theodicy

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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iambiguous
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Re: theodicy

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Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website
The Problem of Good (or of Natures)

The reality of evil actually gives implicit support for God’s existence and knowledge of his goodness. Since evil is real, and since, as a privation of goods or perfections that are supposed to be present in good things that exist in their own right, the occurrence of real evils actually depends on goodness, goodness which is found in varying degrees of perfections according to the objective natures in things.
Of course, my argument revolves around the assumption [mine] that in the absence of God, evil itself can only be an existential prejudice, a subjective predilection, a personal opinion. Not only regarding the existence of evil in and of itself but what is said to be evil as well. After all, there are many, many religious faiths that all subscribe to one or another God. And while to a faith they accept the reality of evil, there may be any number of differences between them regarding what particular behaviors are evil. And yet with immortality and salvation literally on the line given the behaviors that we choose on this side of the grave, what's a mere mortal to do? Must he or she not choose the One True Path? Why yours and not theirs?

Same with goodness in contrast to evil. All of the different understandings of that. Which one sends you up, which one sends you down?

You tell me what this...

"...goodness which is found in varying degrees of perfections according to the objective natures in things..."

...means in regard to the behaviors that you choose.

And all of the faiths that subscribe to the belief that it is their duty on Earth to proselytize...to save souls from damnation. Have they got it wrong?
This all implies there is an all good Creator of good things, who is the objective standard of perfection. Aquinas concludes to the reality of God on this basis in the fourth of his famous Five Ways of proving the existence of God.
Yes, if you believe in a God, the God, your God, and this God is the God that Aquinas is now in sync with in Heaven, you too can insist that all of this implies "there is an all-good Creator of good things, who is the objective standard of perfection". In your head, for example. Actually demonstrating this such that all rational people are obligated to believe the same...?

The Fourth argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_degree

So, how would you go about demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to agree that one can -- must? -- connect the dots between this argument as an intellectual/spiritual contraption to the actual existence of the Christian God.
seeds
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Re: theodicy

Post by seeds »

iambiguous wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2022 3:41 pm [......]
...So, how would you go about demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to agree that one can -- must? -- connect the dots between this argument as an intellectual/spiritual contraption to the actual existence of the Christian God.
You don't have to do anything, period!

You don't have to connect any dots, or believe in any particular religious doctrine, or worship any particular god, etc., etc..

For I suggest that just as none of us had any choice in the circumstances that led to our birth and awakening onto the surface of this planet,...

...likewise, we have no choice (as in there is nothing we can do, or say, or believe while on earth) that will have any effect on the circumstances we will encounter at the moment of physical death.

In other words, whatever it is that awaits us following the event of our death...

(be it eternal life in a higher context of reality - (or) - eternal oblivion and nothingness)

...it will be absolutely the same for all of us.

And, again, that's regardless of anything we may have thought, said, done, or believed while on earth.
_______
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Re: theodicy

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/worl ... loods.html

'DADU, Pakistan — The view from Muhammad Jaffar’s small, mud brick home in southern Pakistan used to bring him a sense of relief. Rolling fields of green cotton shrubs had started just steps from his door, their white blooms offering the promise of enough income for his family to survive the year.

'Now his fields, along with other vast swaths of Pakistan, are under green, putrid water. About two weeks ago, in one of the latest rounds of record-shattering flooding that has afflicted the country since June, his land was completely submerged, including his well for drinking water.

'“We are living on an island now,” Mr. Jaffar, 40, told visiting New York Times journalists on Tuesday.

'The devastating floods have inundated hundreds of villages across much of Pakistan’s fertile land. In Sindh Province in the south, the floodwater has effectively transformed what was once farmland into two large lakes that have engulfed entire villages and turned others into fragile islands. The flooding is the worst to hit the country in recent history, according to Pakistani officials. They warn that it may take three to six months for the floodwaters to recede.

'So far, around 1,500 people have died — nearly half of whom are children — and more than 33 million have been displaced from their homes by the floods, which were caused by heavier-than-usual monsoon rains and glacial melt.

'In Dadu District, one of the worst hit areas in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan, the floodwater has completely submerged roughly 300 villages and marooned scores of others. Across the province, around 40,000 square miles of land — about the size of the state of Virginia — is now underwater, officials say.'


On the other hand, had they been Christians?

Or the same old same old: God's mysterious ways.

