Enjoyed this entry. We just don’t know the reasons why these tragedies happen, but through humility, faith and hope we accept the plans of God.
Excellent article Mark.

FWIW, one blogger has the idea that God is not unlike a programmer creating Artificial Intelligence programs for games: he knows everything about those programs, but their actual operation has been left up to them, as part of his design. That would explain various Old Testament examples of God ‘investigating’ the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, or only coming to the aid of the Israelites in Egypt when they ‘cried out to Him’.

I think it dovetails nicely with the idea that we have a part in the unfolding of creation which is meant to be according to God’s will, but our own doing (which wouldn’t have been a problem if we ‘stayed in the Garden’).

It also suggests that calling out to God should be the first thing we do in any bad situation, not the last - so he can have time to rectify matters before disaster strikes. In this case, anyone who knew or even suspected the structural weakness of that church should have prayed about it at the same time as alerting the priest. Unfortunately, as things go in the third world, it’s likely that someone knew, but couldn’t tell for some reason and it became ‘someone else’s problem’.

I stand to be corrected - but it’s a decent thought.

I can remember as a young girl, we had a tornado predicted, right at the time Mass should be starting.  My Mother questioned if we should go, or would it be better to stay at home, in the basement?

My Fathers’ answer…“I can’t think of a better place to die, than in the Church.”

Needless to say, we went to Mass.

It left quite an impression on me.

Sometimes the problem seems to me to be the underlying concept that while we are here on earth things are supposed to go well.  This isn’t our destination.  What goes on here provides for our eternal destination.  Only God is able to see the finished product - we see darkly.  Many years ago my son died - 3 1/2 years old and there were those who wondered why God would allow such a thing to happen.  We serve a jealous God and he will bring into everyman’s life what is needed to spend eternity with him. That event turned my spiritual life around and made the past 40+ years into a continual growth and blessing in Him.  I have no regrets.  Life has shown me that the results of tragedies do have meaning.

C.S. Lewis’ essay on “The Problem of Pain” is quite enlightening on this.  As is his “Surprised by Joy”.  Both helped me through a depression where I was almost at the very end of my life and pulled me out.  Most influential was “The Genesee Diary” by Henri M.J. Nouwen.  Pain is what we perceive, not what God provides.  The beauty of it all comes from within.  From out of the depths we rise to the Lord.

@James H - The analogy of God as a computer programmer has some merit, but it remains just an analogy and breaks down at a certain point. God is not bound by time, nor is he ignorant even in the absence of our prayers. The mystery of our freedom and God’s omnipotence and omniscience really is a mystery: at best, we only understand a little bit of a glimpse of it.

That said, you’re entirely right that “calling out to God should be the first thing” - not because God needs the output, but because we need to actively engage God in our lives.

I wise man told me when i was young that: “God doesn’t care how you die… He just cares about the state of your soul when you die.” So, was my father talk’en silly???

The only better way I can think of going is after exiting the confessional with a nice clean soul.

how about.. ” they ran to God for prrotection and He accepted them”

So, if they had not died in the fall of the church roof, they would live forever? If the martyrs had not accepted their crosses they would be alive now? If the Holocaust had not been perpetrated all 6 million + of its victims would be here to tell us about life under Hitler?
It’s a broken world, and we broke it. One of the consequences of its brokenness is death. EVERYBODY DIES SOMETIME. But hey, the good news: death is not the end. And it is not a punishment. It is the completion of a life of trial and purgation, and the release into a life of joy.

Death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person. In the words of St. Paul, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” - 1 Cor. Ch. 15

We mourn the passing of those who died in the collapse of the roof, but we should not mourn as those who have no faith mourn. We know that if they died in Christ, they still live because they live in Christ and we have hope that if we, too, die in Christ we will see them again.

Please read “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis, a wonderful explanation for this. These tragedies are allowed ultimately because of free will. I will not even try to summarize Lewis because I would do a horrible job, but this book is one I refer to often when I have these doubts.

If an event or state of affairs is more to be expected under one hypothesis, h1, than another, h2, it counts as evidence in favor of h1 over h2. You seem to claim that we have no idea why God would allow such a thing to happen. To me, this cleanly translates to “the event of this roof collapsing during mass and killing these people is not to be expected under theism.” But, of course, it is on atheism. There’s no one that “allowed” it to happen or could’ve miraculously prevented it: it occurred because of the series of causes that led to it. So, this event is to be expected under atheism. It follows that this is evidence for atheism. This is just an instantiation of the evidential problem of suffering or evil. It’s a pretty smooth running argument.

This is a good response, but it doesn’t address a crucial part of the reader’s question. Premature death is horrible, but like Mark said, we’re all going to die at the Lord’s discretion. But what makes this particular tragedy so difficult is that it happened during an Easter Mass - it’s almost like a slap in the face piled onto an already tragic event. The idea of death isn’t the only thing the reader is struggling with, it’s the special significance of dying in a church.

Steven and Christian:

Assuming god exists, and is completely good, omniscient and omnipotent, and taking the fact that bad things happen, is there any other conclusion than that god allows bad things to happen?  And going from there, it is only probable that sometimes bad things will happen in a spectacularly ironic fashion.

