First, and most obviously: Of *course* it can't be guns that are the issue. It's everything else except for what it actually *is*. Making excuses for tragedy is the worst, lowest way to deal with tragedy. Granted, knee-jerk reaction is a close #2, but making excuses is a refusal to engage in proper, measured, rational analysis.
Second, I really *intensely* dislike this "moral failure" rationalization. Beyond being a convenient excuse, it always entirely misses the point of the tragedy. What it stems from, IMO, is this really naive way to explain why bad things happen to good people. Why, if he's so just and loving, would god visit upon good people such horrible events? When looking to the bible, especially the Old Testament, the only answer one can glean is that god - like a parent or my drill instructors at boot camp - punishes everyone for the mistakes of the few. Were it not for moral failure in god's eyes, he'd leave us alone.
What a horrible way to shift blame and bury one's head in the sand from real causality.
But what better way to deep Christian apologists have to explain why a being that loves us would torture us? It's either a just punishment for our failings, or because "he tests us and works in ways towards outcomes we never will understand." How lovely and poetic, but how sad and lacking. Why can't it be just what we do to one another, and if we look deeply at causality, we might just find real solutions? Why not "it doesn't matter how much he loves us, hates, us, wants to punish us, or really doesn't exist at all...it's what we do to one another." Ugly things happen because, through our own activity or inactivity, we make them happen. Taking the easy way out - god is maaad Hulk Smash - means we don't have to discuss uncomfortable things about ourselves. It means everything we *believe* is still ok - that god is just and loves us - whatever that means for whatever is *true*.
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First, and most obviously: Of *course* it can't be guns that are the issue. It's everything else except for what it actually *is*. Making excuses for tragedy is the worst, lowest way to deal with tragedy. Granted, knee-jerk reaction is a close #2, but making excuses is a refusal to engage in proper, measured, rational analysis.
Second, I really *intensely* dislike this "moral failure" rationalization. Beyond being a convenient excuse, it always entirely misses the point of the tragedy. What it stems from, IMO, is this really naive way to explain why bad things happen to good people. Why, if he's so just and loving, would god visit upon good people such horrible events? When looking to the bible, especially the Old Testament, the only answer one can glean is that god - like a parent or my drill instructors at boot camp - punishes everyone for the mistakes of the few. Were it not for moral failure in god's eyes, he'd leave us alone.
What a horrible way to shift blame and bury one's head in the sand from real causality.
But what better way to deep Christian apologists have to explain why a being that loves us would torture us? It's either a just punishment for our failings, or because "he tests us and works in ways towards outcomes we never will understand." How lovely and poetic, but how sad and lacking. Why can't it be just what we do to one another, and if we look deeply at causality, we might just find real solutions? Why not "it doesn't matter how much he loves us, hates, us, wants to punish us, or really doesn't exist at all...it's what we do to one another." Ugly things happen because, through our own activity or inactivity, we make them happen. Taking the easy way out - god is maaad Hulk Smash - means we don't have to discuss uncomfortable things about ourselves. It means everything we *believe* is still ok - that god is just and loves us - whatever that means for whatever is *true*.
#posthijack
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