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Why Did God Make Ebola?
Question for you religious types: The other day, we were working on digging a foundation for a shed I’m building. We ended up digging up an underground wasp nest. My daughter is mildly allergic to wasp stings, so she freaks out when even a single wasp is flying around. She asked me “Why did God make wasps? What do they do besides make nests where they shouldn’t and sting people? Do they pollinate flowers like bees do?” My answer was “I don’t know.”
When I was reading about Ebola the other day, I asked the same question: “Why did God make Ebola?” Any takers?
Published in General
Oh, well, if we’re simply trying to come up with an answer that will satisfy a young girl, rather than an answer that will satisfy, say, me, for example, then you can make up nearly any old thing.
You could try, “God created Ebola to keep the monkey population down in a particular part of the African jungle, and men got infected because they shouldn’t have gone into that part of the jungle.”
All possibilities.
I believe that science tells us what must be true, and philosophy tells us what may be true. As such, when asked a philosophical (rather than a scientific) question, all I can offer in response are possibilities.
and to pollinate figs.
Pollinating figs is a wasp’s idea of a good date.
Wakka wakka wakka!
Now you’re getting into fundamental philosophical questions that have been debated for millennia and never answered with any level of certainty.
As such, I suggest trying one of these two books for further study of the question:
a palm date? or a turkish date?
Not if we don’t give the cure to the monkeys! After all, who are we to deny Ebola the opportunity to fulfill its God-given purpose?
Or, maybe if we eliminate Ebola it means that we are morally obligated to fulfill its purpose in its absence by operating jungle monkey hunts.
Initially read “than a pile of socks” and thought that was somehow appropriate, given Dime.
….And the serpent shall bite your heel, seed of the woman will crush his head.
Not a direct quote, but Genisis does offer explanation for the age old question “why do bad things happen?”
I think the short answer is that God did not “make” ebola any more than he “made” sin.
Amen, brother!
Since artificial horizontal gene transfer is typically the goal of genetic engineering, we can sort of think of non-artificial horizontal gene transfer as naturally-occurring genetic engineering. Sort of.
Evolution by natural genetic engineering, anyone?
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0019.html
I see a problem with the phrasing of the question. If we’re judging Ebola to be a natural evil (and I would), then, by definition, God would have no part in “making” it. He does not participate in evil, which is absent good (or God). They’re mutually exclusive.
Now, if you were to ask “Why does God allow Ebola [natural evil] to exist?”, you have the problem of presupposing God. How do you know “evil” without a Standard by which to judge it? Peter Kreeft explains at Prager University.
Ebola is either Nature doing what Nature does without purpose, or we accept that our judgment of Ebola as a natural evil depends on God existing, and the purpose of its continued existence being beyond our ken.
Although, I do like iWc’s and anonymous’s theological approach, I’m not sure it’s solid philosophical ground.
Ooooo… Hadn’t thought about that. Neat.
Another view of things is that we make our own purposes; that purpose exists within the human part of the universe.
Judaism is not so interested in sin – and we do not have Original Sin as a doctrine at all (The Torah does not say death and sin come from eating the fruit).
We are interested in what we are supposed to be doing with ourselves to try to make everything better.
God has explained this. Man was made the steward over creation. Man’s sin brought a curse which affects the whole creation.
Genesis 3:17-19
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Creation is subject to man’s fall into sin.
Romans 8:20-23
20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
The fallen creation will end with Christ’s return.
Revelation 21:1-4
The New Heaven and the New Earth
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Kreeft’s answer is basically that all evil in the world including natural evil is ultimately the result of sin. No educated modern person could possibly believe this. It is abundantly clear that pain, suffering and death were built into the world from the beginning. They are simply natural parts of the natural world order, which was not created by human actions. Human sinfulness definitely causes suffering, but the vast majority of suffering is not caused by human actions. Any concept of God must come to terms with this fact.
Even though I believe in a personal God who has purposes of His own for Creation, I do agree that trying to assign purposes to non-human things can be rather pointless, practically speaking.
The way I see it, Christianity is about God’s relationship to Man. God’s relationship to the rest of Creation isn’t necessarily for us to know. I sense that all of Creation praises God in its own way – all of it, which would include the Ebola virus (and cockroaches, and ragweed… and all sorts of stuff that could make me as a human being miserable) – simply by existing. But expecting to understand that praise, to divine specific purposes within it, is pretty obviously foolish. The human notion of purpose is… largely a human one. And that’s OK. We’re humans, after all.
Wow, 5,000 word limit. When did that happen?
Anyway, I also like iWc and anonymous’s and Misthiocracy’s. To the extent not inherently contradictory they are not mutually exclusive. The thoughts that occurred to me when pondering the question were:
1. Given a world fundamentally separated from the immediate presence and direct influence of God, death and suffering are what we should expect, since God is the source of all Good.
2. There is also an evil, supernatural will at work in the world,Satan, whose only thought is to wreak destruction and death on what God created.He however does not have the power to create, only to pervert, twist, warp and poison things that are inherently good – right down to the molecular level. Maybe what we see in Ebola (and chickenpox and other viruses) was once a harmless gene transfer device that has been so corrupted for the purposes of inflicting horror and pain on humans and, where possible, alienating them from God.
3. Discerning why “evil X” or “evil Y” occurs at a given place and time is rarely going to be possible, and more rarely still easy. God’s mercy, wrath, grace and judgement are all at work at once in the lives of what…6 billion souls right now. I don’t think anyone is going to produce absolutely clear and exhaustive explanations through means of our limited human reason anytime soon. And I have floors and floors of university libraries scattered around the world to prove me right on that point.
Ebola happens because Evolution has bestowed on the Earth a kind of biological arms race. Lions selected for faster speeds and prey also selected for faster speeds to evade lions. So too with ever-evolving viruses and ever-evolving and more reistant immune systems to combat them. It has always been thus. There is nothing evil or man-caused about it. It is nature.
Of course God made Ebola. Ebola is life. God made all life on earth. Hence, God mad Ebola.
As it is, ebola is an evil. For humans, right now, it has no discernible good purpose, in the sense of bees, wasps, etc. The result of human contact with ebola is near certain death. However, in that, there is a good. And that is how we treat those infected. If we treat the infected with the dignity they deserve then we will have shown, through our actions of charity, that we are worthy of favor with God.
At the risk of repeating myself, my question is really one of “why do these evil things happen.” Ebola is not evil. It simply is. If God created everything in the universe, and I believe He did, and God has a purpose for everything, (I believe this too), then it follows that God has some purpose for Ebola.
Do you capitalize Ebola? Or not? Another question…
:)
To keep us reaching higher and higher, in medicine and technology, in knowledge and wisdom. WE are the reason for the creation of the world, and WE are responsible for fixing all that ails it, whether in nature or caused by other people.
If not us, then whom? If not now, then when?
Yes. I believe that evolution is an essential part of a beautiful natural world. I believe God could have chosen to make a completely designed universe without any disease or death, but He chose to create an evolving universe with death and disease because it would be overall more beautiful than a “perfect” universe. Ebola is a product of the same evolutionary process that produced humans, and it seems reasonable to suppose that if God controlled the evolutionary process to prevent disease from appearing, humans as we know us would have never arisen.
Yes… but I think when we say “why did God make,” we necessarily imply something that isn’t theologically sound. For instance, if God made everything in the world, he made Satan, evil, sin, etc… When there is a tornado, did God make the tornado? Did he place the tornado in a particular spot or over a particular house? There is some gray area between deism (basically, the God who makes a machine and turns it on), and what I think Islam preaches, that God creates the pavement under your feet literally every time you take a step (that’s a dumbed-down version). By asking “why did God make Ebola,” you’re essentially (and obviously unintentionally) answering theological questions that are by no means settled.
Beautiful? That is interesting. I’m not sure that what God does is for the sake of beauty.
Eh, perhaps.