Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
After all this is our existence, and in some ways, despite all the sordidness the whole chaotic system could be conceived as its own form of beauty and justice.
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I find this sentiment interesting, but misplaced in the context of your post about the nature of God. Works of art, to be beautiful, must be true. And to be true, they must contain pieces of the sordidness of our whole chaotic system, as you describe it. And so I grant you that beauty does not always equate with purity and goodness, but includes their opposites; that is, beauty has to be truthful. (That doesn't mean goodness and purity don't equal beauty either, just that they don't encompass beauty's entirety; likewise, all that is true is not beautiful).
But to then say that God is the yin/yang and a combination of good and evil is unnecessary, nor does it follow. God's ultimate gift to us, free agency, creates the sordidness and chaos. And the truth of that existence is beautiful in its own way. But that does not mean that God is the sordidness and chaos. There are still opposing forces in the chaos, and God is on one side, and someone else on the other.
Plus, let's be more precise: there is nothing beautiful about prejudice, deceit, bigotry, hate, selfishness. There is much that is beautiful about the struggle to overcome those things; the failing, but the getting up again, and then failing again, but getting up again . . . That is beautiful, and true, and interesting. But it does not mean that God is in the hate or in the selfishness. He is in the struggle to overcome those. But b/c he is involved in the struggle to overcome (that is, he's already overcome; but he's involved in our overcoming), that does not mean he
is the hate, the bigotry, the selfishness, the laziness . . .
That's the problem with the Greeks. Actually, the Greeks didn't have the problem, it's pop interpretations of the Greeks (like yours) that have the problems -- imprecision and a smothering of ideas by trying to smooth out the difficulties by throwing everything in one box -- God.