(no subject)

[hopefulnebula]

Oh. In my ranting I forgot to mention that I am going to have *so much* fun in History of Christian Thought. I end up prefacing most of my questions with "Well, I know I'm gonna catch a lot of flak for this, but...". Like today. We've been discussing St. Augustine and the philosophy that since God is all good, and God created everything from nothing, then everything is fundamentally good. Because of this, there is no true "evil," just lack of goodness, and the more something deviates from how it was meant to be, the less good it is. So my first question was to ask how this connected with "certain people today who believe that all diseases are part of God's plan to eradicate sinners." Note that I didn't give names. Dr. Hall immediately replied by saying "Augustine would think Jerry Falwell--you were thinking of Falwell, right?--is full of shit." "Actually," I replied, "I was thinking of Fred Phelps. But Falwell works too." And I grinned. I love Dr. Hall. (Both of them, actually.) Second thing: I argued that the flu bug that's besieged the campus is better than we are, because it's just doing what it was meant to do (yeah, yeah, I know viruses aren't technically alive, but for the sake of the argument...), which is more than most humans do.

Comments

[easybeef.livejournal.com]

That class sounds like a blast! My concentration for my undergrad was comparative religion, and you wouldn't believe how animated and interesting the discussion could become (actually, you probabally could now :)

[aeroaddict.livejournal.com]

omg I love Dr. Hall so much. Like you, I love them both, but D Hall is so effing hot. His class is really fun too. He's a real person, unlike some professors.

[chalybeous.livejournal.com]

What a thoroughly interesting take on things.
*hug* Sorry to hear that your day got bad, but... sometimes it can be interesting to see where religious debate goes, amongst other things. Did I ever tell you that you're my favourite intellectual?

I wonder if that argument makes nuclear weapons "good" (or at least, the people who want to use them)? What about suicide bombers - they're waging war on those they consider to be sinners and infidels...
Debate point for another time, I think.

[zogblog.livejournal.com]

I normally tend to stay out of religious arguments. Those get REALLY messy.

Saying that, I think that you did a good job with that argument.