Natural Evil

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Holy Scripture:It is…a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they be loosed from sin"(2 Mach. 12:46) St.Paul (1Cor. 3:ll) speaks of those who , having some remnants of sin mixed with good works, will be saved in the next life (through fire) Tradition: In the first centuries there was no explicit doctrine on purgatory, but they had the liturgical usage of prayers for the dead, reflected in the inscriptions of the Catacombs. From the time of St.Augustine the doctrine of purgatory was developed which continues substantially unchanged in the East and the West. The Scholastics treat of Purgatory as of something belonging to the doctrine of faith. Luther and Calvin were wrong, rejecting purgatory as a diabolic invention. There is in Purgatory a temporary pain of loss (privation of the vision and possession of God,) mitigated by the sure hope of entering paradise after due expiation. A pain of sense commonly is admitted by the Fathers and theologians, fire not excluded. Purgatory will only last to the day of judgement (Rev, 21"27 )"Nothing unclean shall enter Heaven’ Purgation is used to mean “purify or refine” as gold is refined in fire, impurities are removed, to make perfect in the spiritual sense.

Have you understood where the Catholic Church derived the doctrine of Original sin and it’s consequences? Or why Martin Luther left the Catholic Church? Or where Original justice preceeded Original sin and was lost until Jesus made it possible to be reinstated ?
Have you understood that as the Catholic posters on this thread have each expressed a different theology on natural evil, I’ve no way of knowing who is or isn’t an authority?

Baptists believe we are not born with a knowledge of good and evil, we each acquire the knowledge as we grow up, and we can’t then have that knowledge purged out of us since it is part of who we are.

Bur how is this relevant to the thread topic?
 
You don’t believe in the need for spiritual medicine? You have nothing to regret nor wish to make amends for the harm you have done?

Are all your Christian beliefs in the Bible?
What is your source of authority when interpreting the Bible?
Code:
We certainly don't inherit  guilt but we are adversely affected by the sins of our ancestors. Otherwise why did Jesus die for us?.
If by spiritual medicine you mean purification rundown, faith healers and so on then no, I don’t believe in that outside of placebo effect.

When you hurt someone, do your best to make amends (physically, financially, morally, etc.), ask them to forgive you, make your peace with God and move on (“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” - Ps 103). Long-term guilt trips are unhealthy, you can be born again, each day is the first day of your life, etc., etc.

Recalling the liberté, égalité, fraternité slogan you so much admire :), to us the liberté is of the individual conscience, for we each belong to Christ (Romans 14).

Ancestral sin is another name for original sin, apparently the Greek CCC calls it such. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as “the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam”, but we don’t believe we are born with any stain, infants are stainless, instead we each acquire knowledge of good and evil as we grow up.

But how is this relevant to the thread topic?
 
Are all your Christian beliefs in the Bible?
What is your source of authority when interpreting the Bible?
All his Christian beliefs are not in the Bible which was authorized by the Catholic Church in the 4th Century. He will tell you to stop quote mining the Bible every chance he gets. That’s because those pesky quotes interfere with his “interpretation.”

His “source of authority” is Pope Inocente. 😉
 
Have you understood that as the Catholic posters on this thread have each expressed a different theology on natural evil, I’ve no way of knowing who is or isn’t an authority?

Baptists believe we are not born with a knowledge of good and evil, we each acquire the knowledge as we grow up, and we can’t then have that knowledge purged out of us since it is part of who we are.

Bur how is this relevant to the thread topic?
The thread topic: Natural Evil is a very complex topic involving many concepts. It is one thing to understand what is natural, and another thing to understand what is evil. It involves the nature of the physical world, the nature of living things, animals, plants, and humans, each with their own specific nature, and the nature of spiritual things. Nature is that which one is born with, the essential character of a thing, quality that makes something what it is. The philosophical definition of Natural (l) as vs. artificial; found in nature, what a being has from birth, what happens by itself without interference (art or violence); (2) as vs supernatural:what is or happens without direct divine intervention; (3) as vs. rational:without intelligence (e.g. “natural bodies”) ; (4) as vs. arbitrary or conventional: what flows from a things essence; necessary. This is taken from Peter Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa.

