The HORROR of Natural Evil and Human Evil Actions including the tragedy in Miami

WHY AREN'T TERRIBLE TRAGEDIES LIKE THE BUILIDNG COLLAPSE PREVENTED?

Or questioners could have cited the horrific tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 that slaughtered over 240,000 innocent humans.

Or the 30 Years War, where about 1/3 of all the population of the area of Germany died, about 4-12 millions humans!

The list of human and natural evil events are endless. As a reader of many history book for many years, and a teacher of the American and world literature/history, and the Holocaust, etc., while at the same time being a liberal Christian, I couldn't account for these thousands of years of millions of events of horrific evil.

NONE of the lame theodicies of Christian theologians were satisfying. Most of them made the horrors all that more evil.

Thankfully, I wasn't a creedal Christian, but I did read in depth terrible answers from creedal theologians:

1. God doesn't owe humans any thing because we are his creations and so don't even deserve to exist at all. Its God's grace that we get to live at all.

2. God doesn't rescue the millions of infants who die horrible deaths because at conception, they are in "essence, evil" even though they haven't yet sinned. Michael Wigglesworth the famous American Calvinist stated in his theological poem that was a favorite in nearly every house in New England, that infants will be given "the easist room" in Hell.

3. God plans/ordains/wills all of those horrific evils because all evil brings God "glory" and "good pleasure." That was a favorite of Calvinist leaders:-( Even the Holocaust will give God glory! Whew:-(

4. God gave Adam and Eve free will but they ate the apple so they lost free will and all of us are thus damned, but God provides a limited number of humans, chosen before the foundation of the cosmos, eternal life. IF Adam hadn't sinned, then there would be no natural or human evils. ETC.

I also remember how many Muslim world leaders claimed the tsunami was for specific sins that the 240,000 humans had committed. And, also, one of the key doctrines of Islam is that whatever happens in reality is God's will. ETC.

So what did I do?

As a follower of Jesus and a moral realist, I was convinced that all evils--human atrocities, natural disasters, disease, etc.--are contrary to what is good, what is true, what is just.

So I was left with the terrible contradiction of God's love for every single human versus the utter lack of God's stopping constant evil-- hanging over me-- like a gullotine.

My whole focus was--and still is--on fighting against all human evil actions, and helping to alleviate those who suffer in natural disasters, etc. That is also how some Christian relief-development agencies deal with this.

For instance, MCC and World Vision, which has rescued millions of children and families from poverty, etc. since its founding int he 1950's states that the suffering of any and all humans "breaks God's heart."

They don't attempt to answer how this claim is so contradicted by all of the horrrific evils they work against.

My last comments: It seems to me, that those who think horrific human evil and terrible disasters, cancer, etc. show that God isn't in control is correct. Human history and current events prove that there is no monotheistic God who loves all humans infinitely.

There is too much evidence to the contrary.

Of course, I don't agree that the evidence proves that atheism is true. (But that's another story, why I don't think atheism is true, why I am a Process-theist.

In the Light of the Good, the True, and the Just,

Dan Wilcox

Part 2: Living the Questions: Meta-Stories about Reality

Living the questions, without definitive answers--somewhat lost, unlike most humans who seem so sure they know what it's all about.

I’m lost...not lost in the sense of the religious pietistic term, not un-rescued in the moral sense...not blind to ethical and transcendent truths...not existentially estranged in the sense of not having hope in the future, not lost when it comes to moral realism.

No, I’m not lost in those common meanings—nor am I caught in destructive habits or delusions or nontheistic confusions.
Though I often find I don't live as good as I know I ought to do,
I do seek to do what is right. And I do often experience the Light,
have a sense of the Good, the True, and the Just.

In all of those, I am found.
Thankfully.

No, how I am lost is
that I no longer have a vivid meta-story to identify with, a cosmic narrative.
I no longer have a sense why natural evils occur, such as Covid-19, cancer, etc.

About 10-15 years ago, I finally lost all hope in the Christian meta-story.
It turned out to be even at its best, an illusion. So I lost the philosophical
and theological understandings of my Christian worldview that I had thought
was a fairly stable foundation, despite my questions.

But the Christian meta-story turned out to be only many mirages, swirling sand that blew into a shifting Sahara of fading dunes. Besides, there were so many contradictory versions of what other humans claimed Christianity was!

