Theodicy:
This word means the vindication of the divine providence - that is divine care - in the view of the existence of evil; all according to my Oxford dictionary. In more common terms, theodicy deals with the problem of why a good and powerful god is unwilling or unable to prevent a catastrophe like a tsunami. One common answer is that god is testing us, while my reply is that maybe humans should choose to live in a safer place.
These two replies are based on two differing assumptions. The first one places the cause with god, while the second holds the human to account. And it is this human responsibility that has come to the fore as a result of modern developments and insights.
For example, humanity today is concerned about global warming and rising sea levels. We are examining our own behaviour in this context, attempting to determine to what degree our live style contributes. Nobody points a finger accusingly at some higher power as the source and cause of our dilemma, yet the movie Noah reminds us once again of how people viewed an ancient flood’s cause.
The reason that we are taking responsibility for our own actions in the case of global warming, is that we are now aware of the way our behaviour - gas consumption - contributes to global warming. This new insight about the right and the wrong type of action is routed in our modern conscious awareness and understanding.
There is no eleventh commandment against abuse that has come to us from the past.
The above example demonstrates that good and evil are distinctions made by us as conscious human being, such as to guide and inform our actions and omissions. The distinction between good and evil lies within our own human conscious awareness and is not located some where else.
Granted, we can act with the best of information and intentions, while still being confronted with unwanted and even heart breaking outcomes. It is from such outcomes that we compose new rules and have the old ones, such as the Ten Commandments. They warn us to tread carefully in the no-mans land between the desirable and the prudent.
So, the burden of evil no longer rests with the higher power, but with ourselves as modern humans, conscious and informed by our ethics. This ethics and morals is passed on to us as we grow up and added to by society as cases arise.
The modern disapproval of abuse is a valid example of how new rules of ethics and morals are added to our inventory of held values. There is no eleventh commandment against abuse that has come to us from the past. It represents a modern insight, even for me this author, because in retrospect I was exposed to abusive type punishment, which was commonly held to be acceptable. I referring to the times of my childhood and ‘youth-hood’, that is the years 1936 to 1953.
<9:06am~
The topic theogony will now be discussed as part of the categories ’Existence Divine’. Theogony means the genealogy of the gods, whereas theodicy is a vindication of divine providence - care - in view of the existence of evil.
Theogony:
Many, but by no means all, human traditions contain an explanation about the origins of the higher powers. Genesis declares that god’s spirit ‘moved upon the face of the waters …’, which implies that god was already there from before the creation.
Showing … that humans searched for and discovered ways to order the forces and powers in the world of their experience.
In Greek mythology Chaos is the first ’entity’ to be named, giving birth to Gaia - the earth god -, who then becomes mother and mate to Uranus, the sky god. Two false starts ensue, until things stabilise when Zeus becomes supreme.
In the older Mesopotamian theogony it is Marduk who triumphs over the goddess Tiamat and so establishes order in that house of gods. But, Marduk had many predecessors with Enlil, ’Lord Air‘, ruler of gods and the world probably being the first.
Egypt like Mesopotamia had many gods relating to local and function, such as is the case in the agricultural societies. One of the oldest Egyptian gods was Isis, who was worshipped at Eliphantine in the far south. The Isis and baby Horus symbology eventually become a major symbol of worship across the Roman empire, as far as North West Europe.
Also, the thunder and weather god of the Semites in Canaan eventually became the god Yaweh of the Old Testament as those scriptures emerged from the Babylonian exile.
This elementary overview illustrates that humans searched for and discovered ways to order the forces and powers in the world of their experience. They did so by means of naming, distinguishing and ordering the symbols representative of such powers and forces relating to various events and processes. The images and symbols were necessarily related to the world in which they lived, fashioning a reference frame work for their society.
