Post by FilmFlaneur on Nov 7, 2019 20:24:39 GMT
listverse.com/2009/03/04/top-10-worst-things-in-nature/
listverse.com/2013/06/25/10-sadistic-killers-of-the-natural-world/
There are some higher mammals that flirt with emotions such as tenderness, particularly when it comes to babies of various species, and there have been some amazing examples of purported predators showing something akin to “mercy”, to infants of their traditional prey species; particularly when there is some aspect of maternal instinct involved. But for the most part, the way of the world is to kill to eat, without the hindrance of conscience, over and over. Is this cavalcade of cruelty-as-process really the design of a moral entity?
Evil is typically divided into two types: the moral evil (that which occurs through the supposed misuse of free will) and then natural evil (such as disease, earthquakes & etc.) It is the latter type which was inevitable when one recalls that Genesis tells us that God only made his creation, as He judged, "very good" (i.e. not perfect) and, moreover, in Isiah admits to creating natural evil (or 'great misfortune' as some editions would have it). I have had scriptural qualifiers and special pleaders tell me that Isiah refers to God owning up only to a 'temporary' creation of such evil. But this is hard to marry up against an unchanging god, and the passage itself which offers no such qualification. The question is also how one could tell the difference between cancer created by God and cancer which 'just happens' - even if the latter case is possible in a supposedly designed universe.
But there is also the possibility that god is not good or evil, but some pantheistic regulator of creation. He finds as much beauty in death and destruction as he does in life.
Deists would say that God created everything and then retired to absentee-landlord status taking no further active interest in our lives.