November 2, 2010 at 12:19 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected.
January 26, 2010 at 11:00 A.M. Last night, at about midnight, my television signal was obstructed. I cannot say how many essays were damaged last night, but at least I was able to reach the blogs this morning. I will try to discover and correct inserted "errors" in these writings during the weeks and months ahead, even as Mr. Wood's essay (examined in this comment) remains incoherent and absurd.
January 25, 2010 at 7:07 P.M. Attacks against my security system will require me to restart my computer. I can never be sure of getting back to the Internet. I will continue to struggle.
January 25, 2010 at 2:50 P.M. Marketing calls will be received at fifteen minute intervals from "Heather." Advertisements have been imposed on this site against my will purporting to come from "Ads by Google."
"Is there a God? Regain Hope, Belief and Faith with Facts from the Bible. Read More! http://www.everystudent.com/ "
Faith in God is laughable to the persons responsible for these bogus advertisements. Jim McGreevey? Can James Wood shed any light on this mystery?
"College for Philosophy. Earn a Philosophy Degree online. Respected. Affordable. Accredited. www.APUS.edu/Philosophy "
I surmise that these advertisements are intended as insults of persons respectful of religion and/or philosophy. Perhaps they are intended to be funny? ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "How Censorship Works in America.")
January 25, 2010 at 2:27 P.M. "Errors" were inserted and corrected since this morning. Hackers are protected by New Jersey government officials, I believe, and they obstructed efforts to post this work earlier today. I will continue to struggle to make corrections against an onslaught of cybercrime and censorship coming from New Jersey. ("Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
January 25, 2010 at 10:36 A.M. A previous attempt to post this essay was obstructed, spacing was affected in the first draft of the work, cyberobstructions continue to make writing and posting this work difficult. I find it impossible to believe that this attempt at censorship is coincidental. President Obama said: "Those who silence dissent are on the wrong side of history." ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")
Did the President of the United States of America exclude New Jersey from this comment concerning "silencing dissent"?
James Wood, "Between God and a Hard Place," in The New York Times, Sunday, January 24, 2010, at p. A11. (Disaster.)
Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Philosophy: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002).
Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God & You've Had Your Times (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990).
William F. Buckley, Jr., God & Man at Yale (Chicago: Regnery Books, 1986). (Pecatoribus sunt? Sumus?)
January 25, 2010 at 10:45 A.M. My computer's clock -- or my watch -- is off by 40 minutes. I expect continuing sabotage and defacements of this brief essay. I will do my best to keep up with needed corrections. I cannot say how many of these writings have been vandalized overnight.
Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water, I find a new scare concerning inept discussions of controversial and difficult theological issues, such as the conundrum concerning evil. ("Incoherence in 'The New Yorker'" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
James Wood (David Remnick? Anne Milgram? Stuart Rabner?) rushes in where angels fear to tread: In the aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake, Mr. Wood tells us, theodicy "which is the justification of God's good government of the world in the face of evil and pain, was suddenly harder to practice."
This is an inadequate definition of theodicy. God does not require "justification." Furthermore, Mr. Wood has clearly been reading Susan Neiman's recent book which begins with the Lisbon earthquake -- I doubt that the author of this op-ed piece read much more than the beginning of Ms. Neiman's book -- while resorting to the most absurd deist proponents of fundamentalist rationales for evil, like Pat Robertson, in order to score rhetorical points against the faithful.
We simple folks are in need of Mr. Wood's instruction, according to Mr. Wood, who offers some astonishing "instructions" in this essay. I suspect that there were insertions of text into this article which is so uneven in tone as to suggest multiple authors. ("David Denby is Not Amused.")
Pat Robertson is not someone I would describe as highly philosophically adept, but then neither is James Wood. Ms. Neiman's full discussion should have been cited by Mr. Wood, who was described in the past as a "Professor of English Literature at Harvard University." Mr. Wood is now listed as a "staff writer at The New Yorker." They got rid of ya at Harvard, huh, James? Mr. Wood is a writer with the "grace" to formulate the following sentence which begins a paragraph: "Or is it?" Say what? Alluding to Mr. Robertson and fellow fundamentalist apologists for the ways of God to man, Mr. Wood writes:
"This repellent cruelty manages the extraordinary trick of combining hellfire evangelism with neo-colonialist complacency, in which the Haitians are blamed not only for their sinfulness but also for the hubris of their political rebellion. Eighteenth-century preachers at least tended to include themselves in the charges of general sinfulness and God's inevitable reckoning; Mr. Robertson sounds rather pleased with his own outwitting of such reckoning, as if the convenient blessing of being a God-fearing American has saved him from such pestilence. He is presumably on the other side of the sin-line, safe in some Dominican resort."
"Or is it?" indeed. In the immortal words of Joan Crawford: "Whom is fooling whom."
