I remain unsure of the meaning of the word evil. Is it the defects of creation? Faults in the DNA? Is it intentional harm? To go back to your example of a child dying of illness, the death was caused by a microbe that made a bad bet. A smart microbe does not kill its host; if it does, it will die with it. So is evil just stupidity? If creation charges forward, losing a certain number of plant and animal lives as it goes, is life not still victorious and joyful?
RE: Poem of the day. William Blake - The Tyger
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Poem of the day. William Blake - The Tyger
I'm not entirely clear about the idea of evil either but when I see it it can be as clear as day.
My father who is a genetic biologist and botanist specializing in plant pathogens would have some agreement with your example. From an evolutionary perspective he'd probably agree about "creation charging forward," not perfectly, yet efficiently all things considered. But the crucial detail is that creatures without conscience cannot be good and evil, because they are fundamentally machines.
By the logic of the statement, "If creation charges forward, losing a certain number of plant and animal lives as it goes, is life not still victorious and joyful?", the hundreds of millions of murdered during the last century are an acceptable cost in the Interminable March of history if it helped teach us humanity. My point is you should not apply nature's standard to questions of morality.
Are you quibbling with my construction of what I think you might mean: "God would 'smile His work to see' despite the evil He made possible"? How would you succinctly put it? I'm curious to understand your interpretation of the poem because I never before thought it possible to think Blake's God would smile at the tiger eating the lamb.
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I think, in the poem, that Blake is amazed that the same creator made both the lamb and the tiger, knowing that the tiger would eat the lamb. It is a fearsome act, but not an evil act because the tiger was hungry. We eat animals too, and do not consider this to be an evil act because we do not enjoy causing pain we just want to eat.
As you say, you can only be evil if you can conceive of the idea of evil. Would this mean that humans don't function quite like the rest of creation? Maybe because, thanks to our consciousness we can identify with both the lamb and the tiger.
Blake poses the question in the poem. I think it was the reason why he wrote it. What type of god would create such an unfair situation as a meeting between a tiger and a lamb? And would this god rejoice in such a situation?
Are humans no longer part of nature? We are mammals, aren't we? And yet we have ideas of morality, of good and evil. One could legitimately ask why humans are capable of evil and indulge in it. Inventing war machines to kill on a large scale does seem to qualify as "evil", although those who purchase those machines and use them will always say they have bad guys to kill. They think they are stomping out evil.
I would tend to say that by zooming out and looking at all of creation, critters destroying other critters is just the way our world functions. We as humans feel sorrow when we see this. But we are sentimental, and only feel sorry for creatures that we like. A big bug eating a little bug does not make us sad.
I still feel that creation is a beautiful thing and rejoice every spring when everything comes back to life. Even if many are sacrificed along the way. Maybe God is just the sum total of all that is and his "smile" is the joy of ongoing creation.
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You interpret the smile to signify rejoicing for creation, rather than taking pride in willing creation and its consequences. That is interesting. It shows how smiles can mean many and sundry and even contradictory things.
As conscience personified, God must be an evil god to "smile" at pain and suffering. He may smile at creation and purely creation whilst indifferent to the pain and suffering of His creation, just as you interpret it. But if at pain and suffering that makes Him evil.
I'd pose Blake's question much like you do: What good God "could" cause pain and suffering and "smile His work to see"? But when this is the question, which essentially is a question about the creation of good and evil, I don't see how humans being all nature negates the question and turns us to rejoicing in the mere blessing of creation.
If the question has no answer, I understand. However, Blake provides something of an answer to the question when he ends by asking a variation on the same question: What good God "dare" cause pain and suffering and "smile His work to see"?
The question of "could" is a question of capability, of factual possibility, the reality of the Kosmos. To this, only scientific knowledge might provide an answer, and in the absence of an answer, we would have to accept that the world is the way it is just because it is. All we might then think on the subject is how marvelous is creation, or else how pointless.
But with the question of "dare" we enter into the arena of the will. The question of creating pain and suffering becomes: Why would God will evil into the world? So there might be good, is the Christian answer. I think Blake, who was steeped in Christian morality, shows in his poem the struggle of the heart that grapples with this question.
The greatest heart being God, who or what God is Blake does demonstrate. Like a smile He means so much and so much profoundly as simply. I think I'm beginning to understand your interpretation.
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I agree with you that Blake was trying to find excuses for "evil" without giving up on Christianity or criticizing it. He was obviously bothered by this problem.
We live in a predatory world. Everybody eats everybody else, and can only thrive if this continues. But for us all to have something to eat, others must prosper and continue to reproduce. Otherwise no food source is left. So symbiosis, not selfishness, will permit the world to continue.
Of course, on an individual level, the "evil" one is the one that eats you or your offspring.
If Blake were alive today, I think he would write a very different poem. His interpretation of the world is time-stamped by the limited world view of his time.
His god is an anthropomorphic being with a capacity to smile and be satisfied (or not) with his creation. It is a charming, but to my eyes, outdated definition of god. His god is closer to the gods of Olympus who have human emotions and partialities.
I don't know who or what god is, but I can see the action of a divine principle that set something in motion and poured out dna in unimaginable quantities. Can this be qualified as "joyful" and worthy of a smile? I think so. To me it is miraculous and inspiring.
Our would view these days is evolving so quickly that even the most brilliant minds are overwhelmed by the intricacies of creation. Who knows how this universe is really organized and who is responsible for it. It is an ongoing interrogation.
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There definitely is a divine quality in setting something in motion willfully; initiating a process, a course of action; causing, consciously implicating unforeseen consequences. That is the manner to think of the miracle of all that which is birthed into existence, be it God's founding of the Kosmos or such small things of the human world as a decision or choice - small in a physical sense whilst infinitely enormous and weighty in a moral sense. Blake's God was of this latter sense, I believe, - not only steeped in Christianity but thoroughly Christian he was - and as a moral God therefore He is timeless. But I am partial to the poem; of all I've memorized it's either this or Kipling's "If" which is my favorite. This is why I was so interested by your interpretation.
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Well it gave birth to an interesting conversation, didn't it. I will read the Kipling poem you mention.
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Yes it was. Thanks much indeed.
Every son and daughter (particularly every son in my opinion) should hear Kipling's words from his father.
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I read the Kipling poem. Such a wise man. I love the line:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
A very liberating poem.
Thanks for telling me about it.
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