Barry Jones mentioned last week that the earth had a near miss last year by an asteroid about the size of the one which caused the damage at Tunguska. This asteroid missed the earth by only 38,000 kilometres, a very near thing.
The asteroid at Tunguska never became a meteorite, an extensive search could not find any physical trace of it. Eventually the investigators worked out that at the speed it was travelling, and the angle of approach, the atmosphere had been solid enough for it to bounce like a stone skipping off water. The enormous force of the slap on the atmosphere and the shock wave it generated caused all the damage.
Fans of the X Files may be familiar with this story.
A search of Google Earth reveals many impact craters including the now famous one at Wolf Creek. If the Tunguska meteor had hit a little more directly many of us would not be here.
How do concepts of a providential and beneficial deity stand up to the inherent tragic consequences of these sort of events?
Plainly, the limited view of a personal, benevolent God is unbalanced.
In the Bible, and in much of Christian thought, the balance is maintained by a belief in the opposing nature of sin and the devil. In the New Testament, the burden of imbalance is so great that a whole book, The Revelation, concludes the collection to enable some sort of unity in the philosophy and the thoughts of the reader.
The story of Job reinforces the moral dilemma “And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power;” ” A message reinforced in the Revelation.
What, then of asteroids and imminent catastrophe?
Perhaps a benevolent deity has rescued us from calamity. There is certainly a satisfying, childish balance in this view, but why would the danger exist in the first place?
His ways are not our ways, is the usual response. A response which takes us back to the concept of the God of the Gaps. God defined in the things we don’t understand.
These ideas are another manifestation of dualism, a central necessity to so much of human thought, and a subject pursued in much of the writing on this website.
This post was written to help with understanding of the poem, Sin of the Gaps.