Evil, the subject of a problem that has always harassed philosophers and theologians. St. Augustine, a father of the church struggled against Manichasism which made Good and Evil, two principles. Augustine refuted this extravagant dualism by bringing neoplatonic (cf. Plotinus) concept of evil as non-being, i.e., as the privation of being and, therefore the privation of goodness. St. Thomas drew his principles from these sources and developed the important doctrine of evil in relation to creation, divine providence and knowledge and divine motion in creatures. The chief heads of the Thomistic teachings are: (1) metaphysically, evil is a partial privation of good, and therefore, it is rather a non-being: e.g. blindness means absence, lack of the good of sight in man who ought to have it. (2) Where there is fullness of being, pure act (God), evil is not possible; but evil blends with good where there is potency, and therefore defectibility. (3) Evil inasmuch as it is non-being, cannot cause nor can it be caused unless per accidens by good itself. Thus God in creating the world (good) is the indirect cause also of evil which has it’s subject in created good, necessarily limited and multiple. (4) Evil is not in the intention or in the idea of God, who knows it through good of which it is the privation. Evil, both physical and moral (sin) is entirely on the part of creatures, which are deficient in acting because limited in being. (5) Evil is not contrary to providence, because God provides, in an orderly way, rather for the universal good, which demands often the sacrifice of the particular good. Moreover, He who does not will but permits evil is able to draw good from evil. eg. Original sin, which has aggravated physical and moral evil in the world, was permitted by God, who, however;, grafted, as it were, onto it the wondrous work of the Redemption. The authority comes from the teachings of the Church, taken from the Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology of the Catholic Church.

Through out the thread you have read references made to the Church’s teaching, including some errors (which is to be expected), but we try. So you see, your question ,"What does this have to do with the topic of the thread?"requires a great deal of thought and answers. Perhaps if the O.P. made it more specific, it wouldn’t require as much. It gets very metaphysical. Baptists don’t seem to deal much with the metaphysical. And of course there are differences in our beliefs. We try to explain why we have these differences, and what these differences are. You were helpful in telling us what those differences are. I mentioned to you in an earlier thread that the teaching of St. Thomas are interwoven in Church Dogma, and it was necessary to know this, so without understanding this, we don’t have a level playing field. Peace 🙂
 
You don’t believe in the need for spiritual medicine? You have nothing to regret nor wish to make amends for the harm you have done?
?
If by spiritual medicine you mean purification rundown, faith healers and so on then no, I don’t believe in that outside of placebo effect.
Don’t you believe in God’s grace?
Are all your Christian beliefs in the Bible?
What is your source of authority when interpreting the Bible?
?
We certainly don’t inherit guilt but we are adversely affected by the sins of our ancestors. Otherwise why did Jesus die for us?
When you hurt someone, do your best to make amends (physically, financially, morally, etc.), ask them to forgive you, make your peace with God and move on (“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” - Ps 103). Long-term guilt trips are unhealthy, you can be born again, each day is the first day of your life, etc., etc.
Being born again presupposes that our guilt doesn’t end suddenly. It isn’t a once-for-all affair nor are we isolated individuals who are never collectively guilty…
Recalling the liberté, égalité, fraternité
slogan you so much admire :), to us the liberté is of the individual conscience, for we each belong to Christ (Romans 14).Jesus told us the truth makes us free, we are all equal in the sight of God and children of the same Father. Where else can we find the origin of those principles?
Ancestral sin is another name for original sin, apparently the Greek CCC calls it such. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as “the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam”, but we don’t believe we are born with any stain, infants are stainless, instead we each acquire knowledge of good and evil as we grow up.
Aren’t we ever adversely affected by our moral environment? Is there no inclination towards wrong-doing in children? Isn’t evil often more attractive and exciting than virtue? Why did Arthur Koestler believe our bloodstained history show there is a strain of insanity in the human race?
But how is this relevant to the thread topic?
Moral and natural evil interact, e.g. greed often affects mental and physical health while illness often affects virtues like patience and trust in God.
 
The thread topic: Natural Evil is a very complex topic involving many concepts. It is one thing to understand what is natural, and another thing to understand what is evil. It involves the nature of the physical world, the nature of living things, animals, plants, and humans, each with their own specific nature, and the nature of spiritual things. Nature is that which one is born with, the essential character of a thing, quality that makes something what it is. The philosophical definition of Natural (l) as vs. artificial; found in nature, what a being has from birth, what happens by itself without interference (art or violence); (2) as vs supernatural:what is or happens without direct divine intervention; (3) as vs. rational:without intelligence (e.g. “natural bodies”) ; (4) as vs. arbitrary or conventional: what flows from a things essence; necessary. This is taken from Peter Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa.

Evil, the subject of a problem that has always harassed philosophers and theologians. St. Augustine, a father of the church struggled against Manichasism which made Good and Evil, two principles. Augustine refuted this extravagant dualism by bringing neoplatonic (cf. Plotinus) concept of evil as non-being, i.e., as the privation of being and, therefore the privation of goodness. St. Thomas drew his principles from these sources and developed the important doctrine of evil in relation to creation, divine providence and knowledge and divine motion in creatures. The chief heads of the Thomistic teachings are: (1) metaphysically, evil is a partial privation of good, and therefore, it is rather a non-being: e.g. blindness means absence, lack of the good of sight in man who ought to have it. (2) Where there is fullness of being, pure act (God), evil is not possible; but evil blends with good where there is potency, and therefore defectibility. (3) Evil inasmuch as it is non-being, cannot cause nor can it be caused unless per accidens by good itself. Thus God in creating the world (good) is the indirect cause also of evil which has it’s subject in created good, necessarily limited and multiple. (4) Evil is not in the intention or in the idea of God, who knows it through good of which it is the privation. Evil, both physical and moral (sin) is entirely on the part of creatures, which are deficient in acting because limited in being. (5) Evil is not contrary to providence, because God provides, in an orderly way, rather for the universal good, which demands often the sacrifice of the particular good. Moreover, He who does not will but permits evil is able to draw good from evil. eg. Original sin, which has aggravated physical and moral evil in the world, was permitted by God, who, however;, grafted, as it were, onto it the wondrous work of the Redemption. The authority comes from the teachings of the Church, taken from the Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology of the Catholic Church.

Through out the thread you have read references made to the Church’s teaching, including some errors (which is to be expected), but we try. So you see, your question ,"What does this have to do with the topic of the thread?"requires a great deal of thought and answers. Perhaps if the O.P. made it more specific, it wouldn’t require as much. It gets very metaphysical. Baptists don’t seem to deal much with the metaphysical. And of course there are differences in our beliefs. We try to explain why we have these differences, and what these differences are. You were helpful in telling us what those differences are. I mentioned to you in an earlier thread that the teaching of St. Thomas are interwoven in Church Dogma, and it was necessary to know this, so without understanding this, we don’t have a level playing field. Peace 🙂
Another fine post! I’m delighted St Thomas is still a source of inspiration. 😉
 
?Why did Arthur Koestler believe our bloodstained history show there is a strain of insanity in the human race?
“Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” Blaise Pascal
 
All his Christian beliefs are not in the Bible which was authorized by the Catholic Church in the 4th Century. He will tell you to stop quote mining the Bible every chance he gets. That’s because those pesky quotes interfere with his “interpretation.”

His “source of authority” is Pope Inocente. 😉
Your sectarianism has nothing to do with the thread topic, and you’re breaking forum rules by jumping threads. What brought it on? Did someone press your buttons or did you accidentally press them yourself? Will you ever get the hang of sarcasm? :confused:

I just responded on the other thread about how it could be good to follow the CCC advice on reading scripture - forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13490319&postcount=268.
 
The thread topic: Natural Evil is a very complex topic involving many concepts. It is one thing to understand what is natural, and another thing to understand what is evil. It involves the nature of the physical world, the nature of living things, animals, plants, and humans, each with their own specific nature, and the nature of spiritual things. Nature is that which one is born with, the essential character of a thing, quality that makes something what it is. The philosophical definition of Natural (l) as vs. artificial; found in nature, what a being has from birth, what happens by itself without interference (art or violence); (2) as vs supernatural:what is or happens without direct divine intervention; (3) as vs. rational:without intelligence (e.g. “natural bodies”) ; (4) as vs. arbitrary or conventional: what flows from a things essence; necessary. This is taken from Peter Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa.

Evil, the subject of a problem that has always harassed philosophers and theologians. < snip so post fits 6000 char limit >

Through out the thread you have read references made to the Church’s teaching, including some errors (which is to be expected), but we try. So you see, your question ,"What does this have to do with the topic of the thread?"requires a great deal of thought and answers. Perhaps if the O.P. made it more specific, it wouldn’t require as much. It gets very metaphysical. Baptists don’t seem to deal much with the metaphysical. And of course there are differences in our beliefs. We try to explain why we have these differences, and what these differences are. You were helpful in telling us what those differences are. I mentioned to you in an earlier thread that the teaching of St. Thomas are interwoven in Church Dogma, and it was necessary to know this, so without understanding this, we don’t have a level playing field. Peace 🙂
Put half-a-dozen Baptists in a room, ask them about any subject, and you’ll get twelve answers. On this subject, the same would appear to apply to Catholics. For instance here are some quotes from Catholic posters:
  • “Natural evil in regards to human beings and evils that befall them is the result and consequence of sin. They are punishments inflicted by God’s justice because of sin.”
  • “If you didn’t choose it, it’s not your fault.”
  • “Evil can not be applied to the natural activity found in nature, for nature is indifferent to evil, or morality.”
  • “God permits natural evil because it is an inevitable consequence of physical laws which cannot cater for every contingency.”
  • “A two year old dying of dysentery and rewarded with eternal joy is quite just.”
And so on. Seems to me no two Catholic posters have the same view on this subject, and so it’s not possible to frame this as a denominational dispute.

Also, I think your approach here of separately defining “nature” and “evil” is overly complicated. If we take a typical definition, evil is the opposite or absence of good, moral evil is caused by human activity, and natural evil is every other kind.

So both moral and natural evil create victims, but only moral evil has human perpetrators.

Considering natural evil in particular, the SEP puts the problem of evil like this: The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God. - plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

The IEP says: “If God were all-knowing, it seems that God would know about all of the horrible things that happen in our world. If God were all-powerful, God would be able to do something about all of the evil and suffering. Furthermore, if God were morally perfect, then surely God would want to do something about it. And yet we find that our world is filled with countless instances of evil and suffering. These facts about evil and suffering seem to conflict with the orthodox theist claim that there exists a perfectly good God.” - iep.utm.edu/evil-log/

Each of us on this thread has our own answer to the problem of evil. I’d suggest that whether any of our answers convinces anyone else is another matter.
 
Don’t you believe in God’s grace?
:confused:
Aren’t we ever adversely affected by our moral environment? Is there no inclination towards wrong-doing in children? Isn’t evil often more attractive and exciting than virtue?
As said previously, we each acquire knowledge of good and evil as we grow up.
Why did Arthur Koestler believe our bloodstained history show there is a strain of insanity in the human race?
Don’t know who he is but Jesus didn’t say we’re insane, He said “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”.
Moral and natural evil interact, e.g. greed often affects mental and physical health while illness often affects virtues like patience and trust in God.
Seems ambitious to get into such subtleties when we’ve not yet made much progress on the question of natural evil (i.e. where there are victims without any human perpetrator).
 
Don’t know who he is but Jesus didn’t say we’re insane, He said “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”…
There you go quote mining again! 😃
 
The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God. - plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/
This only proves that some people cannot think straight.

The epistemic question posed by natural evil is not whether God exists, but rather: what are the motives God has for allowing natural evil?

There is no evidence whatever that God does not exist.

As a Baptist you have to be on board with that proposition.

So tell us, what is your answer to the problem of natural evil?
 
There you go quote mining again! 😃
Quote mining is using a quote out of context to pretend it means something other than what the original author intended. - rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quote_mining

So nope - unless you want to argue that the quote misrepresents Jesus of course.
This only proves that some people cannot think straight.

The epistemic question posed by natural evil is not whether God exists, but rather: what are the motives God has for allowing natural evil?

There is no evidence whatever that God does not exist.

As a Baptist you have to be on board with that proposition.

So tell us, what is your answer to the problem of natural evil?
If you look around, the PhD professor of philosophy who wrote the article is correct, the problem of evil does cause people to not believe in God. For instance, Princeton course notes begin “The Problem of Evil is not a single problem, but rather a family of arguments for the non-existence of God”. The Wikipedia article has “The existence of natural evil challenges not only belief in the omnibenevolence or the omnipotence of God, but also belief in the existence of God”. And so on. That’s why it’s such a long-lasting and difficult problem.

I posted my answer, not sure when, about a week or so ago.
 
There is no evidence whatever that God does not exist.
There is absolutely no evidence that a seven headed, fire-breathing dragon does not exist… so what now? When will people realize that there can be NO EVIDENCE of NONexistence? On the other hand: Absence of evidence is a very strong evidence of absence.
 
If you look around, the PhD professor of philosophy who wrote the article is correct, the problem of evil does cause people to not believe in God. For instance, Princeton course notes begin “The Problem of Evil is not a single problem, but rather a family of arguments for the non-existence of God”. The Wikipedia article has “The existence of natural evil challenges not only belief in the omnibenevolence or the omnipotence of God, but also belief in the existence of God”. And so on. That’s why it’s such a long-lasting and difficult problem.
On the contrary. The fatal flaw in such arguments is that no one has ever even attempted (as far as I know) to produce a feasible blueprint of a universe devoid of natural evil. You need to explain why you believe it is possible and if you cannot you should admit it is not a rational objection but a presumption based on appearances rather than facts which highlights once again the absurdity of atheism and reveals hubris and small-mindedness rather than awe, humility and gratitude when confronted with the breathtaking beauty and majesty of the night sky in all its incomparable splendour:…
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
  • Kant
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty…
Wordsworth’s words are worth remembering in a far more significant context than London! In stark contrast there is the cynicism of atheists like Steven Weinberg::
Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion.
Such parochialism is understandable given his view that “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” Being a Nobel prize-winner in Physics seems to have entitled him to pontificate on subjects far beyond his knowledge and understanding. He takes for granted his power of comprehension which is hardly explicable in terms of elementary particles…
 
There is absolutely no evidence that a seven headed, fire-breathing dragon does not exist… so what now? When will people realize that there can be NO EVIDENCE of NONexistence? On the other hand: Absence of evidence is a very strong evidence of absence.
Absence of evidence might be very strong evidence of absent-mindedness. 😉 It is certainly not evidence of something rather nothing. It doesn’t get to grips with anything whatsoever but it does presuppose a rational mind which knows what evidence is. It doesn’t presuppose the existence of material reality.
 
There is absolutely no evidence that a seven headed, fire-breathing dragon does not exist… so what now? When will people realize that there can be NO EVIDENCE of NONexistence? On the other hand: Absence of evidence is a very strong evidence of absence.
The difference between Gid and a seven headed dragon or a flying spaghetti monster is so vast as to make this analogy terrible. There are metaphysical arguments about the necessity of a being like God, and in response to that, no evidence that he doesn’t exist. There is no such grounding for unicorns or dragons or spaghetti monsters.
 
This only proves that some people cannot think straight.

The epistemic question posed by natural evil is not whether God exists, but rather: what are the motives God has for allowing natural evil?

There is no evidence whatever that God does not exist.

As a Baptist you have to be on board with that proposition.

So tell us, what is your answer to the problem of natural evil?
Why is it a problem? If there’s no such thing as evil of any description in a pointless universe it is merely an illusion.😉
 
The difference between Gid and a seven headed dragon or a flying spaghetti monster is so vast as to make this analogy terrible. There are metaphysical arguments about the necessity of a being like God, and in response to that, no evidence that he doesn’t exist. There is no such grounding for unicorns or dragons or spaghetti monsters.
They are very popular amongst the creators of straw men. 🙂
 
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