Natural Evil - Natural Versus Moral Evil

Natural Versus Moral Evil

Jean Jacques Rousseau responded to Voltaire's criticism of the optimists by pointing out that the value judgement required in order to declare the 1755 Lisbon earthquake a natural evil ignored the fact that the human endeavour of the construction and organization of the city of Lisbon was also to blame for the horrors recounted as they had contributed to the level of suffering. It was, after all, the collapsing buildings, the fires, and the close human confinement that led to much of the death.

The question of whether natural disasters such as hurricanes might be natural or moral evil is complicated by new understandings of the effects, such as global warming, of our collective actions on events that were previously considered to be out of our control. Certain such disasters, however, such as damage caused by a meteorite, cannot be ascribed to the actions of humans.

Another common argument, espoused by Alvin Plantinga, is that everything that appears at first glance to be natural evil could in fact be moral evil committed by freely acting supernatural beings, such as fallen angels.