Re: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

Is animal death an evil? If I recall correctly, the annual increase from
a single pair of house flies would cover the whole surface of the earth
40 feet deep. Is death or deathlessness an evil?
Dave (ASA)

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:25:12 -0600 "Jon Tandy" <tandyland@earthlink.net>
writes:
Don Winterstein wrote:
"Evil" occurs as a consequence of God's priorities: God could not achieve
his goals for his creation unless he allowed it independence. All
"evils" great and small stem from the independence of the creation: God
allows it the freedom to do largely what it "wants."
... John Tandy's recent post exhibits similar thinking but supplies no
motive..."

I just comment that I fully agree with your assessment that evil (in
terms of evil outcomes from sinful choices) is a consequence of God's
granting free will to humans (and angels, apparently, in the case of
Satan). This doesn't fully answer the question of the so-called "evil"
of millions of years of animal death and random genetic mutation. "God
granting nature the freedom to do what it wants" is a little difficult
without attributing freewill and consequent accountability to nature
itself, but with some qualification I think it could still apply. As I
indicated earlier, I'm not concerned about the theodicy problem of animal
death, and don't agree that it should even be considered "evil".

Jon Tandy

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Received on Tue Feb 19 23:07:04 2008