January 4, 2024 • 48 mins
Theologian Dr. Christopher Baglow joins Dan to delve into the problem of evil. Together, they grapple with the existence of natural disasters and human evil, and how they intersect with a loving deity's creation. Dr. Baglow, with his work at the McGrath Institute for Church Life and contributions to theological education, enriches our conversation with insights that bridge the gap between faith and the natural world, offering a fresh lens through which to view age-old questions.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are certain goods that would not exist in
the universe if there were notthe possibility of suffering.
Think about the supernaturalvirtues.
Hope Well, what would it meanin a universe to hope for
something if your universe hadeverything?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome to Purposeful Lab, a Magistenter podcast.
I'm Catherine Hedro, with DrDan Kiebler and Dan, you had
this great interview with DrChristopher Baglow for today's
episode.
Give us a preview of what'sahead.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah, so Dr Baglow is a theologian.
We talked, you know, thisseason about evolution.
One of the questions thatalways comes up in relation to
this is the problem of humanevil and human suffering.
Right, and we look at this fromsort of two perspectives.
Why is there, you know,suffering in the natural world,
in the sense that humans aresusceptible to tsunamis and
(00:51):
earthquakes, you know what's?
How do you make sense of thatwith a purposeful God and a
loving nom, right?
And then also just a questionof human evil, you know, the
human suffering at the hands ofother humans.
Yeah, those are deep questions,you know of.
How do you, you know, makesense of a all-loving God when
there is such evil, that andsuffering you find in the world?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So, and he's written a lot about this and talked a
lot about it, so it was a greatdiscussion- you know these are
big questions you grapple withanytime the topic of evolution
bringing Genesis, just thesequestions of the fallen nature
of humans.
So this is an important one forthis season.
And just Dr Chris Baglow was inan earlier season.
(01:34):
We had a shorter interview withhim, but just so our viewers
are aware, Dr Christopher Baglowleads the Science and Religion
Initiative over at theUniversity of Notre Dame's
McGrath Institute for ChurchLife and he presents on numerous
topics at this intersection offaith and science.
He's the author of Faith,Science and Reason, Theology on
the Cutting Edge and Creation,and he's also the author of A
(01:56):
Catholic's Guide to God and theUniverse.
You know him also in hiscapacity as the Theological
Advisor to the Board ofDirectors for the Society of
Catholic Scientists, of whichyou are the vice president.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah, so I've known him for a number of years.
He's a great thinker and veryarticulate about these issues.
You know that first book youmentioned.
You know Science and Reason.
That's a nice textbook, like ahigh school textbook that covers
science and faith issues sortof groundbreaking, because there
really wasn't anything there Ifa high school teacher wanted to
(02:29):
talk about these issues.
And then the second one, aCatholic's Guide to God and
Creation.
That one is, I think, very,very accessible to a general
audience.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's good to hear.
Well, thanks for traveling toSouth Bend for us to get this
interview, and with that, here'sDan's conversation with Dr
Christopher Baglow.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, Chris, is great to have you back on the podcast
.
We had you on briefly beforewhen we were at the Society of
Catholic Scientists meeting, soour viewers got to know a little
bit about you.
But for those that haven't seenthat episode or are unfamiliar
with you, you know it'd be greatto just start a little bit
about your background.
You know you work here at NotreDame at the McGrath Institute
(03:15):
for Church Life.
You're a theologian and you'vegot into a lot of work within
the science and faith area, andso maybe you can just tell us
how you got into that.
It's a very interesting story.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, sure, I think that would help.
Well, I mean, I was actuallyhalf professor, half
administrator when I got intothis work and Hurricane Katrina
disrupted my career for and alsomy my domestic situation.
My house was flooded by Katrinaat a time when I was not sure
(03:51):
where I was going to be going orwhat I'd be doing.
I was approached by thepresident of McGill, tull and
Catholic High School, mobile,alabama, to create a curriculum
on faith and science for hisschool, a project I said yes to,
somewhat foolishly, because atthe time it was not an area I
really knew very well and alsobecause I was assuming that the
college where I worked wouldnever open again, which was the
(04:15):
rumor on the street.
Turned out, that rumor wasunfounded, but I ended up
spending the next two yearswriting a curriculum which
became a textbook.
From there, I realized that thekey work would not just be in
text but also in in people, andso I started working with
Catholic High School Science andReligion teachers, and that's
(04:37):
really that, I think, thecontext in which our work has
kind of come together and thethings that you and I do for the
Science and Religion Initiativehere at Notre Dame.
But that work ultimately led mehere.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, it's interesting.
You have a really broadoutreach here at the Science and
Religion Initiative and we do alot of work across the country
where you get to talk to a lotof high school educators,
students and so forth.
So just based on thatexperience, what would you say?
What is the biggestmisconception or issue that
(05:09):
people have in terms ofintegrating science and their
Catholic faith?
What is the if you had to saythere's one thing that really is
the most important thing to getacross to people or they
struggle with the most?
Is there something like aphilosophical thing or is there
a scientific issue in yourexperience of the feedback that
you get across the country?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Believe it or not.
Well, actually you wouldbelieve it because you see it
all the time.
The misconception that faithand science are at odds with
each other at least the Catholicfaith and modern science are at
odds is like a straw man andit's easy to push over.
Yeah, you give them a, youscratch the surface and it
disappears, it just disappears.
I mean, our friend Corey Hayesgives us Galileo lecture, we
(05:53):
talk about Fr George LeMette,the founder of the Big Bang
Theory, who's a Catholic priest,and we talk about the Catholic
almost Saint now blessed NicolasSteno, who discovered the
geology necessary to discoverthe ancient age of the earth,
which made Darwin's workpossible, and people begin to
realize that a lot of theirquestions were answered before
(06:15):
they ever arose.
Right.
Then it becomes.
I think, the real thing and theexciting thing about the work
that we get to do together isthat we get to then show them
how to think about the faiththrough a modern scientific lens
you know what I mean and thatputs them in a position where,
with young people who, you know,stem is everywhere now, stem
(06:38):
programs are everywhere now withthe young people that they meet
, that's the way they're goingto see the faith, if they're
going to see it at all.
So once you begin to do that,though, it's very exciting how
those young people themselvesrespond, how their teachers are
able now to meet their needs andhelp them find Christ in a way
that they never thought possible, maybe when they began their
(07:00):
careers.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, Now I think it's a really nice, the physical
embodiment of a theologian anda scientist.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
You know, it's not just you and me, but other
theologians and other scientistsat the meeting, where they look
and say, oh wow, this actuallyworks.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, these people are talking to each other,
they're actually engaged withboth disciplines, are engaged
with each other and they say, oh, there's a natural and the
comfort, confidence and opennessthat that radiates to them,
just tells them that theconflict thesis is a
misconception, it's a lie, andthen from there it's just a
matter of continuing to.
(07:33):
You know, help them begin toanswer the individual questions.
So I would say the misgivest,the biggest problem, is the
easiest one to solve.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Yeah, no, that's good .
Yeah.
Now these individual questionscan be very, very, very tricky,
right, and I just want to pointout your book, which we're going
to be talking todayparticularly about.
You know the question of evilin the world, and so this book,
creation, a Catholic's Guide toGod in the Universe, is a
chapter in here.
We're going to sort of focus onthis as a great book, a great
(08:02):
resource for people that areinterested in these issues that
we're talking about today.
You know, because this booktalks about.
It's interesting to me becauseit discusses a lot about
evolution and the problem ofevil and to me they're often
interconnected and they seem tobe the two biggest issues that
people struggle with and sort ofintegrate, and you dive into
(08:22):
both of them in this book.
You take kind of the two.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Hardest question how do you see those two?
Do you see those asinterrelated to sort of two
separate questions, or did theyone flow into the other?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
They're deeply related to each other, but the
one question, the problem ofevil, is obviously a question
that people have been thinkingabout for a lot longer than that
intersection of evolution andevil and the fact that death is
intrinsic to the unfolding ofthe world as we know it, that
suffering is something that isalmost omnipresent throughout
(08:57):
creation.
Right, the way I approach it inthe book is I start by speaking
quite optimistically I don'tknow beautifully, but quite
optimistically andenthusiastically about the
Christian doctrine of creation,which boils down to God is love
and God creates the world andlove.
I think that's the hardestthing to reconcile with the
(09:20):
problem of evil.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, no, I think so.
That's why that's chapter two.
Okay, you can start to.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And a lot of people is like, okay, we can roll with
this, but it remains a fictionuntil they can begin to
reconcile that with their ownexperience, which is saturated
with pain.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Right Now that's, I think.
I think people, you know theystruggle with evolution, sort of
in the background.
It's sort of an intellectual.
I don't bump into evolutionevery day in terms of being a
life struggle, but I bump intopain and suffering every day,
right, and so that becomes evenmore difficult for them to come
over because they'reexperiencing it directly,
whereas evolution is more of anintellectual question.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, evolution tells them is what seems like the bad
news, which is that their ownpersonal experience is writ
large across the entire historyof life, right.
You know that's true, it's likeokay, yeah, you're having a hard
time.
You're, you know, even withsome physical malady that is
making it difficult for you toflourish or feel happy because
(10:21):
of the pain you're experiencing.
Maybe it's a bad back, maybeit's something worse, like
cancer.
You know, whatever it might be,maybe it's a disability you
were born with.
Whatever that might be, that'sthe universe, or at least that's
the living universe.
The living universe has thatall over the place.
So it's almost as if your ownplace, where you secretly wonder
(10:43):
, is there a God?
It's this massive stamp fromevolutionary science that says,
yeah, that's a good doubt tohave.
And that's where people seethat's really where they kind of
struggle with it.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
You know, yeah, right Now, exactly Now it's
interesting of your story, right, we're going to talk about like
sort of natural evil morally wemake that distinction in the
book, but like a natural you'rebeing like a cancer or a
hurricane or things like that.
So your story is influenced bynatural evil, brought you into
science.
But I think it's kind ofinteresting, yeah, yeah.
But so the whole evolutionaryprocess, right, is full, chock
(11:22):
full of sort of natural evilsand then our human experiences
you know cancer and things.
You know wildfires andearthquakes that cause death and
destruction, right?
So how do you look at that fromthe perspective of a loving and
good, all loving God who allowsthat to happen?
(11:43):
How does that?
How do you start to piece thosetwo together?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Well, that's the difficult part, because it seems
to me that the deepest meaningof suffering, the deepest
meaning of evil, can only bediscovered in a sense, or is
only answerable, outside theuniverse, like if, that's,
what's if the universe?
(12:08):
We think about the universe asa system.
Right, the meaning of anysystem really lies outside of it
.
So think about the rules ofprofessional football as a
system.
Well, what it means to its fansand all that it's not contained
in that book.
It might make a reference to ithere or there, but they're not
(12:31):
really going to capture thesense of triumph or the sense of
loss that occurs when yourfavorite team loses to the
Atlanta Falcons.
You know what I mean.
They're not going, whichhappened yesterday for me.
They're not going to be able tocapture that because the
meaning of the system liesoutside the system.
But that's true than themeaning of both the joys, the
(12:53):
sufferings, the incredible goodthat we see and beauty, but also
the privation of goodness andbeauty that we see.
The ultimate meaning of thathas to lie outside of the
universe itself.
It has to be in the God whocreated it, and consistent with
that is is that we can only knowit, we can only know the full
(13:16):
meaning of it piecemeal, youknow what I mean and signs that,
and so, for instance, I thinkabout the fact that I'm at the
University of Notre Dame and I'msitting here and talking with
you and this is a wonderfulexperience.
But I wouldn't have had it if Ihadn't been a Katrina refugee,
right, okay, so I can look atthat and I can begin to say
(13:36):
maybe then even a much morehorrible sufferings.
I mean, mine was a first worldsuffering.
I had a house with, I mean, Ihad a place thanks to my, my
son's godfather.
I had a place to be with myfamily.
Yeah, it was just one room andthere was four of us living in
that room, but we had aircondition and we had FEMA money
where we could go buy ourselvessome food or we could just eat
(13:59):
in the rectory.
You know we had that.
But the real sufferings, I meanthe horrifying sufferings that
people go through, I there's noway I could ever stand forth to
somebody and say I have ananswer for you, I mean, but I
can walk with them in theirsuffering with a certain
confidence that there is ananswer that lies on the God of
love, who causes and creates thewhole universe, causes it to
(14:21):
exist, and that, of course, thegreatest sign of that is that he
didn't stand outside of it.
He became one of us.
He became one of us, and in hisbecoming one of us he took that
suffering on.
He drank it to its drags Right.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
He took the center of it, you know, unswallowed, so
that he could be with us in themidst of it and bring us on the
path towards meaning.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, there seems to be something to the center of
creation.
This is cruciform nature ofcreation.
That's the central event, youknow, in that we shouldn't
expect the creation to be apartfrom that.
That's part and parcel ofcreation.
There's something, it's struckme, but there's something, about
(15:09):
being a material, the materialworld.
It's subject to death and decay, you know.
So I'm being corrupted at thismoment.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I'm in the sense that .
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I'm getting older, as I'm talking Right, right as.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I sit here Like there's something about that.
You're just synograting as wespeak Right, exactly, hopefully
yeah, I maintain upright posture, but there is something innate
about just the fact that we'rephysical beings and we're part
of material world, that we arenot.
The perfection isn't here.
(15:44):
We're good, but there isn'tthis perfection that we have and
that we are subject to that.
So is there something?
Does that seem like limitingGod in a sense, or does that
speak to something about thefact that we are as a material
world?
We're not perfect, right?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
We are subject to these natural evils of the world
around us, right?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Well, I mean, the catechism actually answers this
question.
The catechism of the CatholicChurch, the one that John Paul
II produced for the church backin the 1990s.
He says with infinite wisdomand power, god could have
created something better, namelythan this universe, but in his
(16:35):
wisdom, he chose to create it ina state of journeying towards
its ultimate perfection.
So let's think about journeyingtowards ultimate perfection for
a second.
And we all know that there arecertain goods that would not
exist in the universe if therewere not the possibility of
(16:55):
suffering, if that was notreally there.
So think about, for instance,the patients involved and the
risk involved in childbirth forour species.
I mean that's, you know.
But also, then, the sufferingsof parents as they care for
(17:18):
children, as they deal with boththeir sorrows, as they learn
patience, I mean.
What would patience mean, orcourage mean, in a universe that
had no possibility of evil?
Yeah right, that would simplybe no such virtues.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I mean, how would they be there?
So all virtue in the sense isdepended upon.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, I mean, it seems to me.
I mean, I can't think of asingle one that doesn't like
think about the supernaturalvirtues.
Hope Well, what would it meanin a universe to hope for
something?
If your universe had everythingyou know, or love, willing the
good of the other for another'ssake?
Well, if the other has alltheir good, how do you will that
(17:59):
?
I mean they already have it,right.
Right, you can't participate init.
In other words, a universeturning towards its state of
perfection is a universe inwhich creatures in the image of
God who are capable of truth andlove, can actually be agents of
the perfection of that universeand share it in the process of
making it perfect, with God.
Right, although we'll never getit all the way there, we'll all
(18:22):
each have a small role to playin that process.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah.
No, there's something aboutcoming out of yourself, which is
part and parcel of thecruciform world, like God coming
out of him, coming to meethumanity on our terms, how we're
called to do that and you thinkabout it.
You want that for, like, we'reboth parents.
You want that for your kids.
What you want is for them tocome out of themselves.
Yes, and a lot of times it'ssuffering that brings them out
(18:47):
of themselves, where they'relike okay, I'm going to lay down
my life for my spouse or mykids or something, and you see
them grow in virtue.
Right, it doesn't seem.
You said that you can grow invirtue without the suffering,
but you have to overcome.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Right and I think about, for instance, the simple
task that I have my kids do,like one son must empty the
dishwasher.
That's the youngest one.
He's not yet really tall enoughto kind of handle scrubbing the
dishes and I don't trust him toget them clean enough to put
(19:27):
into the dishwasher.
You may have that pre-washingthing and the other one, my
17-year-old son, washes thedishes.
Now if I do not say empty thedishwasher, william, and then
say Peter, wash the dishes, theydon't do it.
I never have I come and foundthem at the process without me
(19:49):
having sat in it maybe two orthree or four times.
And at a certain point you'relike William, he had a really
hard day at school today andhe's got a lot of homework.
Should I really make him emptythe dishwasher?
And I'll think the same thingwith Peter.
But the thing is, is that bygiving them the opportunity to
(20:13):
do that and all the other thingsthey have to do, I'm helping
them slowly move, I'mtranslating them out of my care
and making them caring agents inthe world that they inhabit.
And those great times are themoments when you see them in
that world, the little bit youget to see them as they're
growing up and they beginspontaneously doing the things
(20:35):
that you have to constantly youknow what I mean go them into
doing it all.
Those are the moments and herealized, okay, maybe I actually
didn't entirely fail.
There's hope, right, there'shope.
Well.
I mean, if God is our Fatherright and Jesus is our brother
right and he is then we can seethen in the world ever more
(21:03):
opportunities to creativelyrespond to the need that evil
creates and to generate newgoods from it.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, now there is that.
You can see that good can begenerated from that.
But at the same time you havepeople that will say, well, god
could have created any.
Like the quote from John Paultoo, it could have created any
possible world.
This is not the best of allpossible worlds, so therefore,
god doesn't exist.
And they're coming with thisperspective and saying, like
(21:32):
this is not the best of allpossible worlds.
So how can we even judge that?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Well, I mean, what I think part of the problem is,
it's like I would have to beoutside the world to judge that.
How inside the world am Isupposed to come to that
conclusion?
And I don't know how I couldtalk about a best world, because
every time I try to stepoutside of the world, I'm
(21:57):
actually trying to get above thevery source of my existence,
which is the world.
Yeah, so you know, I don'tthink.
I don't know if that's the path.
I don't think that's the path.
Another path which, in a sense,we're treading right now,
because we have to, becausewe're on camera and we're asking
questions about things.
But it seems to me that peopletry to answer abstractly, as a
(22:21):
question, the existentialexperience of those who suffer.
So, seeing it, and then andthis is, of course, this is the
great error of Job's friends.
So the book of Job Job, ofcourse is divested of everything
right, and his friends show upand they start telling him well,
(22:43):
you must have done something,job, you know what was it,
because we can put together theformula for you to understand
your suffering in words.
And that's not the answer tosuffering.
The answer to suffering iscompassion.
The answer to suffering is toembrace someone or stand next to
(23:03):
someone or to say with them I'mangry at God too, that this is
happening to you, which, by theway, I think is one of the most
important ways to respond toone's personal suffering and
anguish is to tell God that Imean just like Job did.
Right, you know what I mean.
So at the end of the book of Job, it's very interesting that
(23:23):
after God gives us long speechto Job and Job says now I have
seen him, he doesn't say now Ihave heard his answer.
He says they only have seen him.
And I repent Dustin and Ashes.
Actually, god tells Job'sfriends that they're the ones
who have been speakingincorrectly about God and they
(23:43):
should offer sacrifices, not Job.
Yeah, job, you have spoken.
You have accused my servant,job and he has spoken rightly
about me.
This is what God says around,about what God says.
So there you have the answer.
It's like Job wants an answerfrom God.
(24:05):
He will not settle for anyanswer, but the answer that God
gives him.
And Job's right, because wecan't get to the answer on our
own.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah, In that story there's the humility that comes
through, where God's saying youweren't there at the foundation
of the world, you weren't there.
There's something about youdon't know what's good for you
what you need in a sense, and Ithink we think we know.
I know what I need I need abeach house and I need a longer
vacation.
But do we know what we need?
(24:35):
Particularly, like you said, ifthe point of this is from
outside, the point of ourexistence, meaning and so forth,
is from outside of what we cancontrol here, that we don't
really know and we have to Godreveal it, Right.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
And he does right.
That's exactly whatChristianity is about.
The crucified one is therevelation of what this is all
about and his resurrection right, those two things together.
Eleanor Stump, who is the greatCatholic philosopher at St
Louis University, and her bookcalled Wandering in Darkness,
(25:16):
which is about the problem ofevil, she notes in God's speech
it's not just about telling Job.
There's no way you couldunderstand this, even if I tried
to tell you.
It's the images that God givesof himself that are kind of
answering Job at the same time.
So it says that God swaddlesthe sea, like a mother holding
(25:36):
an unruly infant.
They do that.
What legs sticking out here andhands.
He swaddles the sea.
He speaks to Leviathan ingentle words.
I think is another example.
There are all of these.
When God creates the firmament,the sons of God are there and
shout with him for joy.
All of these paternal, maternalimages of God as he tells Job.
(26:00):
You can't understand.
He's also telling Job I'mcaring for you, right, this is
all about me caring for you,yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, yeah.
So we focus so far on thesephysical evils.
So when you get to the moralevil that you and I, the human
heart is capable of, right,those seem to be.
People have often have a moredifficult time struggling with
those because it's often verypersonal.
They've been wounded by afather, they've been wounded by
(26:30):
someone around them violently,right, and so those seem to be
the things that people strugglewith the most in terms of
pulling out.
Where is God in this moment?
Where is God in a brutal rapeor human trafficking and things
like where is God allowing?
This is like Job crying outwhere is God in this moment and
(26:57):
how do you address that?
It?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
may right.
Well, let's recall that whathappened in New Orleans during
Katrina?
I mean, Katrina hit theMississippi Gulf Coast, it did
not hit New Orleans.
What happened in New Orleans?
What happened to those poorfolks who were stranded in the
city?
That kind of thing had a lot todo with moral evil.
It had a lot to do with peopleshirking their responsibilities,
(27:19):
with the levees cutting cornersand political corruption.
These people were victimized,and what it did for me is I
realized that I was looking atfootage of neighborhoods that I
would speed through because Iwas afraid before.
And now here are these people,real lives, real mothers,
(27:43):
grandmothers, grandfathers,children, and they're all
suffering.
What had I ever done to helpalleviate that suffering in
advance?
Not enough, right.
So then you also, of course,have the extraordinary paradox
that you would never have love,in the sense that we've
described it already, If you didnot have the freedom to do
(28:05):
precisely the kind of horrifyingevils that you're talking about
.
And that's the extraordinarything about moral evil is that,
from every perspective, God, whois the cause of all things, is
the cause of everything thatleads up to it.
But the hole that we carve in,that, the horrifying abyss that
(28:31):
we make in.
It is the only thing that wecan ultimately take individual
soul responsibility for right,Because evil is when we deprive
goodness where goodness ought tobe right.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So it's a lack of….
They talk about evils being alack of something rather than a
positive or a real thing.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
And so there is this kind of understanding, even
amongst Catholics, the sort ofcultural understanding that
Christianity is kind ofanti-pleasure, anti-sex, anti….
So I bring up adultery as anexample.
When I talk about this, I say,like, what is the evil of
adultery?
What is the moral evil ofadultery?
Because it's not the sexualpleasure that's good, Since it's
(29:18):
not the desire for intimacythat's good.
All of those things, what is it?
It's a lack of fidelity to aspouse that ought to be present
because you committed your lifeto them, right?
That's the evil of adultery.
That's what's missing.
What was the…?
Was it the gases of theconcentration camp?
(29:41):
The gases that they used?
Were those evil?
I mean, you know, you know morechemistry than I do.
They have a molecular structure, they have all these things.
Is that…?
Was it the concrete walls?
Was it the metal that was usedin the bar bar?
Or was it the lack ofcompassion and the lack of
respect for the dignity of thosepeople?
(30:02):
That's where the true evil andthought were indeed right.
That's where it was, that'swhere it resided, and that is a
nothing.
That's an appalling hole wherea hole ought to be.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So what gives us that ability?
Like, from a Christian orCatholic perspective, right,
that humans are created, good,right.
So what allows that to ourability to turn from that?
So the people, particularly ifyou look at the Genesis text, I
mean we say, well, God createdus, and there's this turning
away from God, right.
And so how do you see that interms of allowing, you know,
(30:41):
created in the state that, froman evolutionary process, humans
come onto the scene, are we?
In a sense, we're vulnerable tosome, to the fall right?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Right.
Well, there's this ancient, andI mean sort of traditional way
of understanding the fall, which, of course, is the actual
historical sin right thatbrought our race to its sorry
state right.
When St Thomas Aquinas talksabout it, for example, he says
that the consequence of the fallis that we just revert to what
(31:13):
we have by nature without grace.
And what we have by nature is athing that, because it's
physical and because it'sevolutionary, it always has a
certain ambivalence to it.
I mean, so why are we as aspecies so able to bond and
groups the way that we do?
(31:33):
That's a great good.
I mean, we wouldn't havecommunities, teams, churches, we
wouldn't have any of thosethings if human beings weren't
just social animals.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Right, and there's a lot in evolutionary biology so
it's the only way to understandhominid or human is to see this
group competition going on.
That helps fuel, like language,you don't.
How does that evolve withoutsome benefit to the group Right?
I have language and nobody elsedoes.
It doesn't help me, right?
It's a group thing, right?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
But we know deep in our evolutionary history and we
share it with chimps we havewhat's been called sort of an
innate distrust of those who aredifferent than we are right,
Because it's not really that wehave that.
That's not the.
The scale is down here.
The scale is weighed with thegood.
(32:21):
The good is we bond in groups,but we can allow that.
The shadow side of that, theshadow that it casts and every
real good object casts a shadow,right If you put it in the
sunlight, right the shadow wecan live in that.
We could live for the shadowrather than this.
Or we can do what we have seenboth Christians and
(32:46):
non-Christians do, which is toactually see the other person as
a brother or a sister and treatthem as if they're part of our
group, even though they seem soethnically and racially
different than us.
That's what we can do, that'swhat reason and freedom make
possible right.
So our evolutionary heritage isby itself not enough.
(33:09):
We need grace, we need, we needmoral direction.
What we need, interestinglyenough, is a human being to come
along who lives out all of thegood inclinations in a perfect
way and is willing to put thelove that that involved above
his very biological wife, andthat's what we have, right.
(33:29):
That's who Jesus Christ is.
That's what we call him, thenew Adam, the final Adam,
because the first human being,that what we are by nature isn't
enough right.
We need to be shown the way toorient it all.
Otherwise it just remains apuzzle to us, because there's
plenty of good reasons todistrust those who are outside,
(33:50):
just knowing that they mightprobably distrust me too, Right
exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
They're dealing with the same biases and, whatever,
they're more than we have.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Or think about what they call cognitive bias.
When you teach me evolutionarybiology, I listen to you and I
trust you.
And lately I mean, you're abiologist, you've got a PhD in
biology and I know that you knowyour subject and you're
speaking about it confidently.
That's an evolutionary thingtoo.
This willingness to trust whatyou're told is true.
(34:20):
But in cases where we couldtalk about Nazi ideology
remember the big parades and thespeeches by Hitler and the huge
monuments and the way thatthese slogans became part of
everyday life and on posters andeverywhere, repeating a truth
statement over and over and overagain seems to make us
(34:41):
cognitively more likely toaccept it as true.
Yeah, that's the shadow, thatthis good thing are a bit
willingness to trust one another, because 99% of what I know I
know because people told me.
That's the shadow, where we canlive facing the shadow, or we
(35:02):
can live in the good.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
And that's something that we're saying like on our
own we can't do.
No, no, no, no, no.
That was the point, that graceand grace, and then it's like
Coriace tells people, you knowhe goes.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Basically, living in original sin means this human
being without grace.
That's what it means.
That's the long and the shortof it.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Yeah.
So this isn't something like ohyou have this creature that
then is totally deformed afterthe fall, but it's a deprivation
of grace which leads to thedeprivation that evil is right.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I mean one of the most off non-scriptural quotable
quotes from the history ofChristianity is from St
Augustine you have made us forourselves, lord, and our hearts
are restless until they rest inyou.
Well, that's just what we'resaying, right?
I mean, what we're saying isall of what we got from nature,
all of it comes from God, and itwas all about orienting us
(35:59):
towards Christ, you know what Imean Towards this communion with
God that will never end.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So you know, we've been talking about the evil and
the our capacity for it, andsome of it's written into our
biology in the sense that itpredisposes, without grace, to
do that.
But what do you think thattells about the fact that we
have a world in which sufferingand evil are present?
(36:28):
In terms of the?
What does it tell us about thepurpose of human life, right?
Well, what are we meant for ifthat we are in a world where
we're all going to experiencesuffering?
Is that point to?
Again, you have to sort of beoutside of the system to be able
to see it.
But is there something we canglean from that?
And what does it mean to behuman and what is the purpose of
(36:50):
human life?
Because I think that the peoplethat look, oh God didn't create
the perfect world could havebeen like this, could have been
perfect, we have no sufferingand everybody's got everything
they need.
There's something to that thatthey're bringing in what they
think the purpose of human lifeis.
(37:11):
Right, you can't escape those.
Two things go together, right?
Speaker 1 (37:17):
So yeah, absolutely so, um, all right.
So this is one of the problemsI have with contemporary
Catholic apologetics sometimesis that it tries to make it all
like a QED kind of equationYou're just a fool if you don't
believe in God.
No, no, the logic of arapacious, of a war-like
(37:39):
lifestyle, that's cogent.
I can put all that togetherthat way.
I can put everything Iexperience of myself together
that way.
Yeah, it's going to have itsdownfalls, but so will the peace
ethic have its downfall whenthe barbarians arrive and start
burning down my village.
You know what I mean.
Sure, yeah, there's a logic toboth of them.
(38:01):
Both of them come together.
Both of them seem to have theirtriumphs and their tragedies.
Which should I pick?
And in the end, faith is free.
We only find out when it'sshown to us what the deepest and
the best is, that love is thedeepest and the best.
We only know that when it'sshown to us Otherwise, we love
(38:25):
when we want to love and wedon't love when we don't want to
love.
Isn't that the truth?
No, no, no, it's not likeeverybody just lives hatefully.
No, right, yeah, even peoplewho horrify us end up here and
there.
You know what I mean Doingsomething.
Yeah, they love their dog ortheir kid and their wife, but it
(38:50):
was Alexander Solzhenitsyn said.
If only we could just pointover there and say that's where
all the evil people are.
He goes, but the line betweengood and evil runs straight down
the human art, and we don'tknow which one to choose.
One of my favorite stories andI use it in every class that I
teach is a good man that's hardto find, by Flannery O'Connor,
(39:13):
and that's the point that Misfitis making.
He said Jesus raised peoplefrom the dead and he never
should have done it, because ifhe did it, if I was there and I
saw him do it, I would know whatmy life was about.
But if he's not there, there'sno pleasure but meanness.
Of course he's saying this ashe's killing an entire family.
(39:33):
He and his convict friends arekilling an entire family.
Well, there you go, right.
It could be sentimental aboutour inclinations and desires.
We have to be objective aboutthem, and the objectivity all
comes from Christ.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
So it seems.
From a Christian perspective,it's like you're explaining
Christ is the model.
Everything in terms of humanflourishing and what it means to
be human has to be read throughChrist, and so, in doing so,
where does that get you Read it?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
through Christ.
We look back on it all and wesay, of course, yeah, of course.
You know what I mean.
This is why I loved my mother.
This is why I was sad when Ihad a quarrel with my friend.
This is those kinds of things.
We look back and we see them inthat new light and we
understand them in a new way, inthe deepest and the most
(40:33):
wonderful possible way.
But we need that light in orderto in your light.
We see light.
We say right, right, yeah, nowwe know what was light and what
was darkness.
And now we know what is lightand what is darkness and how we
think about our present and howwe prepare for the future.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Yeah Well, let's give you we're wrapping up here Just
one last question.
If you had to talk to someone,maybe the one thing you'd want
them to take away in terms ofsomeone that's really struggling
with moral evil, right, and Ijust don't see how a loving God
could be there I mean again, Idon't think the reason this
(41:15):
question is such an Asian oneand will continue when humans
will struggle with it until thesecond coming.
There's not a pat answer likeoh, here's your answer and then
go away, but what would you wantthem to take away to reflect
upon that you think can befruitful in terms of letting
(41:35):
them at least you know I wouldwant them to reflect.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
I don't think I think I would offer them an
opportunity to do somethingright.
Make God bear the burden ofproof.
There's, the heart ofChristianity.
Is this idea that God has fullyrevealed himself to humanity
(42:01):
right?
So in Christ, god has shown useverything about what it means
to be God.
What I would say is go, showGod everything about what it
means to be you suffering fromvictimization, suffering from
moral evils that have beenperpetrated against you by those
(42:25):
you love or by strangers.
Tell God how angry you areabout it.
Tell God you're pissed off.
And if you're not sure if Godexists, tell God you're angry
that he doesn't exist, becauseif he existed you could tell Him
.
That's what I think I would say.
In fact, that's what I say allthe time to people.
(42:45):
That's what I did in Katrina.
I moved from our beautifulfirst home, and when I say
beautiful, it was tiny, but itwas beautiful to me because I
brought my children home to thathouse for the first time.
We moved from that because Iwas an hour and a half from work
and my wife was like I've got afour-year-old, five-year-old
(43:06):
daughter and a three-year-oldson, and you're always an hour
and a half away and you've gotall these responsibilities and
you're getting home every nightat 7.30 at the clock.
Let's get closer to your work.
And so we moved.
I did a good thing and then Igot wiped out.
I tried to do a good thing andI got wiped out and I told God I
(43:28):
was angry.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I think, how many times have we all said that to?
Speaker 1 (43:31):
God they showed me a path and don't put a time limit
on it.
If you're doing it for the restof your life, just keep telling
God that you're angry aboutyour suffering and then just
give him five or 10 seconds andlisten.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Not to run away from it, to enter into that and bring
God into that.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
If he were here, I would stand before his seat and
I would tell him that's what Ithink the answer to suffering is
.
That's what I do when I suffer.
At least that's great advice.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Chris, thanks for being here today and talking to
anybody that's interested inthis topic.
Again, the book Creation aCatholic Guide to God and the
Universe is an excellent read.
I highly recommend that toeverybody.
Chris, always a pleasure tohave you.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It's always great to be here, Dan.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
It was great to hear his insights on this topic.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah, he's got a lot of ways that are useful to look
at the problem of suffering,even though it's one of those
things that there's never reallya definitive answer, but
there's ways that help usunderstand the reality of human
suffering.
I would recommend to anybodythat's interested in these
(44:44):
topics his book Creation aCatholic Guide to God and the
Universe, because he lays outwhat we talked about in the
interview in more detail hereand it's very accessible.
I think it's a very usefulresource for people that are
thinking about this issue.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
That's great to know.
Well, now you have questionsfor him.
I now have questions for you aswe pivot to today's Office Hour
segment.
This first one Famed Atheistand biologist, richard Dawkins
again familiar name to many he'sdefending, on the record, two
biological sexes in the face oftransgenderism.
He is on the record, I think inearlier 2023.
(45:23):
There are two sexes and that'sall there is to it.
When you hear this stand andyou hear Dawkins saying this,
does it mean that he is sidingwith a purposeful biology?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
I think he is really rooted in biology.
He gets a lot of theology, Ithink, in philosophy around, but
he does a good job of lookingat the biology and says, from a
biological perspective, what issex for?
It's for reproduction, and soyou have two sexes.
You have the male and female,for biologically those are the
(45:56):
only two that make senseevolutionarily.
As an evolutionary biologisthe's looking at it with the
proper lens and proper reasonbecause he's looking at what's
the purpose of that.
Even though he might deny thatthere's purpose in general, he
is actually trying to figure outwhat's the purpose of it.
Yeah, you differentiate in maleor female and sure, there's
(46:17):
intersex conditions where youdon't properly differentiate,
but there's no purpose or end tothose biologically because they
don't lead to the propagationof the species.
He is looking at it in, I think, a very reasonable, rational
way.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Well, speaking of purpose, we got this question
submitted to us, which, again, Ithink fits perfectly with our
goals here.
This question came in isconcluding that there is a
purpose behind or a purposewithin the natural world?
Is that even scarier than thethought of purposelessness?
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think there's aresponsibility that comes with
recognizing there's a purpose.
If I'm meant for something andI have a purpose, then I have a
responsibility to do my best tolive that out.
If I feel like there's apurpose to my life, I'm meant to
be in communion with my spouseor with my children and my
(47:17):
family, and then with God, thenthere's an obligation on me.
Some people, that's scary tohave an obligation protecting
today's society but at the sametime, when you think that it's
purposelessness all the way down, that there is no purpose,
that's also scary.
That leads to we see,psychologically, people that
don't have a purpose strugglewith a lot of mental illness.
(47:38):
They feel like there's no worth, there's no point to anything.
I think that, to me, isactually scarier than the idea
that there's purpose.
Purpose does put demands on you, but we're meant to have
demands on us.
We're not meant to be justautonomous and sit there and
enjoy our life and do whateverthe heck we want.
Where there is this need for usto come out of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
It seems, when there is that purpose and there is
hope whereas purposelessness,you can see how you can fall
easily into despair, despair andhope.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, maybe I'm not living out my purpose the way I
need to, but there's always hopethat I can do better.
You have that worth.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
if there's no purpose and I have no hope that
anything means anything, Bigquestions that everyone in some
way or another grapples with atsome point.
So grateful for that questionthat came in.
Just a reminder if you have aquestion for Dan that you want
to hear him answer on thepodcast, you can email it in at
infoatmodgescentercom.
You can also leave us a voicemessage.
