So this is just another problem of evil question, but it’s been bothering me for awhile

We are living in the time of grace, so in this period of grace God is never punishing. This comes after the period of grace. He lets the rain fall over good and evil persons or vice versa.

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I’m confused. Adam’s children, though sinless on birth, lost God’s protection because of their father’s sin?..that is what my church says, and I have been taught all my life, but is not just, it seems. It’s something I have struggled with all my life. I also don’t think there is evidence for a change in protection in the fossil record. Maybe there is another interpretation. Thanks.

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I agree completely. I am pressed for time so I can’t keep up the conversation with Roger and Mitchell right now but this has also been an issue of struggle for me.

The argument for a God that isn’t all good is a tough one to dissect when dealing with natural evil— since He created it.

Vinnie

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Death and suffering are not evil. By suffering and dying for our salvation Jesus demonstrated that they are good.

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And that is a fair point that we can discuss. But I can modify this to say “needless death and needless suffering” and we can debate what is and isn’t needless. Do people “need” to die of cancer? Is there some divine purpose to that?

As I said, I am deep diving into Gethsemane right now but I would like to dive into this–eventually. I agree that suffering can have a very valid purpose. I don’t disagree but but I think a lot of people, myself included think of natural evil as a bad thing. A tsunami that kills 200,000 people and cancer which kills millions are considered bad or evil things by most people. They just seem to be unnecessary and random acts of violence. God is capable of preventing them. He does not. They seem to either have been a purposeful part of God’s plan, or a necessary part of a universe designed with beings that have free will. Redefining evil to exclude them doesn’t solve the problem for me. If I can’t consider cancer evil, I am not sure how many of the behaviors people consider sin are even remotely or evil. If cancer isn’t really evil or bad, I personally don’t see how my own sin or anyone’s sin is worthy of death or eternal punishment. Does anything I do or not do compare to not saving 200,000 people from a horrible death and their family from suffering the aftermath? I am rambling a bit (as I said time) but I feel like some explanations of “natural evil” make it hard know the difference between evil/bad and good anymore. The lines become too blurred and the Father analogy for God is difficult to maintain.

Also, the framing of natural disasters doesn’t need the term evil. Cancer and these disasters seem completely random and senseless to us. Obviously they are necessary components of the way the world works. The earth has an atmosphere and spins. It is unequally heated by the sun. Cyclones will form. I am not disputing that. But if God can save people from cancer or hurricanes, the question his why doesn’t he? I would have saved my grandfather from cancer in a heartbeat if I had the power to.

I do understand that in the Christian framework that death isn’t the end and suffering is only finite no matter what. I don’t wish to lessen the pain some people do feel by this, but to point out that there may be a divine purpose to it.

As an argument:
[1] You know it is extremely probably if a child runs into a busy street they will die.
[2] You see a child running into a busy street and have the power to stop them with no risk to yourself.
[3] You elect not to stop that child…

[C] I would conclude you are not all good and that is putting the matter nicely.

Is it the conclusion that doesn’t follow? Is one of the 3 premises wrong? I understand why God wouldn’t let free willed decisions run their course. He wanted free beings and are actions to be real and matter. The question is why does he let natural disasters, which ultimately stem from his creation, run their course? He obviously knew people would die from these things and the suffering they would randomly cause when creating and designing the world, did He not?

I made my peace with this issue. But it is still one of the ones I don’t think we have a good answer for. It was easier when they could be attributed to human sin, even though that raised the question fo why everyone is punished based off of one couple’s sin.

I appreciate the responses on this.

Vinnie

The best example of nested affirming the consequent I’ve seen for some time.

God is not concerned about Godself. God is concerned about everyone.

If God intervenes to prevent one child from running into a busy street, then God must intervene to prevent all of them from doing so. If God is going to protect children (and babies) from harm and danger, then why not teens and adults? Where would you draw the line if you were God?

Many things can be considered risky activities today. Is God going to force people to wear masks in public? prevent us from eating Big Macs and sugary drinks? prevent people from driving over the speed limit? prevent people voting from voting for racists?

Where do you draw the line?

If God only created perfect people who were without sin or blemish, God would not have created you and me. This imperfect world with its death, pain, and suffering is the price God pays for creating us.

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Genesis 3:17-19 (NIV2011)
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

What the Bible says us that the ground or soil was cursed, not the world. The way to reverse the curse is to become members of the Kingdom of God. In effect it appears to me that Christians through God’s blessing of science have reversed the curse because humans now have the ability to feed themselves through the ground despite Malthus and Darwin .

There is a ton of bad theology around because many people do not understand the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ can and will save you from the power of sin and death if you trust in Him. Let me know if I can help.

I’ve been listening to C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters recently which gave me this idea: Would it change your thinking if thousands of these saved Christian people entered heaven shortly after dying?

I’m sorry! But the church messed up big in my assessment of scripture. The sin was passed down from Adam and Eve to every generation right up to today. And what is it that was passed down? Controversy, conflict and rebellion. These are the three parts of the fruit that the serpent gave to the woman, and the woman gave to Adam.

Remember when Jesus said, “I and my Father are ONE.” It means they are in complete agreement with each other. In order for this to happen, Christ cannot have the sin gene in him. Now we are not in line with God, nor can we be because we are corrupted. This is why the church is broken up into many parts. It’s also why we have wars and we attack one another. We are not the true church. The true church of Christ will be born when Jesus comes again and collects what is his. Think on this as trying out for a professional sports team. Christ is head coach. The Father owns the team and the Spirit of God is the trainer. What we go through in life is the field of battle. If we do well, Christ will choose us to play on his team. If we don’t do well, we will be cut. So contrary to popular belief, we’re not saved until Christ says, “Welcome into my Father’s house.”