Let me run this by you once more, Jimbo. The thing is, kid, that you can't really worry too much about "natural evil" if you believe that everything just "is." The objection that you "seem" to express to calamities, James, such as the Haitian earthquake -- an objection that I share -- implies a moral order in which your feelings and judgments of outrage at waste, suffering, and pain make sense. What is that "moral order"? Why does natural evil offend or bother you? ("Is this atheism's moment?" and "The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
A meaningless universe is entirely without moral qualities. The problem of theodicy exists ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY in theological speculation because it incorporates a tradition of reflection aimed at "explaining the ways of God to man." Thomas Merton, Martin Buber, Islam's mystics -- all agree on this point. Incidentally, capitalizing words for emphasis and to indicate the volume of an utterance may be derided in The New Yorker as a sign of blue collar origins. I will make use of this literary device, happily, to fulfill such expectations from the ASSHOLES in Park Avenue who object to "us guys."
You are assuming the reality of God, James, and seeking to understand natural evil in light of that God's reality whenever you accept or reject a theodicy. This experience of natural evil is a problem for human understanding in the light of faith. Natural evil can only exist or becomes an issue exclusively for religious persons or as against a religious view of life. Nihilists see only events that occur without objective moral meaning. For postmodernist adherents of meaninglessness, everything "is." Reality is absurd for nihilists.
Existentialists, like Sartre, say that everything "is" then they protest and rebel against this "human condition" of absurdity for moral reasons while demanding a meaning for human suffering. That everything just "is" must be unacceptable for conscience-striken existentialists, whose very protest refutes their diagnosis, as in Kierkegaard's transcendence of "either/or" philosophy. Got it? (Again: "The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
It is important for people to appreciate that, if you are bothered by the "evil" in events such as the Haitian earthquake and cannot help trying to make moral sense of the catastrophe, then you are already within a religious perspective or have accepted what we may call God. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
You have stepped into very deep waters by invoking the tradition of speculation upon the mystery of evil -- a tradition existing within a universe of discourse in which "rational moral order" must serve as backdrop. What would you call such a comprehensive rational moral order that makes the concept of evil and our discourse about that concept meaningful? Take your time. (Again: "Is it rational to believe in God?")
Mr. Wood confuses the argument: 1) against God from the observed "reality" of evil (which is absurd); with 2) the defense of the reality of God DESPITE accepting the presence of evil in the world (which is legitimate). Whatever other conclusions you accept, the mere formulation of an "issue of evil" is already a commitment to a form of discourse that makes God LOGICALLY NECESSARY. The discussion offered by Mr. Wood of theodicy -- this may surprise him -- is not logically available to an atheist. "Theodicies seek to explain why God permits evil." The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, at p. 870. Time for more "error" insertions?
This argument concerning God and man (not necessarily at Yale) as well as the philosophical architecture demanded to participate meaningfully in the discussion concerning evil is far more elaborate, difficult, and vast than is suspected by this person, "James Wood." Is this person related to Larissa Macfarquhar? Are Larissa and James the same person? "They" (he, she, or it) make identical logical errors, repeatedly. Why is this person published in The New Yorker and The New York Times as my writings are censored, suppressed, altered, then plagiarized? Is this person a politician? Daniel Mendelsohn? Journalistic ethics? Should a journalist assist in the alteration of copyright protected works? Censorship? Suppressions of speech? Who will be next on the list of prohibited writers? ("The Mind/Body Problem and Freedom" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
Photographs of the blighted landscape in Haiti featured a crucifix that survived the nightmare as it came to rest amidst rubble and broken bodies. This Haitian crucifix is a most fitting symbol. The crucifix was approached by an aged Haitian woman whose gesture of touching the feet of the dying Christ and then kissing her finger tips gently is what I would call a complete "theodicy." This image that becomes a symbol tells us of humanity's need to share with love in suffering. Love redeems evil. I believe that the photograph of this crucifix appeared in The Economist. ("The Colors of the Cross.") Mr. Wood writes:
"The only people who would seem to have the right to invoke God at the moment are the Haitians themselves, [you can just say, 'the Haitians,' James,] who beseech his [sic.] help amidst dreadful pain. They, too, alas, appear to wander the wasteland of theodicy. [Alas, indeed.] News reports have described some Haitians giving voice to a world view uncomfortably close to Pat Robertson's, in which a vengeful God [sic.] has been meting [sic.] out justified retribution: 'I blame man. God gave us nature, and we Haitians, and our governments, abused the land. You cannot get away without consequences,' one man told The Times [sic.] last week." (emphasis added!)
Mr. Wood did not provide further quotes or references from Ms. Neiman's book. Hence, I will allude to the closing analysis in that fine work by Professor Neiman:
"What allows some of us to affirm life in the face of disaster while the rest of us shuffle between cynicism and despair? You may call the question psychological as long as you remember that the answer may be mysterious; it can be called grace. What will be decisive is also a matter of description: how the world is seen long before it becomes an object of judgment." (Neiman, p. 211.)
"Grace" also implies God. We endure "in the unity of the Holy Spirit." These are metaphors of meaning amidst the agonies of life. They exist in people's lives because they are necessary, not because people are stupid or have not heard of Charles Darwin. Perhaps Mr. Wood will instruct us simple folks? However, I very much doubt it.
"Unless the great concepts which have been traditional to the western world are rooted in a reasoned view of the universe and man's place in it, and unless this reasoned view contains in its orbit a place for the spirit, man is left in our day with archaic [intellectual] weapons [like psychobabble?] unsuited for the problems of the present." (Buckley, p. xlv.)
