New Light on an Old Problem

More evidence that God’s Word speaks truth
And Darwinism speaks lies

“If your God is so good and loving, why do such terrible things happen to innocent people? Why all the murders and wars, sickness, famines, floods, earthquakes and volcanoes? Either there is no God or He is harsh and uncaring.”

That is the challenge that has for centuries been posed for Christians who simply believe the declarations of Jesus and His Word that the creator and sustainer of the universe is a loving God Who has our best interests at heart. Sometimes this is a genuine obstacle for people honestly seeking the truth, very often merely a weapon on the lips of those who are determined above all else to refuse to accept that there could be a God to Whom they might be responsible, but either way it is often a real challenge to Christians who may themselves struggle with life’s tragedies and injustices.

In fact, Christians have always recognised that the Bible does provide both a framework of belief within which an explanation to the problem lies, and in the book of Job a warning against the arrogance of querulous ignorance – “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38.4). Today an increasing understanding of the way the earth and it’s climate and the human body all work has enabled us to clothe that framework with more detail. Now reports of the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 has brought us a startling new enlightenment, more evidence of the eternal truth of Scripture – that the human species has by disobedience and wilfulness brought upon itself the miseries it now likes to blame on an uncaring God.

The Root Cause

Whenever we discuss “the human condition” we need to go back to the first few chapters of Genesis for there it is clearly laid out. When God breathed onto man, “He became a living being,” something obviously of a different order to the animals. When He said, “The day you eat of that, you shall certainly die,” He was not threatening but speaking truth and warning of an inevitable consequence. That day mankind lost not physical life, but spiritual life, just as he had been warned. However, physical life also began to deteriorate.

On the other hand, when the serpent (“the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan who deceives the whole world,” Rev. 20.2) told Eve, “You will certainly not die ...... your eyes will be opened and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil,” he certainly was speaking a lie. Jesus spoke to some of, “Your father, the devil ...... he is a liar, and the father of it,” yet mankind continues in the delusion that it was the truth. The message in the Bible from beginning to end is that it is mankind’s sin – his greed, selfishness, wilful ignorance, determined disobedience, and brute obstinacy – that is the cause of all the suffering to which he, as a species is subject.

This, as I say, has been an essential element of Christian theology from the beginning, but one that is challenged by the unbelievers – though they prefer to ignore it, to pretend that Christians have no answer. Let us now look more closely at the challenges and the answers.

Four Categories of Suffering

Suffering can generally be placed into one of four categories – that inflicted by ourselves, by others, by sickness, and by “natural disasters.” Anyone who has worked with drug addicts or in prisons will most easily vouch for the extent of self-inflicted suffering, but the fact is that anyone who is not their own worst enemy must have acquired another terrible opponent somewhere along the way. It is interesting that most drug addicts and criminals make no attempt to blame God for the suffering that they have brought upon themselves – and upon others.

Many people ask how a loving God could allow some of the terrible cruelties that occur – especially to children. What they are really saying is that they think God should interfere with the intentions of other people - but they don’t want Him to interfere with their own intentions, of course. The inescapable fact is that we live in a world of cause and effect, indeed we cannot imagine anything other. So anger, greed, selfishness, stupidity, carelessness, all have effects on other people. The human condition is that mankind collectively has chosen a path of free will – “We are like gods knowing good and evil,” – and individuals exercising their free will cause pain and suffering to others – sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. We have the promise that one day Jesus will bring this era to an end, but in the meantime no sane person can blame God for the evil doings of humans.

So the critics fall back on sickness – how can that be mankind’s own fault? We cannot yet answer that question fully, but we do know that a great deal of disease comes about, or is not cured, through human action or lack of it. In the past populations in some areas were devastated by the arrival of measles brought by Europeans; in Tahiti the same results came from the sinful activities of sailors carrying syphilis; much more recently we have the terrible scourge of HIV/Aids, now killing millions and brought into being by man defying the proper order of God’s creation (see HIV) Worse still, almost anyone HIV+ can now live a normal life – providing they have daily doses of the appropriate antiviral drugs. Yet millions are dying in the third world, not of an incurable disease, but because the rich western nations will not provide, at affordable prices, the remedy that is available. However,, the greatest killer in Africa is not Aids but the ancient enemy malaria. The remedy to this has been know for at least 60 years – spraying of the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes that carry the parasite – yet there is less spraying now than 40 years ago. Is that God’s fault?

Cancer and Genetics

Throughout the 20th century the incidence of cancer grew astonishingly. Moreover, it grew first and most in the most “westernised” cultures. As nations and cultures “developed” so the people developed cancer. It must be something about the way of life that modern western man has adopted – there can be no rational other explanation. I could mention bad diet, smoking, alcohol, asbestos, and many other causes of sickness where the fault lies with mankind.

