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The Idiot's Tale

Brown

Penultimate Amazing
Brown
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Aug 3, 2001
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See The Idiot's Tale by James Randi.

Ian Rowland put straight questions--questions that are difficult but fair--to the Archbishop of York, and got answers that are largely gobbledygook. I am not saying that to be insulting to the Archbishop. I am saying it because I have really tried to understand his points, but some of them simply make no logical sense.

The Archbishop said, "I have nothing actually to say that makes sense of this horror," and then went on to illustrate the point by saying things that indeed made no sense.

Now, there are some things that do make a little sense, but they aren't very illuminating. In the "undecipherable" portion of the interview, my expectation is that the Archbishop is referring to the exchange in Luke 13, in which Jesus is quoted as saying:
Luke 13:4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

Luke 13:5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
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The story of the falling tower is not one that is very well known (which may be why the one making the transcript had never heard of the Tower at Siloam, and therefore deemed the remark undecipherable). One of the messages of the tower story seems to be (and the Archbishop sorta emphasizes it) that bad stuff happens to good people.

Got that? Bad stuff happens to good people.

Now, this is not very illuminating for a number of reasons. First, general experience suggests that bad stuff happens to good people, so confirmation from the Archbishop pretty much agrees with what we already know from our own observations. It doesn't tell us very much about resolving the problems that Ian poses. Second, the message of Luke is ambiguous. Jesus is quoted as saying that the poeple killed by the tower collapse were not necessarily really bad people, but he also urges his listeners to repent lest perish in similar fashion, indicating that there is SOME sort of linkage between goodness and death by calamity.

And of course, the notion that bad stuff happens to good people makes the ancient "problem of evil" question more difficult for religious folks to answer.
 
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I think the verses say that God drops towers on people in order to scare the rest of us into shaping up. :scared:
 
The Luke passages tell us that faith is no better than the Lottery. If you don't play, you certainly will lose, but even if you do play, you still might lose. Tough luck.

Wow, after typing this the irony of handing out lottery tickets as Christmas gifts just hit me like lightning from a clear sky.
 
What I suspect Jesus was saying (or rather, what the author of Luke attributed to Jesus, since the book of Luke is the only place this story was told) was:

Really bad sinners die in catastrophes.
But not all people who die in catastrophes are really bad sinners.

Or it might even be put this way:
The Almighty DOES punish SOME really bad sinners with catastrophes, but not all catastrophes are punishments. (Or if a non-sinner dies in a catastrophe that WAS intended as a punishment, then that is acceptable "collateral damage.")

Virtually any reasonable interpretation of the tower story, though, raises serious questions about the nature of the Almighty, particularly (but not limited to) whether the Almighty is just, whether the Almighty is capricious, whether the Almighty cares about people, or whether the Almighty is REALLY Almighty.
 
Brown said:
What I suspect Jesus was saying (or rather, what the author of Luke attributed to Jesus, since the book of Luke is the only place this story was told) was:

Really bad sinners die in catastrophes.
But not all people who die in catastrophes are really bad sinners.

Or it might even be put this way:
The Almighty DOES punish SOME really bad sinners with catastrophes, but not all catastrophes are punishments. (Or if a non-sinner dies in a catastrophe that WAS intended as a punishment, then that is acceptable "collateral damage.")

Virtually any reasonable interpretation of the tower story, though, raises serious questions about the nature of the Almighty, particularly (but not limited to) whether the Almighty is just, whether the Almighty is capricious, whether the Almighty cares about people, or whether the Almighty is REALLY Almighty.
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That's just because our small human minds are too small to understand the AWESOME MIND OF GOD!

If only we would just believe! :boggled:

GOD is PERFECT. He tells us so! :duck:
 
Matthew 5: The sun and rain are sent on the righteous and the wicked.
John 9: Whose sin caused a man to be born blind? No one.
And then, of course, there's the book of Job.
Physical suffering doesn't come because we deserve it; physical suffering is just part of the process of living a physical life.
 
See, God is an alcoholic. Sure, he loves his children, but when he gets drunk he gets angry and lashes out at everyone around him. In the bible, he got drunk a LOT. He's in recovery now, but has relapses because he doesn't have a higher power.
 
Brown said:
See The Idiot's Tale by James Randi.

Ian Rowland put straight questions--questions that are difficult but fair--to the Archbishop of York, and got answers that are largely gobbledygook.
.
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No. Ian Rowland sent the transcript to Randi.
BBC presenter John Humphreys put the questions. Which is his day job.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Humphrys

John Humphrys has written several books, including Lost for Words, in which he criticizes what he sees as the widespread misuse of the English language, plus 'Devil's Advocate', 'Beyond Words', 'The Great Food Gamble' and 'In God We Doubt: Confessions Of A Failed Atheist'.
Humphrys is an agnostic, but has a curiosity to test his agnosticism and challenge established religions to see if they can restore his childhood belief in God. In 2006, he presented a BBC Radio 4 programme, titled "Humphrys in Search of God" where he spoke to leading British authorities on Christianity, Judaism and Islam to try and restore his faith.[8]
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Rrose Selavy said:
No. Ian Rowland sent the transcript to Randi.
BBC presenter John Humphreys put the questions. Which is his day job.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Humphrys
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I stand corrected.

By the way, the notion that people don't deserve the catastrophes that befall them IS supported by the Bible. The Bible ALSO more than adequately supports the contrary position, however. The Great Flood, of course, is perhaps the most well-known cataclysmic punishment for human wickedness. As Isaac Asimov pointed out, the Old Testament histories of Chronicles appear to be be deliberately distorted to correlate righteousness with good fortune and wickedness with ill fortune.
 
Brown said:
I stand corrected.

By the way, the notion that people don't deserve the catastrophes that befall them IS supported by the Bible. The Bible ALSO more than adequately supports the contrary position, however. The Great Flood, of course, is perhaps the most well-known cataclysmic punishment for human wickedness.
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Emphasis added. Calling the two positions contrary is logically inaccurate. The Bible supports these two ideas:
1) God uses cataclysms as punishment.
2) Cataclysms occur that are not punishment.
If a cataclysm occurs, that by itself is insufficient to know whether it was deserved.
Similarly, the government may kill some people when they commit capital crimes; that does not imply that everyone that dies has committed a capital crime.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Emphasis added. Calling the two positions contrary is logically inaccurate. The Bible supports these two ideas:
1) God uses cataclysms as punishment.
2) Cataclysms occur that are not punishment.
If a cataclysm occurs, that by itself is insufficient to know whether it was deserved.
Similarly, the government may kill some people when they commit capital crimes; that does not imply that everyone that dies has committed a capital crime.
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Does God not cause all cataclysms? Or do some things happen that are out of God's control?
 
He allows all cataclysms to happen.
As we know from the book of Job, that doesn't necessarily mean God is the direct cause. Nor is there necessarily anything supernatural about a cataclysm happening.
 
AvalonXQ said:
He allows all cataclysms to happen.
As we know from the book of Job, that doesn't necessarily mean God is the direct cause. Nor is there necessarily anything supernatural about a cataclysm happening.
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If you are calling on Job as your evidence that tells us that all such actions are condoned by god, whether they harm the innocent or not.
 
Darat said:
If you are calling on Job as your evidence that tells us that all such actions are condoned by god, whether they harm the innocent or not.
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Again, God permits them all to happen, even though He's not the one doing it.
 
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