So the Devil has the power of creation?
You have it backward. Man did all that by desiring to become like gods. God allows it - He does not create it.
These things came after the fall of man. It was man’s sin which caused God’s creation to possess the capacity to decay and die.
No they did not. Viruses, predatory behavior, and parasites were here long before man existed, hundreds of millions of years in fact. The answer is that God does not view animal death in such ways as evil, any more than do I think of myself as a brute for enjoying the salmon I’ve just finished grilling. Much has been made of this issue, but it simply can be said in response that God allowed life to evolve as it has because it WORKS. The funny thing is that people have an apparent idea that they could do it better if they were God, to which I would say “Sure you could.”
The system works wonderfully as it is, and worked to get us here, God’s pinnacle of creation. But as with physics, you can’t just change one small thing without throwing the whe system into chaos. Butterfly effect: change one thing about the works and a million unintended changes occur, maybe making biological life itself impossible.mea culpa. I thought the question was asked in regard to humans more than animals.No they did not. Viruses, predatory behavior, and parasites were here long before man existed, hundreds of millions of years in fact. The answer is that God does not view animal death in such ways as evil, any more than do I think of myself as a brute for enjoying the salmon I’ve just finished grilling. Much has been made of this issue, but it simply can be said in response that God allowed life to evolve as it has because it WORKS. The funny thing is that people have an apparent idea that they could do it better if they were God, to which I would say “Sure you could.”
I’m not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it, but in hopes that someone can help me resolve this issue. I find the fine tuning argument to be a pretty intriguing one, but it seems to have a fatal flaw: our resurrected bodies. Catholic teaching holds that our resurrected bodies will be glorified, in that they will be physical bodies but will not be subject to all of the laws of physics by which they are currently bound. How would you reconcile that with the idea that if the laws of physics are changed, biological life would be impossible?No they did not. Viruses, predatory behavior, and parasites were here long before man existed, hundreds of millions of years in fact. The answer is that God does not view animal death in such ways as evil, any more than do I think of myself as a brute for enjoying the salmon I’ve just finished grilling. Much has been made of this issue, but it simply can be said in response that God allowed life to evolve as it has because it WORKS. The funny thing is that people have an apparent idea that they could do it better if they were God, to which I would say “Sure you could.”
Ah, I see. But no, I think the OP was asking about animal death and suffering, diseases in general, etc. Though I’m also not trying to dismiss such things as unimportant to God, just that these questions, in my experience, often seem to come down to an underlying attitude of “Well, I could have done it better, in MY creation there’d be no viruses!”. The ultimate silliness of such an idea is clear when we face the idea head on by considering exactly how, in toto, such a universe would look. Of course, we literally can’t even conceive of how to comprehensively rearrange all the laws of physics and biology to make even a small change such as “no parasites”, for instance. We have no idea how such a change would affect everything else about the course of life on Earth, let alone something big, such as the obvious end-game “I want there to be no death”.
Well, this is not really germane to the topic, but I’d say the thing here is with resurrected bodies they are no longer within the same space-time continuum that we know now. Rather, as Revrlation says, part of a new Heaven and new Earth…it would seem this universe will indeed be done away with, which modern cosmology also strongly suggests, and then God will bring about a new one with new, different rules. I don’t have a clue what those laws of physics will look like, but I’m sure God does! Resurrected and perfected bodies will not be of the same “physical” as are ours, and all matter, currently. So I don’t see an obvious problem there…hope that helps.
You say that God does not view animal death and suffering in the same way as human suffering. Whether this is true or not, he certainly must view it negatively, no matter how much “less bad” it is. So why would an omnipotent being create a system that has any bad in it? Obviously I couldn’t design a system that is better than the one we live in, but God (omniscient and omnipotent) certainly could.No they did not. Viruses, predatory behavior, and parasites were here long before man existed, hundreds of millions of years in fact. The answer is that God does not view animal death in such ways as evil, any more than do I think of myself as a brute for enjoying the salmon I’ve just finished grilling. Much has been made of this issue, but it simply can be said in response that God allowed life to evolve as it has because it WORKS. The funny thing is that people have an apparent idea that they could do it better if they were God, to which I would say “Sure you could.”
Hey, I agree with you on Point 1. A miracle. Doesn’t Scripture say, “The dead are happier than the living. Happier than both is he who has never even existed.” Also “Whoever hates his life in this world, the same will inherit eternal life.”- Classic Schopenhauer
The loving Father described by Jesus wouldn’t have created us if