Most Christians will talk about “Gods Plan”. Which makes sense to me, the Christian God is omniscient and omnipresent so he could have a super well laid out plan for every micro second of human history.
But like, doesn’t this kind of defeat the purpose of prayer? Like if a family member gets sick, what’s the point to praying to God about it. Whatever happens is part of his “plan”, so there really isn’t any chance you’re going to change his mind on whether Grannie is going to pass.
Same with things “going against Gods Plan”. Gods plan should have every contingency accounted for, so it really shouldn’t matter what anyone does. Is there a chance that if too many people are gay that will derail Gods plan and everything will be fucked? Or did Gods Plan account for me being a big gay commie? Is the idea that you can’t fuck up Gods master plan, but if you do a bunch of weird crap God doesn’t like it will throw things off slightly and God will have to compensate which he finds really annoying?
Huh, I much prefer Aquinas to Augustine. Augustine always comes across as a self hating misogynist asshole.
For a more modern Catholic perspective, De Chardin has become widely accepted, at least at the core, by Catholics both conservative and progressive
Oh, is Augustine a misogynist too? The self-hatred I picked up on, the misogyny I missed, because I was much, much less sensitive to it a decade ago. Ah well, live and learn, and maybe don’t read Augustine after all!
I’ve never heard of De Chardin, I think he must be too recent for the school I went to. It’s one of the real downsides of doing a “classics” or “western cannon” sort of program, you never get to read anything from the last 50 years or so.
De Chardin gets a lot of traction in transhumanist circles since he helped develop the concepts of the Noosphere and the Omega Point. He’s in some ways the Catholic counterpart to Russian Orthodox Cosmists.
Unfortunately none of them read him and those that did misinterpreted his entire thesis far too literally