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If God exists why does he allow death from natural disasters?

February 10th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

Often people will use the argument that if God existed why does he allow evil. Why does God allow people to be killed in hurricanes and other natural disasters?

First of all, is death evil? I think evil is the ultimate cause of death, but death in itself is not evil and is a necessary part of life as we know it. Therefore how can we say people dying in an earthquake is evil? Actually, I would argue it’s good — only spiritual bodies are allowed in heaven. It can be good in other ways too, for example, say you were to die right before you would commit the unforgivable sin? That is an example of death being good. You might even take it as far as that people dying in natural disasters is evidence of Gods grace.

Further, the fact that people can associate death to evil I believe is evidence of Gods existence. From an evolutionary aspect you would think that death would just be an accepted part of life. We would have a bunch of hard-coded DNA bits that give us instincts to stay alive but our rational mind would say it’s an exercise in futility. The atheist will tell themselves that but in reality they try to relate death to evil and I find that interesting. Maybe that’s just hard-coded into us from God to let us know that the evil inside of us may ultimately cause our spiritual deaths.

So if death isn’t evil, then what about natural disasters? Natural disasters cause destruction, but I would not go as fas as to call it evil. There can be good outcomes from bad destruction. Also, a hurricane can cause mass destruction but it can also provide an area with much needed rainfall.

So if anyone uses the argument of natural disasters being evil you can point out that they aren’t evil and the fact that they made that association is very interesting.

Without doubt suffering will be the next topic. Why does God allow suffering and genetic defects. I’ll cause that in another post, but here is the short story.

Genetic Defects

We live in a fallen world that has a consequence of genetic mutations that cause abnormalities at birth. Further, we may do things to our body that cause our children to have birth defects, or we may do what we think is best for them but actually be  harming them. Why does God allow this to happen? Again, it’s all the consequence of a fallen world.

Suffering

First of all, suffering does not equal evil. If suffering was evil why would Jesus have suffered so much when he was crucified? Evil people may cause suffering but suffering is not evil.  I believe there is something very spiritual about a death where you suffer. A healthy person may think suffering is horrible. However, it might be the perfect cure of a spiritually sick person as it may bring you closer to God.

Thanks for reading!

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