: I,m sorry., but IMHO that explanation won't cut the mustard. Lots of bad and/or stupid people never have 'bad luck' of this magnitude. Why this guy, why was he punished for hsi cruelty, and why in this particular way?He asked his girlfriend to drive over him, N.J., You don't need to invoke divine retribution to explain that! The only way "god" enters into this is if you argue that god made him ask his GF to drive over him, in which case, you have much a worse theological paradox than you did before. If god could force him to ask his GF to drive over him, then god could also force him to not crush things in the first place. That he is willing to use force to punish the guilty, but not to rescue the innocent suggests a reactionary attitude on god's part. Do you really want to defend that?
: I understand that teleogical explanations are generally out of place in trying to explain nature, but it seems to me that they have value in explaining human actions and history.
Abject stupidity is still more parsimonious. God had nothing to do with this one. The only "directing force" was the man's own (pitiful excuse for a) brain.
: MDG, you'd probably interested to hear a Hindu legend that is sort of reminescent of this, about a spiritually advanced and enlightened sage who was nevertheless tortured (but not killed0 by being impaled on stakes, for something that was not hsi own doing. God later explained to teh amn that his impalement was the necessary outcoem of the amusement he'd taken in childhood from impaling small insects on pins.
Neat legend. Different situation, and besides, God's words to the sage weren't reported in a major newspaper. I'm not trying to be hostile to religion, but faith really isn't necessary to explain why this guy died. He was stupid, he deliberately lay down under a car, and the car crushed him. The causal chain is pretty short here, and pretty clearly defined, IMHO.
-Floyd
None.
