Natural Evil

List pages on the Problem of Evil on this site by Vexen

If god was all-powerful or all-good (omnipotent or benevolent), it would not allow natural evil such as earthquakes to cause suffering. If God designed the way our planet was formed and how its tectonics work, then, it wouldn't have designed it in such a way that random catastrophic disasters occur as part of the normal working of the planet. If a good god designed or created the Earth or if a good god exists at all, then, there would be no earthquakes, volcanoes, floods or natural disease. The suffering of the unborn, infants, children and animals all occur as a result of god's natural earth regardless of issues of free will. The suffering of innocent people results from things that are beyond their own control. Natural evils causes suffering because of the nature of the elements, the nature of nature itself. It is the way the world works.

The major physical events only form part of natural evil. Zoonotic diseases travel between animals and humans, humans and animals, and diseases in general travel haphazardly and opportunistically from being to being with no care for whether people deserve infection. Many religions hold that non-human animals are somehow more innocent than human animals, yet, many human diseases cause suffering of animals. Such human-sourced anthropozoonotic diseases that effect primates include "measles, polio, scabies, influenza, tuberculosis"₁. There appears to be no divine distinction between species or structure. There is evidence of earthquakes, collisions and catastrophes on every stellar object we have observed. Not only evidence, but Linda Morabito, a member of the Voyager Navigation Team, saw the plumage of a volcano on Io, one of Jupiter's large satellites, as she watched footage filmed by the passing Voyager satellite. "We know now of nine large volcanoes, spewing out gas and debris, and hundreds - perhaps thousands - of extinct volcanoes on Io" [Sagan (1995)₂]. Everything in the universe is affected and ultimately destroyed by the processes of tumultuous cosmic change. That this happens on the Earth, too, is merely unfortunate and has nothing to do with human free will.

Natural evil, then, is universal. Cataclysmic events have continued from the Universe's inception through to the arrival of living beings, and continues into the future. As the free will, choice, volition of living beings is irrelevant, why would a god design such a dangerous universe? As a moral god would not allow earthquakes and disease to cause undue harm, theologians try to reconcile the existence of natural evil to the existence of a good god. Some stand by the experience theodicy that the experience of suffering is somehow a requirement for entry into heaven. But their argument contradicts other aspects of major religions, and, does not appear to solve the problem.

“It is inadequate to say merely that knowledge or experience of suffering is requirement for us to enter heaven as a justification of why suffering exists. God can give us innate knowledge of evil, rather than let us experience it directly, and if babies or the unborn go to heaven then is clear that experience of the suffering of life is not actually required, after all. If angels or god exist in heaven then it shows that it is possible for beings to be in heaven without first experiencing suffering. The experience theodicy does not work.”

"The Experience of Evil Theodicy" by Vexen Crabtree (2003)

There are only a few possible explanations for the existence of natural evil:

• God is evil and creates suffering for its own sake

  or

• God is not all-powerful and cannot change the way the universe works

  or

• God does not exist.