Panglossian

Just because an idea is easy to mock doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Leibniz’s argument for why this is the best of all possible worlds was, essentially, that since God loves us, if a better world were possible God would have created it instead of this one. Since I know that God does, indeed, love us, I find it hard to refute that argument.

But also consider some of the alternatives. Suppose there were no sorrow: how would we know what joy is? Suppose we never made bad choices: that could only mean we didn’t really have a choice. Life would be pretty meaningless.

God loves us so much that He gave us a world where we could experience sickness and health, highs and lows, joys and sorrows. He loves us so much that he lets us make meaningful choices, even though that means we often make bad choices. And He gave us His Son, so that if we turn to him the worst consequences of our choices can be overcome by His Grace.

Experts

One of the clear lessons of the first two decades of this century is that many of those touted as experts don’t really know all that much.