God Defined as Evil Through Nature?

The Christian Conscience - Apologetics Pages

The following was a debate held on the Wasteland Atheist board between myself (NYJ) and an atheist named showme. It started off with showme claiming that God was evil, but not giving me anything definite to work with. So, let us take it from there.

Showme's comments will be in white. My replies will be in gold. Commentary text will be in blue.

NYJ: What do you mean by "evil"?

Showme: Your god, if he exists, created an ecological system in which virtually every life form [with some exemptions] depends on destroying another life form for it's own existence. In many of these cases this is performed in hideous and torturous ways. He, being omnipotent, could have easily devised a way to avoid this. If this is not EVIL then you tell me what is.

NYJ: In MANY of these cases these life forms are destroyed in hideous and torturous ways? Ok, this is your first assumption and your first mistake. Let us take a brief glimpse of life on this planet and see where you went wrong. First, I imagine you were talking about things we see on television and the like... lions feasting on wildebeasts, crocodiles feeding on gazelles that try to cross flooded rivers, sharks tearing apart sea lions, etc etc. So, a majority of your cases are based on mammals and other vertebrates. First let me tell you, out of all multi-cellular life, only 1% of that life contains a backbone. That is a rather small portion. But, don't take my word for it... let us look at the facts. For this I will refer you to a nice little site I found on the web:

WRI - Biodiversity

There are currently ~4,000 described species of mammal (4,629 as of an update I read on the web). I also mentioned reptiles in my discussion and there are 6,300 species of those. 19,056 species of fish, 9,040 species of bird and 4,184 species of amphibians. Wow, that is a lot of animals that can experience some form of pain because they have advanced enough neurological systems. That is 43,206 species!

Hrm, however we have 4,760 species of identified bacteria (actually as of July11, 2000 that number is 5,236 but I'll take the lower number) and some scientists believe that we have only identified about 1% of all bacterial species. There are 26,900 species of algae, 30,800 species of protozoa and 46,983 species of fungi. All living creatures that do not have any known sensory perception of pain. I won't even mention the 248,428 species of plants that have no central nervous system but I AM going to mention the 751,000 species of insects which have 'nervous systems' but do not experience physical pain. That gives us 860,443 species that do not experience pain and hence cannot die "hideous and torturous deaths". There are some extra major taxa which one can argue either way (in some cases) so we will leave those out.

So what we have done is reduced your "many die in hideous and torturous ways" to "~5% have the possibility of dying hideous and torturous deaths". So, now we can drop all the exagerrations and get down to business. Now, do not get me wrong, I am not trivializing death, but I am refuting your quite erroneous claims. However, sometimes such deaths that you claim are 'hideous' are in fact necessary when found in nature.

I will give you two cases as to why:

First, let us take the example of Isle Royale, a beautiful island found out in the middle of Lake Superior. What is so fascinating about this island is that it contains populations of both wolves and moose. The moose of course feed off the vegetation of the island, and the wolves diet consists predominantly of moose. The populations though of both the moose and wolf are not fixed and rather, they seem to fluctuate in a timely cycle. When the wolf population is up, the moose population is down. When the moose population goes down, the wolf population goes down and then the moose population goes back up. What we see here is a symbiotic relationship between the moose and wolf. The wolf hunts the moose and rarely is a healthy moose caught. This means that the wolves feed mostly on the sickly and old moose. This takes that moose out of the moose population, allowing the moose population to grow stronger by taking out of the population any moose that might pass on 'faulty genes' (ie: sickly and diseased moose) or is too weak to otherwise contribute to the overall benefit of the herd. When the moose population goes down, the wolf has less to feed on. When winter comes in, only the healthy wolves survive. Those that are either sick or old usually do not survive these 'lean' times. This in turn benefits the wolf population. In the meantime, the dead wolves serve as a useful means of nourishment for other animals (and miscellaneous organisms) and eventually plants, which in turn are fed on by the moose.

I do not see what is so inherently evil about such a setup. It appears to me to be quite the intricate pattern, energy is conserved, recycled and reused for future generations of moose and wolf that can benefit from it. It is almost like a machine in perpetual motion. It feeds off itself and in turn it generates more food for itself.

