Construction continues here although this base is supposed to be a “temporary” post. Afghan contractors have been hired to build many of the new structures and they tend to use our porta-johns. There's been some talk about stopping them from using our “facilities” and talk turned to action today, when I discovered a strange ornament hanging inside the porta-john.
This is what bathroom politics looks like in a war zone dominated by religion:
That's right. Delicious, scrumptious BACON!
In my opinion, it was just a terrible waste. I wonder if this will scare those Afghan contractors away? I'm pretty sure that bacon doesn't afflict pain on Muslims the way Crucifixes and Garlic harm vampires. But, then again, I've only been in the country for a couple weeks and these Army guys must know something I don't.
For now, just to be safe, I'll sleep with a few slabs of bacon around my bed for protection.
-Danny
Concerning the bacon problem, allow me to put forth a basic tenet of classical theism that modern believers tend not to be aware of (and that modern theologians are extremely uncomfortable with), an argument originating with Aristotle and subsequently appropriated by all the major medieval philosopher-theologians (including the Islamic ones!):
ReplyDeleteIf God is thoroughgoing in perfection, and owes this perfection to nothing outside Godself, being a necessary being whose necessity exists in and of Godself, then there can be no real relation between God and humanity, for, if real relations between God and humanity exist, God’s very substance would have to really be related to something else; but if this were true it would have to be the case that God could not be or be understood except in that relationship. It is, however, impossible for God to be anything other than Godself: being perfect, God not only does not require a relationship for the sake of any determination or perfection, but Godself cannot participate in the existence of finite beings via divine immanence without sacrificing his divine simplicity and absolute perfection. Therefore there are no real relationships between God and creatures. Creation is an act of sheer freedom.
Given all this, we must conclude that God can have no opinion of the bacon. The angst caused by bacon that is present in certain populations of man can be of no divine ordination. A rosary of bacon may give off a protective aura regarding the minds of fools (and also contribute to your shamelessness of body), but against God’s vengeance it is useful as no more than a mid-day snack.
Moreover, we cannot know God directly, but only affirm a limited knowledge by way of negation (God is not finite, God is not bound by time, etc.) and by way of negative statements get closer to an understanding of his being. So if he did in fact hold an opinion of the bacon, there is no way for us to know it.
(By the by, this of course is not the whole story; the basic problem for medieval philosophers was to reconcile this aforementioned tenet with the tenet that God is immanent in all of creation, and each philosopher (in an extremely complex way) forms an uneasy tension between the two qualities).