Unconventional Wisdom
Why We Need Earthquakes
Ward and Brownlee's answer to this is as simple as it is devastating. Such a world could have produced life, but it surely could not have produced creatures like us. Science tells us that our world has all the necessary conditions for species like Homo sapiens to survive and endure.
Our planet requires oxygen and a warming sun and water in order for us to live here, and we appreciate this, even though we recognize that people can get sunstroke and drown in the ocean. So, too, it seems that plate tectonics are, as Ward and Brownlee put it, a "central requirement for life" as we know it.
This is not to suggest, as the scientist and philosopher Leibniz once argued, that ours is the best of all possible worlds. But ours may be the best of all feasible worlds, at least as viewed from a human perspective. This recognition will not stop people from bemoaning the next earthquake, but it should at least stop us from blithely assuming that the Creator could have done a much better job.
Dinesh D'Souza, a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, is author of What's So Great About Christianity and other books.
Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
Previous columns by D'Souza include:
The Evolution of Darwin | The scientist's problem with God did not spring from his theory. (January 22, 2009)
Staring into the Abyss | Why Peter Singer makes the New Atheists nervous. (March 17, 2009)
Christianity Today also has a special section on science & health.
Unconventional Wisdom
Dinesh D'Souza
Apologist and writer Dinesh D'Souza is president of The King's College and a former policy analyst for the Reagan White House. His latest book is Godforsaken: Is There a God Who Cares? Yes. Here's Proof. His column, "Unconventional Wisdom," ran in 2009.
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TheDoubter
So plate tectonics must have been put in place during Creation... before the Fall of Man... so the potential for destruction through tsunamis and earthquakes was present before people were created and sinned ... makes no sense. Terrible argument, turns me further away from people's understanding of God.
Ifeanyi
Strange as it may sound I believe natural disasters are a consequence of the fall of man. If sin did not enter the natural disasters would not have either. That is the understanding I have from scripture.
charity
ah, the humanity. bonhoeffer talks about how the fall (obtaining knowledge of good and evil, in order to judge right vs. wrong for ourselves) introduced "judgment." everyone wants to judge, for him/herself, what is right, and what is wrong...this is all we know how to do, it seems. and through all the generations, i wonder how far the power of human judgment has gotten us... i love what ravi zacharias says in an essay on human suffering - he points out that a human taking the life of another human, when he/she has no power to give life, is fundamentally different to a being taking life away when it has the power to give that very life back. ravi also points out the mistaken logic of all who would say that this god is surely cruel, he has done nothing to alleviate the suffering of the masses who remain. god DID, and IS ending human suffering. that is the whole point. some may look at that statement as weak; that is your judgment. but are you sure that judgment can be trusted?