>No one pointed out the need >to process *all* evidence, not just miracles, but WW II, Rwanda, Kosovo, >and each pediatric osteogenic sarcoma... OK, let's look at *all* the evidence. Twelve million people were hideously exterminated in WWII. On the other hand, while American men went off to war to stop the horror, someone had to work in the factories and shops. "Negroes" (to use the then-respectful terminology) and women stepped up to the task, and the foundation was laid for the Civil Rights and women's movements. (How do you keep 'em down in the kitchen once they've seen the thrill of self-determination?) My father would never have gone to college if it weren't for the G.I. Bill. He was absolutely determined that his daughters would have opportunites his wife never had. We would have options in life other than to marry some guy and depend on him. Research shows that the strongest predictive factor in professional success for women is a strong, supportive father. One might plausibly argue that Hitler was responsible for the fact that out of five daughters in my family, we have a partner in a law firm, two professors and a high-school computer teacher (who serve as role models for even more future successful women), and a university vice-president. There are millions more such cases all over the world, in which it can plausibly be argued that people in categories Hitler vilified achieved more than they might have achieved had Hitler never existed. How many schoolchildren have read Anne Frank's diary, decided they do not want to live that way, and thereby acquired the courage not to participate in teasing or hazing or cruelty? As for Kosovo, I have some serious concerns with how we did it, but for the first time in human history the world stepped in and INSISTED that there are limits to what a country can do and call it an "internal affair." The pediatric ostogenic sarcomas are a lot harder for me. But tell me, would you really want to live in a world someone had constructed for you that was absolutely safe from danger, in which even skinned knees were impossible? In the Jewish Torah, also known as the Christian Old Testament, God says: "I set before you the choice between life and death. Therefore, choose life." Who, if they understood, would choose death? Yet we keep choosing death. Over and over again. Are we passive victims of an unfeeling universe that visits such horrors upon us? Are we so helplessly ruled by our baser drives that we cannot keep ourselves from acting on them? Are we hopelessly bad and morally depraved? Well, most people if handed an algebra exam having received no instruction, would "choose" to fail it, wouldn't they? And most people set in front of a piano with no instruction and never having heard piano music, would "choose" to butcher Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (my father's favorite piece), wouldn't they? God set before us the choice. But he didn't lay out all the options and consequences and attributes neatly in a matrix, complete with weights and scores and probabilities to six decimal places, so all we have to do is press the "calculate" button on the big spreadsheet in the sky and have the right answer pop out at us. That would be boring and pointless. Building the right model is our job. The most efficient and effective way to do that is to help each other construct our own models, to celebrate the diversity in the models we come up with, and to learn from others how to make our models better. Once we have the right model, then we CAN choose life. And once we learn to do that, God will give us a new challenge. (Probably that will occur long after I die. But the hope is what gives my life purpose.) Notice that there is absolutely no reason anyone who prefers not to, has to anthropomorphize the God I'm talking about here. Think of God as "the best that is in each of us," as "that which turns pain into joy." You don't have to believe in magic tricks, or even call it God if that makes you uncomfortable. Just try to learn to choose life. That's a partial articulation of my "robust optimal" theology. If I discipline myself to look at things this way, it makes me happier and more effective. Kathy Laskey
