Moral and Natural Evil

Great Debates
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I’m told that these two are not entirely distinct. How come?

Our homie Augustine says that natural evil is cause by the fall™ of the angels, way back in the day. Yet, he also says that evil isn’t really a thing - its a lack of good, not a ‘substance’ of itself.

However, my notes also say that natural evil is a punishment for sins… its a punishment, and a result of the fall?

How does this work? Natural evil is because the fall interupted the ‘natural perfection’ of the big G’s work, it’s a punishment; yet ‘evil’ doesn’t really exist?

I suppose I can wrap my mind around the idea that it’s [evil is] a punishment for sin because god ‘leaves’ you for a moment (taking his goodness with him) ‘cos u sinned; (this being old’ skool christianity and all, where you dont want to mess with God), and I suppose that the fall™ could have caused natural evil, (im sorta’ envisioning something along the lines of a jigsaw [being the perfect world] being ‘torn’ as the naughty angels do their falling thing - causeing earthquakes and the like)

But its both of them, all at once?
:dubious:

And what does Augustine think to moral evil? Is that caused by free will?

Lets not talk about Plantinga, and his ‘possible worlds’ theroys. His answer to everything is parallel universes. yawn
Personally, I prefer Irenaeus.
He tells us that moral evil is a test, because we were only created ‘in God’s image’ and we have to ‘grow unto his likeness’ - done through making the correct moral choice.

Fair doos. ok, so we have a God who believes that the end justifies the means, but we can live with that. Those that don’t die, anyway.

But what about natural evil? That comes about because it’s useful to help us grow, allowing for ‘second order’ good, like sympathy, herosim and the like to shine though.

Where does this evil come from? I can’t see how the source of the evils are distinct for Irenaeus, although the end purpose of the two are…

I don’t know if there is a single factual answer to this (thus, not general questions), and speculation is welcomed, as long as it doesn’t go too far away from more classical philosophy… unless you have to :wink:

Thanks all.

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Dear Hoka:

In my philosophy and theology days in a Catholic university, we talked about moral evil and physical evil. I guess you are referring to these two concepts. Moral evil is the evil that makes God unhappy with man. And no offense intended against God, physical evil is what makes man unhappy with God. No, I didn’t learn that in the Catholic university, not the attitude, but the attitude comes from the conclusion or the observation from my own part which seems obvious.

Anyway, I guess you know what I mean by physical evil. Let’s bring up some samples of physical evil: earthquake, flooding, typhoon, rats, cockroaches, babies born deformed, guys born with low IQ.

When you start thinking about physical evil, you feel like blaming God specially if you are endowed with some which other people think are physical evil, like if you are born with short stature and a sixth finger-let in one hand. So the God’s defenders tell us it’s all our fault, going all the way to Adam and Eve; because they committed the first act of disobedience against God, and thus He punishes all mankind with all kinds of physical evil.

According to God’s defenders, He created us perfect and freed of all kinds of physical evil. We did the first moral evil, in Adam and Eve. God has been angry at us since that time. But He also pities us and sends His son in a human incarnation to be true man without being less God, to appease God (the Father), so that we would have peace with Him and go to heaven upon dying in this world where He places a lot of physical evils to punish us.

I have always been wondering whether we might be better served if He would just return us to Paradise or the Garden of Eden (correct me, those of you here who are better acquainted with Paradise or Eden or the Garden and its whereabouts). If it’s up to me, I would prefer to return to Paradise where life is terrific and there are no rats, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and we don’t have to bring out the garbage.

Susma Rio Sep