You can call 949-257-2436, butbe sure always to check out
(48:37):
modgescentercom for the latestupdates, the latest information
on the podcast, and make sure tosubscribe Until then.
We'll see you next week.
There are certain goods that would not exist in
the universe if there were notthe possibility of suffering.
Think about the supernaturalvirtues.
Hope Well, what would it meanin a universe to hope for
something if your universe hadeverything?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome to Purposeful Lab, a Magistenter podcast.
I'm Catherine Hedro, with DrDan Kiebler and Dan, you had
this great interview with DrChristopher Baglow for today's
episode.
Give us a preview of what'sahead.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah, so Dr Baglow is a theologian.
We talked, you know, thisseason about evolution.
One of the questions thatalways comes up in relation to
this is the problem of humanevil and human suffering.
Right, and we look at this fromsort of two perspectives.
Why is there, you know,suffering in the natural world,
in the sense that humans aresusceptible to tsunamis and
(00:51):
earthquakes, you know what's?
How do you make sense of thatwith a purposeful God and a
loving nom, right?
And then also just a questionof human evil, you know, the
human suffering at the hands ofother humans.
Yeah, those are deep questions,you know of.
How do you, you know, makesense of a all-loving God when
there is such evil, that andsuffering you find in the world?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So, and he's written a lot about this and talked a
lot about it, so it was a greatdiscussion- you know these are
big questions you grapple withanytime the topic of evolution
bringing Genesis, just thesequestions of the fallen nature
of humans.
So this is an important one forthis season.
And just Dr Chris Baglow was inan earlier season.
(01:34):
We had a shorter interview withhim, but just so our viewers
are aware, Dr Christopher Baglowleads the Science and Religion
Initiative over at theUniversity of Notre Dame's
McGrath Institute for ChurchLife and he presents on numerous
topics at this intersection offaith and science.
He's the author of Faith,Science and Reason, Theology on
the Cutting Edge and Creation,and he's also the author of A
(01:56):
Catholic's Guide to God and theUniverse.
You know him also in hiscapacity as the Theological
Advisor to the Board ofDirectors for the Society of
Catholic Scientists, of whichyou are the vice president.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah, so I've known him for a number of years.
He's a great thinker and veryarticulate about these issues.
You know that first book youmentioned.
You know Science and Reason.
That's a nice textbook, like ahigh school textbook that covers
science and faith issues sortof groundbreaking, because there
really wasn't anything there Ifa high school teacher wanted to
(02:29):
talk about these issues.
And then the second one, aCatholic's Guide to God and
Creation.
That one is, I think, very,very accessible to a general
audience.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's good to hear.
Well, thanks for traveling toSouth Bend for us to get this
interview, and with that, here'sDan's conversation with Dr
Christopher Baglow.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, Chris, is great to have you back on the podcast
.
We had you on briefly beforewhen we were at the Society of
Catholic Scientists meeting, soour viewers got to know a little
bit about you.
But for those that haven't seenthat episode or are unfamiliar
with you, you know it'd be greatto just start a little bit
about your background.
You know you work here at NotreDame at the McGrath Institute
(03:15):
for Church Life.
You're a theologian and you'vegot into a lot of work within
the science and faith area, andso maybe you can just tell us
how you got into that.
It's a very interesting story.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, sure, I think that would help.
Well, I mean, I was actuallyhalf professor, half
administrator when I got intothis work and Hurricane Katrina
disrupted my career for and alsomy my domestic situation.
My house was flooded by Katrinaat a time when I was not sure
(03:51):
where I was going to be going orwhat I'd be doing.
I was approached by thepresident of McGill, tull and
Catholic High School, mobile,alabama, to create a curriculum
on faith and science for hisschool, a project I said yes to,
somewhat foolishly, because atthe time it was not an area I
really knew very well and alsobecause I was assuming that the
college where I worked wouldnever open again, which was the
(04:15):
rumor on the street.
Turned out, that rumor wasunfounded, but I ended up
spending the next two yearswriting a curriculum which
became a textbook.
From there, I realized that thekey work would not just be in
text but also in in people, andso I started working with
Catholic High School Science andReligion teachers, and that's
(04:37):
really that, I think, thecontext in which our work has
kind of come together and thethings that you and I do for the
Science and Religion Initiativehere at Notre Dame.
But that work ultimately led mehere.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, it's interesting.
You have a really broadoutreach here at the Science and
Religion Initiative and we do alot of work across the country
where you get to talk to a lotof high school educators,
students and so forth.
So just based on thatexperience, what would you say?
What is the biggestmisconception or issue that
(05:09):
people have in terms ofintegrating science and their
Catholic faith?
What is the if you had to saythere's one thing that really is
the most important thing to getacross to people or they
struggle with the most?
Is there something like aphilosophical thing or is there
a scientific issue in yourexperience of the feedback that
you get across the country?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Believe it or not.
Well, actually you wouldbelieve it because you see it
all the time.
The misconception that faithand science are at odds with
each other at least the Catholicfaith and modern science are at
odds is like a straw man andit's easy to push over.
Yeah, you give them a, youscratch the surface and it
disappears, it just disappears.
I mean, our friend Corey Hayesgives us Galileo lecture, we
(05:53):
talk about Fr George LeMette,the founder of the Big Bang
Theory, who's a Catholic priest,and we talk about the Catholic
almost Saint now blessed NicolasSteno, who discovered the
geology necessary to discoverthe ancient age of the earth,
which made Darwin's workpossible, and people begin to
realize that a lot of theirquestions were answered before
(06:15):
they ever arose.
Right.
Then it becomes.
I think, the real thing and theexciting thing about the work
that we get to do together isthat we get to then show them
how to think about the faiththrough a modern scientific lens
you know what I mean and thatputs them in a position where,
with young people who, you know,stem is everywhere now, stem
(06:38):
programs are everywhere now withthe young people that they meet
, that's the way they're goingto see the faith, if they're
going to see it at all.
So once you begin to do that,though, it's very exciting how
those young people themselvesrespond, how their teachers are
able now to meet their needs andhelp them find Christ in a way
that they never thought possible, maybe when they began their
(07:00):
careers.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, Now I think it's a really nice, the physical
embodiment of a theologian anda scientist.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
You know, it's not just you and me, but other
theologians and other scientistsat the meeting, where they look
and say, oh wow, this actuallyworks.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, these people are talking to each other,
they're actually engaged withboth disciplines, are engaged
with each other and they say, oh, there's a natural and the
comfort, confidence and opennessthat that radiates to them,
just tells them that theconflict thesis is a
misconception, it's a lie, andthen from there it's just a
matter of continuing to.
(07:33):
You know, help them begin toanswer the individual questions.
So I would say the misgivest,the biggest problem, is the
easiest one to solve.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Yeah, no, that's good .
Yeah.
Now these individual questionscan be very, very, very tricky,
right, and I just want to pointout your book, which we're going
to be talking todayparticularly about.
You know the question of evilin the world, and so this book,
creation, a Catholic's Guide toGod in the Universe, is a
chapter in here.
We're going to sort of focus onthis as a great book, a great
(08:02):
resource for people that areinterested in these issues that
we're talking about today.
You know, because this booktalks about.
It's interesting to me becauseit discusses a lot about
evolution and the problem ofevil and to me they're often
interconnected and they seem tobe the two biggest issues that
people struggle with and sort ofintegrate, and you dive into
(08:22):
both of them in this book.
You take kind of the two.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Hardest question how do you see those two?
Do you see those asinterrelated to sort of two
separate questions, or did theyone flow into the other?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
They're deeply related to each other, but the
one question, the problem ofevil, is obviously a question
that people have been thinkingabout for a lot longer than that
intersection of evolution andevil and the fact that death is
intrinsic to the unfolding ofthe world as we know it, that
suffering is something that isalmost omnipresent throughout
(08:57):
creation.
Right, the way I approach it inthe book is I start by speaking
quite optimistically I don'tknow beautifully, but quite
optimistically andenthusiastically about the
Christian doctrine of creation,which boils down to God is love
and God creates the world andlove.
I think that's the hardestthing to reconcile with the
(09:20):
problem of evil.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, no, I think so.
That's why that's chapter two.
Okay, you can start to.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And a lot of people is like, okay, we can roll with
this, but it remains a fictionuntil they can begin to
reconcile that with their ownexperience, which is saturated
with pain.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Right Now that's, I think.
I think people, you know theystruggle with evolution, sort of
in the background.
It's sort of an intellectual.
I don't bump into evolutionevery day in terms of being a
life struggle, but I bump intopain and suffering every day,
right, and so that becomes evenmore difficult for them to come
over because they'reexperiencing it directly,
whereas evolution is more of anintellectual question.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, evolution tells them is what seems like the bad
news, which is that their ownpersonal experience is writ
large across the entire historyof life, right.
You know that's true, it's likeokay, yeah, you're having a hard
time.
You're, you know, even withsome physical malady that is
making it difficult for you toflourish or feel happy because
(10:21):
of the pain you're experiencing.
Maybe it's a bad back, maybeit's something worse, like
cancer.
You know, whatever it might be,maybe it's a disability you
were born with.
Whatever that might be, that'sthe universe, or at least that's
the living universe.
The living universe has thatall over the place.
So it's almost as if your ownplace, where you secretly wonder
(10:43):
, is there a God?
It's this massive stamp fromevolutionary science that says,
yeah, that's a good doubt tohave.
