Sometimes I think about the problem of evil and it makes me really question things.

I never lose belief in God but it does make me think.

Anyways, I've been thinking perhaps it has to do with wanting to create diversity in the universe including diverse sentient lifeforms. And to do that, the wisest way to go about it was to make things happen through evolution naturally.

I don't even know if this is possible or not, but, perhaps in creating life naturally like that, it was bound to happen that we face hurricanes, diseases, etc...

The alternative would be that he magically interferes with everything that happens in the universe. So in the future, when we go exploring planets, instead of life and planets forming naturally, they would be being created on intervention basis.

I think this is a silly type universe.

Anyways, just some thoughts.

Maybe the Earth is the sentient being and all of the life forms on it are simply parasites that it's trying to eliminate. In other words, humans are just bedbug pests to the Earth and it's trying to kill us off.

(June 7, 2014 at 10:09 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Sometimes I think about the problem of evil and it makes me really question things.

I never lose belief in God but it does make me think.

Anyways, I've been thinking perhaps it has to do with wanting to create diversity in the universe including diverse sentient lifeforms. And to do that, the wisest way to go about it was to make things happen through evolution naturally.

I don't even know if this is possible or not, but, perhaps in creating life naturally like that, it was bound to happen that we face hurricanes, diseases, etc...

As you're not ready to let go of your belief in God you could look at it from the viewpoint that science and belief aren't incompatible. The majority of Christians accept that everything started with the Big Bang and think that evolution is the way God did it. I decided to look at Islam for a change.

The Quran on the Expanding Universe and the Big Bang Theory

Some Muslims have managed to find verses in the Quran which can be interpreted as meaning the Big Bang.

Islamic Views Of Evolution

Quote:Islamic views on evolution are diverse, ranging from theistic evolution to creationism.

Islamic Views On Evolution - Muslim Society

Quote:Evolutionary biology is included in the high-school curricula of most Muslim countries. Science foundations of 14 Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, and Egypt, recently signed a statement by the Interacademy Panel (IAP, a global network of science academies), in support of the teaching of evolution, including human evolution.[21]

A 2007 study of religious patterns found that only 8% of Egyptians, 11% of Malaysians, 14% of Pakistanis, 16% of Indonesians, and 22% of Turks agree that Darwin's theory is probably or most certainly true, and a 2006 survey reported that about 25% of Turkish adults agreed that human beings evolved from earlier animal species. In contrast, the 2007 study found that only 28% of Kazakhs thought that evolution is false.[21]

According to a more recent Pew study[23] these numbers appear to increase slowly but steadily. For instance, a relatively large fraction of people accept human evolution in Kazakhstan (79%) and Lebanon (78% for college students), but relatively few in Afghanistan (26%), Iraq (27%), and Pakistan (30%), with most of the other Islamic countries somewhere in between.

As humans have spread all over the planet it's inevitable that many people will be in the wrong place at the wrong time where natural disasters are concerned. Disease is also a natural part of life on Earth but humans have made themselves susceptible to a lot of it by lifestyle choices which result in pollution and poor hygiene etc.

Nature is as Nature is. As I'm an atheist I don't believe that any deity started the universe off. You'll have to think about it and come to your own conclusions.

When I finally admitted to myself I was an atheist, the relief that ensued was immense.

(June 7, 2014 at 10:21 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Maybe the Earth is the sentient being and all of the life forms on it are simply parasites that it's trying to eliminate. In other words, humans are just bedbug pests to the Earth and it's trying to kill us off.

Red Dwarf Wrote:“Why does it have to be such a big deal? Why can't it be like, like, human beings are a planetary disease? Like the Earth's got German measles or facial herpes, right? And that's why all of the other planets give us such a wide berth. It's like, 'Oh, don't go near Earth! It's got human beings on it, they're contagious!'
-- Dave Lister

“So you're saying, Lister, you're an intergalactic, pus-filled cold sore? At last, Lister, we agree on something!“
-- Arnold J Rimmer

(June 7, 2014 at 10:09 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Sometimes I think about the problem of evil and it makes me really question things.

I never lose belief in God but it does make me think.

Anyways, I've been thinking perhaps it has to do with wanting to create diversity in the universe including diverse sentient lifeforms. And to do that, the wisest way to go about it was to make things happen through evolution naturally.

I don't even know if this is possible or not, but, perhaps in creating life naturally like that, it was bound to happen that we face hurricanes, diseases, etc...

The alternative would be that he magically interferes with everything that happens in the universe. So in the future, when we go exploring planets, instead of life and planets forming naturally, they would be being created on intervention basis.

I think this is a silly type universe.

Anyways, just some thoughts.

What kind of God do you believe in? A God bound by natural laws? What makes him more special than the Cosmos if he can't do anything but mechanistically follow a certain set of rules that over time brings about the diversity of lifeforms through natural selection? Why not just believe it is the Cosmos i.e. observed reality that causes these disasters, instead of an invisible puppet master?

Re the OP:

A god that is bound by the physical laws of the Universe is a useless, emasculated god.

A Universe that is bound to the will and the whims of an interventionist god is, as you say, a silly one.

I fail to see the problem.

I don't think it's a useless God. Perhaps it with it's immense knowledge and wisdom, knows the natural laws would be enough to create life all over the universe. This also doesn't take away his role in constantly causing existence to exist, just not playing intervention role. Also life after death etc, all can happen, but this universe with diverse life has it's wisdom in which it would be governed by natural laws.

Obviously, the title of this thread is misleading, as you are not questioning your belief in a god.

The reason why it is bound to happen that we face hurricanes, diseases, etc, is because we live on a planet in a universe that looks exactly like what one would expect if it is of completely natural origin, operating completely naturally. There is no need for your magic deity anywhere in the functioning or origin of the universe.

Putting a god anywhere in the equation has no explanatory scope or power. You might as well be saying that universe creating pixies are responsible.

You always strike me as being quite intelligent. Don't you think it's time to let go of your Bronze/Iron Age mythology?

I'm still wondering why you consider yourself a deist? You are a theist.