And me, I suspect my own reaction revolves around reading such grim stories and wanting to believe it is all God and His mysterious ways. Why? Because at least that's an explanation. And maybe in the end it is all for the best. It is all still in sync with a loving, just and merciful God.

Otherwise, you have to accept that there is no reason for this terrible human pain and suffering. It just happened. And for no ultimate reason whatsoever. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time when nature comes calling.
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Re: theodicy

Post by iambiguous »

seeds wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2022 7:44 pm
iambiguous wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2022 3:41 pm [......]
...So, how would you go about demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to agree that one can -- must? -- connect the dots between this argument as an intellectual/spiritual contraption to the actual existence of the Christian God.
You don't have to do anything, period!

You don't have to connect any dots, or believe in any particular religious doctrine, or worship any particular god, etc., etc..

For I suggest that just as none of us had any choice in the circumstances that led to our birth and awakening onto the surface of this planet,...

...likewise, we have no choice (as in there is nothing we can do, or say, or believe while on earth) that will have any effect on the circumstances we will encounter at the moment of physical death.

In other words, whatever it is that awaits us following the event of our death...

(be it eternal life in a higher context of reality - (or) - eternal oblivion and nothingness)

...it will be absolutely the same for all of us.

And, again, that's regardless of anything we may have thought, said, done, or believed while on earth.
_______
Thanks for clearing all that up for us.
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iambiguous
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Re: theodicy

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Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Nature of Evil
From the Thomistic Philosophy website

Conclusion...
God does not cause evil.
No, what God brought about here on planet Earth was this:

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages..."

And then the need for mere mortals who believe in Him to convince themselves that this is not an evil thing to do because God did it. And we simply do not yet grasp why He did it. If we did it, sure, that would be evil. But He did it.

So, in the interim it is necessary to concoct "spiritual contraptions" to explain it all away...
Besides implying the reality of objective natures (along with an Author of nature) understanding that evil is a privation or absence of due goodness also shows that evil, as such, is not, and cannot be caused by a good God. An all good God directly causes creatures to exist, and in so doing, causes them to be good as they exist according to the natures he gives them. If evil occurs, it does so by those good things becoming deprived of some goodness or perfection their natures demand.
What could possibly be more obvious, right? And, sure, while "here and now" it boggles my mind how in this world, aside from the "flocks of sheep", there are still any number of intelligent men and women [such as Aquinas] who are able to convince themselves of things like this, I am also obligated to acknowledge that I have no real understanding of how they think about it...in having lived a life that may well be very, very different from theirs.

So, all I can do is to ask them to, to the best of their ability, demonstrate to me how they have managed to convince themselves that what they believe in regard to theodicy is true.
So, evil is not created at all; it is a lack, and the lack results from good things pursuing their own perfection at the expense of goods of other things. Lions, according to the perfection of their nature, cause the privation of life of gazelles. God causes lions to have the nature they have – he causes their goodness. But permits the evil that that nature entails.
Same thing. If you are able to believe things like this, then just stop there. Leave all the rest to a more or less blind faith.

On the other hand, how far can such rationalizations go?

At least this far:
Likewise, God does not cause people to choose sin, but causes the goodness, the existence, of people who are by nature free. They, not God, choose moral evil by failing to act according to the rational demands of their nature, and who freely fail to give others what is due to them according to their nature. God, again, in causing the good of free moral agents does not cause their actions to be deprived of moral goodness; the free agent is completely responsible for that. But God permits the moral evil of some of their free choices.
Of course here I come back to my first three points:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths


But if we just agree that a God, the God, your God does exist, the question then comes around to theodicy.

As for the part where an omniscient God and human autonomy itself are reconciled...leave that to the theologians.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

Jesus and other prophets and seers are supposed to translate the eternal verities into relative terms.
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iambiguous
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Re: theodicy

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Next up: God and hurricane Ian.
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Re: theodicy

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Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
Jason Blum at aeon website
The problem of evil is a classic dilemma in the philosophy of religion. The relative ease with which the problem can be stated belies the depth of the challenge that it presents to traditional monotheism. Roughly, it can be summarised as follows:

If God is omnipotent, then He has the power to create a world without evil.
If God is omniscient, then no moment of evil goes divinely unnoticed.
If God is omnibenevolent, then He has the desire to rid the world of evil.

Therefore, the world should be perfect, or at least free of undeserved suffering. Yet, a cursory glance reveals a world that clearly is not inherently just or free from undeserved suffering.

