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.
Read more about this topic: Natural Evil
Famous quotes containing the words natural, moral and/or evil:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)