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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.
| 21335 | Belief that an afterlife is required for justice is an admission that this life is very unjust [Mill] |
| 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] |
| 21332 | We don't get a love of 'order' from nature - which is thoroughly chaotic [Mill] |
| 21333 | Evil comes from good just as often as good comes from evil [Mill] |
| 21334 | No necessity ties an omnipotent Creator, so he evidently wills human misery [Mill] |