Hence, the problem of evil: how can a perfect deity allow such injustice and rampant evil in the world that He created?
Again, however, most of the faithful do not encompass it in this manner at all. Instead, they start with the assumption that their God is loving, just and merciful. And, given that, there must be a reason why the world is the way it is. It's just far, far, far beyond the grasp of mere mortals.

Besides, since God is the source of both morality on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side of it, what "for all practical purposes" is the alternative? It's basically God or "shit happens". Not only that but the shit happens in an utterly indifferent universe.
Many solutions to the problem of evil – called ‘theodicies’ – have been proposed. There is the argument of free will, attributing evil not to God but to humanity’s misuse of its own freedom.
Leaving out this part:

...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages...
Others have argued that certain kinds of moral goodness – compassion, for instance – are not possible in a world without evil, and the value of these types of goodness outweighs the evils on which their existence depends.
Does that work for you? Yes? Then that need be as far as it goes until the atheists among us are able to finally demonstrate once and for all that God does not exist.

Any atheists here managed to accomplish that?
There is also what I call ‘the big-picture defence’, claiming that evil only appears as such from our limited perspectives. Were we able to see things from the perspective of God, we would see that, in the grand scheme of things, every apparent evil plays a necessary role in making the world more perfect.
In other words, "for all practical purposes" the Big One. The number one explanation that the faithful can always fall back on because, until the atheists do prove that God does not exist, anything at all can be attributed to Him. And this explanation covers anything at all.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

The God Who is the Supreme Being was and is an invention, a reification, for the priest-king's purpose of social control, persuading ordinary people to behave so as not to steal or go around killing people except when the priest-king tells them to do so.
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Re: theodicy

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Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
Jason Blum at aeon website
The philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s simple solution was to argue in 1710 that this world is necessarily the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz depicts God assessing in His infinite mind all the various possible worlds that He could create. Because He is a loving God, the one He chooses to create is surely the ‘best of all possible worlds’. Leibniz’s argument suggests that it is ultimately meaningless to complain about this evil or that injustice; because this is the best of all possible worlds. We should take comfort in the fact that everything is, in the final analysis, as good as it can possibly be.
Tell me that this is not an entirely "thought up" explanation that allowed Leibniz himself to rationalize that which no actual sane man could attribute to a loving, just and merciful God. How can it not boggle the mind that an otherwise intelligent human being is able to accept this as a reasonable point of view.

Is his God omnipotent? If so, how can the world that we live in even come remotely close to being the "best of all possible worlds". Or is God too just another manifestation of monads?

Though, if this world...

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages..."

...actually is the very best that God can create, complaining about it won't do much good.

Though, let's face it, it's not for nothing that others reacted to it rather scornfully:
Voltaire derided Leibniz’s solution, writing a book to satirise it. In Candide (1759), the eponymous hero and his companions stumble through the world, constantly beset by bad luck and predations. They witness even greater tragedies in the world around them. Their troubles arise from the uncaring forces of the natural world, but also from the naiveté of Candide, who is constantly assured by his mentor, Professor Pangloss, that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds.
Then those who are compelled to argue that it must be the best of all possible worlds because it is the only possible world. Or those who go here...

Peter: What branch of physics were you involved with?
Lloyd: Something much more terrifying than blowing up the planet.
Peter: Really? Is there anything more terrifying than the destruction of the world?
Lloyd: Yeah. The knowledge that it doesn't matter one way or the other. It's all random...resonating aimlessly out of nothing and eventually vanishing forever. And I'm not talking about the world. I'm talking about the universe. All space, all time just a temporary convulsion. And I get paid to prove it.
Peter: Do you feel so sure about that when you look out on a clear night like tonight and see all those millions of stars? That none of it matters?
Lloyd: I think it's as beautiful as you do...and vaguely evocative of some deep truth that always just keeps slipping away. But then my professional perspective overcomes me and a see more penetrating view of it...and I understand it for what it truly is...haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.


Is it any wonder then that naiveté is the path most choose? Starting, of course, with their own rendition of an ultimately "loving, just and merciful" God.
In juxtaposing vivid depictions of myriad cruelties and Professor Pangloss’s blind insistence on the ultimate goodness of the universe, Voltaire demonstrates that there is a poignant reality to the experience of suffering that cannot be rationalised away. The claim that justice naturally inheres in the order of things does not bear scrutiny.
On the other hand, let's face it, some of us experience considerably more or considerably less suffering than others. But the bottom line [mine] always remains: subsuming this suffering in God or in an essentially meaningless and purposeless universe.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 6:41 pm Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
Jason Blum at aeon website
The philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s simple solution was to argue in 1710 that this world is necessarily the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz depicts God assessing in His infinite mind all the various possible worlds that He could create. Because He is a loving God, the one He chooses to create is surely the ‘best of all possible worlds’. Leibniz’s argument suggests that it is ultimately meaningless to complain about this evil or that injustice; because this is the best of all possible worlds. We should take comfort in the fact that everything is, in the final analysis, as good as it can possibly be.
Tell me that this is not an entirely "thought up" explanation that allowed Leibniz himself to rationalize that which no actual sane man could attribute to a loving, just and merciful God. How can it not boggle the mind that an otherwise intelligent human being is able to accept this as a reasonable point of view.

Is his God omnipotent? If so, how can the world that we live in even come remotely close to being the "best of all possible worlds". Or is God too just another manifestation of monads?

Though, if this world...

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages..."

...actually is the very best that God can create, complaining about it won't do much good.

Though, let's face it, it's not for nothing that others reacted to it rather scornfully:
Voltaire derided Leibniz’s solution, writing a book to satirise it. In Candide (1759), the eponymous hero and his companions stumble through the world, constantly beset by bad luck and predations. They witness even greater tragedies in the world around them. Their troubles arise from the uncaring forces of the natural world, but also from the naiveté of Candide, who is constantly assured by his mentor, Professor Pangloss, that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds.
Then those who are compelled to argue that it must be the best of all possible worlds because it is the only possible world. Or those who go here...

Peter: What branch of physics were you involved with?
Lloyd: Something much more terrifying than blowing up the planet.
Peter: Really? Is there anything more terrifying than the destruction of the world?
Lloyd: Yeah. The knowledge that it doesn't matter one way or the other. It's all random...resonating aimlessly out of nothing and eventually vanishing forever. And I'm not talking about the world. I'm talking about the universe. All space, all time just a temporary convulsion. And I get paid to prove it.
Peter: Do you feel so sure about that when you look out on a clear night like tonight and see all those millions of stars? That none of it matters?
Lloyd: I think it's as beautiful as you do...and vaguely evocative of some deep truth that always just keeps slipping away. But then my professional perspective overcomes me and a see more penetrating view of it...and I understand it for what it truly is...haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.


Is it any wonder then that naiveté is the path most choose? Starting, of course, with their own rendition of an ultimately "loving, just and merciful" God.
In juxtaposing vivid depictions of myriad cruelties and Professor Pangloss’s blind insistence on the ultimate goodness of the universe, Voltaire demonstrates that there is a poignant reality to the experience of suffering that cannot be rationalised away. The claim that justice naturally inheres in the order of things does not bear scrutiny.
On the other hand, let's face it, some of us experience considerably more or considerably less suffering than others. But the bottom line [mine] always remains: subsuming this suffering in God or in an essentially meaningless and purposeless universe.
I'd rather not confuse the meaningless and purposeless universe with meaningful and purposeful people. The universe is an idea but meaningful and purposeful people are real in the sense that the subjective can't be denied.
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Re: theodicy

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Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
Jason Blum at aeon website
There is also a profound moral danger to certain types of theodicy.

The essential difficulty of the problem of evil is how to reconcile its apparent existence with a loving, all-powerful deity. One popular method has been to reassert the inherent justice of the world, implying, if not explicitly claiming, the righteousness of the suffering that we witness throughout it. The result is, essentially, a theological form of victim-blaming.
Yes, that's one way to rationalize it. But the point being that the sheer magnitude of human suffering...suffering that is often "beyond our control"...is what makes it necessary to concoct rationalizations of this sort. The psychological impetus being to sustain the comfort and the consolation that faith in God provides many by "explaining away" these terrible "acts of God".

Hurricane Ian? God's way of reminding mere mortals not to live on the shoreline. Or near a volcano. Or where tornados are common. Or along an earthquake fault line. Really, I've heard this sort of thing from folks down through the years.