It’s not unexpected in the statistical sense, it’s just unexpected in the sense that it’s bitterly ironic to our sensibilities.  And it isn’t a slap in the face either, it just seems like that from first impressions.

And really, what’s god supposed to do?  He lets tsunamis wipe out a quarter million people, is he supposed to save a bunch of people in church because it will look bad?

I was kind of surprised by this article I thought it was going to be someone struggling with a personal tragedy like a dead kid or something, not just the fact that bad things happen, sometimes ironically.

Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori.  Faith is optional, especially in this culture of death.  But Death itself is not optional.  It will come to each of us, we do not know the hour or the day.  And we do not understand why.

@Steven: your premise is wrong, you assume we can or should fully comprehend God in this life, but as St. Thomas Aquinas says “No created mind can comprehend God and what his power implies”, so it may be that God had a reason to allow this to occur, or as you say it might just be an act of causality,ie, heavy rain cause the roof to collapse, of course in the book of job, God allows satan to wreck havoc with Job, so as a Catholic I can synthesize evil and suffering with Gods goodness and omniscience, St. Thomas makes a good argument for the providence of God.

Whether everything is subject to the providence of God?

Objection 2:

Further, a wise provider excludes any defect or evil, as far as he can, from those over whom he has a care. But we see many evils existing. Either, then, God cannot hinder these,
and thus is not omnipotent; or else He does not have care for everything.

Reply to Objection 2:

It is otherwise with one who has care of a particular thing, and one whose providence is universal, because a particular provider excludes all defects from what is subject to his care as far as he can; whereas, one who provides universally allows some little defect to remain, lest the good of the whole should be hindered. Hence, corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular nature; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature; inasmuch as the
defect in one thing yields to the good of another, or even to the universal good: for the corruption of one is the generation of another, and through this it is that a species is kept in existence. Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe. A lion would cease to live, if
there were no slaying of animals; and there would be no patience of martyrs if there were no tyrannical persecution. Thus Augustine says (Enchiridion 2): “Almighty God would in no wise permit evil to exist in His works, unless He were so almighty and so good as to produce good even from evil.” It would appear that it was on account of these two arguments to which we have just replied, that some were persuaded to consider corruptible things—-e.g. casual and evil things—-as removed from the care of divine providence.

@eclid: If we’re unable to form expectations of what events or states of affairs are likely to occur given that theism is true, then we have even more reason to be atheist; because, we are able to form expectations of what events or states of affairs are likely to occur given that atheism is true. (This awful event being such an example)

ds: If you encounter an instance of evil or suffering that appears to be unjustified, your belief in god should experience epistemic tension, even if it remains strong enough to survive. Given enough such examples, however, your confidence in theism should extinguish. It’s just a matter of updating your credences as you acquire new information, adjusting them as they should be apportioned to the evidence.

Anybody else have the nagging suspicion this could be due to human sin still?  After all, a properly designed roof doesn’t normally collapse under even the heaviest of rains.  Snow maybe, if the pitch isn’t right, but not rain.

Never mind, my own bad reading ability- the roof of the church *blew off* and then the walls collapsed.  Still pretty shoddy construction though not unusual in the third world.

@Christian,
That depends on the way you look at it.  One could make a great argument that there’s NO BETTER WAY TO DIE in the entire universe than while attending Easter Mass.  These might have been the most blessed souls on the face of the Earth.

Dave, I like that point. That is a wonderful way to think about it. I made my earlier comment because I was looking at the situation from the point of view of Mark’s reader. This person is struggling with his or her faith. We can pour out sound theology on them, which - while an excellent way to philosophical prove that bad things do not disprove God - does not touch the fact that this person’s heart is bleeding for the villagers, and is confused that such a tragic act of god would happen in… a House of God. ds wrote at 12:03 that it’s not unexpected statistically, but it still seems ironic. I guess that’s the kicker, and I totally sympathize with Mark’s reader.

Dave that is kinda stupid, really.  I guess then the best bestest way to die would be right after baptism!  I sure love it when a baby whose soul belongs to christ kicks the bucket before it has ever sinned and had any chance to, you know, live a full life.

ds- it’s only stupid to you because you don’t have the worldview that Dave does- where the point is not this life but the next, where human suffering is valuable and to be valued for it’s own sake.

“the event of this roof collapsing during mass and killing these people is not to be expected under theism. But, of course, it is on atheism”

I had no idea atheism was so paranoid ;)

I still want to know why we’re blaming God for shoddy workmanship in building a physical Church.

ds - There’s nothing wrong with dying right after baptism.  Of course, while they haven’t had a chance to sin yet, they also haven’t had much of a chance to learn to love either.  The point is that we all die, some young, and some old.  Some die more tragically than others, from a human point of view, but we don’t have the necessary knowledge to judge whether a particular death is unjust or not.  I’m not just whistling dixie here.  My own wife died at the age of 30 of cancer, leaving me four small children.  I certainly did think that it was “unfair” from a human perspective, because it WAS unfair from a human perspective.  However, I am equally certain that God knows what He is doing.

If I’m drawing up a list of my preferred ways to die, dying while attending, or right after Mass (especially Easter Mass, which is the highest celebration of the year) would be right up there towards the top of the list.

