Is This the New Teleology?
"It's all part of God's plan." We've all heard this platitude, usually expressed in tones of voice intended to soothe a questioning, frightened, or raging psyche. It is usually uttered after disasters natural or man-made as an attempt to make sense of the suffering of those who do not deserve to suffer, to try to answer one of the oldest questions that humanity has ever struggled with--why do horrible things happen to innocent people?
Most worshippers of God consider God to be omnipotent and omniscient. This conception of God endows God with the ability to do anything anywhere in the universe. Taken in conjunction with the assertion that God is not evil, this idea of the divine requires that God must manifest itself in good actions rather than disruptive, senseless, and evil actions. If there is a desire within the Godhead for goodness, there must be, by implication, some sort of divine master plan for the development of life in the universe, according to those who believe. As lowly humans, we are simply too self-absorbed, or distracted, or mortal to truly understand what this plan entails.
It has become acceptable in recent years to ascribe everything from a football team's playoff comeback to a child's high score on a test to the divine plan. In this particular conception the all-powerful God manages to weave together strands of prayer and good intentions with natural disasters like hurricanes and volcanic eruptions and man-made disasters like war and political repression in order to keep humanity's forward progress going towards the ultimate, hidden end. These sentiments are typically self-centered and have no basis in reality. The universe is a testament to the power of dumb luck; and if you are familiar with the concept of the multiverse the idea of a deity that intervenes on behalf of the chosen supplicant becomes even more ludicrous.
Christianity's teleological viewpoint is of course shared by other major religions, though with a slightly different perspective. The fundamentalist Islamic movement undoubtedly views an event like Hurricane Katrina as divine justice for a war of invasion, the same way that fundamentalist Christians must view the Baghdad bridge stampede as divine payback for resisting the supposed truth of the Christian faith. Other Americans might view the hurricane in a more negative light, viewing it as yet another example of the way in which the planet is revenging itself upon a population of mercantile polluters. As the number of natural disasters increases in the next few years, look for some kind of spin from somebody somewhere to claim that the increase in disasters proves that God is either wrathful or pleased with the results.
In the US, the new teleology has been dealt a heavy blow, as the destruction of New Orleans has proven that nature can always devise new and unexpected means of making human beings suffer and die. I wonder if those who claim that God's hand is seen in all things on this planet can say that the murders of children at the Superdome served a purpose. Or perhaps they can piously declare that the sewage and debris slowly curdling in the water in the late summer sun, turning ever more lethal by the hour, illustrates God's perfection. Of course, this new teleology has another function--it helps its practitioners to rationalize away all forms of suffering endured by their fellow humans, especially those who are in different economic strata from themselves. It's all part of the feel-good divisiveness encouraged by the saved/unsaved dichotomy of religious fundamentalism.
Existence is without meaning or plan, unless we ourselves invest it with such ideas. To accept this idea is to reject the New Primitivism of the modern fundamentalists. To live comfortably with this idea is to accept your individual responsibility for your own life; not such a radical sentiment, of course, but one that many people find frightening. So much so that they rush into the arms of repressive and irrational systems of belief.
Most worshippers of God consider God to be omnipotent and omniscient. This conception of God endows God with the ability to do anything anywhere in the universe. Taken in conjunction with the assertion that God is not evil, this idea of the divine requires that God must manifest itself in good actions rather than disruptive, senseless, and evil actions. If there is a desire within the Godhead for goodness, there must be, by implication, some sort of divine master plan for the development of life in the universe, according to those who believe. As lowly humans, we are simply too self-absorbed, or distracted, or mortal to truly understand what this plan entails.
It has become acceptable in recent years to ascribe everything from a football team's playoff comeback to a child's high score on a test to the divine plan. In this particular conception the all-powerful God manages to weave together strands of prayer and good intentions with natural disasters like hurricanes and volcanic eruptions and man-made disasters like war and political repression in order to keep humanity's forward progress going towards the ultimate, hidden end. These sentiments are typically self-centered and have no basis in reality. The universe is a testament to the power of dumb luck; and if you are familiar with the concept of the multiverse the idea of a deity that intervenes on behalf of the chosen supplicant becomes even more ludicrous.
Christianity's teleological viewpoint is of course shared by other major religions, though with a slightly different perspective. The fundamentalist Islamic movement undoubtedly views an event like Hurricane Katrina as divine justice for a war of invasion, the same way that fundamentalist Christians must view the Baghdad bridge stampede as divine payback for resisting the supposed truth of the Christian faith. Other Americans might view the hurricane in a more negative light, viewing it as yet another example of the way in which the planet is revenging itself upon a population of mercantile polluters. As the number of natural disasters increases in the next few years, look for some kind of spin from somebody somewhere to claim that the increase in disasters proves that God is either wrathful or pleased with the results.
In the US, the new teleology has been dealt a heavy blow, as the destruction of New Orleans has proven that nature can always devise new and unexpected means of making human beings suffer and die. I wonder if those who claim that God's hand is seen in all things on this planet can say that the murders of children at the Superdome served a purpose. Or perhaps they can piously declare that the sewage and debris slowly curdling in the water in the late summer sun, turning ever more lethal by the hour, illustrates God's perfection. Of course, this new teleology has another function--it helps its practitioners to rationalize away all forms of suffering endured by their fellow humans, especially those who are in different economic strata from themselves. It's all part of the feel-good divisiveness encouraged by the saved/unsaved dichotomy of religious fundamentalism.
Existence is without meaning or plan, unless we ourselves invest it with such ideas. To accept this idea is to reject the New Primitivism of the modern fundamentalists. To live comfortably with this idea is to accept your individual responsibility for your own life; not such a radical sentiment, of course, but one that many people find frightening. So much so that they rush into the arms of repressive and irrational systems of belief.
posted by alyosha mcbain at 1:22 PM
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