Woke up this morning (and this isn't the opening to a blues song) to the un-dulcet sound of humanist philosopher A.C. Grayling on Radio 4, dismissing belief in God as utterly illogical on the basis of the recent Haitian earthquake.
There's something about humanist philosophers that brings out the worst in me. They seem so smug, so utterly certain, and so unutterably dull; acknowledging no shades of grey, yet somehow sounding as grey as a November day. Grayling and his ilk are children of the enlightenment, modernists and positivists to the core and apparently unable to embrace the richer both/and insights of post-modernism; they mock at mystery and cannot live with paradox and untied ends.
Yes, it's hard to understand how there could be an all-loving, all-powerful God in the face of horrendous natural disasters - no-one's denying that. But for those of us who believe - who cannot but believe because of the whole experience and evidence of our lives and our hearts - these are problems we can live with, paradoxes we can embrace. There are of course many possible ways of trying to explain how God can be good and yet there can be natural disasters; maybe I'll explore them in another post but of course they are all partial and provisional, and personally I'm inclined not to bother too much over them. They may perhaps satisfy the intellect, but the heart has very different needs.
What makes me smile wryly is that for all Grayling's insistence on cold, hard logic, he then segues on without a blink to speak of how what really matters is responding to the disaster with compassion and kindness. I completely agree, but where's his logic in that? How on earth do kindness and compassion fit into his tight A+B=C conceptual framework? Nonetheless I'm very glad to find that his humanity is better than his philosophy. Love is greater than logic and maybe those who try to justify God but don't help their stricken fellow man are further from the kingdom than philosophers who reject God but feed their neighbour.
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