Heck, most Christians claimed that Christians such as myself, who was one for 55 years, actually never were real Christians.

Furthermore, even all of those years as a Christian I never believed in their Creeds or their horrific concept of God.

But, finally, I realized, deeply, that I was trying to live a “true Scotsman” version of Christianity, one completely contrary to what most Christians claim. I realized down to the marrow of my bones that not even the Anabaptist/Quaker version of the Good News can be true.

I’m lost in that sense--from an intellectual standpoint. When in reflection, I step outside of my own personal commitment and try to see Life impartially and accurately, I have to admit that I don’t know the ultimate nature of Reality.

Unlike all of those who support various contrary versions of Christianity, those who claim they know that the meaning of existence is Islam, and those who claim to know that there is no god, etc., I am uncertain; indeed, never was “certain,” but now am very aware how little I know.

This is not the first time, I suddenly woke up lost--doubting my thinking and my perceiving, not knowing as much as I thought I knew when I was young.

Not long ago, about 10 years ago, I was sharing my spiritual struggles, a crisis I was in,
and one of my family joked “Oh Dan’s whole life has been one long spiritual crisis.”

And, in a sense, I suppose that is true as far as it goes:
from my earliest remembrances, I have—more than many—been the living human primate of “questions” far more than “answers.”


in process

"All things sick...evil great and small...foul": Covid-19 Virus and God

Jeremiah 14:11--16 "The YHWH said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people.
Though they fast, I will not hear their cry,
and though they offer burnt offering
and grain offering, I will not accept them.
But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”

Many, many verses from the Christian Old Testament deeply stress and trouble humans. In the numerous readings through the entire of Bible, studying its various books in depth, listening to many sermons, and reading plenty of scholarly books, the great evil of such passages grows like a cancer within our moral selves.

Where in these vindictive, slaughtering, hate-filled parts of the Bible--that claim all natural evil and human evil are brought into being by God--is there the God of infinite love of the Good News, the God who never gives up on any human, the God who is the Good, the True, the Just, the Loving?

Then besides this textural hell, more and more Christian leaders--millions of them--emphasize these passages as central to Christinaity! They base their views in part by the study and promotion of Romans 9, the chapter which claims that God hates some humans, predestined billions of us to destruction and hell.

One famous Christian leader claims that God makes some humans "toilets" "spittoons."
Most state that all humans are "worthless," and "in essence, evil."
And so on...

Romans 9:
"11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay..."

Then there is the whole Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin.

Covid-19, the Black Plague, the Spanish flu, the Indian Ocean tsunami that slaughtered about 170,000, etc. all occurred because Adam and Eve disobeyed God. And God had foreordained their disobedience and punishment and that it would be inherited by all of the billions of infants conceived and born after them, over many thousands of years.

Even many Orthodox Jewish think that G-d created evil!
They quote Isaiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the YHWH do all these things."

And it gets worse....
--

Now many current Christian leaders are applying these doctrinal beliefs to the current pandemic, that Covid-19 has been sent by God to punish America, the world.

According to the latest poll, 2/3rds of religious people (American Christians, Jews, and Muslims) think God sent Covid-19 as a message to all humans. So even though hundreds of thousands of innocent people are suffering and dying, this pandemic is God's way of warning us.
--the poll is from the University of Chicago and NORC Center for Public Affairs, May 2020

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE GOOD NEWS?

Here's a parody/satire of Christian beliefS.
from Monty Python Contractual Obligations Album:

All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The lord god made the lot

Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings

All things sick and cancerous
All evil great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The lord god made them all
--
"Black Death, a mid-fourteenth century plague, killed 30 to 50 per cent of the European population in just five years. The pandemic was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria with millions dying from the disease in two major outbreaks. This image is of a plague pit in Marseille, France"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3412769/Black-Death-lurking-centuries-DNA-plague-victims-France-backs-theory-bacteria-lay-dormant.html

Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spiky urchin
Who made the shocks... he did

All things scabbed and ulcerous
All pox both great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The lord god made them all
Amen


--Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: John Du Prez / Eric Idle / Trad
All Things Dull and Ugly lyrics
© Python Monty Pictures Ltd.,
Emi Virgin Songs Inc
--

So in Summation what are the “Books” of Nature and the “Books” Library of the Bible Teaching Us Humans?

