have a little chortle at new-earthers pointing to any 'missing evidence' in sci knowledge as proof of God, and merrily using evo-inspired drugs without being thankful. But they're a minority, of sorts, and the 'thankfulness for existance' thing is a larger and more beautiful concept )

Cool - will look into it . He certainly feels evil should be smooshed in with beauty, from what I've read

Flying by the seat of my pants a little here, so forgive me if I phrase something poorly or confuse terminology or anything.

The latter. That while we may do so out of ignorance or carelessness, ultimately it is the product of human choice. Beyond that we'd merely be speculating. Not that this doesn't raise interesting questions about the nature of will, addressed somewhat below...

I'm not sure if "moral input" is required. Does it really pose a problem for the Christian God is a human dies because they're ignorant of something? I'm not sure there's a way to blame God for this that doesn't involve invoking some presupposition about Him owing us something. It seems obvious on a large scale, where someone deliberately refuses to learn the ways of the world and then walks into an open manhole cover. But is it really different on a subtler scale?

And as is very often the case with issues of God and man, an analogy based on parents and children proves pretty instructive: many parents have allowed their kids to do this or that even knowing they would regret it, so that they learn. I realize these things feel like they change fundamentally when blown up to a much larger size, but I'm partially of the mind that that's more about our own limitations than about the limitations of the analogy.

I've wondered the same, and it's a fair question. I come down on the side that the ability to examine one's pain is worse, but obviously we can never really know. One of the things that sways me between the two, though, is that while the baby (and I agree, that's a much better example) may not be be able to conceive of it's end, it also often feels no lingering effects. You and I can ruminate about pain, have phantom pains, and suffer in all sorts of aftershock-like ways. But pain in infancy is often completely forgotten later.

I got to see this up close and personal with my wife recently when she went in for surgery. She had severe pain at first and was pleading with doctors to give her pain reliever, which they were unable to do for awhile because they didn't want to mask symptoms. Eventually, of course, she got some, but what struck me was that, even when she was in very little pain, she was still incredibly anxious because she remembered the pain and feared it might come back. She feared this even beyond the point at which she knew it was rational to fear. The pain rippled out past its own cessation in a way that was only possible because of her memory and lucidity.

A fine question, and one I wondered myself even as I said it. I won't pretend to know. I certainly think there is some correlation, but how far it might go, I have no idea.

Then again, it might be helpful to remember that I'm not saying "X is the answer." I simply find that there are enough plausible explanations for the problem of pain that I don't regard it as a serious philosophical or rational impediment to believe in a loving God. But that's about as far as my claim goes. I find some explanations more or less satisfying than others, but the main thing is that I find most of them plausible, moreso when taken as a group/range of options.

That's a good point. And this is really at the heart of the matter, isn't it? How you define "will," and what kind of physical constraints actually violate your will. Nobody thinks it violates free will to have a wall standing in the way of where we want to go if you can just walk around it, but they might feel differently if you were born locked in a room you couldn't get out of it, even though in a purely technical sense your will is not being deprived of you in either instance. This ties into the "Death By Ignorance" thing above, a little.

Oh, sure. And I think pretty much every Christian sect regards the Devil as an unwitting part of God's plan, at least insofar that good has been/is made out of it. My thinking is that things can happen which God did not ordain, choose, or "want," but nothing can happen that He cannot bend to His will in some way. The distinction is important because I think it leaves enough metaphysical room for God to simultaneously dislike and disapprove of Satan's actions, and ultimately weave them together for a larger purpose.

But here's the real distinction, I think. We're approaching this as if the only explanation is that Satan's interference still serves some larger purpose for humans, specifically; that it teaches us some lesson that God wants us to learn. But perhaps that's not the larger purpose: perhaps the value in allowing it comes from the fact that He's allowing Satan to do what he chooses. Satan's supposed to have free will, too, after all, which would put his evil in the same realm as suffering brought about by other humans. It might be about him, and not about us.

Heh. It does sound kind of new-agey, doesn't it?

I think it's a big concept, and a really crucial one. I think there are legitimate questions about God and pain and other things that people in all times have to grapple with, but I feel some of the purported issues with God are purely modern constructs, caused only by the default intellectual posture of this particular age. Lewis wrote a lot about that in God and the Dock, a collection of essays by himself and others, if I recall correctly. I think that's the book in which he recommended that someone read two old books for every new one, to help mitigate the blind spots that every generation and culture inevitably has.

Well, if you end up digging into any of them, do let me know. I've read just a few myself but the ones I have read, I like to talk incessantly about.

On the death thing sure no, it doesn't matter. But it's the stuff that comes before - 'moral choice' free will - and by extension the destination after death (depending on your brand of Christianity etc), that still matters in this discussion no? IE we started out talking about how moral free will might impinge on apparently 'arbitrary' suffering - and you seemed fairly certain that it did, whether it be disease or disaster etc. But I don't see where you've made a comprehensive case for this.

In both cases you're counting 'ignorance' as the auto-moral failing for the more unpredictable punishments. Or so it seems to me. I just don't see how the copious 'ignorance' examples are "the product of human choice". (Certainly choices play a part in the build up, altho not always the participants' choices perhaps say in the case of rape-pregnancy [sorry, big guns again ]. But I'm unclear about the theological significance of these 'choices', if we remove the moral component. I chose to live in a house. A freak storm flipped a roof slate into my head. Here endeth the lesson?)

It's cool if you're happy for 'ignorance' to be the 'sin'/failing which precedes 'misfortune' etc. And/or if you were to say there's no actual choice there and that's just how it goes. (As we've discussed these could still be part of an ineffably-benevolent God's plans).

Fair play. Certainly could be internally consistent with all the theological elements (as I understand them).

[I can't help but mention again that there are a helluva lot of 'black box' suppositions built into this discussion which make it I think, quite easy to argue for numerous things in a way that I wouldn't find that convincing outside of a theological context. From ineffability to implied benevolence we could possibly argue that: the Bible could be a God-designed patchwork of lies, but one meant to keep us on our toes and work out moral action for ourselves; or that the Devil secretly could be God, and benevolence as understood by humanity could actually be the deepest sin. Etc etc.

This is merely my slight frustration at staying within these philosophical confines - or more accurately - running around on such an open playing field . And I dare say to have this discussion with redress to scriptural specifics would move the goal posts a bit closer to the human realm of limits. That's naturally not a discussion I'm equipped to have tho ]

Cool will do

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

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I have no time now,later i will post a comment that explains our nature,existence and everything about our universe...i know a lot about thous stuff,have my own theory that i was explaining in some Serbian forums allready.

There's no rush.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Yeah, take your time explaining the meaning of the universe to us.

How many pins can you stick in the head of an angel?

I love you

I am too lazy to write but i will have to...i wanted to copy and paste my text from some Serbian forums to google translate,then here,but i was using slang and everything,English and Serbian are just way too different languages and grammars,not even google translate can help...so i will have to write here again,but since i love writing about thous stuff,i don't mind...i will write about planets and possibilities of alien life on them,solar system,stars,galaxies,space,time,big bang and other dimensions...

In our solar system,now in this time,life exist only on Earth and maybe Europa,satellite of Saturn...Europa have water in atmosphere and rotating hot Saturn,state of that atmosphere is changing...when Europe is away from Saturn,atmosphere is frozen,but when when its close,atmosphere starts to melt...so life can exist bellow that atmosphere...there are also theories that life existed on Mars 200 million years ago,but some asteroid or something else destroyed everything,and now there are just deserts,rocks and volcanoes there...scientists also found water recently,so maybe there are still some primitive life forms...also there is theory that life existed on Venus...Earth and Mars are in right distance from Sun to support life,not too close,not too away...hundreds of millions or even billions years ago,Venus was on that same right distance also...everything else about solar system is not too interesting(except Earth off-course)...Titan,satellite of Saturn is kinda interesting,there are volcanoes that throw ice...rest of planets,satellites and asteroids are just bunch of dust,rock and gas,but solar system is only star system that we know something about...

Closest star to Sun is Proxima Kentauri and is 4,3 light years away...that is a long long distance...from Earth is away from moon 1,5 light seconds,and from Sun 8 light minutes...so 4,3 light years is extremely huge distance and is impossible to travel to there,except if we learn how to use wormholes(space-time shortcuts)...there are about 400 billion stars in Milky Way,and about septilion stars in known universe,so saying that life exist only on Earth is really funny...there must be whole bunch of alien civilizations in space...Sun will explode in 6 billion years from now and will blow whole solar system in pieces...what i find fascinating is that it happens every second in space with other stars...while you write a comment on forum,somewhere far in space a lot of stars explode blow whole system away


About galaxies and black holes...gravity of black hole is so powerful that even light cannot escape...black hole suck stars into,and there is whole mini-universe inside,with completely different objects and time in that universe goes faster...black hole creates galaxy sucking the stars,every star and smaller black hole rotate around central black hole and will finish inside,if don't explode before coming close to it...when black hole is full,white hole will be created...white hole works in opposite way,white whole throws energy in space,instead of sucking...but that is all about white holes,i will back to black holes...Sun will not finish in central black hole,because Sun will explode 6 billion years from now,and Sun is not enough large to create a black hole when explode...Star must be way too larger that a Sun to create a black hole...largest black hole attracts everything around(stars,dust,smaller black holes) and that is the way galaxies are created...closest galaxy to Milky way is Andromeda,2,5 million light years away...2 billion years from now,Milky Way and Andromeda will merge in one galaxy...Andromeda is larger with larger central black hole and trillion stars,so Andromeda attrack us more...both galaxies are part of local group of galaxies,and all will merge into one galaxy in far far future(because attraction of black hole that i explained)...galaxy with largest black hole is in the middle of local group...

While attraction of black holes work in local group(local cluster),it is expected that galaxy with largest black hole is in the center of whole universe...but no...7 billion years ago,dark energy appeared...that is a mysterious force that expand the universe,so clusters of galaxies are moving away from each other faster that the speed of light...

Now,space as a whole...space is infinite...in every dimension...when i say that,people ask me-,,but how space is infinite if expanding? ,,...space expands in 6th dimension,which shares with infinite number of other universes...but i will explain that later in text...

Space,time and parallel universes all begin with big bang...try to even think about-how something looks like that is not space and time,and your brain will explode...you cant...you cant even think about space without time,or time without space...all we know about is a space-time,whole our nature that we can explore is space-time...well before big bang there was no space,and there was no time...that is mind-blowing...what we can is releasing how it all work,and i will explain that...

Now,i will write about dimensions,most mind-blowing part of the text...there is infinite number of dimensions,but all that we as humans can understand at least a little are 11 of them,and now i will write about each of that 11 dimensions...

0th dimension-just a dot
1D dimension-line,back and forth
2D dimension-back and forth,left and right...second dimension experience 3rd as time...
3D dimension-back and forth,left and right,up and down...we live in that dimension,lol
4D-in fourth dimension besides 3 that we know there is one extra dimension...we experience only pieces of that dimension(moments),so we experience it as time,because we cannot see it as a whole...time is just dimension like all others,objective with no movement...movement don't exist in nature,movement is just a line frozen in 4th dimension,dimension we cant see...so in fourth dimension,you can see from one standing point 3D object as a whole...in space-time,world that we experience,you have to make 4D movement to see lets say computer as a whole...you have to turn around to see it as a whole...but when you are in 4D,you see all 3 dimensions,all 6 sides while standing in one point,you dont have to turn around...
5D-Parallel universes,everything that can happen,but didn't,happens there...for example,you throw the ball to the basket,and score,in some other parallel universe,you miss...there are numerous number of examples,like in some universe Hitler won the war and lot of others,in some universe you were never born,in some universe,Earth was never existed,solar system never existed...i gave lame examples,someone more creative would give better and more interesting ones...like there is Infinite monkey theorem...you give monkey printer to type some text...he will type some non-sense text like gm3ht6g7r5r7...but in some of the parallel universes,that monkey will type full Shakespeare roman at first without one single wrong spelling word and mistake
6D-That dimension is a fabric of big bangs...in that dimension our universe expands and in that dimension,our universe was born...in that dimension infinite possibilities of our big bang...like our big bang,but exploded in different way...also there are infinite number of big bangs that created other universes
7D-Infinite number of ways that universes are born...not big bang,but something else...that universes have slightly different laws of physics
8D-Every possibility that can happen in 7D
9D-Infinite number of universes that contains a lot different laws of physics,like there are not laws of action and reaction,but some other laws...that is also mind-blowing,because everything that happens in our nature,all we know and can think about is action and reaction...also there are infinite number of universes with no laws at all
10D-In that dimensions everything that can and cant be exist...everything in purest sense of that word...strings of that dimensions are what make up our world(google String theory)
11D-infiniteD-since everything that can and cant be exist in tenth dimension,we cant guess what is in higher ones

Since everything,really everything happens by that theory,all movies,cartoons,dreams and everything are real somewhere...i spend hours writing this,my hand hurt me,but i enjoyed,and i hope you will while reading this,now i am going to watch a movie The Usual Suspects,so i will answer on responds later or tomorrow,if someone respond...cheers

i hope that there was at least one person who read my text...it is interesting.

So what your saying is there really is a Land of Oz?

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula