Epicurean Paradox

[Mister Agenda]

I know you have heard this answer before. But we live in a fallen world. What that means is that at the time of the fall the reigns of this world the care for it and all of the things in it including infections and earth quakes are now our responsibility to manage and to deal with. If We want to be like God and enjoy the freedom it offers, we also have to accept the responsibility of that job.

I can't help but notice that people who choose to hand the reigns over to God don't seem to enjoy any special immunity to natural evil. So apparently it's whether or not we want to be like God. And it's ludicrous to postulate that it's meaningful to accept an impossible responsibility. It's like a parent who catches a small child in the cookie jar and expecting that from now on they have to do the dishes and the laundry and the shopping, cook the food, and pay the rent; since they want to be like the parent and enjoy the freedom it offers. In other words, you're making God out to be petty.

That means it is up to us to manage disease and sickness, it is up to us to manage the damage and destruction of the planet, or to pick up after said D&D has ravaged the land. Again it is all apart of freewill. If you want to be independent of the Expressed will of God then it is on you to manage the ALL of consequences of that desire. If you want to be God then be God and hold back the hurricanes an keep the tornadoes from destroying entire cities.. Can't?

Sure can't. You're the humble one who accepts that you're not God, (just one of his representatives on Earth) maybe he'll stop earthquakes and storms for you since you know your place.

Then how about we do our part in stopping the one thing that has taken more lives and destroyed more land than all of the natural disasters to this point. War. This is well within the firm grasp of man and yet we still have war. War is a far greater threat than anything else that has plagued man from the time of the garden. Why wasn't that on your list?

Perhaps my writing was not as clear as I thought. I only listed natural evil. The whole point of the post, from start to finish, was about natural evil. War was not on the list because it is not a natural evil. Evil it is, natural it is not. In our power to do something about, unlike the shaking of the planet and the fury of storms. It's less surprising that imperfect humans born in sin have war than that a perfect craftsman makes a world that's rattly and drafty or is prone to become so if humans eat the wrong fruit.

Y'know, another explanation is that there's no perfect craftsman so nothing is perfect. Our planet was formed by natural processes and is impersonally dangerous and there's no supernatural power watching out for us or out to get us. We're tribal and prone to combativeness, and are our own worst enemy because there's nothing higher on the food chain anymore.

The tale of the garden could be a nice allegory for our propensity to do things we know better than to do because of our conflicting impulses of aggressiveness and tribalism versus our empathy and community. But some people have to take it literally.