cofty,
Though natural evil is not the subject, since you brought it, I will make my comments:
We all know that darkness glorifies the light. Without darkness, light makes no sense. Good has no meaning unless its opposite evil exists. Saying there is no God because there is suffering is like saying there is no Government in a country because there is suffering in prisons. Among numerous welfare activities Government undertakes such as parks, schools, hospitals, highways, bridges, various utility services ….etc. prison is just one built to protect the majority from the few anti-socials. Similarly, God too has done on earth many fine-tuning acts which make life and its enjoyment possible, all of which work by certain laws. Look at the wonderful mechanism called seeds. Each of all the species on earth (about 8.7 million) reproduces only its own kind, which shows how perfectly laws are working. Suffering and well-being are like two sides of a coin because well-being results when laws are observed and suffering results when laws are violated, thus both are the works of same laws. For example, in skillful cooking, delicious dishes are produced which means some laws are perfectly observed. In careless cooking, what you cook is burned, or food item being turned black into carbon, which again means some laws are at work. [Living things contain the element carbon; hence, anything that was once alive that you cook and subsequently burn, will turn black and the charred material will definitely contain the element carbon]. In reality, every happening is neutral as everything is a flow of events with one thing leading to the other under the influence of many factors and forces. “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” (Robert Green Ingersoll, American lawyer)
Pointing to things such as carnivorous animals one can say natural evil exist. If humans can take care of certain animals such as dogs, cats … it shows we can also feed carnivorous animals too (if their hunger is taken care of, they won’t prey on other species). This shows somewhere in the time, humans got diverted onto self-centric activities leaving many important works behind uncared for. If we say, natural evil exists, hence there is no God, then the same reason would equally apply to its opposite—natural good exists hence God exists. Life and its support systems are no easy task to come by themselves. There are puzzles such as life coming from non-life, abiogenesis….etc. We can give explanations to them. Yet if such explanations were correct, it could be something that happens on as many as 10–25% of the possible worlds, which means up to 20 billion planets in our galaxy could have life on them (Including — past or present — others in our own Solar System, like Mars, Europa, Titan) with no lab-and-scientists facilities being available there. Yet we have all those facilities—lab, scientists, hard-core atheists with intense desire to see life coming from non-life. Still, thus far, we’ve been unable to create life from non-life in the lab.
