by jimwalton » Wed Nov 14, 2018 12:14 pm
> You cannot compare hell to a jail
The comparison was actually with just punishment. "Jail" was just the environmental context of our culture. The true point was that justice is not only fair but beneficial.
> Especially when the crime worthy of eternal punishment is not believing without evidence
First of all, I never said anything about eternal punishment. You've brought your own business to the table with that one. Not all Christians, you should know, believe in the traditional concept of hell (eternal punishment). And no Christian believes in unfair punishment. There are theories labelled reconcilationism, semi-restorationism, modified eternalism, and annihilationism, all with some kind of scriptural backing. In other words, hell isn't necessarily eternal for all who enter it. It may only be eternal for those who absolutely, stubbornly, and persistently refuse to be reconciled.
> a world without disease would not make us robots.
You took one point and chose to make a straw man out of it. Look at the total picture. If God were to prevent all suffering and pain, think about what he would have to control to do that. Think about what would have to change for no one to get hurt or sick in any circumstance. Think about that such control of us would have to even enter our minds and affect the way we think, not just our bodies and what we do, and not just the natural world and physical realities. As I said, there would be no science because nothing would be regular or predictable. Therefore we would have no reasoning power, because our reasoning requires us to be able to play through probabilities, possibilities, expectations based on the orderliness and regularity of nature. So our thinking processes would be worthless. But think also that if you said "I love you" to someone, they would know you didn't mean it. You said it because you were forced to say it. Love would be absolutely meaningless, as would kindness, forgiveness, or even good deeds. We wouldn't be human at all. If we're going to get rid of all pain and suffering, we get rid of our humanity in the process. Disease and even death has to be included in that picture.
> if you are religious and believe your god is all knowing then yes, the natural disasters are his fault, he created them
A dynamic world is better than a static one, and even necessary for life as we know it. The natural world is dynamic, capable of change and adaptation, with a large number of systems that interact, balance, and even depend on each other. Some of those systems exhibit characteristics more like chaos (though that is a scientific category of a dynamical system) and others more like order and purpose. It is within these two categories that natural systems cause what is commonly regarded as natural evil (natural disasters).
If you have ever tried to balance something on the palm of your hand, you have discovered that you can do it for a while but eventually something (distraction, wind, your movements) causes it to become less stable and it falls. This principle was posited by a meteorologist in the late 60s, who wrote a paper titled, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” This thought was so significant we now know it as the Butterfly Effect. Even if we had delicate sensors in every square foot of the globe and its atmosphere, we would still not be able to reliably (100%) predict the weather. The “Butterfly Effect” would always be present.
Our world is infused with a huge number of interacting chaos systems: weather patterns, electrical impulses, the firing pattern of neurons in the brain, ecosystems, etc. And they behave occasionally in wild ways (the Zika virus). And they result in natural evil: drought, earthquakes, volcanoes, disease.
I contend that God should not stop all that because a dynamic world in which free creatures can exercise genuine creativity, thereby bringing about truly novel effects, is a better world than a static world. Therefore God would want to create a dynamic world. For instance, since both our circulatory system and nervous system are beneficial chaotic systems, there is strong scientific evidence to conclude that dynamical systems are beneficial to life. The heart can recover from occasion arrhythmias and even blockages by creating new patterns; our brains can recover from some injuries. In addition, if the brain were static, creativity wouldn’t be possible. If the natural system were just linear and static, natural processes (trees, snowflakes, clouds, shorelines, faces) couldn’t produce
novel outcomes.
Hopefully it’s obvious that while God might have created a static world, such a plan would have eliminated all reason, creativity, and scientific inquiry. And while He might have created a world where his sovereignty overrode all possibilities of evil, in the process He also have overrode the matching possibilities of good. This would not be a desirable world. Natural science, engineering, and education would be vapid, courage and excitement would be absent. Careful structural design would be meaningless (no earthquake or tornado would ever be allowed to hit a building, and God would stop any building from ever collapsing on a person). Medical arts wouldn’t exist, since disease would never harm or kill.
Therefore, God should not have made a dynamical world in which natural evil can’t occur or where cause and effect are meaningless. It’s essentially self-contradictory, and ultimately intensely undesirable as a form of existence.
> your god can create the universe but can't balanced Earth without killing people?
There's no reason to assume that God controls the weather and environmental forces of the planet. We live on a dynamic planet much to our benefit. God is not killing those people.
> I'm not convinced you thought through your reply very well
Thanks for your concern, but I'm pretty sure I have.