Natural Evil

[Angrboda]

As noted, I suspect your knowledge of hermeneutics and the philosophy of literary analysis is not particularly advanced…

My general experience in real life and on the web has ecouraged me to put as much as I can into folk terms. Most people I deal with are not as well-read as I and when I use “big words” they tend to think I’m talking down to them or trying to prove how smart I am. I recognize that not everyone has studied semiotics, reads biblical Hebrew, or are remotely familiar post-structualism or process theology. Using more common terms rather than academic nomenclature helps me avoid falling too deeply into bullshit. It also allows others to follow and contribute to the threads.

Understood. In high school I had such an intimidating vocabulary that I spent years learning to adjust my speech to the needs of my audience. I don't find that a problem with most of the people in the live discussion groups which I frequent. Yet when I'm being lazy or tired, the old monster comes out. And I'm particularly prone to it on the internet because I come here to escape and relax, not to work at it. Still, I receive sufficient compliments on the clarity and quality of my prose to suspect that I must be doing something right. I'm at my worst probably on irc. Perhaps you and I have something in common; I'm not even minimally read on process philosophy, but my current foundation for the bulk of my thinking about philosophy of mind rests on a framework which suggests that some form of process philosophy will likely form the most natural fit for the way our brains process information.

Does it make any sense for God to be relatively clear in communicating his message through a book and a people… yet be so thoroughly inscrutable in communicating his message through nature and creation

From an atheistic stance, probably not. Whereas, I consider divine providence so ubiquitous that that it escapes the notice of modern (post-modern?) humanity. In the words of my favorite hymn, “Tis only the brilliance of light hideth thee.”

I find this answer rather bizarre when given in the context of a discussion about the ubiquity of senseless and arbitrary ugliness in the world that is so extreme that even a talented and conservative fundamentalist religious scholar like Bart Ehrman was forced to find another answer.

(ETA: Though having just acquainted myself with the general outlay of Heidegger's existentialism prior to "The Turn", I can see where it would couple nicely with your appraisal.)