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[P-min]

> heaven is a place where the occupants have chosen to be there, and so the design can be different. >The idea of heaven being a place that has been chosen is a generalized truth of the nature of the place and its access, not an absolutized universal applying to the babies who are brought there by a gift of grace.

Ok, so if it's not that the design of earth can't be different because of people choosing to go there (since babies don't choose to go to heaven), then what is it? Why exactly is God unable to create the earth without natural disasters?

> Are we blaming God when a tornado rips their house and kills their baby? People build on fault lines, in tornado alley, and on cliffs prone to mudslides.

I do find it problematic that God would design the earth in the specific way that he knew the family would move there and yet he chose to design that tornado to happen knowing it would kill the baby. But the problem of evil is much larger than that. There are many instances of the suffering and deaths of children that have nothing to do with the parents raising their children in a natural disaster prone area - like lightning strikes, storms, floods, earthquakes. In fact, almost anywhere you go there are going to be some sort of natural disasters that you can't avoid. And the point is that God knew exactly where everyone would be living and designed specific natural disasters with the perfect knowledge of where specifically they would wreak havok and injure and kill his innocent babies and children.

> It relates back to the problem of evil. You want God to intervene in weather patterns and geologic events to prevent injury.

No, please reread my question. Much of your answer is about intervention. My question is not at all about God preventing anything or intervening in anything. My question is limited only to his design and creation of the world - why he chose a design that includes natural disasters which injure and kill innocent babies when he could have chosen a different design.

> Or God must make sure that all such events only happen in places where humanity has chosen not to settle, so as to not interfere with our homesteading and traveling.

That's a possibility. Or he could design the world without natural disasters. Or natural disasters that only hurt adults. Or natural disasters that only happen on earth during time periods when no humans are alive on the planet. There are many options we can think of and we are mere mortals without the omniscience of God. Imagine how many different options he could think of!

> If we are to be human with free will (a necessity to humanity), and if the universe is moral (a necessity from God's an man's vantage point), then X amount of things have to be part of the picture. But it doesn't make God evil. If God were to stop all such things, humanity ceases, because that's the only choice if we take away free will and moral choice, even to the point of natural disasters.

Again, please re-read my question. Free will is not a factor because I am asking specifically about infants and babies - humans who's minds are not yet developed to be able to make choices or learn from trials or be deserving of punishments.

> all of these things—heat and cold, wind and fire, earthquakes, sun flares, tides, volcanoes—make life on earth possible.

Is God really limited in that way? Are you saying that God is unable to create a human body that could withstand certain temperatures? Or wind, or fire, etc? Are you saying God is unable to create humans that could survive on the moon, for example, where there are no natural disasters? I thought the Christian concept of God was more powerful than that.

It seems like there are many examples of planets/moons/etc. where there are no natural disasters. So God presumably has the ability to make those. And it also seems like God has the ability to alter people's bodies in different ways to be able to live in different conditions - like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Sampson, Jesus, etc. So it seems well within God's abilities to figure out a way to create a place for humans to live where infants and babies are not killed by his specifically-designed natural disasters.

> God doesn't cause natural disasters. The earth he created includes them, but that doesn't make God immoral.

How exactly does God not cause natural disasters? He designed and created them with the perfect knowledge of when they would occur, with what severity, where they would strike, who exactly they would injure and kill, and every other minute detail down to the millisecond and molecule, right? And then he put it all into motion. How is that not causing the natural disasters? Let me give you an example: Suppose a bomb expert designed and built a bomb with the specific intention of blowing up a building and he spent years mapping out exactly how the bomb would work, when it would go off, what damage it would do, etc. And then when the time he planned for came, he lit the fuse and 5 minutes later it exploded and did exactly what he had designed it to do. In that instance would you say the bomb expert caused the damage to the building? He designed it and put it into motion. How is that different from God designing the earth with specific natural disasters and putting it in motion when he has perfect knowledge of what the result will be?

[jimwalton]

I get it. You're talking about design, not implementation; design, not intervention or protection—DESIGN. I've already presented to you that the design is geared towards life, renewal, diversity, beauty, and purpose. All of these natural events (rain, snow, glaciers, deserts, wind, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) have a beneficial role to contribute to life on the planet and its renewal. Granted, and you grant that too. Your issue is with regard to injury...and design. Could God have designed an environment without injurious events, or designed our bodies to be impervious to the injury. Am I right? I would say no for the following reasons:

1. These kinds of events are necessary to sustain the life that we have. You compare to heaven, but that's a different kind of life. These events (earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) are necessary to sustain human life as we know it. They renew the earth with life-sustaining pieces.

2. Human bodies were created to be vulnerable and "perishable". All bodies are, for that matter. Planets are not eternal, nor are suns, stars, rocks. Scientists tell us our sun will burn out, and so will eventually the universe play itself out. Immunity to harm would change our psyche, our attitudes and lifestyles in many harmful ways. Vulnerability is not only essential for our survival modes, but also relationships, and I would even say that our vulnerability is one of the main factors that drives us to God, since we know that life is fragile and we are insufficient in and of ourselves. Our design as frail motivates us to work, learn, relate, seek, inquire, and pray.

Again we trace back to the problem of evil. Is God cruel or incompetent to create a world where evil would inevitably exist, or where nature would inevitably harm? Logically speaking, no, as I have already substantiated. Theologically speaking, no, because pain is a megaphone calling us to God. As C.S. Lewis says, "It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." Only in our inadequacies will someone dare to seek what is adequate.

[P-min]

> Your issue is with regard to injury...and design. Could God have designed an environment without injurious events, or designed our bodies to be impervious to the injury. Am I right?

No. I agree with you that injurious events can be beneficial to SOME people - specifically those people who have the mental capacity to learn from them. A person can learn to overcome pain and suffering and become a better person. A person could be punished by pain/suffering and learn to act better, etc. My quibble is only with the pain and suffering that God has designed to be inflicted on infants and babies who do not have the capacity to learn from the pain and also who have not sinned sufficiently to be punished with pain/suffering/death.

So again, I largely agree with your arguments, but they ONLY apply to older humans, not at all to infants and babies who have no capacity to learn from pain or deserve it for anything they've done.

[jimwalton]

You're working very hard to paint God as cruel. You must know that the Biblical picture is that all suffering and pain in this life are the consequence of human sin. God's design was functional and good, and it was humans who brought pain into the picture. Secondly, I have claimed that human bodies are, by necessity, vulnerable and not eternal. It sounds as if you believe that if God were truly God he would make babies impervious (somehow) to pain and suffering, protect them from harm, injury, and disease, etc., but, as I've said, this is not a possible design, the way of life, or how the earth must work. I agree with you that infants and babies have no capacity learn from pain, or deserve it for anything they've done. It's truly tragic. They are caught, like the rest of us, in the flow of the detriment of human sin, the cause-and-effect properties of life on earth, and the vulnerabilities of human flesh. These processes and effects don't define God as cruel, as I've already stated.