Natural Evil

[Markos]

I always seem to hear the "God gives us free will" argument as the reason that theists use to explain why god doesn't stop people killing each other.

However, I have never seen an argument that tries to explain why god doesn't interfere to stop "natural evil" occurring, such as someone falling off a cliff, or drowning, or even dieing from illnesses. Any of our resident theists care to try and explain?

There are two words that you use, Tobie, that I would want to examine quite carefully: "interference" and "natural". These two words come with significant baggage. First, the notion of "interference" suggests that God is in some sense detached or uninvolved in so-called "natural" processes. Second, the category "natural" is presumably used in opposition to something like "supernatural" or "spiritual", suggesting that reality is made up of two quite distinct, even separate, levels. From my (Christian) perspective, I would want to reject both of those uses of language.

Now, from your perspective, I would be interested to hear what your understanding of your phrase "natural evil" means. You use scare-quotes around the phrase - is that to suggest that you, yourself, would not use the phrase to describe an event?