What about genetic defects then? Can that be mankind’s fault? In the case of the “thalidomide children” it certainly was. They were born with varying defects, such as no arms or legs, because their mothers had been given a new – and insufficiently tested – drug to counter morning sickness in early pregnancy (I thank God that our doctor told my wife at that time that there was a new drug available but he was not happy with it; otherwise my second daughter would have been one of the victims). In Iraq there are still many children being born with defects caused by the use of depleted uranium ammunition by USA and UK in the 1993 Gulf War – indeed some children of British and American soldiers have suffered the same defects. All over the world there are cases of genetic defects caused by the irresponsible pollution from industrial processes run with a money-first policy.

There are, of course, other genetic defects, some hereditary, for which the precise causes cannot be identified, but there is good reason to suspect that since mankind turned his back on God to become “like gods” his genetic make-up and his immune system have gradually declined in quality. This would account in part for the cancer increase mentioned above and for the many “new” diseases of defective immune systems and malfunctioning cells. This, again, would be cause and effect – like taking a motor vehicle from the manufacturer and driving it hard for years without servicing or repair. The performance gradually declines - and at an ever increasing rate of decline.

“Natural Disasters - Famine”

Faced with these facts, the critics now retreat to their last bastion of defence – the “natural disasters” of air, water, fire, and earth (Aristotle’s four elements) plus famine; they surely cannot be blamed onto mankind. Or can they?

Famines occur when the rains fail or disease hits the staple crops, so where can man be at fault?

“Between 1845 and 1850, more than a million Irish people starved to death while massive quantities of food were being exported from their country. A half million were evicted from their homes during the potato blight, and a million and a half emigrated to America, Britain and Australia". The starving could have been fed, but exporting food for cash had greater priority (and the exporters were as much Irish as English.)

Almost a century and a half later we find just the same hard human hearts in Africa: “The region's rapidly growing population requires increased food production, yet the Sahelian countries have opted to encourage the cultivation of cash crops, especially cotton and peanuts, at the expense of food crops.” (www.pubmed.gov) This is a region which had terrible droughts and famine in 1968-73 and again in the mid ‘80’s, and is suffering yet again as I write. Lately evidence has come to light that high altitude pollution from India’s industries caused changes in rainfall across the Sahel region.

Both in the Sahel region (the southern edges of the Sahara desert) and in Ethiopia, the felling of trees has had devastating effects. Trees hold the soil together and they draw moisture from the ground up to the leaves where it evaporates into the air, rises and forms clouds that produce rainfall. Widespread tree felling thus leads to lower rainfall, and when the rains do come they wash away the top soil on hillsides, leaving bare infertile rock. Until the 1940’s Ethiopia was covered with forests. Now most are gone and as a result the country suffers regular droughts. That is man’s doing, not God’s. Another factor in the spread of deserts is the over-grazing by domesticated goats at the desert edges.

The effects of the destruction of the rain forests in South America, Africa, and South East Asia are too complex to be considered here, but they are a factor in global warming, which threatens the whole planet. It is true that at the end of an interglacial period a gradual global warming and desert spread is to be expected, but it is the activity of humans ignoring the instruction “to replenish the earth ..... to dress it and to keep it,” (Gen.1.28 & 2.15) that is speeding up the process and it is the greed and selfishness of the “haves” that is turning a problem into a disaster for the “have-nots” .

I have not even mentioned as yet that one major cause of starvation and famine is armed conflict. Mankind has it in his power to reduce global warming, to provide for those suffering drought, and even to reverse the spread of deserts – but we choose not to do these things, Some of us even choose to blame God for the results of our own greed and selfishness.

“Natural Disasters” – Air and Water

Let’s note important factors about Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the city of New Orleans in late August 2005, for we can clearly see at play there the elements that are behind many other so-called “natural disasters.”

1.	To maintain a modern city and suburbs housing 1.3 million people on a site surrounded by sea and river and largely below sea level and in the path of regular hurricanes is “tempting fate” if not downright insanity.

2.	The New Orleans Impact Study of 2002/3 exactly predicted what could happen and did happen less than 3 years later and called for the protecting levees to be heightened. It was ignored and funds were cut.

Hurricanes form over warm water. The warmer the sea level, the fiercer the winds. 2005 had more and fiercer hurricanes than ever before known because sea temperatures have risen as a direct result of mankind’s production of “greenhouse gases,” especially in the USA which refused to endorse the Kyoto Treaty and continued to produce 25% of the whole world’s greenhouse gases.

4.	The NOI Study pointed out that there were 110,000 folk in the danger area who could not evacuate without help, but no plan was drawn up, and the city’s huge fleet of buses was left to the waters instead of being used for evacuation.

All of these are human callousness, not divine disregard.

The periodic flooding of the Ganges delta in Bangladesh brings death, misery, and destruction. The cause of the flooding is similarly hurricanes driving high tides in the Bay of Bengal onto the low-lying delta land The cause of the death, misery, and destruction is that this is unsuitable land upon which no-one lived 50 years ago, but the increase in national population from 44 million in 1951 to 144 million now – a density nearing 1,000 per sq. kilometre (2,560 p. sq. mile) for the whole country – has led to large populations in danger zones. As in the Sahel, local ignorance, neighbouring politics, and international economics combine to prevent population stability or population movement or alternative strategies.

