A 2020 ABC News article about a semi-trailer carrying chickens in Adelaide (of exactly the sort I recently wrote about in Estimated Witness) contains the following mind-bogglingly insane words:
The RSPCA attended the crash scene.
Spokeswoman Carolyn Jones said the chickens involved in the crash were taken to an Ingham’s processing facility at Burton in Adelaide’s north where their welfare would be assessed.
Up to 1,000 chickens died.
“Clearly a very distressing scene with so many crates that had toppled over and many birds that were loose,” Ms Jones said.
“We’ll be monitoring the welfare of the surviving and the injured birds.”
Umm. Their welfare would be assessed… At an Ingham processing facility…
It makes me feel so much better to know that the RSPCA was on the scene, and that Ingham and RSPCA were keeping an eye out for an unknown number of chickens’ welfare…
RSPCA Approved chicken. It’s in the name, along with their oxymoronically titled podcast: Human Food.
Up to 1000 chickens died. On the scene or in the “processing facility”? Ultimately I’d say 100% died except those who managed to run the hell away from the truck and didn’t get run over by a car.
Seriously!!
They were on their way to be slaughtered!
The only thing a chicken slaughterhouse “cares about” is whether or not it’s worth “processing” (euphemism alert!) a chicken or disposing of its dead or dying body! It’s all about the cost!
And who knows what the RSPCA cares about. Cute cats and dogs and bugger all else apparently. Kick a dog and we’ll prosecute you. But slaughter as many pigs, cows, sheep and chickens as you like. That’s fine. They’ll even approve the death of pigs and chickens so long as they “lived well” and were slaughtered “humanely”. Oh, and don’t export live sheep! Just kill them in Australia!
I prefer the second of these. It’s more consistent with Science which is willing to declare that things can be unknown in fact because of a lack of evidence.
To say that there is no evidence for gods seems reasonable, just as there is no evidence for many other potentially imaginary entities.
The first formulation declaring that there are no gods leaves one open to the charge of overconfidence.
In recent years we have heard of the rise of the so-called new atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens (sadly gone since 2011; the world could use his sane voice right about now). Some of them have even been considered to be militant atheists.
So we can apply the adjective militant to the noun atheist.
The first time I heard the adjective agnostic applied to the noun atheist, I thought: “that doesn’t seem right”. Others I’ve spoken to have had a similar reaction. And yet, that’s more or less my preferred atheist variant at this point.
The agnostic adjective declares that the existence or non-existence of gods is:
currently unknown in fact or
unknowable, even in principle
The first seems uncontroversial and I personally think the second is too. It simply asks the question: what would count as evidence in support of a deity? The answer seems unclear at best.
While it has to be admitted that agnostic atheist is a bit confusing, the exact description of anything should be open to refinement, as with Science.
A parting thought is that Christopher Hitchens called himself an anti-theist, not only because he was an atheist, but because of the great harm he thought religion does, even if only to lead people to surrender their reason (but he also thought it was worse than that).
Perhaps I should refer to myself as an agnostic atheistic anti-theist. Too much? 🙂
I’ve been listening to the ABC Radio National podcast The Voice Referendum Explained, hosted by Fran Kelly and Carly Williams (an indigenous person), for the last few weeks. It tries to represent the whole picture rather than coming down on one side.
I’ll be up front and say that I plan to vote yes, for at least the following reason. I don’t want to be the one person who gets in the way of better communication between Australia’s indigenous people and the Australian government.
Even though it’s often said that not much is known about the details of how the Voice will operate, there is actually plenty of detail about the broad principles by which it is likely to, in a July 2021, 256 page document: Indigenous Voice Co-design Process: Final Report to the Australian Government.
If implemented, the final proposals outlined in this report would lay a solid foundation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to work in partnership with all levels of government and have a greater say in legislation, policies, programs and service delivery.
Most of us don’t have the time or motivation to read such a report (one reason why 10 minute episode podcasts like The Voice Referendum Explained are a good thing), and I will admit that I have not read much of it, but you get a good sense of the report from the Executive Summary and skimming sections.
While the Yes campaign has a fairly simple message about the Voice just being an advisory body that could lead to positive change, the No campaign‘s strategy seems to be to employ FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about various issues.
Of course, individuals have many reasons for choosing to vote either way that go beyond what the campaigns say or are motivated by.