#1 At one extreme are the Augustinian-creedal Christians, Orthodox Muslims and Orthodox Jews most of whom claim that both sets of books accurately describe the will of the nature of Ultimate Reality—that God causes whatever happens to humans.

Their views is already briefly described in the first part of this reflection.

HOW DO WE KNOW IF AN EVENT IS FROM GOD?

If it happens in nature or human history, then it is “God’s will.”

So, it is God’s will that Covid-19 happen.

Why?

To give God “glory,” “good pleasure,” to punish humans for failing to worship God.

#2 At the other extreme are the Naturalists, Materialists, and Atheists most of whom claim that there is no ultimate reality—that “God” or the “gods” are delusions of the human brain.

They state that there really is no good or bad, but only subjective morality, mere preferences, and that our preferences aren't really ours. We have them because it was determined by nature, the Laws of Physics, etc.

All of what appears to be horrific disasters, diseases, plagues, etc. including somewhat minor ones as Covid-19 aren’t even really "bad."

That judgment is only our subjective preference because we humans have a survival instinct instilled into us by natural selection. Besides, it was determined that that would happen because there is no free will and no moral responsibility.

"Free will" and "moral responsibility," according these thinkers, are delusions of the human brain that were determined to occur for who knows why. We humans don't choose our views or our actions.
We are "puppets" of nature.

Of course, why this happens, they state is for no reason.

So take your pick--God determined Covid-19 or the Laws of Nature/Big Bang determined it would happen.

#3


TO BE CONTINUED--

*The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1562)
*

Part #2: Not Soon...Why So Long?

Almost 2,000 years have passed since Jesus, the Son of Man, said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

What a wonderful ethical command, (though so seemingly impossible to live).

But since Jesus told us to become perfect, tragically, the opposite has happened! Down through history, many Christian leaders have so perverted and twisted what Jesus said and how he lived.

They act contrary to Jesus' words of compassion, mercy, and peacemaking, often even claim God calls them to slaughter, enslave, persecute, torture, lie and steal!

From the Crusades, through the wars of religion of the 16th century, to the “Christian” 30 Years War, and downward to this present day, Christians continue to go forth to war in Jesus' name.

In response to many Muslims claiming Allah is on their side, many American soldiers are claiming the Christian God is on our side; some Americans even use weapons engraved with Bible verses to kill Muslims in Afghanistan.

Is this praying or preying?!

Where is this so-called arc of the moral universe?! Where is the realm of God that Jesus promised?

Even if we manage to close out the human world’s dark night of destructive action, there’s always the suffering of natural evil everywhere and endless through the centuries--famine, natural disaster, and disease.

Thousands of little children die daily right now for want of nourishment and vaccination. These innocent children could easily be saved with only a tiny portion of the billion-dollar'd weapons budget of the United States alone!

Where is the arc of the moral universe?

But notice the quote again--the famous statement emphasizes that “the arc of the moral universe is LONG…”

Evil hasn't been defeated quickly. Its horrendous dominance has lasted for many thousands of years.

The great quote comes originally from a speech by the Christian leader Theodore Parker in the mid 19th century:

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.”
Theodore Parker, 1853, “Of Justice and the Conscience”

Parker wrote this during the tragic time leading up to the horrific slaughter of the American War Between the States, where nearly a million humans died, and millions more suffered for a generation!

The arc of the moral universe is very LONG…

Tragically, the situation of most people, especially Negroes, was often worse after the American war than before!*
Think about that.

True, “legal slavery,” had ended, but the actual living conditions for most Negroes after the war grew worse during Reconstruction and on into the new century. Discrimination, oppression, persecution, even lynchings occurred regularly.

Don't forget so-called "sundown towns."

On the outskirts of Hawthorne, California in 1930s stood a sign:
"Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne.”

There were hundreds of such racist towns throughout the United States, both north and south.

And this only speaks of the evil of racial prejudice.
Think of all the other evils including the slaughter of over 10 million humans in the Great War, then over 50 million in World War 2, and the Holocaust.

What a great demonic ocean of darkness…

Where is God? Where is the Chosen One?

Where is this improving “moral arc”?


To Be Continued

Daniel Wilcox