Logic Times

The Problem of Natural Evil, Part One

Posted by Aslan, 05/29/05, 9:51pm. Comments (4)

Q: Why don't you believe in God?

A: Look at all the evil in the world.

The most common objection to the idea of a benevolent God is the existence of evil. And while many accept the existence of moral evil – a necessary by-product of free will – what is commonly called "Natural Evil" is a bit more problematic. The great evil of a child molester can be understood because a moral free agent – not God – chooses to inflict this evil. By what about a child stricken with leukemia? Or a young couple killed in a tornado? Would not a benevolent (and omnipotent) Creator at the very least design a world that prevented such needless (i.e., agent-less) suffering? Instead, it appears we have a cruel of careless God subjecting humanity to all manner of indiscriminate tragedy.

Where this logic fails is in the alternatives. As so often is the case with assaults on theism, it is easy to attack and reject, it is not so easy to seriously consider the alternative...

Bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz. Carol reaches over and taps the alarm button. She swings her feet over the edge of her four-poster and smiles sleepily. Carol stands and stretches, sighing with pleasure as her sixty-year-old joints painlessly loosen, and then shuffles towards the bathroom. Suddenly, her foot catches on the edge of a throw rug, and she stumbles badly, her lowered head arrowing towards the corner of the roll top writing desk. Carol continues to smile as she falls. At the last minute, the divine hand of the Lord, limned in white light, appears and catches her, breaking her fall. Thanks, Lord, thinks Carol as she turns to the bathroom.

Later, Carol sits to a bowl of Granola and opens the paper.

GOD BUYS HEAVY, RALLIES MARKET YET AGAIN.

Hmm, thinks Carol, my portfolio keeps getting better. She skims over the next few pages...

GOD LOWERS ARSENIC LEVEL IN DRINKING WATER

JESUS CATCHES PARACHUTER WHOSE CHUTE FAILS

THE ANGEL GABRIEL DIVERTS LAVA FLOW IN HAWAII

...until an article in the international section catches her eye...

GOD AVERTS TSUNAMI SOUTH OF INDONESIA (AP). Jakarta, Indonesia. The Indonesian emergency weather service announced that a tsunami was expected to make landfall at Tombok near 4:00pm. Crowds estimated by local officials to be greater than 50,000 gathered excitedly on the beaches of Tombok to witness the rare event. At 3:58pm, to the delighted applause of Indonesians and tourists alike, a massive 100,000,000,000 gallon wall of water appeared on the horizon and hurtled towards the gathered crowd. At 3:59pm, the Lord God, disguised playfully as a waiter at the Tombok Marriott Beach Resort, sprang forward to the cheers of all. With a bow, the Lord stepped onto the water and, imitating a Johnny Carson golf swing, knocked the powerful tsunami into a colorful collection of confetti, balloons and butterflies. A great time for all.

Carol eases back, content, and looks out the window. The neighbor cat, scrapping around up in a tree, falls as the thin branch breaks. Carol leans forward expectantly. Sure enough, the hand of God catches Boots at the last minute and sets her down lightly.

The phone rings.

"Hi, Mom!" Carol's son, David, shouts enthusiastically into the phone.

"David, I'm not deaf!" scolds Carol.

"Who is?" laughs David. "Good news, Mom."

"Is there any other kind?" Carol laughs. "What's up?"

"Aunt Minne's cancer cleared up. She's feeling much better."

Carol frowns. "Why wouldn't it? Who ever heard of anyone being bothered much by cancer? It comes, it goes."

David grunts. "I know. But her energy level is back to normal. Listen, I can't swing by the house and cut your lawn today. I have to run some errands."

Carol sits up sharply, irate. "Damnit, David, I have to go to San Bernardino today, you know that! And my friends, the Battersons, are coming over at 5:30 for dinner. The house will look a mess!" Tension sizzles over the phone lines as Carol sits expectantly. Vroom! The sound of Carol's new Cub Cadet lawnmower leaps to life. Carol smiles and peaks outside in time to see the tractor swing around, Jesus firmly in command behind the wheel. She waves and Christ gives the thumbs up sign. "It's OK, David. Christ will cut the lawn."

"Whew!" laughs David. "Thank the Lord!"

Carol stares at her watch: 5:00pm. Damn, she thinks, I'll never make it in time. The Battersons will find no one home and leave, disappointed! She punches the accelerator of her Geo Metro, and, after 8 or 9 seconds, it leaps forward. Faster, thinks Carol. The tiny speedometer needle creeps upward. 70. 80. 90. 100. The Metro is shaking, a loud howl screams through the car. 120. 130. Cars whiz by as Carol torpedoes through traffic. Each time her quivering Metro nears another car, a white light, like a holy pinball bumper, flashes and Carol careens lightly away. Her cell phone rings, and she reaches down to where it had dropped on the floor. The little Metro shoots off a corner of the road, over a cliff. "Carol here." Like a cosmic boomerang, the Metro rips a high velocity parabola in mid-air and returns to the road. 140. A tire blows and reseals itself with a flash of white.

