AUDIO
THE ETHICS OF LIVE AUDIO TECHNOLOGY | Jeff Hawley
I had an amazing time presenting last month at the Christian Musician Summit in Tacoma , Washington . During the closing discussion portion of my session on immersive audio , a member of the audience asked a wonderful question . “ You shared research that demonstrated how the addition of reverb to a mix increased the occurrence of responses from listeners categorising it as being ‘ spiritual .’ The dry mix was a lower tally on this stated response ; the wet mix was higher — taken as more ‘ spiritual .’ More reverb = more ‘ spiritual .’ How should we think about this in terms of the ethics of our mixing activity and the overall quality of the spiritual experience ? Is it less ‘ real ’ or somehow a lesser spiritual experience if it is being caused by our addition of reverb vs . a ‘ real ’ spiritual experience without reverb ?” Wow .
Needless to say , my response in the moment was not very impressive . I understood what the question was getting at , but I didn ’ t have a ready answer . Sometimes things like this need to simmer a bit . So here is my more considered response in the form of this month ’ s Audio with Jeff Hawley series article !
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL FOR ATHEISTS
Well , if that section header doesn ’ t grab your attention , I don ’ t know what will . The problem of evil and atheism in a section about worship technology ? Has this Hawley guy gone off his rocker ? Well , perhaps . But stay with me . I recently read through Yujin Nagasawa ’ s book ‘ The Problem of Evil for Atheists ’ ( 2024 ) as part of my research for my PhD in philosophy . Rather than being written for atheists , the book
is actually a presentation of a novel argument that Nagasawa puts forward , claiming that the problem of evil not only is a problem for nontheists ( like atheists ) as well , but he also aims to show how belief in God puts the theist in a better position to defend against what is traditionally used as a possible reason that God cannot exist .
In case you aren ’ t familiar with the problem of evil , the basic gist is that an all-powerful , allknowing , all-loving God isn ’ t consistent with the existence of evil in the world . If God was actually all-powerful , He could stop evil from coming into being . If He was all-loving ( or allgood ), then he wouldn ’ t want evil to exist . If He was all-knowing , then he ’ d know that evil was going to exist and prevent it . So one ( or more ) of the classic elements within the concept of God must be false , and / or God can ’ t ( logically ) exist as defined . Theologians and philosophers have wrestled with these issues since the genesis of our conception of God .
We won ’ t get into these issues here except to highlight how Nagasawa reframes the issue in his book . The problem , according to Nagasawa , isn ’ t really as much of a logical problem as it is an ‘ axiological expectation mismatch .’ What he means ( roughly ) is that we have a gap between
94 December 2024 Subscribe for Free ...