Journal LawfulGood's Journal: Bad things happen to good people 1
Thanks for your response.
Imagining the first and only instance of soemthing is far more complex than simply imagining an additional instance of something we've seen a zillion times before (a person with a watch).
Fair enough. Then suppose instead of a watch you find a machine of unknown purpose, but with well defined orderly systems. Pressurized liquid travels through tubes, little ports open and close, etc. You're not sure what it is, but everything about it seems to have a purpose. I still don't think that you're going to believe that it washed up that way, even though you've never seen anything like it before. Whenever we see order and purpose we immediately assume design. Unless, for some strange reason, we're talking about ourselves.
But that counter is built upon the false premise that all suffering by innocents is caused by other people, and as my examples above show, clearly this is not the case.
Clearly there is a difference between moral evil and natural evil. However I believe that you are assuming a full understanding of events that you really don't possess. First of all, you seem to consider death to be a great natural evil. That is far from certain. If Christians are correct, it would actually be great good. But I do agree that natural evils exist, so I won't belabor that point.
Another understanding that we lack is the sum total of the effects of natural evils. A friend of mine had a young child that was running a dangerously high fever. When they went to the hospital, the staff rushed the child into a room, removed her clothing and plunged her into a tub of ice water. Naturally, the girl did not understand at all and starting screaming "mommy! mommy! no!" She was in a panic and felt completely betrayed. But she didn't, and couldn't, understand the seriousness of her situation or what this was happening to her. All she could see was the "evil" that was being done to her, not that she was being helped.
As an aside... my friend, who is a Christian, said that for the first time she really understood this concept. And also gained some small understanding of how God must be affected by watching his children suffer. And how he must be affected by having to allow it to happen or even cause it to happen.
Anyway, it is in this manner that the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God is not contradictory with natural evil. We could only make the claim of contradiction if we had full understanding, which we do not. Indeed, even with limited understanding, we can often see the good that comes out of evil. Someone loses a job and then starts a new life and is much happier. Someone has a heart attack, and then starts to appreciate his family. Someone has an unexpected death in the family, and old feuds are forgotten.
There are times when it is difficult to see how good does come from some evils. But this should come as no surprise, since we know we do not have perfect understanding. But the point is to demonstrate how God's nature does not logically conflict with the existence of natural evils.
When bad things happen to good people (Score:2)
There is a book written with just that title. A Rabbi explains it better than anyone else can, using the book of Job as a reference, etc.
I think of bad things as a learning experience. To quote George Burns as God in "Oh God":
"Have you ever seen an up without a down, a left without a right...?"
God apparently created this universe with opposites, so we have a good and bad, or good and evil, take your pick. Neutral bein