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Full Idea
Nature often takes the means by which we live. A single hurricane, a flight of locusts, or an inundation, or a trifling chemical change in an edible root, starve a million people.
Clarification
an 'inundation' is a flood
Gist of Idea
Hurricanes, locusts, floods and blight can starve a million people to death
Source
John Stuart Mill (Nature and Utility of Religion [1874], p.116)
Book Ref
'The Existence of God', ed/tr. Hick,John [Macmillan 1964], p.116
A Reaction
[second sentence compressed] The 'edible root' is an obvious reference to the Irish potato famine. Some desertification had human causes, but these are telling examples.
| 2120 | God is responsible for the good things, but we must look elsewhere for the cause of the bad things [Plato] |
| 21404 | There is a rationale in terrible disasters; they are useful to the whole, and make good possible [Chrysippus] |
| 1893 | If God foresaw evil he would presumably prevent it, and if he only foresees some things, why those things? [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 2281 | If we ask whether God's works are perfect, we must not take a narrow viewpoint, but look at the universe as a whole [Descartes] |
| 3955 | If sin is not just physical, we don't consider God the origin of sin because he causes physical events [Berkeley] |
| 21329 | Nature dispenses cruelty with no concern for either mercy or justice [Mill] |
| 21328 | Killing is a human crime, but nature kills everyone, and often with great tortures [Mill] |
| 21330 | Nature makes childbirth a miserable experience, often leading to the death of the mother [Mill] |
| 21331 | Hurricanes, locusts, floods and blight can starve a million people to death [Mill] |
| 1475 | It is logically possible that natural evil like earthquakes is caused by Satan [Plantinga, by PG] |