There is something sincere and horrifying in the story of Job: the frank admission that God is not only completely indifferent to the suffering of creatures, but that God is the cause of those sufferings.  I can only take the concern this reader expresses and multiply it billions-fold: the Christian faith would have us swallow that God created a universe in which this suffering would occur, created creatures that would suffer, and chooses (at every moment He eternally creates and eternally chooses) to allow the suffering to continue.  We are then given a spoonful of catharsis in the form of sadism: at least Christ suffers with us - although this really plunges everything into an even deeper abyss (what does it mean that God let His own Son suffer?  Is it as Nietzsche says, that God “beats the dog he loves best?”).  In short, the failure of theodicy has been the gaping hole in Christianity, and we are left wondering if anything is actually meant by that inane phrase “God is good.”

The problem as I see it is that you think suffering is evil, Scotty.

Suffering alone isn’t evil.  Suffering *without purpose* is evil, and suffering *with purpose* is good.  The difference is between having muscle aches due to stress position torture and muscle aches due to isometric exercise.

Thinking dying after baptism is not so bad because you go to heaven kinda strikes me as winning the race is a good thing even if its just cause your opponent was disqualified.  Yeah god wants souls in heaven but he also wants us to live right? Could just manufacture souls staight into heaven if he wanted

I dont know man the more i have discussions like this i think god is just an a-hole.

ds- The only purpose of life on this Earth, by Catholic dogma, is to teach us what we need to learn to go to Heaven.  If an infant just baptized has a soul that already has all it needs, what is that to you?  Your journey is different.

I think that your problem is ” i think god is just an a-hole.”, and then you color your world view by that assumption.

Ted:
“The problem as I see it is that you think suffering is evil, Scotty.”
I like to call things by their rightful name, so to speak.  I said specifically “suffering” rather than simply “pain.”  Suffering is more than simply the pain of a good jog.  It is the meaningless enduring of anguish: a girl who has watched her friends drown, a woman dying the long death of lung cancer, a rape victim enduring first the agony of the crime and then the scars that will haunt her future.  There is a fuzzy line or continuum between mere pain and suffering, I will grant, and I doubt that line is the same for everyone: but it is there.  God, we may assume, not only intended a universe in which these things would happen, but watches them happen in perpetual bliss.

Scotty- just because YOU see no meaning in such deaths, does NOT mean the death was meaningless, nor that the suffering had nothing to teach somebody- usually the person going through the suffering.

@ Scotty

“God, we may assume, not only intended a universe in which these things would happen, but watches them happen in perpetual bliss.”

Sure… then he decided to incarnate into man and to endure and horrible suffering and death for us. What did you ever do?

“I like to call things by their rightful name, so to speak.  I said specifically “suffering” rather than simply “pain.” “

I wonder if YOU ever suffered, truly suffered, if you truly comprehend what suffering is or you just like to make jusdgments after watching some TV show.

Many saints have suffered much more than contemporary western people sitting behind their PC (or Mac) can imagine, yet they also found joy and streght in what they endured.

Even if suffering is unpleasant it does not mean it cannot lead towards happiness and joy and a greater reward later on.

Ted:

Again, I try to call things by name.  A girl gets bitten by a mosquito, develops malaria, suffers, and dies: she wants to live, but doesn’t.  She learns nothing, because there is nothing to learn.  There is simply meaningless anguish.  Perhaps someone else dies, and does learn something (like, “look before you leap,”); or perhaps that person flies in the face of suffering and grants to it some sort of meaning.  Sure, that may happen; what has it to do with the little girl?  And even if one does learn something from suffering, how on earth does that justify the suffering?  That would be to say that I am justified to torture my children, if only I be sure they learn something from the experience.

FM:

“Sure… then he decided to incarnate into man and to endure and horrible suffering and death for us.”

More specifically, the Father sent His Son to endure horrible suffering and death for us.  What has that to do with justifying suffering?  Am I to be comforted that “well, at least God’s Son has suffered, too.”  There are countless ways that salvation could have been accomplished (or that the need for salvation may have been avoided altogether), yet Christianity would have us believe that the good God has chosen: suffering.  The torment of His children.  Even if a suffering happens to have a good outcome, this does not justify the suffering any more than a good consequent would justify an evil action (or is God, at the end of the day, merely a consequentialist?)

@FM: So let me get this straight – you believe that God created the universe 13+ billion years ago, set into motion the wonders of evolution of life, and ultimately mankind, on one of trillions of planets in this vast creation, someone sinned (the first man, the 50th man, the millionth man?), watched dispassionately for eons, then decided to incarnate his Son for the express purpose of being murdered to somehow atone for this sin? Really?

I never understand why people wail and gnash their teeth and ask Why did so & so die. Why did the car crash, why did they get murdered, why did the plane blow up and on and on. The answer according to our faith is it your time. God has us in his palm and there is a reason. I think that many trials and lawsuits could end, when people realize that God has a purpose. If nobody died, how crowded do you think this world would be?

@Zeke: Right. (Except for the dispassionately for eons part.) I’m sitting here reading the comments, thinking of the true suffering that has occurred in my life, and I’m experiencing a peace of soul that is beyond understanding. This is the fruit of faith and grace. We all suffer. I believe that the deep down, contented gift of peace that I’m experiencing is unique to the faithful sufferer.

Ted-
I know god prob isnt an a-hole, but i kinda am and maybe thats the lens i view it through.

i just dont get the whole thing i mean WHY? Why would an omnipotent being actually create us and our universe and then just hide out there and be all mysterious?  Doesnt that just make him some kind cruel scientist or something?  Is it all ok just because hes god?  The whole thing just seems so freaking ridiculous sometimes

So let me get this straight

Translation: What I am about to say is a sneer at a straw man, not an actual question

– you believe that God created the universe 13+ billion years ago,

No.  We believe that God is creator in the sense that the work of sustain the universe in being at every point in space and time, not just that he hit the first cue ball 13 billion years ago. Catholics are not deists.  The quick way to get the hang of the difference is to understand that Catholic theology holds that if God wanted to get rid of the universe he wouldn’t have to do anything: he would have to stop doing something.

set into motion the wonders of evolution of life, and ultimately mankind,

See above.  “Set in motion” is the wrong image.

on one of trillions of planets in this vast creation,

You are smuggling in the philosophical assumption that, because something is big or old, it is somehow incredible that omniscience can really comprehend it.

someone sinned (the first man, the 50th man, the millionth man?),

Traditionally, the first man.  For a somewhate fuller discussion of that go here

watched dispassionately for eons,

“dispassionately” is your word.  I don’t know why you choose it when, in fact, precisely the word used to describe the sufferings of Christ is “Passion”.

then decided

The redemption is, in Christian understanding, in the mind of God from all ages.  It is not a last ditch effort by a bad playwright to fix a story that got away from him.

to incarnate his Son for the express purpose of being murdered to somehow atone for this sin? Really?

You do realize, don’t you, that it is we who decided to murder Jesus?  Blaming God for it is a curious thing for an atheist to do.  Christians do believe that Jesus was “handed over” to us for us to do with him as we willed and that God knowing what we are made of, anticipated our brutality and made it, paradoxically, the means of our salvation.  That we are sinful is, you know, evident from the treatment we meted out to Jesus (or from any headline).

It is always amazing to me that atheist will simultaneously sneer at the concept of sin while moralistically complaining about human evil as a proof that God does not exist.  Make up your mind!

Great article, and so needed!
I struggle with things like this, too, especially when the poor and the weak and the ‘average guy’ have to suffer through life, while the pro-abortion politicians, abortionists, and pseudo-Catholics appear to go through life unscathed—wealthy and no cares (so we think-ha!).

But you’re right—we just can’t know.  We only see a tiny piece of the puzzle.  In the case of this church, I have to wonder if those who died could not be considered martyrs, at least those in good faith.

Mark Shea:

Let me step in and revitalize the arguments that you think you’ve dispelled:

First, if God is eternally creating the present moment and if creation is continuously being renewed, it only means that God continues to sustain every bit of suffering at every moment.  This situation only aggravates the problem of theodicy.

Second, evolution pretty much dispels Adam and Eve as an historical event (something even Cardinal Pell recognizes), which subsequently makes original sin a mythological doctrine (by the way, Pope Pius XII was pretty adamant about the historicity of Adam and Eve and opposed polygenism).  Even if it were somehow historical, we cannot blame human sin for the suffering which beings endured before this fall.  God creates a universe in which the indifferent rules allows for people to be struck by lightning, consumed by a parasite, or smashed by falling rocks willy nilly without regard to their will.  And God, you note, continually grants these people’s suffering His divine Fiat.

Third, the Passion does not provide a coherent theodicy, although it does provide a form of catharsis that allows people to accept their suffering peaceably and even joyously.  This mechanism is a form of masochism, the willing acceptance of pain and suffering (which are the result of the Other’s actions) in order to enjoy intimacy with the Other.  The Passion only adds an element of sadism: at the very least, God’s Son suffered, too (by the way, if you believe in substitutionary atonement, you do indeed have to believe that the intentionality of the Incarnation was secondary to human action [i.e., the sin] and that it was explicitly intended by God that Jesus be murdered for the purposes of atonement).  None of this explains why God decided this would be a good course of action or justifies how we can say “God is good” in anything other than an equivocal manner.

Fourth, and finally, the rejection of the Christian notion of sin as a universal divinely instituted morality does not necessitate the rejection of all concepts of morality.  In fact, I am confused on what concept of morality it would be okay for me to make a room with a pit in the middle and spikes at the pit’s bottom and apples hanging above it and let my children loose in it with the warning, “don’t eat those apples.”  Or on what concept it would be “good” that I should stand by and watch a man get beaten and simply say “fiat.”

The mysteries of God is like a woman who spent her life breaking homes and marrying other women’s husbands, causing misery , hurt, pain and destruction to the families she had damaged. The children from one of the families she broke struggled to make something of themselves despite the negative consequenses of their fragmented family. While the children of the home wrecker prospered in life. Until one day, tragedy struck. The home-wrecker suddenly lost her first and favorite daughter in a very tragic natural disaster, then her son-in-law died under the most mysterious and also tragic circumstance and finally the home-wrecker herself died in church during praise worship…. of a heart attack…all within a year. Those who don’t know the real past of the dead will wonder why God would allow such tragedy to befall a seemingly nice women.We must also remember though that even those who know are not to judge. We just thank-God for His mercies because it could have been worse.

Sneer at suffering all you want, but it is through suffering that I have really grown in life.  Any good parent realizes that giving their children a smooth life of ease, devoid of any challenges, is a good way to end up with spoiled narcissistic brats.  Why should it be any different with God?

We are the ones who brought sin into the world, and thus suffering and death.  The good news is that God is powerful enough to turn even suffering and death into a greater good, if we cooperate with it.  As Fulton Sheen said, “There are only two things we can do with crosses - carry them or kick against them. We can merge them in God’s plan for life and thus make them serve our inner peace and happiness, or we can stumble over them to the glen of weeping.”

This doesn’t mean fatalism.  We should try to overcome/eliminate our suffering IF POSSIBLE.  Sometimes, though, it is not possible.

The discussion about Adam and Eve might be relevant among fundamentalists, but not among traditional Christians.  All that we are required to believe is that we are all descended from one man, not that the creation story as written is true in a strict historical sense.

It is so simple really, but so profound it demands a life of contemplation. God gives each of a choice to be Adam-Eve or Jesus-Mary, the new Adam and Eve,  Elder Brother of an adopted family and the mother of the Church. Hell, sin, physical and moral pain and death were built in from the start,not as a consequence of mis-understaning the meaning of Genesis We can accept Jesus the Christ and His First Disciple, Mary who said Yes and believe He conquered death and pain and sin and opened up a New Eden for us. Or we can continue fussing about murders in churches and planes being used as bombs and presidents who think Adam and Arthur and Eve and Elizabeth are actually married and have the “right” to do so. Simple, yes, profound yes. Waste no time wondering why God set it up this way. Work at believing it and keep moving forward.

Ds- we do not have enough data to Judge God’s decisions.  Out brains are finite.  But God is not hidden to the man who seeks him in honesty and without prejudice; he hides from those who try to force Him into their own image.

Posted by Mark Shea on Thursday, May 10, 2012 2:54 AM (EST):
“‘someone sinned (the first man, the 50th man, the millionth man?)’

“Traditionally, the first man.  For a somewhate fuller discussion of that go here”

In the post referenced above, Mr. Shea describes the fall as “an upheaval that inflicted incalculable spiritual damage to the whole of the human race.”

As I understand the argument, there may have been many humans alive at this time, but we are descended from the particular couple that sinned. Is that a correct understanding of the argument, Mr. Shea?

Cowalker- I’d even go so far as to say, as far as we know, it was Homo Sapiens that failed.  As opposed to Homo Neanderthalis, Homo Habilis, or Homo Florentis, who also existed way back in the mists of time beyond 150,000 years ago.  In fact, one might even go so far as to say that one potential natural law proof of original sin is that our evolutionary cousins were wiped out- likely by the rise of Homo Sapiens.

Mark Shea - in replying to FM’s comment “then he decided to incarnate into man and to endure and horrible suffering and death for us” I had no need to get out the arts and crafts set to create a straw man there. You can nuance it all you like but I think this is a fair characterization of the Christian doctrine, no? You say that redemption was “in the mind of God from all ages”, as in, He knew in advance what mankind’s fate was? Or didn’t he? Either way, watching “dispassionately” for eons is the correct phrase I think; did He simply wait until 2000 years ago to bring Jesus into the world as our saviour, which suggests that there was no need for him until then? Why? Was there no other way? Why not let another 2000 years go by so at least there would be video cameras around?

The attempts to reconcile the absence of a historical Adam and Eve with doctrine really requires a great deal of gymnastics for it to make even a lick of sense. So I’m also interested in your answer to the question posed by cowalker, looking forward to reading it

Zeke- there was no other way.  Half of the work of salvation is having a people ready to *understand* and *receive* the gift.  Just like you can’t learn Calculus if you don’t know how to add and subtract first.

Posted by Ted Seeber on Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:41 AM (EST):Cowalker-”. . . one might even go so far as to say that one potential natural law proof of original sin is that our evolutionary cousins were wiped out- likely by the rise of Homo Sapiens.”

That is an interesting speculation. One can speculate that the sinning couple were the only Homo Sapiens with souls, and that is why they were capable of sin. Or perhaps there were others with souls, but their sinless lines died out. Maybe the descendants of the sinners wiped them out too.

But the much simpler explanation is that humans evolved like other animals, with some of whom we share emotions and intelligence. Like elephants, dolphins and chimpanzees we became conscious of ourselves as individuals. Our brains and limbs and speech capability allowed us to make complex tools and to record and pass knowledge to succeeding generations. Gradually we systematized the behaviors that favored survival of the tribe (and the individual in it) into rules. Needing an authoritative source for rules to encourage compliance, we attributed them to a superhuman Creator.

This explains the problem of suffering perfectly. All sentient creatures on earth evolved to experience pain and fear, because these negative experiences have survival value. Creatures that experience these feelings sometimes survive by acting in response. In other cases they don’t, and the negative experience serves no useful purpose. It’s an unfortunately blunt tool for survival, but clearly very effective.

For many of us, the problem with The Fall story, even if it is not taken literally, is that it proposes that the universe was created purposefully by a loving Being, that only allows humans to suffer to learn lessons, but inflicts the same suffering on all other creatures for no reason. This is an improvement on the insane fundamentalist belief that sabre-toothed tigers and mastodons grazed in the fields together until Adam and Eve sinned, but it doesn’t work as well for me as the natural explanation.

cowalker.  “But the much simpler explanation is that humans evolved like other animals,
with some of whom we share emotions and intelligence. “

I am unable to prove that other animals have emotions and intelligence.  Heck, I’m unable to prove that humans have emotions and intelligence, especially without adding a soul to the equation.

I CAN, however, prove that humans have behavior we termed religion, that NO other animal shares.  Elephants do not bury their dead.  Chimpanzees do not build shrines.

Ted - ready to receive and understand it? Not until 2000 years ago was mankind finally ready? We weren’t ready during the previous hundreds of thousands of years? And even then, God only revealed this absolutely critical truth about the reason for our existence to semi-literate tribes in the middle east, specifically neglecting the rest of the planet?

“Ted - ready to receive and understand it? Not until 2000 years ago was mankind finally ready? We weren’t ready during the previous hundreds of thousands of years?”

Given your response, I’d say as a whole we aren’t even ready now.  2000 years ago some of us *started* to be ready.  There’s much work left to do.  And yes, previous to the Roman Empire, well, just look at Iraq or Afghanistan today.

“And even then, God only revealed this absolutely critical truth about the reason for our existence to semi-literate tribes in the middle east, specifically neglecting the rest of the planet?”

Well, given the emphasis the Jewish religion put on reading and writing, I’d say your claim of “semi-literate” is a total lie.  Combined with the fact that this was pretty much the center of the Roman Empire at the time, and Jerusalem was THE trading center of the known world at the time of Christ.  All roads may lead to Rome, but Jerusalem was where the caravans met. 

Beyond the Roman Empire, in the rest of the planet 2000 years ago:  the only other people with reading and writing were the Chinese.  Japan’s 1st Emperor, likely an ethnic Chinese who invaded the islands stealing land from the Ainu, was just unifying the islands.  No slave population there to preach free food to yet.  China was even worse- there they had no notion of free will at all, it was a strict dictatorship, which claimed even judicial oversight of mountains. 

But here’s my question- don’t you see the conflict between your questions?  Which was it?  Were people before Christ semi-literate savages, or were they ready to hear a radical message of brotherly love?  Can’t be both.

Posted by Ted Seeber on Thursday, May 10, 2012 5:30 PM (EST):
“Elephants do not bury their dead.”

Actually . . .
http://fragmenten.ketmia.net/?date=2010-01-25-1731

You can google “elephants bury their dead” and find more on this.

Apparently they often cover the body with branches, rocks and or dirt, although they can’t dig a grave. It’s fascinating how deeply emotional elephants appear to be, as well as intelligent.

Co-Walker, Zeke:

Please.  Go to the link I provided and, in particular, read the “Adam and Eve and Ted and Alice” piece by Mike Flynn I linked therein.

“Adam and Eve and Ted and Alice”

Ok, got the part about getting original sin from only one ancestor among numerous others. That’s a good explanation of that hypothesis. I’m a bit puzzled by the insistence on the MAN’s role in Flynn’s article, with the parenthetical remark that it doesn’t much matter what Eve was up to.  If we’re not taking the Garden of Eden literally I’d expect that either a man or a woman could be the ancestor who caused an upheaval that inflicted incalculable spiritual damage to the whole of the human race. That wouldn’t matter if it’s a metaphor, right? Either parent could pass on the sin.

I don’t get the part about attributing rationality to God’s intervention. We can see that animals, particularly primates, are able to reason in a primitive fashion. There is no reason to suppose a need for supernatural intervention to develop that ability.

I liked this part a lot.
“All of a sudden, he knew he had disobeyed the voice in his head, he was naked like an animal, he knew that someday he would die. So death came into the world - not as fact, but as truth. . . .  Death became true when Adam realized it. . . . And so he was expelled from the edenic existence of the innocent ape-men animals into a world of worries.”

This is a great description of what I think happened to human beings, and a great interpretation of the story of The Fall. There never was a time when creatures didn’t suffer in the maw of the “Circle of Life.” But there was a time when homo sapiens wasn’t conscious of it. However there is no need for a supernatural element in this story. Our ancestors recognized a significant difference between themselves and other life forms, and explained it by assuming they were the special creations of a superhuman force. That doesn’t mean that this is true.

Cowalker, when you find the elephant mumifying the remains and ritually preparing the body, we will talk about animals having the same intelligence as humans.

Also read it, wonderful article by Flynn, poetic even. And an astounding feat of verbal agility to describe an imaginary scenario that yet again attempts to reconcile doctrine with the stark reality of what we know to be true, to keep the whole thing from falling apart. To sum it up, “original sin” is just another phrase for “human nature”. Homo sapiens’ capacity for rational thought and awareness that there are ways of acting that benefit their society (refraining from killing, stealing, cruelty, etc) is actually also a curse. They knew what good was, and the turning away from good is what we call sin. Have I got that right?

The liberal quoting and adulation of Aquinas is tough to read, especially where he seems to credit him with recognizing the basis of the science of genetics by recognizing that “a gouty man may be the father of a gouty son” despite not knowing that he had indeed shared ancestry at some point with a gouty hominid. Also a lot of speculation about “seminal corruption” which one can research further and learn that he reasoned through scripture some very appalling things about the nature of women and sexuality.

But doesn’t this all come down to why? At least the literal interpretation, which might make sense until one learns about biology, provides a narrative that explains why a God would even care about us, and why salvation was required through Jesus. But without a literal, historic fall, there’s no need for it. Were we destined to develop as a species with consciousness, and recognize God, or not? If so, why is this a flaw that required divine intervention roughly 150,000 years later? Salvation from what? 

Posted by Ted Seeber on Friday, May 11, 2012 12:26 AM (EST):
“Cowalker, when you find the elephant mumifying the remains and ritually preparing the body, we will talk about animals having the same intelligence as humans.”

It seems clear that no animal has the same intelligence as humans. But there doesn’t seem to me to be an insurmountable gap between humans and animals in the quality of their intelligence and emotions that makes it necessary to explain the difference by throwing in the existence of a soul. But of course the existence or non-existence of a soul is not an issue that can be proved or disproved by evidence, so we must agree to disagree.

Posted by Zeke on Friday, May 11, 2012 12:29 AM (EST):
“At least the literal interpretation, which might make sense until one learns about biology, provides a narrative that explains why a God would even care about us . . . .”

There is a long-established human tendency to take it for granted that supernatural creatures are totally focused on humans.  Mythology, folklore, literature, TV shows and movies are rife with spirits, gods, demons, fairies, and angels who dote on humans or assault them. Many Americans believe in a God who is offended if He is not honored at government functions, and Who will bless America more than other nations if we have prayer breakfasts in the White House. Many Christians picture themselves as the coveted prize in an ongoing battle between God and the Devil. Science fiction is full of incredibly intelligent and powerful aliens who love or hate humans with puzzling intensity, rather than simply ignoring them, eg. Dr. Who in the British sci-fi series or Q in the second Star Trek series. Of course if you don’t project human characteristics onto these supernatural creatures, the story of an encounter with one is just a story about humans encountering a force of nature, rather than the story of a relationship—a lost opportunity for drama.

To me it’s pretty clear that each of us is the hero of our own story, and we can’t help putting ourselves at the center of the universe. Quite naturally we aren’t engaged by the idea of a supernatural being who isn’t fascinated by our lives and who is indifferent to our fate.

God is not a “supernatural creature” in Catholic understanding.  Medievals imaged him as a circle whose center is everywhere and whose boundary is nowhere.  In short, everything is the center for God and his eye is on the sparrow as well as on man.  At the same time, man is, virtue of the fact of being a rational animal, placed in a unique relationship with God.  There are other animals.  And there are other rational creatures (angels).  But there is only one rational animal.  Revelation does not requires to think God cares nothing about the rest of creation. Indeed, it requires us to believe that God calls the rest of creation good.  It marvels as much as any skeptic that God should care about the cosmic pipsqueak called homo sapiens (Psalm 8 is instructive here). Only it does not make the typical mistake of the modern mind of assuming that size somehow is indicative of value.  To the modern irrational cry, “Man is insignificant compared to the size of the Universe!” the Christian tradition replies in the words of Chesterton, “Man is insignificant compared to the size of the nearest tree.”  So what?  What the Christian tradition insists on is not that God is interested in us because we are just so fascinating, but because he is love.  Nor is it our virtue that makes us the center of the biblical story.  It is divine pity for our wretchedness that wrought the Incarnation in Christian understanding, not God’s admiration for our wonderfulness.  Indeed, the centrality of man to the biblical story is a sort of illusion once the tradition is properly understood.  The task at hand is to get man out of the jam in which he finds himself: alienation from God.  So Scripture is focused on that because that is the problem that faces us.  But the Bible is not intended as the Big Book of Everything, so it tells us very little about God’s relationship with the kangaroo or his purposes in making the paramecium beyond “for the praise of his glory”.  Once man begins to escape the fix he is in and see God as he is, the absolutely consistent reports to come to us from the saints is is not “So it was all about Me all along.”  Rather, it is “from him and through him and to him are all things”.

There seems some confusion stemming from the biologist’s equivocal usage of the term “human being.”  The biologist uses it to mean only a particular biological species, then gets tied in knots because the definition of species is so fuzzy.  But it is because he is a biologist that he sees all in terms of bios.  The original definition was as a “rational animal,” and Augustine was willing to extend that definition to any such being, including sciopods, blemyae, pygmies, centaurs, and other fabulous races which the Greeks claimed lived “out there somewhere.”  (We would call them “aliens.”  Although he added wryly that one need not believe such races existed until actually finding one.  Oddly, the pygmies did exist; but not the others.) 

This draws the distinction down to rationality.  But again, the Late Modern uses this term also in an equivocal fashion, using it for all sorts of traits like “consciousness,” “intelligence,” etc. which man shares with at least some animals.  An instructive, short read on this is: http://thomism.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/what-really-are-uniquely-human-traits/ by which we learn that it took post-Cartesian scientists to start ascribing things to humans that were shared by other animals.  Chastek writes:
“For [St. Thomas or Aristotle], man is defined properly by reason, and reason is most of all verified in speculative wisdom. None of the traits listed [in the New Scientist article] were even in the same genus as speculative thought, and I doubt it would cross anyone’s mind to test the hypothesis. Do we really need to ask whether non-human animals have developed systems of physics, speculative mathematics, and metaphysical wisdom?” 
+ + +
Aquinas indeed proposed “common descent” as one seed by which the original sin was propagated to all descendants.  Indeed, that all human beings were descended from the same origin was a dogma of the faith long before it was a theory of biology.  (For a while, biologists tried to show that different races had evolved from different populations of prehumans.)  Thomas did not specify “genetics,” because the Augustinian monk, Mendel, had not yet discovered genetics. 
+ + +
there doesn’t seem to me to be an insurmountable gap between humans and animals in the quality of their intelligence and emotions…

All animals have e-motions.  Otherwise they would not have motions.  Likewise, they have a sort of intelligence, based on sensation, memory, and imagination.  (At least the higher animals do.  Can’t say about cockroaches.)  Reason, which comprise the faculties of intellect and volition, is distinct from Imagination, which is the faculties of perception and emotion.  Alas, the Cartesian Nonsense has reduced animal intelligence to “meat puppets” and pure mechanism.  (The irony is that Late Moderns who now try to counter this misperception imagine they are rebutting “religion” rather than Early Modern science.) 

that makes it necessary to explain the difference by throwing in the existence of a soul.  But of course the existence or non-existence of a soul is not an issue that can be proved or disproved by evidence…

The term we translate as “soul” is anima, which means “life, alive.”  So the question “Does X have soul?” translates as “Is X alive?”  This can be proved or disproved fairly easily by evidence.  The anima is the substantiating form of the body: that which gives it “shape” in the broad sense that includes functionality.  Late Moderns presume that the soul is a substance in itself, rather than the form of a substance.  This Cartesian Nonsense leads to all kinds of foo-foo, like the “mind-body problem.”  From an Aristo-Thomist perspective, this is much like kvetching about a basketball having a “sphere-rubber problem.”  (If basketballs were alive, rubber would be their body and sphere would be their soul.) 

The distinction between the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul predates Christianity and was incorporated into its theology.  (Again, see Aquinas.  Or, see here: http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02003.htm and http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02004.htm) 

The gap between perception and conception is a vast one indeed; and so far as we can tell empirically, only humans have leapt it.  As Aristotle put it, an animal may see food, but only a human conceives it as “food.”

@Zeke: Also a lot of speculation about “seminal corruption” which one can research further and learn that he reasoned through scripture some very appalling things about the nature of women and sexuality.

One must keep in mind that Thomas
a) wrote in Latin, and the Latin terms might not mean what an English translation seems to mean.  Hence, deficiens et occasionatus, which is sometime mistranslated as “defective and misbegotten” actually mean something more like “unfinished and caused accidentally.” (And “accidentally” meant something different than what we mean.  Black skin is an accident of humanity, not an essence.)
b) relied upon the best and most up to date science of his time, namely, Aristotle. 
Even so, he concluded that women were equal of men in human dignity no matter what science had to say.  And also that diversity was impossible without imperfections and diversity better reflected the infinitude of God.  (This was also why he stated that the more species of creatures the better.)

This may be of help in overcoming your preconceptions and chronocentrism: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/what-aquinas-really-said-about-women-24

There is a huge leap of faith between “. . . a circle whose center is everywhere and whose boundary is nowhere” and “. . . God is interested in us . . . because he is love.”

We can’t imagine a relationship with an infinite Creator unless we cast it in human terms. So believers say God has the desire not to be alienated from humans, that he pities us, that he is angered by human cruelty to humans, that he wants humans to be happy, that he enjoys adoration from humans, that although he loves us, eventually he is obliged to dispense justice by renditioning human souls to hell. When non-believers say it is only limiting the concept of a Creator when human emotions are attributed to it, the sophisticated believer says that all of it is just metaphors for something beyond our comprehension.

I have to stop right there. I don’t have any insight into an existence outside the material universe, nor do I have any evidence that anyone else does. Projecting human feelings onto this theoretical construct, even if only metaphorically, does not add to my understanding. From my point of view, it merely provides the illusion of understanding. But neither can I disprove the existence of something beyond the material universe. So non-believers and believers will always live with this irreconciliable difference of opinion. Hopefully in civility.

We are created in the image and likeness of God, but we are still subject to the physical and biological laws here on Earth.

The answer can be found in Deuteronomy 8:2; Moses is speaking to the people of Israel.  “Remember how, for forty years now, the Lord your God has directed all your journeying in the desert so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.”  This is one of the most important verses in all of Sacred Scripture because it tells us why God created us to be his children.  This is the meaning of the verse:

“Remember how, during your lifetime, the Lord your God has directed all your journeying in this world so as to test you by suffering, just as he tested his only begotten Son, to find out whether or not it is your intention to love him by keeping his commandments.”

In other words, the world is a testing place, and Satan is the tempter.  Since, God is love, only he who demonstrates that he loves him with all his heart, soul, mind and strength and loves his neighbor as he loves himself will be with him in heaven for all eternity.