God and Suffering (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, November 23, 2008, 13:59 (5842 days ago) @ dhw

1) The indiscriminate suffering caused by Nature began long before man came on the scene. I cannot see any link between diseases, floods, hurricanes etc. and free will. Nor can I see how these God-made agonies are compatible with love. > - dhw: I am forced to jump in at this point. Our Earth is a very special planet. It cannot rain without the weather pattern, and I cannot imagine a God that so perfectly arranges those patterns that it always rains on Tuesdays and Fridays so as not to spoil the weekends! Some of the storms get out of hand, granted, but that is the way atmospheres work. There are storms that are followed on Jupiter. Earthquakes are due to crustal techtonics which have also been very crucial to the evolution of the Earth. - Where the free will comes in is God gave us a portion of His intellect, so we can handle these dangers in the way the Earth must be constructed. That intellect has free will and can create evil as we all know. Evolution requires that animal organisms eat animal and plant organisms. Some of the organisms created cause diseases in man. We have the intellect to rise to the challenge to cure those diseases, but to test us, why should we be given all the answers in advance? We must use our intellecct, create its muscles in training in research. If life were the Garden of Eden, it would be boring. Those humans who have not philosophized, starting with the Greeks to the Enlightenment; those humans who have not been willing to be inventive from the wheel to jet planes have terrible lives: just look at Africa, even today after the colonizing European countries left. Were they taught nothing, or were they unwilling to learn and change? Their fault, not God's.