How far will some take this?
For example, the American evangelical preacher Pat Robertson explained the 2010 earthquake in Haiti – which killed between 220,000-316,000 people, and injured another 300,000 – as the fault of the Haitian people. The people of Haiti had apparently sworn a pact with Satan in exchange for delivering them from French rule, and the earthquake was divine retribution for that bargain (delivered approximately two centuries later). Robertson similarly suggested that both Hurricane Katrina and terrorism were divine punishment for the fact that abortion is still legal in the United States.
That far. Of course, Robertson is one of those TV evangelists. A "media mogul". Worth "between $200 million and $1 billion" according to wiki. Not so much the idiocy of theodicy as the idiocy of religion itself. Or at least where those like him are able to take it. Along with those gullible enough to follow him.
Robertson, of course, is not alone. An Iranian mullah has blamed earthquakes on women dressing immodestly; a New York rabbi blamed the advancement of gay rights in the US for another earthquake in 2011; many Burmese Buddhists blamed a 2008 cyclone that killed approximately 130,000 people on bad karma.
And let's not forget jerry Falwell's admonition that AIDS was God's punishment for the homosexual lifestyle. There's almost nothing the religious fanatics won't argue if it takes the onus away from God. The Creator of the AIDS virus.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Iwannaplato »

Belinda wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:41 am I'd rather not confuse the meaningless and purposeless universe with meaningful and purposeful people. The universe is an idea but meaningful and purposeful people are real in the sense that the subjective can't be denied.
Nicely put, the inability to demonstrate meaning at the level of the universe does not entail that one need view one's like as meaningless or purposeless and ruminate on that patch of grass for the rest of one's life. If one ruminates there, I would suggest that the reason one has for doing that is actually something other than the topic. Johan Hari's
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Connections ... 163286830X
if a much more likely set of possibilities for why one is ruminating there.
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Re: theodicy

Post by Belinda »

Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 8:53 am
Belinda wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:41 am I'd rather not confuse the meaningless and purposeless universe with meaningful and purposeful people. The universe is an idea but meaningful and purposeful people are real in the sense that the subjective can't be denied.
Nicely put, the inability to demonstrate meaning at the level of the universe does not entail that one need view one's like as meaningless or purposeless and ruminate on that patch of grass for the rest of one's life. If one ruminates there, I would suggest that the reason one has for doing that is actually something other than the topic. Johan Hari's
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Connections ... 163286830X
if a much more likely set of possibilities for why one is ruminating there.
I wish i could buy that book for a friend I knew long ago.
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Re: theodicy

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Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
Jason Blum at aeon website
The desire that motivates these [theodicy] interpretations is understandable. Natural disasters and terrorist attacks are either random events in a chaotic world, or they are explicable events within a discernible pattern. In the former case, we inhabit an essentially amoral universe: bad things happen to good people, children die premature deaths, and tragedy strikes without remorse, all without rhyme or reason.
Well, natural disasters and terrorist attacks are hardly the same thing. Natural disasters are random only in the sense that we often can't predict them. But if God is a part of them, He created Earth such that natural disasters unfold only as they must, given the laws of matter that exist only as they must because He created them. On the other hand, for most, God embedded free will in our souls and some, over the course of their lives, become involved in what others construe to be terrorist attacks but what those who participate in them construe to be entirely moral, just and necessary. Randomness here revolves around how we never know when the next explosions -- the next "actions" -- will occur.
In the latter case, we inhabit a much more hospitable universe where there is some sort of inherent order: a place where morality is inscribed into the very fabric of things, assuring us that, if only we play by the rules, evil will be punished, goodness will be rewarded, and justice will reign supreme.
On the other hand, chaos can often revolve around this too because we live in a world where conflicting moral, political and spiritual narrators insist that it is only their own hospitable universe and their own inherent order that count. Their morality ensconced in their "fabric of things". Their rules and their punishments for those who violate them. And punished they shall be or else how can true goodness and true justice reign supreme.

Thus...
It is easy to understand the attraction of that vision. But it has a substantial dark side. Like any theodicy, it cannot simply unmake suffering, and so it instead tries to justify it. The claim that the universe is inherently just then implies that those who suffer deserve it. The existence of a just God and a moral universe is gained at the cost of condemning victims of misfortune as blameworthy. And so, hundreds of thousands of Haitians died because their ancestors made a pact with the devil. Women and homosexuals agitating for equal rights are blamed for deadly natural disasters.
So, sure, let's call this "human history in a nutshell". Then the squabble can revolve around whether it's more or less about the genes than the memes.

A multicultural, politically correct evil we can be "woke" to or we can "cancel".
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