“Natural Disasters” – Earth and Fire

Although no-one can as yet point to a human cause of earthquakes, there is no doubt that stupidity, ignorance, and greed all contribute to the disastrous loss of life that often occurs. This was most dramatically demonstrated by the 1995 earthquake at Kobe in Japan when skyscrapers which had been planned and designed specifically to survive earthquakes collapsed and were found to have been illegally built to inferior standards with inferior materials. Greed and bribery resulted in the loss of many lives. There was the same tale in Izmit, Turkey, in 1999. Quite apart from these highlights, there is an astonishing tendency in many known earthquake zones to build houses and other structures of stone and insufficiently reinforced concrete despite the known fact that most fatalities and injuries in earthquakes are the result of falling masonry – and most of the others are the results of houses built in positions where landslides and mudslides are predictable. The latest example of this has been in Pakistan and Kashmir in October 2005.

Similar comments can be applied to volcanoes. Most of these are known to be sporadically active and the dangers of living near them are obvious. Moreover they normally give plenty of warning of a coming eruption. This is the case even with those which suddenly become active after being apparently extinct. This was true of Mt. Somma/Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii in AD79. Inhabitants had left the city after the first earthquakes occurred and the mountain began to smoke, but many foolishly returned when it quietened a little – and then found themselves trapped when it exploded.

The greatest explosion known to have been heard or witnessed by humans was that of Krakatoa in 1883 when 6 cubic miles of the island, including three mountains, was blown into the air – but it gave humans three months daily warning of what was coming. The roughly 35,000 deaths were the result of a series of devastating tsunami waves

The Great Tsunami Riddle

Which brings me to the most recent example of this phenomena in the same area – the under-sea earthquake-generated tsunami wave of Boxing Day 2004 which killed maybe 300,000 humans all around the Indian Ocean. Surely, here my argument runs out; no human agency could have caused the earthquake and people many hundreds of miles away could not be accused of foolhardiness for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

How could they possibly have known that the giant wave was coming and moved themselves away from the shoreline?

Ask that question about the humans there, and the answer seems obvious – they couldn’t know, could they?

But ask the same question about the animals there – and the answer hangs in the air with a giant question mark - for the animals DID know and they DID move themselves out of the way.

In Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand and India and Sri Lanka the experience was the same – the animals that were free to escape did so – before the wave arrived.

It has been known for some time that animals know when an earthquake is coming – this has been observed particularly in China – but the tsunami evidence is even more startling. To sense the build-up of tension and movement hundreds of feet below one’s feet is difficult enough to contemplate, but to anticipate in time to escape a wave advancing at 500mph?

Almost immediately after learning this, I also learned of a woman who had been confined to her house unless someone else could take her out because her epileptic fits came suddenly and unannounced and were sometimes very violent. But now she has a dog who senses when they are coming. He gives 15 minutes warning of minor attacks and 45 minutes for major attacks. He senses changes in her brain waves that she cannot sense herself.

Faced with these facts we have to acknowledge that the animals must have a sense that humans do not have. We know that different species do indeed have far more acute sensitivities to infra red heat or air pressures or vibrations or high pitched sound than humans, but this seems to be another sense altogether shared by all animals – humans excluded.

What can be the explanation for that? The evolutionists can have no possible explanation. How could the human species at the very time it emerged above the level of the general animal kingdom to become the planet’s dominate species, lose a sense of such vital importance for survival? Evolution is supposed to be about the natural selection of those abilities which increase the chances of survival, not about losing them when the species can stand upright or talk.

For those of us who understand the Bible’s message, however, there is an explanation. We know that God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground for your sake,” (Gen.3 17) and the apostle Paul wrote, “For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now,” (awaiting God’s end time) (Rom. 8.22) because mankind’s attempt to “be like gods” has had such catastrophic effects. We know that geneticists cannot explain why cells commit suicide before they have produced a replacement or why new generations of cells are of lower and lower vigour, or why the immune system sometimes turns and attacks the body it is supposed to be protecting – in other words, they do not understand why physical bodies die. They appear to be designed for self-perpetuation.

Christians do understand that all this is as a result of “the Fall.” Could it also be that in choosing to lose spiritual life and to gain “the knowledge of good and evil” mankind also lost that “sixth sense” which enables the animals to be so much more alert to the world around them? It enables them to sense a coming earthquake or an advancing tsunami. It tells them when to migrate hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles as the season will make their present abode uninhabitable, or to leave it for good when the climate change is more than seasonal; It tells them when to refrain from reproducing and when to reproduce in abundance. Humans are unable to respond like this.

“Why do such terrible things happen to innocent people?” Because mankind is not innocent. These terrible things happen because of the sins of individuals (not necessarily the victims’) and of sinful societies and because mankind surrendered his spiritual life and his accord with nature that could keep him safe from its threats.

The love and provision of God stand exonerated and the self-destructive sins of mankind stand exposed.

The Good News

We can individually regain that spiritual life. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3.16) “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely,” (Rev. 22.17). The Christian Gospel is that took our death upon Himself so that He could offer us back – individually – His spiritual life. If you have not done so already, claim that life now.