On the September 27 2023 episode of The Voice Referendum Explained, the subject of Treaty came up. This is another thing that I suspect is not well understood by many, myself included.
Fran Kelly: Treaty is a big one. Carly, Because Australia is one of the few colonial Commonwealth nations that doesn’t have a treaty with its first nations people, right?
Carly Williams: So Canada has one. We know New Zealand has one.
Fran Kelly went on to say:
…when we think about what was outlined in the Uluru statement, what were those reforms that were called for? It was “Voice, Treaty, Truth” in that order. So Treaty is meant to come after the voice and that’s what the Uluru statement called for back in 2017. That’s what the Government’s promised.
Some say they will vote no because they want a treaty now.
Warren Mundine, who’s one of the Indigenous leaders of the Conservative No camp says Australians should reject the voice in order to speed up the treaty process…. Meanwhile, supporters of Yes, like Pat Dodson say to be talking treaty without a voice first will lead nowhere.
Pat Dodson, a federal senator, who many regard as the father of reconciliation in Australia thinks you need a Voice to make a treaty work. On the podcast he was heard to say:
Well, who are you going to deal with? That’s the first question I’d ask. And if you go down the track of dealing with 300 or 400 different Aboriginal nation groups, how are you going to do that and how do you determine it? And that will take you a couple of years to get that all sorted.
The Government needs to deal with an entity, a body that’s capable of putting forward the process by which these matters can go forward. It just can’t walk out there willy nilly and say, Well, okay, here’s three natives. We’ll have a discussion with them and we’ll have an agreement. There has to be structure and the voice is the beginning of that.
Treaties are a bit of a new concept in Australia. Most of us grew up seeing treaties of the cowboys and Indians and broken treaties and Indians marched off to reserves and we’ve known about the Maori treaty in New Zealand, but treaties are about … agreements … it’s about the recognition that they have legitimate concerns that have to be accommodated within the polity of the environment they find themselves within, and that will be a negotiation and an accommodation, not of all things, but of those things that are agreeable, that are not going to shatter or rip apart the foundation of the democracy.
This seems like a good argument for why those who want the focus to be on a treaty sooner rather than later, should vote yes for the Voice, and that a no vote may actually hinder the process.
Something else I wonder about is that I’ve also heard people talk about multiple treaties. If there was just one Treaty, then the Voice would make sense as an important, even necessary, precursor. Is the same true for multiple treaties?
“In sexual and reproductive health matters, the responsibility of Catholic health care is to give counsel which is both medically accurate and a witness to the teachings of Christ and his Church,” the code of ethics states.
In good faith (ABC News), referencing Catholic Health Australia’s Code of Ethical Standards
The 2021 census showed a continuing decline in the importance of religion in the Australian psyche, but as revealed by a recent (December 2022) ABC News story, once again we see that the Catholic Church still has more power in our modern world than we collectively think it should.
First our private schools, now our hospitals, and we all know about the institutional abuse of children by those in power in the Catholic Church.
Forget the overturning of Roe vs Wade in America. Catholic hospitals in Australia today can refuse an abortion (except if there is a “grave risk” to the mother’s life), a tubal ligation or even the replacement of an intra-uterine contraceptive device (IUD)!
One shocked doctor working in an Australian public Catholic hospital said:
[My supervisor] asked me to change the wording to say that we had supplied [the IUD] for acne, rather than birth control.
At least in this case, people of good conscience were trying to work around the rules I suppose… But they should not have had to!
In another case, a clinician who…
…worked at that same public hospital told Background Briefing when they booked a patient having their third caesarean in for a tubal ligation, “All hell broke loose”.
“It was a big incident. I was taken to the Director’s office, told, ‘Did I realise this was not allowed in the hospital?’ And I was like, ‘Why is it not allowed? I’m not Catholic, the patient is not Catholic, why should it matter what I do?’”
The ABC article goes on to quote a Catholic Health Australia official:
Catholic Health Australia, which represents the hospitals, said in a statement: “Most providers of public health and aged care will have services they do not provide … For our members, this includes the intentional termination of pregnancy. These limits are well known, given our members have been looking after the Australian community for more than 150 years.”
But are these limits really “well known” and what about those services “they do not provide”? Shouldn’t that mean less funding for the private or public Catholic hospital in question? MSI, a national, independently accredited safe abortion, vasectomy and contraception provider thinks so.