And that's where people seethat's really where they kind of
struggle with it.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
You know, yeah, right Now, exactly Now it's
interesting of your story, right, we're going to talk about like
sort of natural evil morally wemake that distinction in the
book, but like a natural you'rebeing like a cancer or a
hurricane or things like that.
So your story is influenced bynatural evil, brought you into
science.
But I think it's kind ofinteresting, yeah, yeah.
But so the whole evolutionaryprocess, right, is full, chock
(11:22):
full of sort of natural evilsand then our human experiences
you know cancer and things.
You know wildfires andearthquakes that cause death and
destruction, right?
So how do you look at that fromthe perspective of a loving and
good, all loving God who allowsthat to happen?
(11:43):
How does that?
How do you start to piece thosetwo together?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Well, that's the difficult part, because it seems
to me that the deepest meaningof suffering, the deepest
meaning of evil, can only bediscovered in a sense, or is
only answerable, outside theuniverse, like if, that's,
what's if the universe?
(12:08):
We think about the universe asa system.
Right, the meaning of anysystem really lies outside of it
.
So think about the rules ofprofessional football as a
system.
Well, what it means to its fansand all that it's not contained
in that book.
It might make a reference to ithere or there, but they're not
(12:31):
really going to capture thesense of triumph or the sense of
loss that occurs when yourfavorite team loses to the
Atlanta Falcons.
You know what I mean.
They're not going, whichhappened yesterday for me.
They're not going to be able tocapture that because the
meaning of the system liesoutside the system.
But that's true than themeaning of both the joys, the
(12:53):
sufferings, the incredible goodthat we see and beauty, but also
the privation of goodness andbeauty that we see.
The ultimate meaning of thathas to lie outside of the
universe itself.
It has to be in the God whocreated it, and consistent with
that is is that we can only knowit, we can only know the full
(13:16):
meaning of it piecemeal, youknow what I mean and signs that,
and so, for instance, I thinkabout the fact that I'm at the
University of Notre Dame and I'msitting here and talking with
you and this is a wonderfulexperience.
But I wouldn't have had it if Ihadn't been a Katrina refugee,
right, okay, so I can look atthat and I can begin to say
(13:36):
maybe then even a much morehorrible sufferings.
I mean, mine was a first worldsuffering.
I had a house with, I mean, Ihad a place thanks to my, my
son's godfather.
I had a place to be with myfamily.
Yeah, it was just one room andthere was four of us living in
that room, but we had aircondition and we had FEMA money
where we could go buy ourselvessome food or we could just eat
(13:59):
in the rectory.
You know we had that.
But the real sufferings, I meanthe horrifying sufferings that
people go through, I there's noway I could ever stand forth to
somebody and say I have ananswer for you, I mean, but I
can walk with them in theirsuffering with a certain
confidence that there is ananswer that lies on the God of
love, who causes and creates thewhole universe, causes it to
(14:21):
exist, and that, of course, thegreatest sign of that is that he
didn't stand outside of it.
He became one of us.
He became one of us, and in hisbecoming one of us he took that
suffering on.
He drank it to its drags Right.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
He took the center of it, you know, unswallowed, so
that he could be with us in themidst of it and bring us on the
path towards meaning.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, there seems to be something to the center of
creation.
This is cruciform nature ofcreation.
That's the central event, youknow, in that we shouldn't
expect the creation to be apartfrom that.
That's part and parcel ofcreation.
There's something, it's struckme, but there's something, about
(15:09):
being a material, the materialworld.
It's subject to death and decay, you know.
So I'm being corrupted at thismoment.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I'm in the sense that .
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I'm getting older, as I'm talking Right, right as.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I sit here Like there's something about that.
You're just synograting as wespeak Right, exactly, hopefully
yeah, I maintain upright posture, but there is something innate
about just the fact that we'rephysical beings and we're part
of material world, that we arenot.
The perfection isn't here.
(15:44):
We're good, but there isn'tthis perfection that we have and
that we are subject to that.
So is there something?
Does that seem like limitingGod in a sense, or does that
speak to something about thefact that we are as a material
world?
We're not perfect, right?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
We are subject to these natural evils of the world
around us, right?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Well, I mean, the catechism actually answers this
question.
The catechism of the CatholicChurch, the one that John Paul
II produced for the church backin the 1990s.
He says with infinite wisdomand power, god could have
created something better, namelythan this universe, but in his
(16:35):
wisdom, he chose to create it ina state of journeying towards
its ultimate perfection.
So let's think about journeyingtowards ultimate perfection for
a second.
And we all know that there arecertain goods that would not
exist in the universe if therewere not the possibility of
(16:55):
suffering, if that was notreally there.
So think about, for instance,the patients involved and the
risk involved in childbirth forour species.
I mean that's, you know.
But also, then, the sufferingsof parents as they care for
(17:18):
children, as they deal with boththeir sorrows, as they learn
patience, I mean.
What would patience mean, orcourage mean, in a universe that
had no possibility of evil?
Yeah right, that would simplybe no such virtues.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I mean, how would they be there?
So all virtue in the sense isdepended upon.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, I mean, it seems to me.
I mean, I can't think of asingle one that doesn't like
think about the supernaturalvirtues.
Hope Well, what would it meanin a universe to hope for
something?
If your universe had everythingyou know, or love, willing the
good of the other for another'ssake?
Well, if the other has alltheir good, how do you will that
(17:59):
?
I mean they already have it,right.
Right, you can't participate init.
In other words, a universeturning towards its state of
perfection is a universe inwhich creatures in the image of
God who are capable of truth andlove, can actually be agents of
the perfection of that universeand share it in the process of
making it perfect, with God.
Right, although we'll never getit all the way there, we'll all
(18:22):
each have a small role to playin that process.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah.
No, there's something aboutcoming out of yourself, which is
part and parcel of thecruciform world, like God coming
out of him, coming to meethumanity on our terms, how we're
called to do that and you thinkabout it.
You want that for, like, we'reboth parents.
You want that for your kids.
What you want is for them tocome out of themselves.
Yes, and a lot of times it'ssuffering that brings them out
(18:47):
of themselves, where they'relike okay, I'm going to lay down
my life for my spouse or mykids or something, and you see
them grow in virtue.
Right, it doesn't seem.
You said that you can grow invirtue without the suffering,
but you have to overcome.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Right and I think about, for instance, the simple
task that I have my kids do,like one son must empty the
dishwasher.
That's the youngest one.
He's not yet really tall enoughto kind of handle scrubbing the
dishes and I don't trust him toget them clean enough to put
(19:27):
into the dishwasher.
You may have that pre-washingthing and the other one, my
17-year-old son, washes thedishes.
Now if I do not say empty thedishwasher, william, and then
say Peter, wash the dishes, theydon't do it.
I never have I come and foundthem at the process without me
(19:49):
having sat in it maybe two orthree or four times.
And at a certain point you'relike William, he had a really
hard day at school today andhe's got a lot of homework.
Should I really make him emptythe dishwasher?
And I'll think the same thingwith Peter.
But the thing is, is that bygiving them the opportunity to
(20:13):
do that and all the other thingsthey have to do, I'm helping
them slowly move, I'mtranslating them out of my care
and making them caring agents inthe world that they inhabit.
And those great times are themoments when you see them in
that world, the little bit youget to see them as they're
growing up and they beginspontaneously doing the things
(20:35):
that you have to constantly youknow what I mean go them into
doing it all.
Those are the moments and herealized, okay, maybe I actually
didn't entirely fail.
There's hope, right, there'shope.
Well.
I mean, if God is our Fatherright and Jesus is our brother
right and he is then we can seethen in the world ever more
(21:03):
opportunities to creativelyrespond to the need that evil
creates and to generate newgoods from it.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, now there is that.
You can see that good can begenerated from that.
But at the same time you havepeople that will say, well, god
could have created any.
Like the quote from John Paultoo, it could have created any
possible world.
This is not the best of allpossible worlds, so therefore,
god doesn't exist.
And they're coming with thisperspective and saying, like
(21:32):
this is not the best of allpossible worlds.
So how can we even judge that?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Well, I mean, what I think part of the problem is,
it's like I would have to beoutside the world to judge that.
How inside the world am Isupposed to come to that
conclusion?
And I don't know how I couldtalk about a best world, because
every time I try to stepoutside of the world, I'm
(21:57):
actually trying to get above thevery source of my existence,
which is the world.
Yeah, so you know, I don'tthink.
I don't know if that's the path.
I don't think that's the path.
Another path which, in a sense,we're treading right now,
because we have to, becausewe're on camera and we're asking
questions about things.
But it seems to me that peopletry to answer abstractly, as a
(22:21):
question, the existentialexperience of those who suffer.
So, seeing it, and then andthis is, of course, this is the
great error of Job's friends.
So the book of Job Job, ofcourse is divested of everything
right, and his friends show upand they start telling him well,
(22:43):
you must have done something,job, you know what was it,
because we can put together theformula for you to understand
your suffering in words.
And that's not the answer tosuffering.
The answer to suffering iscompassion.
The answer to suffering is toembrace someone or stand next to
(23:03):
someone or to say with them I'mangry at God too, that this is
happening to you, which, by theway, I think is one of the most
important ways to respond toone's personal suffering and
anguish is to tell God that Imean just like Job did.
Right, you know what I mean.
So at the end of the book of Job, it's very interesting that
(23:23):
after God gives us long speechto Job and Job says now I have
seen him, he doesn't say now Ihave heard his answer.
He says they only have seen him.
And I repent Dustin and Ashes.
Actually, god tells Job'sfriends that they're the ones
who have been speakingincorrectly about God and they
(23:43):
should offer sacrifices, not Job.
