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RE: Poem of the day. William Blake - The Tyger
Imagine the confessor come to the bed of a child in the delirium of scarlet fever to offer such comfort. Isn't the senseless pain and death of a child a definitive evil?
"Why do I hurt?" "It is God's will" "What did I do to die?" "Nothing" "I'm scared" "Rejoice!" [Weeping] [Laughter]
What cruel comfort! don't you think? Malevolent.
Many sad and frightening things happen in our world. Does this mean there is an evil god or devil behind the events we see? You think the death of a child is "senseless". Yet, from all we hear about near death experiences, where people die and then return, they don't want to come back here. Perhaps this earth is a sort of "spiritual boot camp" where a soul is challenged with very difficult experiences. Death is not punishment, nor is it annihilation. It is transiting from this world to another. A life can last 30 seconds or 100 years. Are you so sure that on a divine level the latter is "better" than the former? An Indian sage once told me that if I knew how happy a soul was to quit its earthly body, which it views as a prison, I would never again cry over the death of someone. He also said that when the soul has accomplished what it came for, it will leave, no matter what the age of the individual.
I initially read your comment - "I think he [God] smiled ["His work to see"]" - to imply God is evil to take pleasure in the suffering of His creation, and I believe Blake would be abhorred to know his poem interpreted thusly. This thank goodness was not exactly your meaning.
You, however, seem to say good and evil is neither here nor there - which is something else (and in my opinion monstrous). God or the gods think nothing of good and evil so we humans also shouldn't use those categories? And if we should act as God or the gods, then we can ridicule all of existence and yearn for eternity? Do I understand you correctly?
I say to this, yes, properly understood, a god is not either good or evil, but he is both - like the Taoist harmony of Yin and Yang.
So, what of a newborn babe only just arrived only to thence depart? Life is its transit, death the destination. What did it come to accomplish? Partake of the earth's life cycle? To speed its way to the afterlife having skipping life along the way? The first ring in Purgatory is inhabited by the souls of babies because they did not live life in such a way as to deliver themselves direct to Heaven; it is their misfortune to have had no life to leave for an after-life.
The Indian sage is right about the aged, infirm and sick who have nothing to look forward to in life but life after death.
You are right. But I didn't say that.
Your comments about purgatory make me think you have a Christian point of view. So according to your beliefs babies can be punished there? I believe in a God of love, so I cannot accept this idea. But each is free to establish a personal belief system and adhere to it.
I grew up in a household as the child of parents who ardently disapprove of organized religion, authority and Christianity in particular, and who became buddhists in the '70s before I was born, whom they sent to a Jesuit school for the quality of its liberal arts education, not its catholic teachings. I believe in faith but have none myself.
That aside, a moment ago you said a god or the gods do not make value judgments and we shouldn't either. Now you say "I believe in a God of love." So out of love He would "smile His work to see"? Even the senseless death of an innocent! And you say, as though advocating it be done, therefore "each is free to establish a personal belief system"?
I think I misunderstood you and maybe you me. My original question was why do you imagine God would "smile His work to see" when He is responsible for creating creatures capable of evil?
You first answered that there is no evil, that good and evil are arbitrary constructs. Then you said death is good because afterlife is the best good. Now you say it is not good the innocent suffer evil, but that if your evil is another's good then it's okay. You sound like a closeted Christian to me and one who believes in an anthropomorphic God if He is a person who has humors.
Well, I am anything BUT a closeted Christian. You are right, we are not understanding each other. How could we? We don't know each other. For me, evil is a human thing, although there appear to be some examples of it in the animal kingdom. I read a fascinating book called "The biological origins of evil" . You may enjoy reading it. What is God anyway? Who created this matrix? It is all such a mystery. We can speculate all we want and it will change nothing. And if there is a God, whether or not we believe in his/its existence wouldn't change anything either. But I do think that whatever set this universe in motion did so in jubilation and I see it everywhere in nature.
So He would "smile His work to see" despite the evil He made possible? Is that what you meant when you commented that you think he would smile? I can agree with that and think Blake had that in mind when writing that verse.
I remain unsure of the meaning of the word evil. Is it the defects of creation? Faults in the DNA? Is it intentional harm? To go back to your example of a child dying of illness, the death was caused by a microbe that made a bad bet. A smart microbe does not kill its host; if it does, it will die with it. So is evil just stupidity? If creation charges forward, losing a certain number of plant and animal lives as it goes, is life not still victorious and joyful?
I'm not entirely clear about the idea of evil either but when I see it it can be as clear as day.
My father who is a genetic biologist and botanist specializing in plant pathogens would have some agreement with your example. From an evolutionary perspective he'd probably agree about "creation charging forward," not perfectly, yet efficiently all things considered. But the crucial detail is that creatures without conscience cannot be good and evil, because they are fundamentally machines.
By the logic of the statement, "If creation charges forward, losing a certain number of plant and animal lives as it goes, is life not still victorious and joyful?", the hundreds of millions of murdered during the last century are an acceptable cost in the Interminable March of history if it helped teach us humanity. My point is you should not apply nature's standard to questions of morality.
Are you quibbling with my construction of what I think you might mean: "God would 'smile His work to see' despite the evil He made possible"? How would you succinctly put it? I'm curious to understand your interpretation of the poem because I never before thought it possible to think Blake's God would smile at the tiger eating the lamb.