One Universe is Enough for Anyone

Firstly, I expect you have noticed that P. J. O'Rourke has cancer.

Androoo must bear the weighty responsibility of putting me on to P. J. O'Rourke in the first place. This had the effect, eventually, of kicking me some distance along - though not all the way down - the continuum between traditional Catholic economic 'progressivism' and more libertarian economic principles.

The interesting thing for me is that P. J. Rourke states pretty much the same theodicy that I have used for a long time, though with fewer long words and funnier jokes, presumably because he doesn't have a doctorate but is famous for being a funny person:


I consider evolution to be more than a scientific theory. I think it's a call to God. God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe he wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless -- the taxpayer-funded-art-in-public-places universe.

Rather, God created a universe full of cosmic whatchmajiggers and subatomic whosits free to interact. And interact they did, becoming matter and organic matter and organic matter that replicated itself and life. And that life was completely free, as amoral as my cancer cells.

Life forms could exercise freedom to an idiotic extent, growing uncontrolled, thoughtless and greedy to the point that they killed the source of their own fool existence. But, with the help of death, matter began to learn right from wrong -- how to save itself and its ilk, how to nurture, how to love (or, anyway, how to build a Facebook page) and how to know God and his rules.


Which is basically what I have thought for the last twenty years. But I have never seen anyone else write it down.

Actually, this first bit about P. J. O'Rourke is not at all pertinent to my main points. Which I will get on to later tonight, or possibly tomorrow. Watch this space!