God Can't Be Reconciled

 Via the NYT I came across this: 

Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian Who Confronted Auschwitz, Is Dead at 98

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/books/jurgen-moltmann-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

In which I discovered these:

Well, I recently finished my readings for the Brown German Studies Course: Postcatastrophic Narratives: Memory and Postmemory in German Literature after 1945, and I have some questions.

How does god suffer or mourn without a body? Moreover, if god could mourn and suffer, isn't this all he would do? Does god read the papers? It's a shit show out there of epic (dare I say biblical) proportions. If god had a body with a brain and a limbic system to process emotions, he wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Moltmann's god would be depressed and powerless. 

Moltmann, like others from WWII, is trying to process and reconcile god with the world. Different from Adorno ("Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.") who jettisons god, and different from Sebald who can't trust god or memory, tries to anthropomorphize god for a reconciliation but doesn't follow the logic through. 

Putting god in the play makes him a schlub like the rest of us. Putting god in Germany makes him accountable. Giving god a body renders him subject to depression at best and entropy at worst. 

God can't be reconciled. At all. Not with WWII and The Holocaust, not with natural selection, not with entropy. 

 

Leibniz and Nex

Consider the debate about gender and sex. 

If Leibniz is correct, the “suicide” of Nex Benedict is necessary as part and parcel of the best of all possible worlds. 

Remember, per Leibniz, nothing imperfect can flow from a perfect being. God can only produce the best of all possible worlds. 

From a god’s eye view, one (god and perhaps Leibniz) can see that the bullying of Nex Benedict and the suicide of Nex Benedict are BOTH necessary as part and parcel of the best of all possible worlds. 

Logically, Nex Benedict would not have committed suicide unless she were bullied. 

The suicide is part of the best of all possible worlds. The bullying that created/fostered/instigated the suicide is the best of all possible worlds. 

The upshot, for god and Leibniz, is that with knowledge of god’s perfection, there is no suffering. Suffering is only the ignorance of god’s perfection and ignorance of the fact that nothing imperfect can flow from a perfect being. 

Again, there is no suffering. 

How does this not lead to nihilism, understood as a lack of values? If this is the best of all possible worlds, how is anything good or bad? If bullying is part and parcel of the best of all possible worlds, why are we trying to get rid of it? If suicide is part and parcel of the best of all possible worlds, why are we trying to get rid of it? 

If sin is part and parcel of the best of all possible worlds, why are christians trying to not sin? Or to atone for sins committed a priori? Either way, this is the best of all possible worlds. Sin, don’t sin, bully, commit suicide, none of it is imperfection in the best of all possible worlds. 

This is nihilism. 

Leibniz, in his attempt to exult god, renders human endeavor meaningless.

I can’t imagine a paradigm more harmful.

Invoking god

Lotta folks invoke god and god's plan. Or as some call it, divine providence - god's intervention in the universe. 

Ah yes, intervention. To intervene. 

Now, athletes can be especially guilty of this invoking business. Two that come to mind are Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes. I find it interesting (and so did George Carlin) that this invoking is always after success. Mahomes winning the super bowl and Mayfield landing a contract of "life-changing money." 

Here's Mayfield via kpvi: 

God had a plan for me, saw it through, and the group we had made it so special last year, I big reason I wanted to come back here.

 And here is some Mahomes via the christian post:

I give God the glory. He challenged us to make us better. I am proud of my guys. They did awesome. Legendary.

Now, does god's plan also hold for Regina King? Does god's plan also hold for her son Ian, who committed suicide? Is depression part of god's plan? Why didn't god intervene for Ian? Did Regina King not pray as hard or as well or as correctly as Mayfield and Mahomes? 

God only knows. 

But this is not the worst part of adhering to beliefs like this. 

The worst part is the paradigm constructed to answer the cognitive dissonance of suffering, best known and portrayed by Leibniz' answer to the problem: 

 Leibniz's best of all possible worlds philosophy argues that the existence of evil in the world created by God made it possible to achieve a greater good. However, Leibniz posits that humans do not always understand this greater good because they are less perfect creatures than God.

You don't always understand the greater good of suicide, but that is your ignorance. Take any so-called evil: plague, murder, torture, rape, cancer...all part of god's plan for the best of all possible worlds. God is benevolent and omnipotent and can only create the best of all possible worlds. 

I just want Mayfield and Mahomes to explain this to the grieving, the parents in the cancer wards, and the starving, and those suffering.

New Album Out! Wings Of Desire

There’s a scene in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire where the angel Damiel is pining to be human, to have a body. He says,

“But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. I'd like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say "Now!" Now and now and no longer "forever" and "for eternity." To sit at an empty place at a card table and be greeted, even by a nod.”

Upon seeing Wings of Desire, a weight grew in me. Because the movie greeted me, made me think. Now and now. What are you waiting for? Perfection is a myth. Play. Record. Do it again.

Along with Wenders, there is Jason Isbell. Weathervanes tied me to the earth. There was a hole inside me, and I filled it. Play. Record. Do it again.

There is a wonderful German word/idea that encapsulates Damiel and Isbell - Torschlusspanik, roughly, gate closing panic. The fear that time, and hence opportunities, are running out. It describes the sense of panic when you realize, one day, that you haven't done very much with your life, and that if you don't act soon then you may miss out on the remaining opportunities as time passes and the 'gate closes.


What are you waiting for? Perfection is a myth. Play. Record. Do it again.

credits

released February 16, 2024

Last Week Tonight - Desantis...and Sin

I watched this

and of course the christian near the end, talking about the two male (homosexual) penguins and how the bible says, “sin no more,” got me thinking about sin.

Well, specifically, sin in light of god’s omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence. It’s essentially a theodicy of sorts, because nothing imperfect can flow from a perfect being, by definition. 

How does human sinning, especially a priori sin, certainly an imperfection, come into being from a perfect being? Remember, nothing imperfect can flow from a perfect being.

How does an all powerful, all knowing god, all good god, permit sin? Notice I did not ask why, but ‘how’. What are the mechanics of sin’s placement into the world, from a perfect being?

Now consider, what if our presidential candidates had to be questioned thusly about sin.

Why is homosexuality wrong? Why is homosexuality sinful? will elicit pat answers with biblical citations, but how, how, how does sin (an imperfection) come into the world from the perfect creator?

Or if this is the best of all possible worlds, per Leibniz, why all the hubbub, Bub?

Leibniz and Uvalde

If Leibniz is correct, and this is the best of all possible worlds. (because a perfect god can only create a perfect world with perfect being [only perfection can flow from a perfect being]) then Leibniz will tell you that you should rejoice and that suffering is human error - a perspective/framing problem.

This is crucial for Leibniz and christianity.

Consider our most recent tragedy and the resultant suffering: Uvalde.

Leibniz and other christians will tell you that from a human point of view, this is tragic. But from a god's eye point of view, one will see the fuller picture, the picture with the future and how the tragic became rolled up into a change for good. Theoretically, gun laws were passed and future school children can go to school and not be gunned to death with war machines while learning their ABC's. Perspective. (This is often done with the Holocaust.)

But what if the parents don't want their children to be pawns or sacrifices for a future good? What if the parents want their kids alive? What if the parents ask why previous children, say Sandy Hook children, could not have been the critical mass in god's perfection to roll up into the change for good?

What if the Uvalde parents question god's perfection? What if they question if this is the best of all possible worlds? 

What if we as a culture, begin to question the public health consequences of christian thinking and christian doctrine? What if we begin to recognize that personal beliefs are a public health issue?