Barron Not Quite Off, But Pretty Much

Bishop Barron on God, Tsunamis, and the Problem of Evil
Bishop Robert Barron | 21 March 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx8ZMkWL8hw

3:15 There is a problem here.

A bit like how some Protestants pretend Jesus "dealt with Narcissists" (the collective of the Pharisees) and so the audience should spot and "deal with Narcissists" (one or a couple each) ...

Another person, like Toviah Singer may pretend Jesus contradicted Himself, because He forbids to say "thou fool" and still says "ye fools" in Luke 11 (actually in the presence of one single Pharisee, and still avoiding to single him out).

And now you claim, when Jesus say (John 9) that his parents like himself were innocent, or when God manifests to rebuke those who said Job had for instance earned God's wrath, this somehow disproves that collective calamities come as retributions (of which there are quite a number, and as Job was an Edomite probably, the memory of Sodom, materially relevant for the procreation of the northern neighbours Moab and Ammon would have been recalled).

Could we say, simply, God deals with collectives in other ways than with individuals?

4:18 God cannot will the moral evil of wickedness.

He certainly can will the physical evil of punishment.

4:30 As God is inherent Being and creation lives off borrowed being, God is in a perfect position to cause non-being by simply refusing to uphold in a given context being.

God doesn't give being as an emanation of Himself that He cannot control, He gives it as a gift, and sometimes gifts cease, as we read in St. Paul prophecy will cease. After Doomsday, there won't be any Doomsday prophets any more, meaning in that function.

4:55 God may not be the direct physical cause, He may leave that to demons (so, God may not have caused one single death since Adam fell, except His own on Calvary and His Mother's dormition), but He can certainly will it (for instance ordain that demons shall have waters from the deep and rain as tools to kill men except a set of 8 in a certain vessel).

And note, while God may have directly caused no death, He has certainly decreed each death, even of sparrows.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father But the very hairs of your head are all numbered Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows
[Matthew 10:29-31]

5:16 Indeed. But one of the greater goods that do come about through evils is, wicked communities getting punished.

5:33 Indeed the great good of freewill is a very ultimate explanation, but when Lenin came, after the restrainer, the Roman Emperors Czar Nicholas and Kaiser Karl were taken out of the way, Lenin's arrival, like that of his two followers Hitler and Stalin (yes, Hitler was a Leninist in Munich in 1919), like that of the upcoming Antichrist, that was already a next level, namely a punishment for societies of people abusing their freewill, run by people abusing it and these followed in many cases by people abusing it.

6:10 Given Polkinghorne was an Anglican, it would have been more correct to say "clergyman" ...

7:42 Mutations give rise to Evolution?

Definitely remains to be proven. That they give rise to cancer is however spot on. And in the years after the Flood, God used one and same process (higher than previous and higher than now cosmic radiation) to:

• contribute to the Ice Age (ionising particles chill the weather)
• raise carbon 14 (1.628 pmC at the Flood, 43 sth pmC when Noah dies just after the Younger Dryas (or maybe he dies just before it)
• to make human lifespans shorter (they'll reach 120 by the time of Moses).

Free processes? A line of causation reaching back in time to Creation, rather than reaching up right now to God? Sounds like a pretty blatant denial of Prima Via. Sounds, frankly, like Deism.

9:48 Ultimate providence of the universe ...

... and of each event.

While natural events usually have regularity and while human events have freewill, coordination of all of this, is from God.

[Purpose in the Lisbon Earthquake: Pombal is allowed to be perceived as a goody, competent and all, he later — 24th Jan. 1777 — became the "Nero of Trafaria"]