Talking to a Calvinist acquaintance today. Mentioned the sixty thousand (and counting) deaths in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, etc. For the record, I didn't provoke the conversation; he did.
I asked: "What does a Calvinist do in the face of this situation? I mean, did God ordain this?"
"Yes," he answered. "But I don't believe that because I'm perverse. I believe it because I think that's obscenely Biblical."
"God ordained the death of sixty thousand people?"
"Yes. And He still maintains his infinite goodness."
May I say that this is the kind of religious thinking that is driving me toward atheism? Let's set aside the issue of natural evil as un-synthesizable in a theodic framework for now. Just parse that last statement. From the Calvinist perspective, God ordained this tsunami; He must, as He is absolutely sovereign. (I'm using He because my acquaintance did.) This guy would have me believe that epistemology and ethics are so slippery that God can simultaneously kill sixty thousand people and maintain an ontological standing called good. I find that an impossible reach.
As for natural evil, it's an issue I'm still struggling with. Why do these things happen? Before you post a comment about "the Fall" with capital letters and all, please know that I don't believe in a primordial fall from perfection. A Fall does not explain natural evil any more than original sin explains our guilt before God. Sorry. I believe in the goodness of God, so I try to let God off the hook for situations like the one in Asia, but how? How is God not culpable?