For Bonney Corbin, head of policy at MSI Australia, the solution is clear: redirect some of the funding from the hospitals not providing these services to the places that are.
“It’s looking at every single region at where their capacity is, and then funding those smaller providers accordingly.”
How did we find ourselves in a situation in which one of the most divisive and corrupt organisations on the planet has any control over reproductive rights in Australia?
The quote at the top of this post puts the emphasis upon the “teachings of Christ and his Church” and mentions “medical accuracy” (an awkward phrase) along the way, almost in submission to the teachings of Christ.
Anyway, isn’t the “and his Church” bit redundant? Are there teachings of the Church that go beyond those of Jesus? There are (it was a rhetorical question), for example The Catechism and Code of Ethical Standards referred to already. Would Jesus approve of such teachings or how hospitals declaring the name of the “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” turn some patients away?
Here we see an example of Christopher Hitchens’ maxim that religion poisons everything. At least, it can, and currently appears to be doing so in the case of the Australian hospital system and reproductive health.
The need to resist the Church’s control over our lives still exists in the 21st century.
If you have any doubt about whether the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world, watch this debate in which Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry argue for the negative case. I recommend Fry’s and Hitch’s short orations starting around 48 mins 13 secs and 14 mins 56 secs, respectively. It will come as no surprise to learn that the negative side won.
In his oration, Hitch says the following, which has some relevance for the current post:
The original sin, so to say…the problem in the first place, is the belief on the part of this church, that it does possess a truth that we don’t have and it does have a God-given right, a warrant, a mandate of Heaven, to tell other people what to do, not just in their public, but in their private lives; and until that has changed, until that fantastic and sinister and non-founded claim is changed, these crimes will go on repeating themselves.
Christopher Hitchens, Intelligence Squared
We no longer have any need of a god to explain what is no longer mysterious. What believers will do now that their faith is optional and private and irrelevant is a matter for them. We should not care. As long as they make no further attempt to inculcate religion by any form of coercion.
The documentary 2040 (or visual diary as it has been referred to) does a good job of putting a positive outlook on the future by emphasising solutions, things that can be done to mitigate climate change, including but not limited to local solar electricity networks, kelp farms as a future protein source, and a move away from private car ownership toward more efficient transport systems.
I’m a father too, so I understand the film maker’s desire to put his young child (daughter in this case) at the centre of the story, imagining a better world for her early adult years and beyond.
2040 – official trailer
But, as uplifting and inspiring as 2040 is, it doesn’t go nearly far enough in my view.
What bothers me about the film is how anthropocentric it is. In what follows, I give examples of how its vision falls short. I may be accused by some of being overly critical of what is an otherwise heart-felt, genuine labour of love, but so be it.
There is a section in which a farmer is interviewed and there is talk of farming practices to improve the health of the soil, which is great. But the true costs of animal agriculture in terms of emissions (comparable to the whole transport sector) and animal welfare are not really addressed.
Near the end of the film, there is a self-congratulatory comment about how much less meat people will eat by 2040. We are already seeing a trend towards eatingless meat and towards other protein alternatives.
Primary-school aged children were interviewed throughout. Their insights sometimes bordered on the profound and were often more wise than the adult utterances. The kid who talked about planting a seed and getting meat was on the money, if the rise of the lab grown meat industry is anything to go by, as was the girl who liked bacon but wasn’t sure she should eat it because of its source. These are the sorts of comments that get an uncomfortable “isn’t that cute” laugh from the audience, the members of whom may more-or-less dismiss the seriousness of the points being made.
There is a rushed and insipid comment by the film maker about the existence of some nice meat alternatives as supplements (not potential replacements), but no meaningful concession to the need for a totally plant based diet, just that we should be heading toward eating more plants: a no brainer since that’s what the latest Australian Dietary Guidelines have been telling us for almost a decade anyway!
At one point the future daughter asks her off-screen father “what were you thinking” regarding our generation’s shipping of fish long distance, as opposed to “what were you thinking” by engaging in the act of industrial scale fishing at all, with its attendant destruction of the ocean environment, species population decimation and untold suffering.
The film ends with a jubilant young generation having a party, but it’s a little too soon for much celebration it would seem to me, when there is no sign that any serious attempt to tackle speciesism (arguably, a barometer of our maturity as a species) has been made, and we are in 2040 likely still too narcissistic to think much beyond the end of our collective noses.
