Explaining natural wonders; addendum (Animals)

by David Turell , Friday, September 30, 2016, 02:40 (2975 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You obviously realized the awful implications of your theory that God might have preprogrammed or dabbled in order to ensure that the virus could go about its murderous business. 
> DAVID: In my first book I included this in the problem of evil events (theodicy), and concluded that God gave humans the ability to learn how to fight viruses. He was not creating the Garden of Eden but allowing challenges for us to solve, since we had the brains for it.
> 
> dhw: So God specially designed murderous viruses long before humans were around, so that they would ensure life continued until humans were around, and then humans could have a problem to solve. What fun! Here are two theistic alternatives: God specially designed viruses because he enjoys nasty things as well as nice things. God didn't design viruses at all, but allowed all life forms (if we may call viruses life forms) to work out their own ways of existence.-Evil is a problem. I'll stick to my approach.