Yeah, job, you have spoken.
You have accused my servant,job and he has spoken rightly
about me.
This is what God says around,about what God says.
So there you have the answer.
It's like Job wants an answerfrom God.
(24:05):
He will not settle for anyanswer, but the answer that God
gives him.
And Job's right, because wecan't get to the answer on our
own.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah, In that story there's the humility that comes
through, where God's saying youweren't there at the foundation
of the world, you weren't there.
There's something about youdon't know what's good for you
what you need in a sense, and Ithink we think we know.
I know what I need I need abeach house and I need a longer
vacation.
But do we know what we need?
(24:35):
Particularly, like you said, ifthe point of this is from
outside, the point of ourexistence, meaning and so forth,
is from outside of what we cancontrol here, that we don't
really know and we have to Godreveal it, Right.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
And he does right.
That's exactly whatChristianity is about.
The crucified one is therevelation of what this is all
about and his resurrection right, those two things together.
Eleanor Stump, who is the greatCatholic philosopher at St
Louis University, and her bookcalled Wandering in Darkness,
(25:16):
which is about the problem ofevil, she notes in God's speech
it's not just about telling Job.
There's no way you couldunderstand this, even if I tried
to tell you.
It's the images that God givesof himself that are kind of
answering Job at the same time.
So it says that God swaddlesthe sea, like a mother holding
(25:36):
an unruly infant.
They do that.
What legs sticking out here andhands.
He swaddles the sea.
He speaks to Leviathan ingentle words.
I think is another example.
There are all of these.
When God creates the firmament,the sons of God are there and
shout with him for joy.
All of these paternal, maternalimages of God as he tells Job.
(26:00):
You can't understand.
He's also telling Job I'mcaring for you, right, this is
all about me caring for you,yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, yeah.
So we focus so far on thesephysical evils.
So when you get to the moralevil that you and I, the human
heart is capable of, right,those seem to be.
People have often have a moredifficult time struggling with
those because it's often verypersonal.
They've been wounded by afather, they've been wounded by
(26:30):
someone around them violently,right, and so those seem to be
the things that people strugglewith the most in terms of
pulling out.
Where is God in this moment?
Where is God in a brutal rapeor human trafficking and things
like where is God allowing?
This is like Job crying outwhere is God in this moment and
(26:57):
how do you address that?
It?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
may right.
Well, let's recall that whathappened in New Orleans during
Katrina?
I mean, Katrina hit theMississippi Gulf Coast, it did
not hit New Orleans.
What happened in New Orleans?
What happened to those poorfolks who were stranded in the
city?
That kind of thing had a lot todo with moral evil.
It had a lot to do with peopleshirking their responsibilities,
(27:19):
with the levees cutting cornersand political corruption.
These people were victimized,and what it did for me is I
realized that I was looking atfootage of neighborhoods that I
would speed through because Iwas afraid before.
And now here are these people,real lives, real mothers,
(27:43):
grandmothers, grandfathers,children, and they're all
suffering.
What had I ever done to helpalleviate that suffering in
advance?
Not enough, right.
So then you also, of course,have the extraordinary paradox
that you would never have love,in the sense that we've
described it already, If you didnot have the freedom to do
(28:05):
precisely the kind of horrifyingevils that you're talking about
.
And that's the extraordinarything about moral evil is that,
from every perspective, God, whois the cause of all things, is
the cause of everything thatleads up to it.
But the hole that we carve in,that, the horrifying abyss that
(28:31):
we make in.
It is the only thing that wecan ultimately take individual
soul responsibility for right,Because evil is when we deprive
goodness where goodness ought tobe right.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So it's a lack of….
They talk about evils being alack of something rather than a
positive or a real thing.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
And so there is this kind of understanding, even
amongst Catholics, the sort ofcultural understanding that
Christianity is kind ofanti-pleasure, anti-sex, anti….
So I bring up adultery as anexample.
When I talk about this, I say,like, what is the evil of
adultery?
What is the moral evil ofadultery?
Because it's not the sexualpleasure that's good, Since it's
(29:18):
not the desire for intimacythat's good.
All of those things, what is it?
It's a lack of fidelity to aspouse that ought to be present
because you committed your lifeto them, right?
That's the evil of adultery.
That's what's missing.
What was the…?
Was it the gases of theconcentration camp?
(29:41):
The gases that they used?
Were those evil?
I mean, you know, you know morechemistry than I do.
They have a molecular structure, they have all these things.
Is that…?
Was it the concrete walls?
Was it the metal that was usedin the bar bar?
Or was it the lack ofcompassion and the lack of
respect for the dignity of thosepeople?
(30:02):
That's where the true evil andthought were indeed right.
That's where it was, that'swhere it resided, and that is a
nothing.
That's an appalling hole wherea hole ought to be.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So what gives us that ability?
Like, from a Christian orCatholic perspective, right,
that humans are created, good,right.
So what allows that to ourability to turn from that?
So the people, particularly ifyou look at the Genesis text, I
mean we say, well, God createdus, and there's this turning
away from God, right.
And so how do you see that interms of allowing, you know,
(30:41):
created in the state that, froman evolutionary process, humans
come onto the scene, are we?
In a sense, we're vulnerable tosome, to the fall right?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Right.
Well, there's this ancient, andI mean sort of traditional way
of understanding the fall, which, of course, is the actual
historical sin right thatbrought our race to its sorry
state right.
When St Thomas Aquinas talksabout it, for example, he says
that the consequence of the fallis that we just revert to what
(31:13):
we have by nature without grace.
And what we have by nature is athing that, because it's
physical and because it'sevolutionary, it always has a
certain ambivalence to it.
I mean, so why are we as aspecies so able to bond and
groups the way that we do?
(31:33):
That's a great good.
I mean, we wouldn't havecommunities, teams, churches, we
wouldn't have any of thosethings if human beings weren't
just social animals.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Right, and there's a lot in evolutionary biology so
it's the only way to understandhominid or human is to see this
group competition going on.
That helps fuel, like language,you don't.
How does that evolve withoutsome benefit to the group Right?
I have language and nobody elsedoes.
It doesn't help me, right?
It's a group thing, right?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
But we know deep in our evolutionary history and we
share it with chimps we havewhat's been called sort of an
innate distrust of those who aredifferent than we are right,
Because it's not really that wehave that.
That's not the.
The scale is down here.
The scale is weighed with thegood.
(32:21):
The good is we bond in groups,but we can allow that.
The shadow side of that, theshadow that it casts and every
real good object casts a shadow,right If you put it in the
sunlight, right the shadow wecan live in that.
We could live for the shadowrather than this.
Or we can do what we have seenboth Christians and
(32:46):
non-Christians do, which is toactually see the other person as
a brother or a sister and treatthem as if they're part of our
group, even though they seem soethnically and racially
different than us.
That's what we can do, that'swhat reason and freedom make
possible right.
So our evolutionary heritage isby itself not enough.
(33:09):
We need grace, we need, we needmoral direction.
What we need, interestinglyenough, is a human being to come
along who lives out all of thegood inclinations in a perfect
way and is willing to put thelove that that involved above
his very biological wife, andthat's what we have, right.
(33:29):
That's who Jesus Christ is.
That's what we call him, thenew Adam, the final Adam,
because the first human being,that what we are by nature isn't
enough right.
We need to be shown the way toorient it all.
Otherwise it just remains apuzzle to us, because there's
plenty of good reasons todistrust those who are outside,
(33:50):
just knowing that they mightprobably distrust me too, Right
exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
They're dealing with the same biases and, whatever,
they're more than we have.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Or think about what they call cognitive bias.
When you teach me evolutionarybiology, I listen to you and I
trust you.
And lately I mean, you're abiologist, you've got a PhD in
biology and I know that you knowyour subject and you're
speaking about it confidently.
That's an evolutionary thingtoo.
This willingness to trust whatyou're told is true.
(34:20):
But in cases where we couldtalk about Nazi ideology
remember the big parades and thespeeches by Hitler and the huge
monuments and the way thatthese slogans became part of
everyday life and on posters andeverywhere, repeating a truth
statement over and over and overagain seems to make us
(34:41):
cognitively more likely toaccept it as true.
Yeah, that's the shadow, thatthis good thing are a bit
willingness to trust one another, because 99% of what I know I
know because people told me.
That's the shadow, where we canlive facing the shadow, or we
(35:02):
can live in the good.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
And that's something that we're saying like on our
own we can't do.
No, no, no, no, no.
That was the point, that graceand grace, and then it's like
Coriace tells people, you knowhe goes.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Basically, living in original sin means this human
being without grace.
That's what it means.
That's the long and the shortof it.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Yeah.
So this isn't something like ohyou have this creature that
then is totally deformed afterthe fall, but it's a deprivation
of grace which leads to thedeprivation that evil is right.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I mean one of the most off non-scriptural quotable
quotes from the history ofChristianity is from St
Augustine you have made us forourselves, lord, and our hearts
are restless until they rest inyou.
Well, that's just what we'resaying, right?
I mean, what we're saying isall of what we got from nature,
all of it comes from God, and itwas all about orienting us
(35:59):
towards Christ, you know what Imean Towards this communion with
God that will never end.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So you know, we've been talking about the evil and
the our capacity for it, andsome of it's written into our
biology in the sense that itpredisposes, without grace, to
do that.
But what do you think thattells about the fact that we
have a world in which sufferingand evil are present?
(36:28):
In terms of the?
What does it tell us about thepurpose of human life, right?
Well, what are we meant for ifthat we are in a world where
we're all going to experiencesuffering?
Is that point to?
Again, you have to sort of beoutside of the system to be able
to see it.
But is there something we canglean from that?
And what does it mean to behuman and what is the purpose of
(36:50):
human life?
Because I think that the peoplethat look, oh God didn't create
the perfect world could havebeen like this, could have been
perfect, we have no sufferingand everybody's got everything
they need.
There's something to that thatthey're bringing in what they
think the purpose of human lifeis.
(37:11):
Right, you can't escape those.
Two things go together, right?
Speaker 1 (37:17):
So yeah, absolutely so, um, all right.
So this is one of the problemsI have with contemporary
Catholic apologetics sometimesis that it tries to make it all
like a QED kind of equationYou're just a fool if you don't
believe in God.
No, no, the logic of arapacious, of a war-like
(37:39):
lifestyle, that's cogent.
I can put all that togetherthat way.
I can put everything Iexperience of myself together
that way.
Yeah, it's going to have itsdownfalls, but so will the peace
ethic have its downfall whenthe barbarians arrive and start
burning down my village.
You know what I mean.
Sure, yeah, there's a logic toboth of them.
(38:01):
Both of them come together.
Both of them seem to have theirtriumphs and their tragedies.
Which should I pick?
And in the end, faith is free.
We only find out when it'sshown to us what the deepest and
the best is, that love is thedeepest and the best.
We only know that when it'sshown to us Otherwise, we love
(38:25):
when we want to love and wedon't love when we don't want to
love.
Isn't that the truth?
No, no, no, it's not likeeverybody just lives hatefully.
No, right, yeah, even peoplewho horrify us end up here and
there.
You know what I mean Doingsomething.
Yeah, they love their dog ortheir kid and their wife, but it
(38:50):
was Alexander Solzhenitsyn said.
If only we could just pointover there and say that's where
all the evil people are.
He goes, but the line betweengood and evil runs straight down
the human art, and we don'tknow which one to choose.
One of my favorite stories andI use it in every class that I
teach is a good man that's hardto find, by Flannery O'Connor,
(39:13):
and that's the point that Misfitis making.
He said Jesus raised peoplefrom the dead and he never
should have done it, because ifhe did it, if I was there and I
saw him do it, I would know whatmy life was about.
But if he's not there, there'sno pleasure but meanness.
Of course he's saying this ashe's killing an entire family.
(39:33):
He and his convict friends arekilling an entire family.
Well, there you go, right.
It could be sentimental aboutour inclinations and desires.
We have to be objective aboutthem, and the objectivity all
comes from Christ.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
So it seems.
From a Christian perspective,it's like you're explaining
Christ is the model.
Everything in terms of humanflourishing and what it means to
be human has to be read throughChrist, and so, in doing so,
where does that get you Read it?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
through Christ.
We look back on it all and wesay, of course, yeah, of course.
You know what I mean.
This is why I loved my mother.
This is why I was sad when Ihad a quarrel with my friend.
This is those kinds of things.
We look back and we see them inthat new light and we
understand them in a new way, inthe deepest and the most
(40:33):
wonderful possible way.
But we need that light in orderto in your light.
We see light.
We say right, right, yeah, nowwe know what was light and what
was darkness.
And now we know what is lightand what is darkness and how we
think about our present and howwe prepare for the future.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Yeah Well, let's give you we're wrapping up here Just
one last question.
If you had to talk to someone,maybe the one thing you'd want
them to take away in terms ofsomeone that's really struggling
with moral evil, right, and Ijust don't see how a loving God
could be there I mean again, Idon't think the reason this
(41:15):
question is such an Asian oneand will continue when humans
will struggle with it until thesecond coming.
There's not a pat answer likeoh, here's your answer and then
go away, but what would you wantthem to take away to reflect
upon that you think can befruitful in terms of letting
(41:35):
them at least you know I wouldwant them to reflect.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
I don't think I think I would offer them an
opportunity to do somethingright.
Make God bear the burden ofproof.
There's, the heart ofChristianity.
Is this idea that God has fullyrevealed himself to humanity
(42:01):
right?
So in Christ, god has shown useverything about what it means
to be God.
What I would say is go, showGod everything about what it
means to be you suffering fromvictimization, suffering from
moral evils that have beenperpetrated against you by those
(42:25):
you love or by strangers.
Tell God how angry you areabout it.
Tell God you're pissed off.
And if you're not sure if Godexists, tell God you're angry
that he doesn't exist, becauseif he existed you could tell Him
.
That's what I think I would say.
In fact, that's what I say allthe time to people.
(42:45):
That's what I did in Katrina.
I moved from our beautifulfirst home, and when I say
beautiful, it was tiny, but itwas beautiful to me because I
brought my children home to thathouse for the first time.
We moved from that because Iwas an hour and a half from work
and my wife was like I've got afour-year-old, five-year-old
(43:06):
daughter and a three-year-oldson, and you're always an hour
and a half away and you've gotall these responsibilities and
you're getting home every nightat 7.30 at the clock.
Let's get closer to your work.
And so we moved.
I did a good thing and then Igot wiped out.
I tried to do a good thing andI got wiped out and I told God I
(43:28):
was angry.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I think, how many times have we all said that to?
Speaker 1 (43:31):
God they showed me a path and don't put a time limit
on it.
If you're doing it for the restof your life, just keep telling
God that you're angry aboutyour suffering and then just
give him five or 10 seconds andlisten.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Not to run away from it, to enter into that and bring
God into that.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
If he were here, I would stand before his seat and
I would tell him that's what Ithink the answer to suffering is
.
That's what I do when I suffer.
At least that's great advice.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Chris, thanks for being here today and talking to
anybody that's interested inthis topic.
Again, the book Creation aCatholic Guide to God and the
Universe is an excellent read.
I highly recommend that toeverybody.
Chris, always a pleasure tohave you.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It's always great to be here, Dan.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
It was great to hear his insights on this topic.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah, he's got a lot of ways that are useful to look
at the problem of suffering,even though it's one of those
things that there's never reallya definitive answer, but
there's ways that help usunderstand the reality of human
suffering.
I would recommend to anybodythat's interested in these
(44:44):
topics his book Creation aCatholic Guide to God and the
Universe, because he lays outwhat we talked about in the
interview in more detail hereand it's very accessible.
I think it's a very usefulresource for people that are
thinking about this issue.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
That's great to know.
Well, now you have questionsfor him.
I now have questions for you aswe pivot to today's Office Hour
segment.
This first one Famed Atheistand biologist, richard Dawkins
again familiar name to many he'sdefending, on the record, two
biological sexes in the face oftransgenderism.
He is on the record, I think inearlier 2023.
(45:23):
There are two sexes and that'sall there is to it.
When you hear this stand andyou hear Dawkins saying this,
does it mean that he is sidingwith a purposeful biology?
Speaker 3 (45:35):
I think he is really rooted in biology.
He gets a lot of theology, Ithink, in philosophy around, but
he does a good job of lookingat the biology and says, from a
biological perspective, what issex for?
It's for reproduction, and soyou have two sexes.
You have the male and female,for biologically those are the
(45:56):
only two that make senseevolutionarily.
As an evolutionary biologisthe's looking at it with the
proper lens and proper reasonbecause he's looking at what's
the purpose of that.
Even though he might deny thatthere's purpose in general, he
is actually trying to figure outwhat's the purpose of it.
Yeah, you differentiate in maleor female and sure, there's
(46:17):
intersex conditions where youdon't properly differentiate,
but there's no purpose or end tothose biologically because they
don't lead to the propagationof the species.
He is looking at it in, I think, a very reasonable, rational
way.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Well, speaking of purpose, we got this question
submitted to us, which, again, Ithink fits perfectly with our
goals here.
This question came in isconcluding that there is a
purpose behind or a purposewithin the natural world?
Is that even scarier than thethought of purposelessness?
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think there's aresponsibility that comes with
recognizing there's a purpose.
If I'm meant for something andI have a purpose, then I have a
responsibility to do my best tolive that out.
If I feel like there's apurpose to my life, I'm meant to
be in communion with my spouseor with my children and my
(47:17):
family, and then with God, thenthere's an obligation on me.
Some people, that's scary tohave an obligation protecting
today's society but at the sametime, when you think that it's
purposelessness all the way down, that there is no purpose,
that's also scary.
That leads to we see,psychologically, people that
don't have a purpose strugglewith a lot of mental illness.
(47:38):
They feel like there's no worth, there's no point to anything.
I think that, to me, isactually scarier than the idea
that there's purpose.
Purpose does put demands on you, but we're meant to have
demands on us.
We're not meant to be justautonomous and sit there and
enjoy our life and do whateverthe heck we want.
Where there is this need for usto come out of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
It seems, when there is that purpose and there is
hope whereas purposelessness,you can see how you can fall
easily into despair, despair andhope.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, maybe I'm not living out my purpose the way I
need to, but there's always hopethat I can do better.
You have that worth.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
if there's no purpose and I have no hope that
anything means anything, Bigquestions that everyone in some
way or another grapples with atsome point.
So grateful for that questionthat came in.
Just a reminder if you have aquestion for Dan that you want
to hear him answer on thepodcast, you can email it in at
infoatmodgescentercom.
You can also leave us a voicemessage.
You can call 949-257-2436, butbe sure always to check out
(48:37):
modgescentercom for the latestupdates, the latest information
on the podcast, and make sure tosubscribe Until then.
We'll see you next week.
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