"Carol? It's Janet Batterson. Is it OK, dear, if we're a little early? Frank and I were shopping nearby."

Carol jams on the accelerator. 150. "No problem, Janet." God, having given up trying to keep a 160 mile/hour Metro on a Southern California highway at 5:00pm, raises the speeding vehicle up over the road and sends her arrowing directly towards home. 'Bout time, thinks Carol sourly. "See you in a bit." she says and hangs up.

The Problem of Natural Evil, Part Two

Comments

1: Trekram

May 30, 2005 10:54am EST

Aslan, a very humorous and entertaining story and very thought provoking. Humans cannot, in our fallen state, comprehend or experience what a perfect world would be like. It seems that our human experience is defined by the duality of our nature and this world; good vs. evil, health vs. sickness, joy vs. sorrow, success vs. failure, well-being vs. tragedy, life vs. death. Therefore it would appear that the struggle plays a critical part in the overall purpose of our existence in this world. An existence where the later are absent is beyond our comprehension.

As to not take away from your thunder, I'll wait to comment on the your main topic until after I've seen your Part Two.

{Aslan: Thank you, Trekram. When you suggest that the human experience is defined by the duality of our natures, you touch upon, among other things, the value of hardship in transforming man (as discussed in Soul-Making). Further, I think uncertainty and faith are inseparable - and from here we need to begin to question the definitions that have us distraught by evil.}

2: TElder1

May 30, 2005 11:33pm EST

The problem with the words you've written concerning natural evil and moral evil are obviously nonsensical even though you think you are portrayed as the Believer merely because you have done opposite emotions about belief as distinguished from the atheist. You have portrayed belief as a positive while the atheist is supposed to be defined as atheist by having portrayed belief in Christ as a functional negative emotion.

Because the speech/words in which they were written cannot create anything, that non-creating speech must/can-only be a lens of non-creation/things-remaining-as-they-are through which the "Divine" is supposedly seen as it truly is. That is, the words written by you are not that Divine Word and yet have pretended to defend the genuinely true nature of the Divine in a speech that is powerless to do anything...much less genuinely reveal what is Divine. You cannot know the Divine/Word/Christ as He truly is minus Himself as Speech in you. You cannot know part of Him, nor describe Him truly at all without knowing Him totally as Word. It is a common lie in non-creating speech that you can advertise for God in a speech that He isn't. Those who have yet to hear Him as Word and be born again cannot hear Him as Word and therefore can only hear a lie/caricature of Who and What He is in a speech that He is not). The non-creating words assume no new creation in Jesus Christ--that no one is "actually" born again because the speech that speaks doubt/atheism cannot do new creation at all. The doubt and unbelief of the atheist/pagan-in-general in Jesus Christ is a product of the powerlessness of the only speech they have. They have neither the new being, new heart or the Speech to understand God. God will NEVER make emotional sense to them as they presently are. He can't because He is to them (as they are presently) an alien Speech.

Yet there is new birth and specifically by God as Word Speaking in a word not that of 'analysis' or of 'why'. In that new birth in Jesus Christ we receive a new heart along with a new spirit. The new heart of the new creation in Jesus Christ, in which God/Divinity lives, is not worried at all that the fallen heart of those not born-again as real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ can make no emotional sense of why God does whatever God does.

The fallen heart has an outright inability to understand God at all. It does not have God as Creating Word and therefore can only see through a lens of non-creation--(its own speech) the heart remaining as it is forever. Nothing God does will ever make emotional sense to the world because He has given them a speech and hearts in which it is impossible to understand Him.

No matter what that non-creating speech says through an atheist, no matter what it asks, no matter any word order it makes up, it will never be answered/validated by God, even though it seems to prove to those under its dominion that because the questions it asks God through His servants aren't answered in the same speech in which they were asked that the accusation/lie against God and His servants must be true. If you perfectly understand the outrage over Hanoi Jane and those Vietnam Vets who came back and protested against the war and gave functional aide and psychological ops to the enemy and against their brothers in arms and the American people and said things as if they were true that many POWS endured torture because they would NOT say because they were obvious lies, then how can you not understand this:

Matthew 27:12-14 And when he was accused of the chief priests and the elders, he answered nothing. Then says Pilate to him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him not so much as one word, so that the governor wondered exceedingly.

and yet

Jeremiah 44:28 Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose words shall stand, mine, or theirs.

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