I would like to add a thought using science and history. Did you know that thoughout earth’s history we have had 5 events where life almost was wiped out? It happened the first time about 3.5 billion years ago, when a Mars size planet hit the Earth and out of that collision, we got our moon. If we hadn’t got the moon, life would never had gotten off the ground. When the earth just got to the point of having bacteria, another catastrophe happened and almost wiped out what little life there was. But from that catastrophe came living biologies that were even more complex. We have had 2 snowball earth’s, a volcanic eruption that lasted for millions of years, a meteor impact that brought on the dinosaurs, another ice age that caused humans to be born, and so forth. So all in all, the earth has gone through many calamities and yet life still survives and evolves.

I believe that this is a very common question: why does a good God allow bad things to happen to people? People have been struggling with this question throughout the ages. The following is my opinion and only reflects my position at this time.

My perspective is, God created everything including us. I believe he owns everything He created. The first question to ask is: What does God want from his creation?

Rom. 8:19 “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” Given this is true, God profits by waiting for His children to be revealed. Too me this means our choices, while living, is of utmost importance to God.

All of us eventually die physically, some early others later. Since this is God’s creation, what value does it do for us to project our morals on Him? Maybe we should ask the question: For what value does God view our physical person?

Isa 64:7-8 “No one calls on your name (God) or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins. Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

Apperently, the only thing that escapes our world is our soul and God chooses where it will reside.

Luk 12:4-5 "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.”

This question is so old and so worked-over that I’m baffled people keep asking it (unless they’re just kicking anthills to watch the Christians scurry). There are no new answers under the sun. I was in a round-n-round on it several months ago. As simply an emotional point it has some power, but it has no real logical force. The question boils down to “Why didn’t/doesn’t God run the universe differently?” Or, more honestly: “Why doesn’t God run the universe like I would if I were God?” Of course, there’s no reason to believe that any human asking that question knows anything about running a universe anyway, so who the hell cares how they would run it?? (I expect they’d do a lousy job. If you actually run the thought experiment, you’ll see that creating a world without suffering may be harder than you think…)

Your choices are: 1) the universe is being run by somebody who isn’t you and is orders of magnitude more powerful than you can even conceive; or 2) the universe isn’t being run by anybody. Guess what? There is no empirical observation you can make that can determine which of these two possibilities holds. So, pick one or t’ other, but simply be aware that you’re doing so without objective evidence… And then stop asking people who’ve made the other choice to prove theirs.

Emotionally, I find option 1 to be more satisfying. When I feel grateful, I have Someone to thank. When I don’t like what’s happening, I have Someone to be angry at (if He exists He can take it, and – on Christianity’s telling of it – He already has). My problem with option 2 is that it if it’s the case, it would be irrational for me to be bothered by suffering, because “it” just happens and there’s no point to it and besides it took millions of years of suffering to produce me anyways so it’s a bit hypocritical for me to be all agin’ it now… I call that “the Problem of the Problem of Suffering”. I can’t muster up the stoicism, so instead I’ll have to stick with being thankful to and/or angry at Someone.

Well put. However, we are conditioned to dislike suffering–even to consider it “evil” …likely as a survival tactic. It’s not irrational, in that way, is it? Thanks.

Also, often, a question like this, that boils down to not necessarily having a logical answer (whether God is just), kind of does lead one to think there could be no God. I’m a believer, but I’m making the observation that it makes sense in that way.

Not sure what you mean by “conditioned”. We instinctively avoid suffering for ourselves and our kin group. That’s certainly an evolutionary survival advantage, but it’s instinct, not rational. If you recoil at the suffering felt by children on the other side of the world… well… that’s just your instinct misfiring. An “evolutionary spandrel”, in Dennett’s term. It’s still not rational – and in the case of remote suffering, it’s actually a disadvantage for you to care about it because it might lead you to expend resources on something that provides you no competitive advantage. Now that we’re all smart and stuff and understand evolution, we aren’t rational to let instincts govern us entirely.

No, that doesn’t follow. Whether or not there’s a clear explanation for why God might do something has no bearing on his existence. That’s my point. One might have an emotional reaction in the face of suffering that might appear needless to one… But that’s all it is: an emotional reaction. It’s a complete non sequitur to say “I don’t see how God could let X happen, so there’s probably no God.” The only thing you can conclude from “I don’t see how God could let X happen” is: “I’m not God.”

EDIT to add: I don’t want to come across as downplaying emotion… We’re emotive beings, and they drive us far more than reason (wasn’t it Hume who said “reason is the slave of the passions”?). But emotive discourse is different from rational discourse, and we need to keep that in mind.

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Sometimes God uses disasters to bring people to himself. Maggie’s wasn’t a natural disaster, but a personal one. And God used a natural event, potentially disastrous, to ‘catch’ John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace”. He was a slaver, a slaving ship captain, and the ship was caught in a severe storm and about to sink.

Good points all; but it seems that injustice is a bit of a construct, as well–it’s interesting that we think that if something “bad” (noxious) happens to us, we should deserve it. That, too, seems to be a survival instinct, from socialization–don’t you think?

It’s absolutely a construct. A phrase that cropped up in Robert Heinlein’s SF: “There ain’t no justice – just us.” We seem to instinctively expect justice… at least to an extent (more for ourselves rather than others). And if natural selection is all there is, you can understand the usefulness up to a point. But I think you run into trouble once you’ve deconstructed “justice” as simply an instinct that provides competitive advantage to a kinship group. If one wants it to be more than that… well… one’s got some Storytelling to do.

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Was this a natural disaster or a manmade disaster? Who designed and built the building that was unable to withstand the earthquake?

When, not one, but two new big Boeing airplanes crashed recently people did not blame God, but the principle is the same. Why did God allow it to happen?

If everything is God’s fault, then humans are not responsible for anything.

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