WEAVING THE CONNECTIONS
The Newsletter of the Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine
Volume 17 Summer-2011 Number 1
Theodicy:
The Vindication of Divine Goodness and Justice in Allowing the Existence of Evil
Eleanor Rae
As far as I can tell, a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil has not been found by anyone. It is still a work in progress, going back at least to Plato. I think that right now there is a choice: if one insists on an all-powerful Deity, then the Deity is directly responsible for all the evil. Or one can opt for a Deity who is not all-powerful, as Plato did in the Timaeus, and say that the Divine has just done the best that the Divine could.
In an unusual occurrence, the winner of the recent Cannes Film Festival was an American motion picture: The Tree of Life. This film attempts to address the issue of theodicy, which is the justification of God’s goodness in the face of extant and evident evil. It begins with a quote from the book of Job, the biblical story of the good man upon whom every conceivable misfortune has befallen. The quote is from the first theophany, or revelation, in which God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind asking where Job was during the mighty acts of Creation. Further on in the book, there is a poem addressing not only the creation of Earth, but also of the sea and time, and God is revealed as the Master of the deep, of light and darkness, of snow, hail, lightening, constellations, clouds and mist, as well as the protector of animals (Job 38:1-40:5).
At the same time as I went to see this film, I was also reading, in the June issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, a series of articles (from several religious perspectives) that dealt with the same topic: theodicy. I would like to share a few of the insights from these articles. A Jewish perspective argues that, having to deal with the issue of the absence of God during the Holocaust, the Jewish theologian is in a unique position to offer insights on unjust suffering. One answer might be that it is the role of God to suffer, and the human is in the unique position of being able to empathize with and relieve that divine suffering. An article from the Hindu perspective notes that in classic Hinduism the doctrine of reincarnation has played a key role in the understanding of undeserved human suffering. However, there is evidence that today’s Hindus are moving away from acceptance of this doctrine. It should also be noted that Hinduism does offer a deep mystical link to the suffering of non-humans because of its understanding that appearances of its deities are in animal as well as human form.
The usual responses from Christianity include the understanding that in the afterlife, the good are rewarded and the evil punished or that it is the price to be paid for God’s gift to the human of free will. In a Zygon article Christopher Southgate’s perspective is particularly interesting in that he attempts to address issues such as the extinction of species (The Tree of Life also includes scenes with dinosaurs) as well as the suffering of animals, including the human. His emphasis is on creation as process rather than as product. While he would insist that in creating, God had to choose the evolutionary model in that it best addresses the question of Divine goodness, this does bring us back full circle to the issue of omnipotence, which Plato raised in his Timaeus.
I would like to conclude with a thought from my own book, Women, the Earth, the Divine, in which I presented the Holy Spirit as the Shekinah or Feminine Divine. There is a corollary to this understanding of the Divine in the Jewish mystical school of thought, the Kabbalah. There one would find the theory of a Divine “split” of sorts: the withdrawal of Yahweh into heaven and the Shekinah left to remain present and share in the suffering of Creation. Might we, then, be those who unite ourselves with Her to relieve this suffering until all of Creation is healed?
The universe, miniature from ms. of Scivias by Hildegarde of Bingen, Germany,, c. 1150.
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Nightmares from the Edge of the Milky Way—
Linda Clarke
I have learned through a secretly released report that a small vehicle from another galaxy recently floated through our solar system and briefly hovered over our planet. The ship’s computers confirmed that of the billions and billions of worlds populated with living organisms, ours is an average planet and our sun an average star.
Apparently, this unusual visit was prompted by a plaintive sub-space lament the ship’s computers picked up, from both our oceans and dry land masses, which seemed to be a collective expression of sorrow. These sophisticated instruments had detected such sounds before as their starship wandered from one sector to another in deep space. Mysterious whisperings, interpreted as haunting appeals or pleas, usually indicated a large-scale planet-wide extinction in process and were always investigated by the ship’s crew who were a deeply compassionate race and often acted upon an instinct to help an immature species in its natural progression for entry into the cosmic community.
A planet must have oceans, oxygen and billions of years of life in its geological and evolutionary history before sensor arrays detect the unmistakable grieving sound. Their data indicated that earth is a water world, the oceans covering over 71 percent of the planet’s surface, and that life here has flourished for several billion years, developing intelligence and a technical civilization about midway during the approximate life span of the sun, a healthy yellow dwarf star. Currently, over ten million species live on earth, all direct descendents of organisms that lived 3.8 billion years ago. The crew also confirmed that in less than a hundred years, over half of these species will be extinct, particularly the largest, most intelligent, and most beautiful of the species.
Upon entering the earth’s atmosphere, they determined the cause of this worldwide anguish is the same as on other distressed planets: one dominant species in its headlong rush to build a scientific civilization, grows so aggressive and overpopulated and self-important that it takes over and occupies the habitat of the rest of the life forms who, finding themselves pushed aside and subdued, are unable to live as their nature intends them to live. Thus conquered, their movements restricted, these captive species unconsciously send out these sorrowful sounds on a psychic wave into the universe.
Very social family animals who travel in groups seem the most tragic, their lives the most interfered with. Wolves, for example, dolphins and whales, orangutans and gorillas, elephants are all tortured in one way or another. Some of these creatures, notably dolphins, whales and elephants have considerable intelligence and communicativeness but have not developed the capacity to create their own technology.
From the starship’s viewpoint, these creatures are worthy life forms who make our planet more valuable and interesting in the cosmic scheme as their characteristics and personalities have an intelligent integrity that has taken eons to evolve from mere instinct.
Humans, as the dominant species, possess a clever technological mind, an inventive, curious and ambitious brain that is social and literate, but our civilization is still in its infancy and our dependence on declining fossil fuels for energy still childlike. The certain disappearance within a century or less of oil, coal and gas, upon which our entire electrical grid depends, will be catastrophic. Without the sustaining help of electricity human progress as we’ve known it, is impossible. The computers noted that our recent attempt to create energy from nuclear fission has proved disastrous with hundreds of tons of radioactive dust blowing over the Pacific Ocean.
Most importantly, a spirit of responsible guardianship for the home planet is lacking in the majority of human beings. The computers recorded an extreme erosion of tropical rainforests, coral reefs, and temperate forests. A portion of the atmosphere is missing over one of the poles, and the oceans are badly damaged by overfishing, pollution and acid rain. Fish are the planet’s most valuable protein but few big ocean fish remain and smaller fish species are dying off in huge fish kills from lack of oxygenated water.
Even such a brief fly-by revealed we possess profound emotional deficiencies that make us indifferent and unresponsive to life here, even to the most charismatic life forms like tigers, panthers, blue fin tuna and whooping cranes. Some with great effort have transcended egocentric and human-centered limitations and become authentic cosmic citizens. However, they are generally helpless and unsupported. Our current post-capitalistic system, with its disinterest in anything but the well-being of multinational corporations, portends a violent end to intelligent life.
It was also noted that our species possesses a kind of reckless greed which could be the result of the short span of time intelligent life has been here, compared to astronomical and geological time. Fortunately, we are quite far away from the populated galactic centers so our limitations are not yet dangerous to other star systems. This kind of quarantine is providential. The algorithms of one computer onboard even concluded human beings and all remaining wildlife will be living on an unbearably hot, almost lifeless and radioactively damaged planet by the end of the century.
With their computers still whizzing and collecting infinite terabytes of information to be stored away, the small ship exited our solar system and moved on to another quadrant of the galaxy. The crew’s somber conclusion: we will not survive long enough to become a truly advanced civilization. Because our planet is supremely beautiful even in its present state of deterioration, in a few hundred years, another crew will fly by again to observe either our extinction or further evolution. Self-destruction is more than probable. A summary of this visit perfectly translated into English, Hindi, Mandarin, and Spanish was unobtrusively released by the spaceship’s computers to Wikileaks as a courtesy.
Linda Clarke writes essays every few months, free back copies of which are available. Her e-mail address is:
jlclarke@msn.com and her web site address is: jlblue.com.
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Associates of C:WED:
Eleanor Rae, Ph.D., founder
Anne Andersson, editor
Giles E. Rae, publisher
Representatives at the United Nations:
New York: Alayne O’Reilly, Ph.D.
Kathleen Quain
Vienna: Susanne Schaup, Ph.D.
Mission Statement
The Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine is dedicated to exploring the parallels that exist between the imaging and treatment of women and of the Earth, and how our images of the Divine are related to these parallels.
We began by exploring these relationships within the context of our own tradition— the Christian. While we continue our exploration in this tradition, we have also engaged people of other traditions such as the Buddhist, Goddess, Hindu, Indigenous, Jewish and Muslim. Our work is made available through talks, workshops, writings and retreats. The immediate purpose of the Center is educational, while the ultimate goal is the healing of the Creation.
The founder of C:WED is Eleanor Rae, Ph.D., author of Women, the Earth, the Divine, President Emerita of the Network Alliance of Congregations Caring for Earth and founder of the Earth Values Caucus at the United Nations and Founder/President of the Hutchinson River Restoration Project..
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Harmony with Nature
Pablo Solón
Victor Hugo, the author of Les Miserables, once wrote: “How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.”
We are here today to attempt to have a dialogue not just among States, but also with nature. Although we often forget it, human beings are a force in nature. In reality, we are all a product of the same Big Bang that created the universe, although some only see wood for the fire when they walk through the forest.
These three questions are the point of departure for our discussion today.
First, what is nature? Is it a thing, a source of resources, a system, a home, a community of living and interdependent beings?
Second, are there rules in nature? Are there natural laws that govern its integrity, interrelationships, reproduction and transformation?
And third, are we as States and as a society recognizing, respecting and making sure that the rules of nature prevail?
The philosopher Francis Bacon said that we cannot command nature except by obeying her. The time for superheroes and superpowers is coming to an end. Nature cannot be submitted to the wills of the laboratory. Science and technology are capable of everything including destroying the world itself.
It is time to stop and reaffirm the precautionary principle in the face of geo-engineering and all artificial manipulation of the climate. All new technologies should be evaluated to gauge their environmental, social and economic impacts. The answer for the future lies not in scientific inventions but in our capacity to listen to nature.
The green economy considers it necessary, in the struggle to preserve biodiversity, to put a price on the free services that plants, animals and ecosystems offer humanity: the purification of water, the pollination of plants by bees, the protection of coral reefs and climatic regulation.
According to the green economy, we have to identify the specific functions of ecosystems and biodiversity that can be made subject to a monetary value, evaluate their current state, define the limits of those services, and set out in economic terms the cost of their conservation to develop a market for environmental services.
For the green economy, capitalism’s mistake is not having fully incorporated nature as part of capital. That is why its central proposal is to create “environmentally friendly’ business and green jobs and in that way limit environmental degradation by bringing the laws of capitalism to bear on nature.
In other words, the transfusion of the rules of market will save nature. This proposal of the green economy is absolutely false.
This is not a hypothetical debate, since the third round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization will be about the trade in services and environmental goods.
Humanity finds itself at the crossroads: we can commercialize nature through the green economy or recognize the rights of nature.
Why should we only respect the laws of human beings and not those of nature? Why do we call the person who kills his neighbor a criminal, but not he who extinguishes a species or contaminates a river? Why do we judge the life of human beings with parameters different from those that guide the life of the system as a whole if all of us, absolutely all of us, rely on the life of the Earth System?
Is there no contradiction in recognizing only the rights of the human part of this system while all the rest of the system is reduced to a source of resources and raw materials—in other words, a business opportunity?
To speak of equilibrium is to speak of rights for all parts of the system. It could be that these rights are not identical for all things, since not all things are equal. But to think that only humans should enjoy privileges while other living things are simply objects is the worst mistake humanity has ever made. Decades ago, to talk about slaves as having the same rights as everyone else seemed like the same heresy that it is now to talk about glaciers or rivers or trees as having rights.
Nature is ruthless when it goes ignored.
It is incredible that it is easier to imagine the destruction of nature than to dream about overthrowing capitalism.
Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil but because of those who look on the do nothing.”
We have not come here to watch a funeral.
Speech given by Pablo Solón , Ambassador of Bolivia, to the General Assembly of the United Nations, on April 20, 2011.
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7/17/2011
