I can't resist
Posted by LaudateAgno on 2025-May-5 21:06:00, MondayIn reply to Suppose the transcendent deity is a sadist? posted by Sick Rose on 2025-May-4 21:05:48, Sunday
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You're half-kidding, of course, since the entire history of orthodox Christianity comes down to the practical equation of transcendental good, beauty, charity, and truth; a final repudiation of death and suffering; a striving toward divine perfection; an awareness of the personhood of the divine -- and, equal to and through all of these, love. That the transcendent Good should be a "sadist" makes no more sense than that a square be circle or a bachelor be married or a boy be a girl. Whatever has befallen our fallen world, it is not a "botched job." The Book of Job says as much. To condemn evil as evil, to believe evil exists, is to invoke and to appeal to the greater reality of an absolute Good that opposes and condemns that evil. Make that appeal, and there you are, pointing your thumb to a greater God beside you. A true atheist could not say there's anything "better" about that Bruckner performance than there is about the Holocaust. As soon as the word "better" is meant for real, the divine too is meant for real. "True atheist:" an oxymoron, the null set. Atheism is only ever a theism that cannot bring itself to use the word "God" for what it worships. |
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