Saturday, September 10, 2005

Theodicy: A vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.

Here's one of the more interesting articles I've read about the hurricane and theodicy. The idea of a theodicy was coined by Leibnitz, and was best ridiculed by Voltaire. A theodicy in this case would be if people were saying that the hurricane still proves that God is just because New Orleans is sinful. I'm sure some are. But, that used to be the common way that people explained the awesome destructive power of nature away. The author is arguing that these criticisms of the president or the governor or FEMA mirror a theodicy because we're trying to assign a human cause to the force of nature. I think it's an interesting point, although I don't know how many people are actually saying these people are responsible for the hurricane or the destruction it caused, even if they could have handled the aftermath a lot better.

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