Gleanings Quick Links

Good-and-Evil

Items on the problem of evil and responses to evil

Atheism and Evil: Could it possibly improve things to believe that the long pain of human evolution was set in motion by chance alone? The atheist view of the world is actually rather bleaker than that of Jews and Christians: Suffering under the weight of evil is meaningless, and so is any struggle against evil. Everything in the atheist’s world begins and ends in randomness and chance. Few atheists seem to be as rigorously honest as Friedrich Nietzsche, who warned that if God is dead, it is wishful thinking to hold that reason alone can confer “meaning” on life. Reason has been outmoded by chance. (Michael Novak, First Things: On the Square )

Tue 29 Jul 2008 • Responses: 1 • from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Knight: “The title of the Nolan’s latest Batman film calls to mind medieval chivalry in a postmodern key. The dark knight embraces extraordinary tasks and fights against enormous odds; his quest is to restore what has been corrupted and to recover what has been lost. In so doing, he takes upon himself a suffering and loneliness that isolate him from his fellow citizens and inevitably court their misunderstanding and scorn. He is a dark knight, in part, because the world he inhabits is nearly void of hope and virtue, and, in part, because some of the darkness resides within him, in his internal conflicts between the good he aspires to restore and the means he deploys to fend off evil. Of the many filmmakers designing dark tales of quests for redemption, Christopher Nolan is currently making a serious claim to being the master craftsman.” (Thomas S. Hibbs, First Things: On the Square )

Tue 22 Jul 2008 • Responses: 0 • from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

Why Me? The case against the sovereign self: “These are bold claims, and Elshtain has written a bold book, one meant to shake up the now-entrenched view that we are at center of the universe and the better for it. She argues that medieval theology offered anything but a blind worship of obedience. A long struggle between popes and kings ended with a standoff: a realm in which God was supreme and another ruled by the sword. As long as such a duality existed, absolutism could not; Christians could appeal to divine authority to protect themselves against the worldly dictates of a prince. From this point of view, the transfer of sovereignty from God to government was a giant step backward. Once the state takes over, the Christian right to resistance—and the sense of being responsible to God—atrophies.” Points to Wolfe for being honest at the end, though I do think he’s misreading the argument, and perhaps making Elstain’s point. (Alan Wolfe, Slate )

Wed 25 Jun 2008 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Theodicy and the Narrow Escape Syndrome: ‘Most thoughtful Christians have at one time or another found themselves entangled in the theodicy conundrum. Without going into great detail, the key problem with the conundrum as stated is that it assumes we know who or what is meant by “God.” It is as though we have a job description for the position of God and then decide that none of the applicants fills the bill. Were I to go into detail, I would suggest that the critical turn is in seeing the implications of the Christian name for God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is, Ultimate Reality is, Being is relational. Indeed, it is relationality, if I may be permitted the term, all the way down. Which is another way of saying what the First Letter of John says more succinctly: God is love. And love entails suffering.’ (Richard John Neuhaus, On The Square )

Mon 16 Jun 2008 from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

What Matters About Romney’s Religion: Must-read. “Romney, however, should not make Kennedy’s mistake and assert that all religious beliefs are unrelated to politics. What Mormonism shares with other religious traditions is a strong commitment to the value and dignity of human beings, including the unborn, the disabled and the poor. This conviction is unavoidably political, because it leads men and women to act in the cause of justice, not in order to impose their religion, but to protect the weak.” (Michael Gerson, op-ed, The Washington Post )

Fri 03 Aug 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Evangelicals and The Vitter Effect: Senior Fellow Michael Cromartie is interviewed for Newsweek on Senator Vitter’s sex scandal. “Classical Christianity has always had a negative view of human nature. Generally, the belief has been that people are broken and fallen and frail. People plod along and make mistakes. But there is a message to all guilt-ridden humanity: there is saving grace and there can be release from that guilt, shame and sin.” (Newsweek )

Fri 20 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Where the Avatars Roam: “Libertarians hold to a theory of ‘spontaneous order’—that society should be the product of uncoordinated human choices instead of human design. Well, Second Life has plenty of spontaneity, and not much genuine order. This experiment suggests that a world that is only a market is not a utopia. It more closely resembles a seedy, derelict carnival—the triumph of amusement and distraction over meaning and purpose.” (Michael Gerson, The Washington Post )

