Natural Evil As Necessity
The natural-evil-as-necessity argument is meant to be a response to the classic philosophical argument of the Problem of Evil, which contends that an all-powerful, all-knowing and beneficent God cannot exist as such because natural evil (mudslides which crush the legs of innocent children, for instance) occurs. Peacocke contends that the capacities necessary for consciousness and thus a relationship with God also enable their possessors to experience pain, as necessary for identifying injury and disease. Preventing the experience of pain would prevent the possibility of consciousness. Peacocke also takes an eastern argument for natural evil of that which made must be unmade for a new making to occur; there is no creation without destruction. To Peacocke, it is necessary that organisms go out of existence for others to come into it. Thus, pain, suffering and death are necessary evils in a universe which will result in beings capable of having a relationship with God. God is said to suffer with His creation because He loves creation, conforming the deity to be consistent with the Christian God.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Peacocke, Peacocke's Views
Famous quotes containing the words natural, evil and/or necessity:
“The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Good and evil are repaid in kind, just as shadows follow bodies, and echoes follow sounds.”
—Chinese proverb.
“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgement, will probably for ever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I ... am in favour of the race to which I belong having the superior position.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)