But, at any rate... it appears that you consider the main evil to be 'death'. Yes, I guess some of us would consider death a Bad Thing. Of course, if you are a Christian, death is not an ending but a beginning, and is therefore not an evil at all. And if it WERE evil, once again we see that God can even use 'woe' (Isaiah 45:7 NAB) to ultimately achieve good.

But, back to the topic of death. Death is bad eh? Well, actually... uncontrolled life would wreck things a lot quicker than death does.

Case in point:

One Clostridium perfringens bacterium.

One bacterium? Yes, only one... but one that, if given the proper nutrition can double once every six minutes. So after 6 minutes, we have 2 bacteria, after 12 we have 4. Moving right along... after 60 minutes we have 1,024 and after 360 minutes (6 hours) we have 1.2 to the power of 18. If we take it out to 48 hours, we wind up with 1.2 to the power of 144 bacteria. That my friend is a lot of bacteria. But how much bacteria? Well, in one gram of fecal material there can be found 400 billion bacteria. These bacteria account for 40% of the weight of that poopie. Therefore one can equate 1 gram of bacteria to equal 1 trillion bacteria. Since that was dry weight though, let us say that 10 grams of bacteria equal 1 trillion bacteria. Now, we just said we had 1.2^144 bacteria after 2 days of growth. If we divide this number by the number of bacteria in ten gram's we get 2^131 grams of bacteria. Now 1,000 grams is ~2 pounds, so we now have 1^128 pounds. And 2000 lbs is one ton. That gives us 5^124 tons. So in 2 days, if allowed to grow unabated 1 Clostridium perfringens bacterium would give rise to 5^124 tons of siblings. That is 5 followed by 124 zero's. Now, if we say that Clostridium perfringens is not a wasteful bug and that it converts all it consumes into its growth process, this one bacterium would consume 5^124 tons of food in a fourty-eight hour timespan. WOW!

So, as you can see... this really cannot be allowed to happen, it makes no sense. Even though the growth rate of Clostridium perfringens is 6 minutes, it can only keep up this growth rate for a little while before it begins to die off. And it dies off because it is necessary! (Nevermind that it does not die a hideous death at all).

So, I would now ask you... since God seems to have it all wrong... can you come up with a better devised system to avoid the problem I just mentioned and still maintain the 'perpetual motion' like I described? I eagerly await your answer.

Showme: Sure, grant me omnipotence and I will present you with all kinds of ways that will work without pain and suffering, if your god can't do that then he is not too bright, is he now.

NYJ: But showme, you were obviously able to spot all these 'flaws' in the system, surely you have a solution to these problems. At least, you SHOULD if you wanted to bring up the question in the first place. YOU are the one that called the system 'evil'. If you know WHY it is evil then surely you have a solution as to HOW to make it good.

Showme: Man, you are really dense. I never said the system is 'flawed', or called the system 'evil', I called the "omnipotent designer" of this system evil, Period. If you don't understand the difference then go and play somewhere else.

NYJ: Yes, I am dense. Last time I checked, light did not pass through me =). Of course, you were insulting me... I am not surprised. You have been unable to come up with any reason to support your situation... you are frustrated and cornered.

Now, onto your completely silly line of reasoning. You call God evil. You call God evil because of the natural laws he set up. Yet you do not call those laws evil. Can you PLEASE explain to me now, on what basis you call God evil, when your evidence does not support your assertion? I could understand you calling God evil if he set up an evil scenario, but you have unequivocally stated otherwise. And you are right, I do not understand, because you are not making any sense at this point. We call a man evil because he performed an immoral act. We call a man good because he performs a moral act. We do not call a man evil or good because he does something amoral. Nature is amoral.

So, once again... can you give me a better way?

Showme: I could give you some ideas about a better way, but since you only want it to divert the attention from the real question I'm not about to. Besides, whether I could do it or not is irrelevant to the question as to why god didn't.

