Cold Case Christianity: God causes all natural disasters

  This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Where Is God During Natural Disasters?

Posted: 06 Aug 2018 01:08 AM PDT

Hurricanes every hurricane season. Massive earthquakes in Mexico and elsewhere. Volcanoes in several locations around the globe. Record-setting fires across the country. How could an all-loving, all-powerful God allow natural disasters such as these to destroy the lives of His children?

Easy, today's Christians are a bunch of pussies who have completely lost touch with the fact that their biblical god's idea of "love" is a radical departure from the sense they get after proof-texting John 3:16 ten thousand times. The solution is easy:  the god who allows disaster, doesn't "love" disaster victims in the way that the average American person understands "love".  That's precisely why there's such a big uproar in Christianity about why God allows evil.  Once you stop saying God is infinitely loving, the problem of evil disappears.  Consider that John 3:16 might actually be wrong.

John Stonestreet, my colleague at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, recently addressed this important question in a BreakPoint Radio broadcast. While it’s difficult for finite humans to understand the infinite mind and purposes of God, there are a few important truths to consider as we ponder these natural disasters:

Genesis 6:6-7 and other passages objectively justify the open-theist Christian to say that the god of the bible is imperfect, and therefore, all talk about his ways are higher than our ways, only does more to hide the truth than reveal it.  Excuses such as God's infinite purposes cement a person more comfortably in doctrines they already believe, but at the cost of denying the true meaning of other bible passages like Genesis 6:6-7.  It's not an anthropomorphism.  God really is an emotional asshole nearly indistinguishable from the idealistic fantasy created in the minds of pre-scientific tribal mercenaries.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Means

Which indicates you have not the least bit of concern to sound convincing to anybody except those who are already committed to god's allegedly perfect ways.  You think "may be" constitutes "argument"?  No, it constitutes the warm friendly advice you get from a fundamentalist Christian roommate. Let me know when you intend to actually start threatening the arguments of atheists and bible-critics.

God may allow and tolerate some of these events to occur because it is the necessary consequence of a free natural process that allows creatures (such as humans) to make free choices. Scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne suggests that God has created a universe governed by natural laws such that life on earth is possible and humans can experience free will.

 And there you go again, blindly presuming "freewill" is true when a) 5-point Calvinist Christians know their bibles just as well as you, if not better, and they think your idea of freeewill is unbiblical, and b) the only reason "free" appears in "freewill" for most people is because they think the will is free of any and all constraints whatsoever...because they know that if there are any constraints, then to the degree such freewill is constrained, the person is not responsible for their actions.  Since the bible simplemindedly insists everybody is responsible for their actions, most Christians necessarily worship the "free" in "freewill" and, like you, bandy about it as if the matter were a foregone conclusion.

For example, the same weather systems that create deadly tornadoes also create thunderstorms that provide our environment with the water needed for human existence.

Probably because your god thought it too much effort on his part to just use miracles to cause the earth to grow food whenever he wanted it to.  Your excuse is especially attractive to certain internet apologists who lack the Holy Spirit the way people in hell lack water.  Their god consists of nothing beyond their own personal enjoyment of debating biblical matters.

The same plate tectonics that kill humans (in earthquakes) are necessary for the regulation of soils and surface temperatures needed for human existence.

You are forgetting one small matter:  God directly kills every person that dies, Deuteronomy 32:39.  You cannot use the naturalistic mechanisms of earth to shield God from responsibility for death.  Otherwise, that would be like saying the gun that protects the family is the same one that murders them.  Well if Dad was the only person in charge of the gun and was the only person using it...then how does observing the gun can be used for both good and evil, do jack shit to get Dad off the hook for murder?

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Consequence

God may also allow and tolerate some natural evil because it is the necessary consequence of human free agency. Humans often rebuild along earthquake fault lines and known hurricane pathways, and they frequently cut corners on building guidelines to save money. Much of this activity results in the catastrophic loss that we see in times of “natural” disaster. There are times when “natural” evil is either caused or aggravated by free human choices.

That's a good answer, but even then, you'd still have to blame the stupid human choices on God:

"The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps." (Prov. 16:9 NAU)

One could also answer that if you wouldn't allow your child to dig deep holes at the beach despite their unpleasant experience at being involuntarily buried alive the last time they went to the beach, then God has a responsibility to keep watch over his intentionally disobedient kids, the ways parents have over their own kids. And if God's ways are infinitely beyond human abilities to grasp, then comparing God/adults to parents/toddlers really is appropriate. God could do a much better job at convincing adults why their sins and errors are far more significant and evil than they perceive, but he just sits on his ass, pretending "you are without excuse" becomes true after his followers repeat it about 50 million times.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Encouragement

God may allow some natural evil because it challenges people to think about God for the first time. For many people, the first prayers or thoughts of God came as the result of some tragedy. When our present, temporal lives are in jeopardy or in question, we often find ourselves thinking about the possibility of a future, eternal life. If Christianity is true, and we are more than temporal creatures, God may use the temporary suffering of this life to focus our thoughts and desires on eternity, where God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain . . .” because “the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

 God doesn't have to do things  in such a sadistic bloody way.  In the past he has gotten even unbelievers to do what he wanted through his magically coercive telepathic control over their minds (Ezra 1:1, Daniel 4:33). If he wants mother Betty to draw closer to him, he can wave his magic wand over her mind, he doesn't have to allow her three year old Johnny get eaten alive by a bear, just so that she goes crazy from the horror and joins a small pentecostal church where screaming is mistaken for God's inspiration.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Motivation

God may permit some natural evil because it provides humans with the motivation and opportunity to develop godly character. A world such as this requires human beings to cooperate and peacefully co-exist in order to successfully respond to its challenges. The best in humanity often emerges as people respond in love and compassion to natural disasters. It’s in the context of these disasters that moral character has the opportunity to form and develop. Good character (acts of love, compassion and cooperation) must be freely chosen. God has provided us with a world that provokes us to improve our situation, care for those who are in need, and become better human beings in the process.

Same answer

But there’s an even more important truth to be considered as we ask where God is in such situations (as I recently wrote in a Christian Post article):

All Natural ‘Evil’ Necessitates the Existence of God

The painful consequence of a deadly storm is objectively evil.

Only for those who think human life has inherent worth.  Count me out.  Inherent worth is a contradiction in terms. 

It’s not a matter of personal or cultural opinion, and it’s more than a convenient description. The existence of natural “evil” requires us to consider the existence of an overarching, transcendent standard of “good” by which we judge something to be “bad.”

No, we view a flood as "evil" for sweeping away our house, because we were born and raised to believe that life should be lived in a house in a stable fashion.  That desire is perfectly sufficient to justify why it is that the average person finds the destructive force of natural disasters "evil".

And don't forget that many non-Christian adults don't view natural disasters as evil, even if human death is involved.  It is terrible for a child to be killed by an old tree that falls down solely from age and gravity, but it doesn't make sense to call that "evil".  Trees don't do what they do because of morality.  it is only the complaining human beings who are infusing that disaster with a moral issue.

C. S. Lewis, the British novelist and Christian apologist, described in his book “Mere Christianity” how he posited evil as an argument against God until he realized that true evil required a true, objective standard of good:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

If natural evil is simply a matter of personal or cultural opinion, we could eliminate it from the face of the earth by simply changing our minds. But changing your opinion about Harvey, Irma, or Maria won’t make them any less “evil.”

 You weren't talking about changing minds about people, you were talking about us changing our minds about why natural disasters happen. Stay on track next time.

When Lewis realized the connection between true evil and the necessity of a true standard of good, he began to turn a corner in his thinking:

“Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.”

Contrary to Lewis, we often really only mean a standard of justice that is personal, when we call something unjust.  Or, as with many people, we falsely believe that the standards we were born and raised with, are objective.  They aren't.

Natural disasters like storms, earthquakes and fires, are objectively evil,

Wrong.  Plenty of storms, earthquakes and fires occur without destroying human life.  Fuck you.

but that requires an objective standard of good by which we can make such a judgment in the first place. God offers this objective, transcendent source of righteousness. Without him, all notions of evil are simply. . . notions.

 Your answer is dismissed because there is no such thing as objective evil.  If emotions legitimately counted in arguments about evil and morality, then because Christians can be found emotionally arguing on both sides of a moral fence, both of them must be correct.  So don't dig yourself an early intellectual grave by pretending that emotions have a legitimate place in arguments about "objective" morality and evil. But if you leave emotions aside, then suddenly, you have no more proof that any human act is 'objectively' evil.  Except perhaps the tire old saw of selectively quoting the parts of the bible you think apply to 21st century people, an impossible thing to prove.

So, as we consider the devastation we have faced in the past few weeks and months, let’s remember that none of these events preclude the existence of God.

But if they prove the existence of God, they also prove that God views humanity similarly to the way we view lower life forms in laboratories; we are test-subjects, we are pawns moved about by higher spiritual beings who pass the time playing highly unnecessary war-games with each other.  See Job chapters 1 and 2.  Fuck you.  Tell your god to get a tv and a subscription to NetFlix, maybe he'll find something more constructive to do with his time than causing natural disasters to kill little girls in the alleged hope of causing their mothers to cling to him more tightly, when even Christian common sense says you should run away from anything that is likely to cause such a disaster.

By the way, Wallace:  Why do you drive safely in traffic?  Couldn't it be that God wants your car to hit and kill a pedestrian because God knows his surviving family will turn to Christ in their emotional upheaval?

And if God really does have a part to play in the reasons why accidents that you cause end up hurting other people, do you have enough courage and conviction on this to state God's involvement to be a factual truth and therefore require God's involvement to be litigated when you are sued?

Why not?  Isn't it a "fact" that God had a part to play in negligence on your part that caused injury to others?  If so, then doesn't your Christian commitment to biblical truth outweigh the law of the secular courts that tell you to keep religious explanations out of the court (Acts 5:29)?

Maybe you are consistent in your beliefs, and therefore believe America should change its civil and criminal laws so that the jury is allowed to make a possible finding that "God made me do it" or "the devil made me do it" was the real truth of the matter?

In fact, Jesus understands our suffering better than anyone who ever lived.

More proof that you are preaching the choir, and in no sense trying to convince skeptics.

Unlike other theistic, religious systems, Christianity is grounded on the finished work of a suffering Savior who died on a cross and rose from the grave to show us that there is life beyond our pain, joy beyond our calamity, and hope beyond our worst moments. God still reigns, and he is present with us in our storms.

And if they purchase your materials right now, they can save 10% in their effort to help the Holy Spirit do a job he doesn't need any help doing.  Amen?