In short, 2040 is evolutionary, not revolutionary, and to be fair, that’s consistent with the film maker’s focus on what we can do in future derived from what approaches exist today.
But I think we should want to do even better than what is proposed by 2040, if we are not only going to mitigate the worst of effects of climate change for Australia and the world in general, but also to be able to look our future selves in the mirror and consider homo sapiens worthy of a place as anything like competent stewards of this planet.
Wum is for Wumbus, my high spouting whale who lives high on a hill.
Everyone knows How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
But have you heard How the Woke Cancelled Wumbus?
Among other Seussisms, “A Chinaman who eats with sticks” (from And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street), was recently declared to be offensive.
On March 2nd 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises issued this statement:
Today, on Dr. Seuss’s Birthday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises celebrates reading and also our mission of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.
We are committed to action. To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer. These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.
Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’s catalog represents and supports all communities and families.
“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.“
Hmm…
You have to admit though: that Wumbus high on the hill from On Beyond Zebra! looks pretty happy.
Land rights for gay whales anyone?
A Chinaman who eats with sticks… A big magician doing tricks…
No-one uses chopsticks anymore, right?
What about the “big” magician?
Should robust magicians everywhere suddenly be up in arms as they recall their traumatic childhood being force-read Dr Seuss?
The book is not only entertaining but educational, in ways that a linguist like me especially values. It gently gets across the key fact that our letters only approximately reflect the language we actually speak. Note, for example, that there is no way to indicate with an isolated letter, or even a group of letters, the sound of u in put – if you don’t see it in the word itself, no other approximation works: ough, oo, eu, eugh … see how nothing works? English has 26 letters to about 43 sounds, and Zebra introduces the idea, in its goofy way, that there could theoretically be more letters.
But now we are to see the book as some kind of controversial contraband, and why? Specifically, on one page a man of no delineated race (and thus we would declare him “white,” I assume) is riding a kind of camel and has a mustache. A building in the background seems like, if anything (which it isn’t) some kind of pagoda. The man has the billowy pantaloons we would associate with an “Arab.”
I understand, formally, the idea that this picture signals that this is a Middle Easterner. However, I cannot be honest with myself and view it as a “stereotype.” In no way does this picture ridicule the man (or the animal), and in fact, the camel is a special kind (called a Spazzim) with elaborate horns that carry assorted objects which if anything make this man a mid-twentieth century homeowner.
SPAZZ is a letter I use to spell Spazzim, a beast who belongs to the Nazzim of Bazzim. Handy for travelling. That’s why he has ‘im.
I don’t know whether Dr. Seuss Enterprises felt pressure from within or without, but the action to which it has committed itself is an example of political correctness having reached dizzying new heights lately as the word woke has become part of our language.
Wokeness speaks to a keen awareness of social and racial injustice. We hear calls to “stay angry, stay woke”. The derivation is from African vernacular meaning that someone was sleeping but now is awake (“I was sleeping but now I’m woke“).
It’s not at all impossible to relate to such an awakening…
But with wokeness has come cancel culture.
Books from Dr. Seuss, along with other classics, are being cancelled.
Now, I lean pretty far left politically and ideologically. I’m a Green voting vegan atheist. I support freedom of speech, expression, and belief.
But it is arguably precisely these things that are under threat by cancel culture!
Nevertheless, I think we have to resist a new index of forbidden books, no matter what form it takes.
Besides, if you did want to cultivate such an index, why on earth would you stop with modern classics?
Why not go after writings about (or by?) the vindictive, jealous, zealous god of the Old Testament, to name just one holy book?
Unless you think that burning witches or stoning adulterers or killing children if they’re disrespectful or slavery or drowning most of the world’s population are acceptable acts?
Or that damning people to Hell (New Testament) because they don’t utter the right magic words is okay?
No? Well, out with a bunch of books from the Bible then too!
But what counts as harm? What counts as injustice? What should be done about it?
If you look closely, you’ll notice that cancel culture is thoroughly anthropocentric.
How ordinary. How boring. How 20th century.
Not to diminish the importance of addressing the injustices still being done to people in various parts of the world, but why stop with human injustice? Why not upgrade racism to speciesism?
Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs: they’re no good to eat, you can’t cook ’em like steaks, but they’re handy in crossing small oceans and lakes.
It’s easy to imagine a different group of outraged people applying Seuss book bans for treating other species, even if fictional or outlandish, as things to be used. And I don’t mean Thing One and Thing Two.
Those poor old mistreated Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs. And don’t forget that the Nazzim only has the Spazzim because he’s handy for travelling. Or how about the udder (groan; dad joke) convenience of an Umbus?
UM is for Umbus, a sort of a cow with one head and one tail. But to milk this great cow you need more than one pail.
But Seussisms encourage a playfulness with language. And the corny humour never really gets old.
All Dr Seuss characters are essentially caricatures, including the chinaman with sticks, the Spazzim, and the magician.
There will always be someone to offend in this ultra-individualistic world we’ve created.
We have to stop worrying that something we write or say might be considered offensive to some group of people in the future and instead consider writings in their historical context.
That doesn’t mean that we should set out to hurt, to deliberately offend… Of course we shouldn’t…
And of course, we should stand against harm and injustice.
Obviously…
But what’s next: no Irish jokes? No jokes that start like: a priest, a rabbi, and a buddhist monk walk into a bar…
No question should be forbidden. No topic should be taboo.
Unless you think we’re special in some sense, except to one another, irrespective of any special capabilities we may have.
And yet…
We’re better than those others in some part of the world that is not ours. Right?
We’re smarter and superior to every other species. Right?
Wrong!
We have to reimagine ourselves as being a part of nature, the very nature that we seem so keen to distance ourselves from.
Not separate from nature. Not a special creation.
On this, especially, all holy books are misguided or misinterpreted. Usually both.
We are all biased beyond belief about one thing or another.
We are all flawed in some way.
Not one of us is perfect.
We need less judgement, misdirected anger, self-righteousness certainty, talk of those other people…
We need more understanding, thoughtful conversation, tolerance of difference, kindness, forgiveness…
All easier said than done, I know…
Then again…
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
It may be that Jesus never lived and so, never died. But that’s a rabbit hole for another day. We do know at least from the Jewish historian Josephus, that would-be messiahs and crucifixions were common around the time Jesus is said to have lived.
But let’s just suppose there was a historical Jesus, as described in the gospels. Was his death temporary? Did he rise 3 days later? What implications does this have for mammals like us?
35 years ago, when I was a Christian, although I hoped for an afterlife, I focused more on the death of Jesus, the atonement for the sins of the world through his blood sacrifice. But of course the other key piece is the resurrection and the promise of eternal life. Together, these seem to be the core of the Christian message, at least if you are a salvation by faith rather than a salvation by works kind of Christian.
We recently received a little pamphlet in our letterbox from a local Adelaide Baptist church entitled The Empty Tomb.
We’re approaching Easter 2021 so that’s not too surprising.
In my “Questionable Church Signs” posts I obscure any reference to the church to which a sign belongs. The Empty Tomb pamphlet includes the URL for the website, but I won’t include it here.
The Empty Tomb tells the story of the early life of Jesus, his baptism, miracles, downfall, crucifixion and resurrection.
After describing the horror of the crucifixion, it declares:
Just before He died, Jesus shouted… “IT IS FINISHED”.
The penalty for the sins of all mankind had been paid in full.
Now anyone could be saved by putting their faith in Jesus Christ.
All fairly standard salvation by faith stuff.
On the next page after the resurrection, we have:
HE IS RISEN!
Jesus DEFEATED Satan, and conquered death and hell.
At this point I could be excused for expecting a land of unicorns, rainbows and butterflies…
But, then the pamphlet confronts me with…
All who accept Christ will live with God forever in heaven.
and, inevitably, and with “lovely” pictures…
Those who reject Jesus will burn forever in a lake of fire.
…which I take to mean Hell. Finally, we have…
Someday you will bow before God.
Who will YOU serve?
Jesus Christ
Satan
So, no other options then?
Just the two?
Hmm. Wait a sec…
Is atonement really for everyone? Have our sins been paid for in full? Or, is this conditional upon uttering some magic words like “I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour”?
Not completely clear from this particular user manual.
Were Satan and Hell actually defeated? Not really, if it’s possible to burn in Hell or to serve Satan (or bizarrely somehow, both at the same time). Was that always possible, and now only optional because of what Jesus did?
The logical contradictions and gaps in reasoning in The Empty Tomb abound.
But worse than that is the ease with which The Other is condemned. Those who do not believe as “we” do.
That is very dangerous thinking.
Hitch would have declared this an example of how religion poisons everything. It’s easy to see why.
What role do liberal-minded Christians have in countering this kind of thinking? Similarly, what role do liberal-minded Muslims have in countering Jihad and other Islamist (“must convert the infidel”) thinking?
I can’t speak for the faithful although I am always happy to converse with them or anyone, to try to find common ground, and to agree to disagree otherwise.
That’s really the only way forward, isn’t it?
However, I also see it as a kind of duty to expose and counter harmful nonsense, such as is promoted in The Empty Tomb pamphlet.
Life is short and we are not at the centre of things. And, our species is in desperate need of growing up.
My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own.
Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) legislation is being discussed starting from March 17 in the South Australian parliament.
A little more than a year ago, my dad expressed a wish to die every day I was with him for the last week of his life. He was living in Tasmania. While there are amendments to be accepted, VAD legislation is now on the way to being passed there.
I recently took part in a discussion of VAD in South Australia at the Blackwood Uniting Church, a special meeting of the monthly philosophy group, supported by a well thought out presentation by a palliative care doctor. The consensus seemed to be support for VAD.
A cursory glance through my blog will show that I don’t believe in gods of any sort. One problem with religion in general is that it encourages people to pretend to know things they can’t possibly know, and potentially (and this is the crucial bit) base important life decisions on such belief. I’ve written elsewhere about what counts as good belief.
With respect to Christianity at least, the more liberal the denomination, the less salvation by faith thinking there is, and the more emphasis on living a good and caring life due to some notion of (a God of) love there usually is. Of course, you don’t need religion for that.
Especially given that there was a “Non-Christian but I wish to support the Group” option, I was encouraged to sign up on the Christians In Support of VAD website after the philosophy group discussion.
The more names on petitions and lists in favour of choosing a “good death”, the better.
Try to enjoy life now. There’s a very good chance that this is the only one you’ll get. And if your end of life scenario sucks, remember: it’s your life, not some imaginary sky fairy’s. You should get to choose, in consultation with those you care about.
Whatever you believe, the fact is that each of us was born into a life that none of us asked for.
You can choose to consider life as a gift, or to simply accept the fact of existence and embrace it. Or both, if you like.
We were not alive for 14 billion years (give or take), and we won’t be alive for even longer while the heat death of the universe plays out over trillions of years.
But we should, where possible, have some say in the manner, time, and place of our exit from life.
Anyway, let’s hope that VAD legislation is passed in SA.
I took this quick photo of a church sign from a distance on the way to the train, after a nice afternoon on the beach with my wife. The name is obscured to protect the innocent, so to speak, as usual.
Trust Him. Trust Him?
If 2020 is anything to go by, I’m inclined to place my bets elsewhere. A pandemic, major bush fires, earth quakes, untold suffering, personal loss…
The implication of this church sign is that God knows what’s coming. This makes Him all-seeing. Is He powerless to change the future? If so, He is not all-powerful, in which case He should consider a line of work other than Universe building.
Or did He plan to create a future in which there is suffering. If so, He is not all-good.
There are those Christians who will say that the suffering we see in the world is because of our rebellion against God. If God incarnate, in the person of Jesus Christ, died for the sins of all, and rebellion against God is a sin, then shouldn’t that be forgiven too, rather than God heaping more woes upon humanity?
Yes, I know… Jesus died for our sins and “all we have to do” is believe in Him to have eternal life.
What if we don’t want eternal life?
And forgiveness: don’t we get that whether we ask for it or not because of what Jesus did at Calvary?
Others will say that there is a Grand Cosmic Plan that we just don’t understand.
Either way, God gets all the kudos and we are still left with the puzzle. Adding “God” to a sentence does not contribute to an explanation.
I dounderstand the desire to believe that there’s a plan, that all the bad things that happen somehow make sense. Especially when we lose those we care about.
But perhaps we should follow William of Ockham’s advice and not multiply entities needlessly. It all just seems too complex, too arbitrary. It has all the hallmarks of being man-made.
In any case, I much prefer questions that do not yet (and may never) have answers over answers that cannot be questioned.
The sign is right about one thing though: 2021? who knows? It should have stopped there.
Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