NYJ: By saying this you have completely undermined your whole argument! You have just said that what we currently have is not an optimal situation. If there is no God, what we have is what we got through randomness, and since we seem to have come to a balance (the ability for life to persist, against the statistical odds, and maintain its persistance for millions of years) we can consider this optimized. To maintain this optimal situation we have evolution, which allows species to survive and maintain the 'status quo' and ensure that life continues on for millions of years to come. Yet, you think we can do better. If you think we can do better, you obviously hold someone or something responsible for the 'present predicament' and you therefore argue FOR the existance of God.

At this point, Showme refused to reply to me anymore, rather preferring to hide behind the other poster (Apoc Now) who tried to come up with an argument as to how to come up with a better system. Apoc Now will now take Showme's place in white. I will continue to remain in gold.

Apoc Now: I think "god" could probably make bacteria that do not reproduce as quickly, or that do not replicate at all for that matter.

NYJ: Then you obviously do not understand nature then. Both of your suggestions are nonsensical and illogical. I could give you a lecture on the importance of bacteria, how certain species are important for nitrogen and hence when placed into soil, need to populate it efficiently (ie: replicate, sometimes in large numbers in a short amount of time). I could go on to tell you how in some instances, the high growth of certain types of bacteria serve an extremely "good" purpose, in the case of vaccines. I could tell you how our body needs certain types of bacteria to supply us with essential vitamins that our body cannot produce by themselves and how these bacteria need to replicate fast enough so they can 'out-compete' bacteria that may be harmful for us if they were allowed to get a foothold instead.

Of course, all of this is based on the assumption that you KNOW that there is a better solution out there... and none of you have been able to provide me with a solid, concrete example. So, could the setup we have (nature in general) be any better than it is?

At this point, Apoc Now also resigned from the argument and Teneb (who will now be in white) replied. I felt like I was in a tag-team match here, with each one throwing out an argument and then running and hiding from the answer. My replies will still be in gold.

Teneb: You have explained why such deaths are 'necessary' but only by holding other factors invariant when they are not necessarily so.

NYJ: No, not at all. I was simply explaining the world as it actually is. I did not hold any factors invariant at all. They are "not necessarily so" they ARE "necessarily so" because they ARE.

Teneb: To take two examples: killing other creatures for food is only necessary if, from the Christian perspective, they have been created with a requirement to feed of the bodies of others, and the instincts to kill other creatures to attain this goal. Likewise, the kind of population control by culling you describe is again only necessary if creatures are created without any other physical or instinctive mechanism for control, or the environment has been deliberately created with finite resources.

NYJ: This is a silly argument Teneb. We know that the environment HAS been created with finite resources. We know that animals have been created with a requirement to feed off the bodies of other animals, both of which are amoral situations. There is nothing inherently evil in this at all. We know that creatures HAVE been created with instinctive/physical/genetic mechanisms for control but this is NOT sufficient. There must be other external sources, and we see this quite clearly.

Teneb: The matter is made more difficult from a Christian perspective because these are *not* logical requirements, as Christian doctrine is based upon the premise that there already exists at least one place where life can exist without the need for killing for self-sustainment or population control, namely heaven. In light of this, the explanations you provide are simply clumsy solutions to an already-non-optimal situation, and Christian can provide no reason as to why that situation is necessary.

NYJ: First off, the laws of nature ARE logical from a Christian perspective because they are laws established by God. Aside from miracles, these laws govern life as we know it and there is no deviation from it. Second, you say that since there is a 'heaven' that 'earth' presents a non-ideal situation. You are trying to compare a wholy spiritual experience with that of the materialistic world we live in and you cannot do that at all.

Heaven is, as described by Pope John Paul II: "a living, personal relationship with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit."

For all we know, and from the way it appears, the current 'natural laws' that we see present themselves are entirely suited to life on earth. As long as man does not intervene (by elimination of species, introduction of alien species to closed environments, pollution, etc) with these laws, life persists and HAS persisted for millions of years. If this is not a 'perpetual system' I do not know what is. You also call this an "already-non-optimal situation" and I surely hope you are not refering to life as we know it. If you presented this to any ecologist you'd be laughed at. The 'closed circle' of nature is self-sustaining and self-sufficient and has persisted for, like I've said, millions of years.

Also, since you claim that this is a non-optimal situation, do you mean to imply that things here on earth could be better? If yes, how so?

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws