RELIGION IS TOO LAZY WITH NATURAL EVIL AND TRIES TO DOWNPLAY IT TO PROTECT GOD BELIEF
Morality can be good and loving and fair yes. Isn't that what it is about? But it does not follow that when we express moral concerns that we care about that. We can use good things to get our own way and control people.
This tendency is a natural evil.
People fall for religion blaming us for the bad things that we do to each other. But it refuses to blame and condemn God for diseases that force a horrible death on babies. It says moral evil is inexcusable while natural evil is excusable. They say it is not really evil, it is just things that just happen.
They do not admit that many of our bad traits are natural. Nature and our alleged free will both cause moral evil.
They try to justify God standing by while the babies die and other things
such as killer earthquakes happen. The paradox is that they have to
weaponise terrible things they will never suffer for they happen to others for
their religious ideology. So they use moral evil to excuse natural evil.
They give only guesses and there is not a shred of evidence to help them excuse.
Believer Assertion: Natural evils are not really evils for if the dinosaurs had
not been killed in some natural disaster we might not be here.
Answer: Then why not rejoice when a lion dismembers a child? Or why not just not
care one way or the other? If it is not evil then it is good or it does not
matter what it is. The reply is stolen by the believers it would seem. It seems
atheistic to use that reply. It does not fit the notion of a loving supernatural
God.
People tend to be very bad in secret when they are sure they will not get caught
so you might be surprised at how many prophets and saints and so on gloated.
They wanted to believe in God for some reason so why should it be a good reason?
Belief in God is believed to be such a great good that if you had a gun to your
head and had to choose one of these beliefs,
"I must be happy with the dismembering of babies by lions rather than condemn God for being responsible" or
"I hate the dismembering of babies even if it means hating God."
One loves
God for his involvement and the other is open to hating him - though it does not
actually hate. It is obvious what nature itself would "want" you to choose. It
is obvious that to be human you must be willing to be sickened by the babies
suffering even if it means hating God.
Believer Assertion: Natural evil is not about a God or any being trying to cause hurt. Nature is knocked out of balance by sin for it requests and delivers
disorder. It arises from a perfect system that can go wrong if
attacked that way and does.
Yet William Lane Craig suggests that
plate tectonics do good for us though they can risk earthquakes and earthquakes
do happen. He said God just simply had to create a world with them and it is not
God's fault.
Answer: That is actually a denial that God is all-powerful for a God that has to
set up such a system contradicts the doctrine that God is almighty and thus does
not have to do things any particular way. Thus Craig sees earthquakes as by
products of a good thing. So clearly suffering and death are by products of
earthquakes as well. Why not say that death is the by product of the suffering?
Why not say death and murder are good things? Why not diminish how intolerable
they are by saying they are just by products?
Another excuse is that evil is required by God to give us material benefits. For
example, he causes earthquakes in order to persuade us to move away from
high-risk areas or to go to wealthy nations that have the equipment to tell you
an earthquake will not happen. But who made the faults in the earth’s crust? Who
made the viruses that so cruelly kill us? He could have given us the material
benefits in the first place. This excuse denies that God is intelligent. It
implies that those who suffer have themselves to blame for ignoring God's
warning. You can blame people for living in a city next a volcano. Or you can
say God is using nature to give them a sign that they should not live there. The
two are not the same thing and the latter is a very judgemental thing to say.
One is blaming human error and risktaking but that is not a moral failing like
ignoring God's warning and going ahead to live and risk yourself and others by
living in a deadly place.
The idea of God doing many terrible things in nature so that Donald Trump can be
rich and well does not sit well with anybody.
Believer Assertion: God makes you feel that bad things in nature exist and
ought not to happen. That proves it is a mystery why he lets them happen but he
asks to come to him for help to battle them.
Answer: Mystery is often an euphemism for contradiction or nonsense. It is a
disguise. A person who settles for mystery needs to do more than just tell you
they believe it is a mystery. They need to verify that they really think that
but they never do. Thus they are flippant and irresponsible in the face of so
much human suffering.
Believer Assertion: We observe that those who suggest that natural evil proves
there is no loving God think that God should show his love it seems by creating
only a good world. That is what they think. But he did that and we came along
and destroyed his work.
Answer: At least this is an admission that natural evil is really evil and
abhorrent. But they will not admit that there is no point in blaming free will
for a really good world should be able to bounce back to what it was after evil
lays it waste.
Believer Assertion: The assumption that life should be great for us presupposes
that morality is only about avoiding harm or not doing harm. Morality is about
the kind of person you are. The harm is a result of you being a person who harbours vice inside such as hate and envy etc.
Answer: Harm then is a symptom of evil rather than evil. This implies that your
intentions matter rather than the harm. The end result is a form of hypocrisy
called moralism. It is not morality.
It is not even one coin with two sides. Virtue on the one and respect for
harmlessness on the other. But what if it were. One side and not the other may
be what matters to one. For the atheist, it is the harm done and God can take a
running jump as can faith in him. For the believer, it is about how God is
against the harm for he is so good so it is about God not the person who is
hurt. Clearly only the atheist can have a decent attitude.
The believers are trying to make out that atheists just care about debunking
God's care and providence and don't really have any concern for evil and
suffering. The atheist supposedly manipulates and exploits the suffering of
others to condemn God and thus degrades those people. Heavy accusations indeed!
Atheists are accused of caring about the notion of a loving God who reigns over
all things completely more than about evil. This is a straw man approach. When
we have to live in this universe we have to start with how repulsive evil is and
its bad simply because it hurts and stuff any alleged plan of God's.
Make no mistake: the doctrine that we must believe in God though there is
natural evil is at least implicitly but definitely accusing unbelievers of
trying to debunk God's love and not caring about the evil at all though it will
be used as an excuse for denying the existence of God. There is passive
aggressive hatred in the doctrine.
Believer Assertion: God does not create the diseases and earthquakes
miraculously so he is not directly responsible for any natural evil. He is not
the direct but the indirect or the remote cause. God does not cause tragic
deaths - he only refuses to do a miracle to prevent the death.
Answer: It's deliberate lies. The doctrine of creation says that each individual
thing is a miracle made from nothing. Remember creation means continuous
creation. It says God creates all now and will be doing it in a second's
time. Death is a miracle as much as its reverse would be. Knowing
what will happen if you let things be can be a bigger way of causing
harm than direct intervention. God makes all so he cannot
really step back. He is closer to everything than it is to
itself for all is utterly dependent on him. And it does not
matter if you are a direct cause or a remote one for if you intend
harm you intend harm. The argument is trying to play on the
revolting human tendency to favour and praise people who do evil at
a distance. We are all sneaks in many ways.
Believer Assertion: God shows he hates natural evil by the fact that he
inspires you to consider natural events however violent only to be evil if they
actually hurt people. You will not say that a meteorite destroying the earth is
a good thing if it gets rid of human beings so that animals may thrive better in
our absence. A meteorite hitting a remote region and hurting nothing is good or
perhaps just a neutral thing.
Reply: If God hates natural evil then he needs to look at the logic of doing
something that he hates. It would not be happening if he really hated it.
God supposedly put us in this world to take good positive action against harmful
and evil things and people.
The vast majority of people can do nothing about the meteorite. Science probably
can do nothing either. Only a cruel God would ask you to consider natural evil
by definition to refer to only what can hurt people or does hurt people as if
you are supposed to do something about it when you cannot. Even the evils we can
handle are few and far between. A God inspiring you to feel something natural is
evil because it can harm people and because he wants to get you to do something
when you cannot is a liar. Inspiring is communicating.
Believer Assertion: People may deliberately put themselves in danger or
sometimes they just don’t know any better. If they die in tsunamis or whatever
that is not God’s fault but down to the decisions they made. God's role is
simply that he did no miracle to get them to move somewhere safer.
Reply: It is still being said to be their doing. That is still offensive and
insulting.
William Lane Craig says that if man had looked after nature properly and did
sensible things there would be no problem with nature. That answer maligns the
vast majority of the human race who died in natural disasters for they did not
know. It was not their fault. Mistakes are made and God cannot use them as a
justification. :People must be allowed to make mistakes and be responded to with
compassion.
Believer Assertion: Natural evil is unavoidable for if God protected us from it
all then we would have a new natural evil: the state of being spoiled selfish
creatures.
Reply: Translation - you are a bad person so you will spoil. God might put you
in a situation where your viciousness will not be obvious but it will not change
you into a person with a properly good heart.
Do not fail to see how nasty that assertion is and how it is full of
hateful insinuation. See how it says we force God to permit natural evil! If it
is so necessary then why not say he sends it directly either through nature or a
hidden miracle? A God who permits natural evil but does not send it obviously is
not interested in doing what is best for us. A healthy and able mother who
endlessly permits somebody to feed her baby instead of doing it herself would be
a bad mother. Believers say God is doing something similar and they still call
him a good daddy!! Notice how the reply is devoid of real compassion and shows
the true colours of the God-believer.