I wish the view were simply controversial, but I think it's more than that. I think It’s wrong.
To be clear, it is rhetorically sophisticated, but I fear it is also rhetorically sophistic. As always, MrPossidez writes with dexterity, and his verbal profundity often outpaces the best of us at our best. So even when one disagrees with him, it's always a delight to read what he has to say.
Here, though, the brilliance of the writing masks an uncharacteristically shaky argument, one that is more eisegetic than exegetic.
The argument’s greatest strength is that it is very humane.
The argument's greatest flaw is that it is very human.
Quick aside: the only other time I have responded at length to MrPossidez was also on the topic of prayer.
The plot twist where I have inadvertently cast myself as some stalwart defender of prayer amuses me, not least because I am not a man of habitual prayer.
For a long time I was functionally fatalistic and vestiges of that remain.
I think the miraculous is, by definition as well as history, exceedingly rare, and that the grace of God - in sun and rain - falls on the just and the unjust alike.
All of which to say, I am not writing this as someone who reaches for petition as a first recourse. Just an intellectually combative person.