Mon 09 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Really Bad Ideas: Population control: “To put it bluntly: it is difficult to celebrate human life in any meaningful way when people – or at least the growth of the number of people – are regarded as the source of the world’s problems. Alongside today’s respect for human life there is the increasingly popular idea that there is too much human life around, and that it is killing the planet.” An excellent discussion of the latent and blatant Malthusian strands in modern thought—can Rwanda really be overpopulated after the genocide? (Frank Furedi, Spiked )

Wed 20 Jun 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

British business leaders are now as spineless as American ones: “Businesses have a moral responsibility to use the power of their investments not only to make money but also to improve matters globally. That is the whole point of their signing up to statements and organisations such as the UN’s Global Compact or participating in exalted events such as the World Economic Forum. If businessmen and businesswomen don’t want to entirely discredit such organisations and institutions, the least they can do is to keep quiet rather than openly show that they are prepared to sacrifice liberty, law, and principle for the sake of profit.” (Prabhu Guptara, Renaissance blog )

Tue 12 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Freedom and Slavery: A very important speech. Many possible quotes. Two: “Yet what is consistently striking in much of this [African anti-slavery] literature is the fierceness with which nominal Christianity is assaulted and blamed for the slave trade, and the conviction that authentic Christianity is the most powerful argument against it and in favour of human equality.” And “But [Wilberforce] is campaigning for a moral state—that is, for a state that does not compromise its citizens, and that recognises its own accountability to considerations wider than those of immediate profit and security. He wants government to understand that its policies directly shape the moral status of citizens; public policy creates the world in which particular citizens live their lives, it creates a climate, a set of possibilities, a language and culture of public life or international life.” (Archbishop Rowan Williams, Wilberforce Lecture Trust, Hull, April 2007 )

Wed 25 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: a Lesson in the Power of Situation: “The situation won; humanity lost. Out the window went the moral upbringings of these young men, as well as their middle-class civility. Power ruled, and unrestrained power became an aphrodisiac. Power without surveillance by higher authorities was a poisoned chalice that transformed character in unpredictable directions. I believe that most of us tend to be fascinated with evil not because of its consequences but because evil is a demonstration of power and domination over others.” The author looks back at his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, emphasizing the power of situations and institutions over our behavior. (Philip G. Zimbardo, The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Mon 02 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Backward Thinking: Abolition, then and now: Don't apologize for yesterday's slavery, stop today's. “Politicized “apologies” may serve partisan purposes, but they make no moral sense. Each generation is responsible for its own transgressions; as the Scripture says, children are not liable for the sins of their fathers.” (Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte with Benedict Rogers, National Review Online )

Mon 26 Mar 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The man who ‘murdered’ slavery: Includes a review of the Metaxas book on Wilberforce and an excellent assessment of Wilberforce's accomplishments and their lessons for today. “It is amazing to read a letter from Wilberforce and realize that he is, in fact, articulating precisely 220 years ago what New Yorkers came to know in the nineties as the 'broken windows' theory: 'The most effectual way to prevent greater crimes is by punishing the smaller.'” (Mark Steyn, Macleans)

Mon 12 Mar 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Just War?: To help introduce new Senior Fellow Jean Bethke Elshtain, here is a link to a symposium in which she participated in June 2006. “The appeal [of just war theory] is that these are the rules we can arrive at through the use of reason—not revelation, through the use of reason. So the appeal is to reason, not to God, not to revelation. I think that's always the best way to make arguments in a political and civil context.” (Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs)

Thu 08 Feb 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

We’ve never had it so good: Speaking of progress and gratitude, there's this excellent review of Indur Goklany's book The Improving State of the World: “Yet rather than celebrate the immense achievements of economic development, there is a widespread feeling of resentment. Many people in the developed world believe that life is getting worse. Economic growth and technological development are viewed with anxiety and sometimes outright hostility. If our great-grandparents could be brought back to life they would be astonished by humanity’s achievements but also bewildered by our ungrateful attitudes towards these gains.” (Daniel Ben-Ami, spiked)

Fri 02 Feb 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments