Ship of Fools: Natural Evil

Thread: Natural Evil Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

According to my daughter's Religious Studies school textbook, some Christians believe that there is a difference between "natural evil" and "moral evil".

According to the book, "natural evils" are those caused by natural events like earthquakes and volcanoes and "moral evils" are those caused by human actions or inactions.

My daughter asked me which Christians believed that natural events are evil, but I couldn't tell her, as I'd never heard of this idea before.

According to wikipedia this is a real thing, but the article does not help much with understanding who actually believes this.

We had an interesting discussion about a) people who believe God uses natural phenomena to punish people (eg lightening) b) whether, in fact, there are people who believe that all deadly phenomena are punishment from God (and what that says about evil people who are not punished in this way and c) whether one is saying that God is evil if these phenomena are evil.

My daughter was also asking whether these things are arbitrary, in the sense that humans might not cause natural disasters but might be evil in the sense of responding in a selfish way or forcing poor people to live in dangerous places because of racism or disinterest.

None of these interesting questions seem to be part of the curriculum.

So, I'd like to know whether your denomination teaches that there are natural evils. And if there are, where do they come from?

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

It seems to be a sensible distinction, but like you, I have only come across it in RE textbooks.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Surely, natural disasters are partly the fault of humans e.g. floods owing to global warming

and partly the design of the planet - tectonic plate cause earthquakes

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

It's a distinction often made in Wesleyan theology, in particular Open Theism. The distinction is apt for discussions of theodicy, because in a Wesleyan paradigm it's (relatively) simple to explain the problem of moral evil (genocide, etc.)-- it is a result of human sin. It's harder to solve the problem of natural evil, where human (and animal) suffering are part & parcel of the way the world is.

Open Theists advocate a fairly radical view of human freedom-- that love, in order to be love, must be freely chosen, so God created humans with a startlingly large degree of freedom. This again, deals with the moral evil issue but leaves natural evil. Greg Boyd has done IMHO (but not Martin's) an excellent job of addressing natural evil in his book God at War (fyi: despite the title, Boyd is a pacifist. An excellent, tho dense, book-- highly recommended). Basically Boyd posits that angels were also created with this same degree of freedom-- hence you get the traditional understanding of Satan's "fall" and his minions. Boyd (who, like most Open Theists, believes in theistic evolution) posits that Satan intervened in the early moments (nanoseconds perhaps) of creation-- what is referred to in Scripture as "the corruption of creation" and described metaphorically in Gen. 3. This corruption is reflected in the world as we now see it-- a world in which natural evil is part & parcel of the way things work, including such things as the "cycle of life" where the powerful prey on the weak, the way nature is "red of tooth & claw", even the suffering inherent to evolution itself (painful mutations, etc). As Scripture describes, all of creation is "groaning"-- yearning for the time when Christ returns to set all things right-- the new creation.

Martin will hurry along now to disagree.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Ah-ha, thanks cliffdweller - I realised reading your post that I had indeed heard of this idea.

The version I've heard is that at the fall, all of creation was broken, leading to death, disease and hazardous natural phenomena.

And that the kingdom ushered in by the resurrection of Jesus is to redeem the whole of creation - presumably including these natural evils.

I'm not sure why I was not able to bring this to mind, for some reason I was blinded by the explanation given in the textbook.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

I believe it's a translation issue. You have to choose when translating between what is idiomatic in the language you're translating into, and what conveys the meaning of the language you're translating out of.

In this case, the word 'evil' translates a Latin word ('malus' IIRC) which just means 'bad' or 'unfortunate' or 'causing pain or discomfort or trouble', without any conotations of whether anyone is culpable for it. We could say that illnesses and accidents are bad things in English without saying anyone is to blame. So Latin philosophers and theologians divide things that are 'malum' into things that someone is culpable for ('malum morale') and things that nobody is culpable for ('malum naturale'). In English the standard translation was 'evil'.
You then have an inertia issue, in which the philosophical and theological discussions of the matter keep the old word for the sake of continuity, while in colloquial English the word 'evil' is now largely restricted to serious moral wrongdoing (except for a few archaic and poetic uses, such as 'evil day').

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

There are also things that are only "evil" by perspective--the volcano you mention is totally awesome and great to watch (not to mention replenishing the soil over time), but our view of it is apt to change if people get killed--still more, people we love. Tornadoes are the same way. And yet, I would not willingly spare them from creation.

There are halfway sorts of things, like microbes that would be perfectly fine did they not get into the "wrong" place--such as a person's eye or gut or wound. And other creatures that could be perfectly fine with a tweak to a single aspect of their general mode of being--like the wasp that lays its eggs inside a living caterpillar so that the young can hatch and eat it alive.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Surely, natural disasters are partly the fault of humans e.g. floods owing to global warming

and partly the design of the planet - tectonic plate cause earthquakes

I would imagine, however, that it is only in the last couple of centuries that humankind has had the ability to make incursions into the natural world that are severe enough to provoke large-scale disasters.

Serious question: Prior to the Industrial Revolution, what was the worst type of natural disaster that could be blamed on human action?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Plague. (If you doubt me, get a load of your friends to go piss in the local water supply.) NOTE TO FBI: THIS IS A JOKE.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

The depopulation of Easter Island has been blamed on the gradual dimunition of its natural resources - timber etc - by a population that grew larger than the island could sustain.

Some cite evidence of human destruction of natural resources as far back as the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age. I am sure there are also accounts of humanly initiated famines and so on in classical literature.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Plague is a disease caused by a bacterium carried by fleas. Urine is relatively benign, you are unlikely to get any of the nasty waterborne diseases from someone urinating in the water supply.

In many situations you may not even get sick from water contaminated by someone taking a dump in it either however unlike urine, shit is a good carrier of the pathogens, so if someone does have the infection then this will pass it on to everyone else. If everyone is healthy, there might not be a problem, but when someone is sick, they often infect everyone else.

I read a while back about archaeologists who had discovered evidence of deliberate flooding as acts of war.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Why be picky? "Plague" is also a well-known English word denoting sickness in general. Sheesh.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Urine contamination in water is unlikely to make you sick. Believe me on this.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

There are items on the internet about how to naturally make your teeth white and shiny by gargling your own urine. I didn't notice that they mentioned gargling someone else's. Though this all made me think of "The Flea".

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

Natural evil --A person is half way up a mountain when an earthquake dislodges a rock which fatally strikes them on the head.
Commonly called a freak occurrance, fluke or even an act of God.

Human evil----A person is half way up a mountain when another climber picks up a rock and fatally strikes them on the head.
Commonly called murder and an affront to God.,..l.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Urine contamination in water is unlikely to make you sick. Believe me on this.

I do believe you on this. I was careless and wrote "piss" instead of "shit." My bad.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Greg Boyd is a loony. He gives Open Theism a bad name.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Urine contamination in water is unlikely to make you sick. Believe me on this.

Leptospirosis can be transmitted by urine in water.
Whilst urine is less problematic than feces, it is rather too far to say there is no potential for issues.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

As can ebola.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Greg Boyd is a loony. He gives Open Theism a bad name.

See? I told ya: If I say it, he will come.

fwiw, Boyd has been the keynote speaker for the Open & Relational Theology conference within the Am. Academy of Religion, so fair to say, most Open Theists don't consider him to be "loony" but rather one of our most esteemed scholars. Not all agree with him, as is of course, usually the case in academy, but not loony either.

[ 24. September 2015, 23:37: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

If they give him a free ride ...

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