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Tag Archives: evil
God Exists And Evil Is Always For The Best?
Sounding like Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, the Thomist philosopher Edward Feser recently made the following statement at his blog: [I]t is not just God’s existence but also divine providence which can be known via purely philosophical arguments. Hence, even … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, edward feser, evil, God, philosophy, suffering, the Holocaust, theology
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Monster with Big Testicles in House Next Door
Quite a thing to discover. A man who participates in neighborhood barbecues also kidnaps and imprisons women. This is Hannah Arendt’s “the banality of evil” right next door. Charles Ramsey gives a compelling interview on his rescue of Amanda Berry: … Continue reading
A Ten-Year-Old Boy is Raped; Penn Students Show Outrage at Joe Paterno’s Firing
To focus the mind, let’s point to just one of the things Joe Paterno did (or, rather, failed to do) as coach at Penn State. In 2002, one of his coaches sodomized a ten-year-old boy in a university locker room shower. Assistant … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Catholic Church, child sexual abuse, critical thinking, evil, football, irrationality, joe paterno, pedophilia, reason
6 Comments
Not a Flash Mob, but a Flash Rob
Demonstrating the double-edged sword that technology so frequently represents, and the human propensity to make use of it for both good and evil, this new form of theft—shown in the below video—is, apparently, coordinated using cell phones.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cell phones, crime, Dionysus, evil, flash mob, flash rob, robbery, social psychology, technology, theft
12 Comments
Leon Wieseltier on Roger Rosenblatt’s Journey into Hell Mouth
Sooner or later, and in one form or another, all human beings make their journey—and on more than one occasion throughout a lifetime—into what James Wood and others have coined “Hell Mouth”—the Job-like inferno in which we encounter unavoidable and extreme anxiety, suffering, … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, Book of Job, death, evil, God, grief, Job, liebnitz, life, suffering, the problem of evil, theodicy
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A Great Arthur Schopenhauer Quote
This Arthur Schopenhauer quote is in Susan Neiman’s exceptionally interesting book, Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton 2002, p. 203): [T]he astonishment that urges us to philosophize obviously springs from the sight of the evil and wickedness in the world. If … Continue reading
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Tagged arthur schopenhauer, atheism, evil, pain, philosophy, psychology, suffering, wickedness
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Evil, Nietzsche’s “amor fati,” Prometheus, and Thomas Edison
What is evil? If we call evil whatever outrages a human imagination’s ordering will and vitality; that is, if we define evil in its relation to us, then we quickly notice that evil comes in three forms: There are natural evils that … Continue reading
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Tagged amor fati, evil, God, life, Nietzsche, philosophy, Prometheus, religion, science, technology, thomas edison
5 Comments
An 8.8 quake hit Chile early this morning (February 27, 2010). Will the damage and loss of life be similar to May 22, 1960 when the largest earthquake ever recorded (9.5 magnitude) hit the same area?
AP early this morning: A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake capable of tremendous damage struck central Chile early Saturday, shaking the capital for a minute and half and setting off a tsunami. . . . The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the … Continue reading
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Tagged chile, earthquake, evil, Pat Robertson, quake, suffering, the problem of suffering, theodicy, tsunami
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An Atheist Writes a Poem: Thomas Hardy’s “God’s Education”
I love this poem, not just for its power as language, but also for its Job-like evocation of the problem of suffering. Hardy recounts the death of a loved one, and his subsequent argument with God over her death. In content and world-weary tone, Hardy’s poem … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, evil, God, irony, Job, suffering, the book of Job, the problem of suffering, thomas hardy
5 Comments
Love Thy (Atheist) Neighbors: What Jesus Taught Aaron Gardner and His Wife at the Kentucky Creation Museum
This past week, Aaron Gardner and his wife, both Evangelicals, went to the young earth Creation Museum in Kentucky to witness a curiosity: not animatronic people riding animatronic dinosaurs ala The Flinstones, but to get a glimpse of something even more, well, strange: … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, atheist, Christianity, demonization, evil, Jesus, life, love, neighbors, psychology, Richard Dawkins
8 Comments
Word of the Day
Waterboarding. Here’s how Jonathan Kirsch describes waterboarding in his excellent and troubling 2008 Harper-Collins book, The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God (p. 4): Among the first and favorite forms of torture used by medieval inquisitors … Continue reading
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Tagged evil, God, Jesus, Jonathan Kirsch, philosophy, religion, terror, terrorism, the spanish inquisition, torture, waterboarding
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Question of the Day: Why Did God Let Mariana Bridi Suffer So Horrifically?
Why would God let a beautiful young woman go through the ordeal described below, and then also permit her to DIE, decimating the souls of her parents (who, by the way, live in poverty)? Her name was Mariana Bridi. What kind of a God … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Christianity, death, evil, Jesus, life, meaning, pain, philosophy, psychology, religion, suffering
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Prometheus Unbound 