Honestly im not familiar with any kind of argument that answers natural evil. Theres the evil coming from humans which God cant change according to the principle of the free will. What about nature? Tornados ,floods,eruptions,. All these are caused by nature. The very nature God created .
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What’s the difference? It’s all natural. Nothing else works here below.
No its not. Murder someone is not a natural instict
Who’s talking about exclusive all inclusive instinct? Murder is still natural.
I was speaking for natural disasters. You know things that nature does to people? Not things that people do to others
I think perhaps there’s a difference between causing evil and being evil. Since natural disasters aren’t sentient, it’s hard for me to see them as being inherently evil in the same way that people can be. And this is one of the hardest parts for me to wrestle with, which is that if all these things that cause evil were created by God, then he has in a sense created evil. No wonder we can’t work our way to redemption, but require a savior.
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If he did we would be damned in my opinion. Also we wouldnt need the saviour
Things that people do to others are natural. Are things that nature does to people. Human nature. Which thanks be to God in Christ’s faithfulness, all will transcend. Be saved. As He says on the tin.
Alright . My argument goes like this. God created this world which is good. Humans do trangressions to one another. God cant stop them because of the free will they got. Nature is not a person. Hense it has no free will. So why doesnt God just stops the earthquakes ,tsunamis etc etc
The answer to natural evil is evolution. Without “natural evil” there is no life, because life is an adaptation and response to all the challenges in environment made to survival and reproduction. Remove these challenges and I think H. G. Wells was right on the money when he portrayed the result as those like the eloi (in his book “Time Machine”) who only superficially resemble human beings but acted in many ways more like sheep.
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It’s only evil if we think it be evil. Nature is doing only what natures does. Would we call a wolf evil for killing a lamp to get a meal to eat? Animals and nature are exempt from the “issue of evil” as those things are neutral and are only “evil” from our point of view because they bring discomfort.
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That’s mostly how I see it in the sense that I don’t see animals as “evil” for wanting to eat. But these things can all cause evil to humans even if they aren’t inherently evil themselves. If we eliminate our point of view, then it would be more difficult to define why evil is evil.
Who controls nature? Who controls the tornados or earthquakes that happen. These cause death. From what rational point of vie thats not evil?
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Natural disasters are not evil. They do cause heart ache though when we lose someone. They also cause a lot of good things.
When a strong hurricane blows through a state and kills dozens of people and does millions of dollars of damages it also does many other things.
When the strong winds knock over taller older trees it opens up the canopy allowing for more sunlight to get in. It allows the saplings to begin their fight got height and resources. The fallen trees begin to decompose. As they are slowly disappearing over the years they do many things. It provides a home for many animals underneath it. The ripped out roots and hole in the ground creates potential dens for creatures. As more time goes and it breaks down even more it begins to turn into resources for beetles, termites, ants and so on. Even further down the road it begins to feed the fungi. In the cleared canopy before the younger trees fill it back in over a decade or so it allows for edge plants to pick up and throws lots of seeds around.
The massive amounts of water rushes down rivers and helps clear them out in many areas. In some areas it erodes away the soil creating lots of turns with slower deeper water and in others it throws down large trees that catch sediment and builds up while smaller plants begin to grow in it holding it together. Many of the trees knocked over but is surviving will begin to fruit a lot more to disperse more seeds which helps feed many animals. It helps shove some species from islands to mainlands helping to keep a bit more genetic diversity.
Fire ecology shows all the importance of massive burns. Many plants evolved fire dependent.
Swarms of pests on crops forced those places to reach out to places further away that helped those other economies do well for a while.
Ice ages pushed species to travel to different areas of the world.
These things , as inconvenient and painful may be, also do lots of good.
For me evil is sin and sin can only exist where their is a law stating it’s wrong. Only humans can sin. But many things can cause pain and stress.
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Which a loving God can prevent if it doesnt interfere with free will right?
Well he’s God. He can do whatever he wants. He could strip us of free will if he wanted.
A loving parent could also confine their kids to just a bedroom to keep them safe and remove books to prevent paper cuts and not allow you to have any pets to save you from scratches.
If he showed His hand more than He has in Christ, it wouldn’t work. If He could do better, He would. He can’t. Once you start, where do you stop? Free will has nothing and everything to do with it. Once you start, you can’t stop and there would be no freedom at all. So murder is as natural as earthquakes.
Mathematical laws of space and time governs the phenomena of nature. This is not absolute control but it is nearly so. Because of the nonlinear nature of those mathematical equations governing these phenomena, it requires the specification of initial conditions to an infinite degree of precision in order for all events to be determined absolutely. This means that quantum indeterminacy plays a role and this precludes determination by hidden variables within the scientific worldview. Yet the laws of nature constrain the probability distributions of possible outcomes, thus if something outside the scientific worldview affects the course of events, it cannot do so systematically or regularly.
In other words, there is a significant random element to the governance of events by the laws of nature although divine interference is possible without negating those laws of nature as long as it is rare and unexpected. Miracles are possible, but miracles which are expected are not miracles any more… that would be an alteration of the laws of nature.
God cannot do whatever you say by whatever means you care to dictate. That leads to logical inconsistencies which is the very difference between reality and dreams. In other words God CAN interfere but not without consequences. Preventing all pain and stress would negate the laws of nature which are the foundation of the existence of life itself. God will only intervene with miracles, which by definition are rare and unexpected. God will not change the rules for our convenience, because those rules serve a good purpose in the promotion of life. Our convenience often only serves laziness, weakness, apathy, and self-destruction.
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In other words nature explains itself absolutely and no miracle can occur that breaks the statistical, detectable surface.
Atheists and naturalists believe there are no such thing as miracles and nobody can prove they are wrong. Deists reconciled the now defunct belief in physical determinism (like with Laplace’s Demon) with a belief in God by relegating God to the role of designer and observer only. Theists continued to believe in a God who is a participant involved in our lives and were reconciled to science with the advent of quantum physics and chaotic dynamics showing that physical determinism was wrong. Thus Christians who accept the findings of science still believe in miracles. And none of the atheists, naturalists, and deists can prove them wrong, they can only state their own subjective beliefs to the contrary.
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