Does God Cause Natural Disasters?

[Bikeemikey]

Being religious does not prevent them from being historical. Moses did divide the Red Sea, talk with God at Sinai, use a miraculous rod etc. The books of Joshua, Judges, Kings and Chronicles are for the most part historical, written from a faith perspective. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel etc. are prophetic for the most part, but mingled with true history as well. Daniel is as much history as prophecy. There is no reason to deny or downplay the historical because of the prophetic or the doctrinal, or the wisdom or the poetic.

Parables are not histories, nobody says they are. But the stories about his life and miracles, teachings, preachings, trial, death, and resurrection are true histories. The book of Acts is true history combined with stories of miracles, teachings and preachings. The epistles of Paul describe events that really happened, as well as contain teachings, preachings, and exhortations.

I don't think anyone is suggesting scripture can not have historical value, I would not think that claim to be reasonable. There is however a major difference between the historical value of bible and the writings of Josephus. One is primarily historical and one is primary religious.

As such, the reader of religious text needs much more context and understanding to seperate the historical from the religious... A context the text specifically refuses to provide.

[harfad]

As such, the reader of religious text needs much more context and understanding to seperate the historical from the religious... A context the text specifically refuses to provide.

Not true. The historical parts of the Bible are clearly enough historical to be known, understood, and declared as such, even by secular and non-religious scholars.

[volgadon]

Especially if it has been rewritten as much of the Old Testament has been from a far later age with the later age's thinking put back into the ancient times as if that were the original. Much like Joseph Smith doing so with his revelations then claiming what we Mormons today think is what all the ancients from Adam on thought in Ancient Israel. There is simply precious little to confirm that, and quite a bit to disconfirm that interpretation. But for we Mormons the magic word to make us simply fall into line without thinking about it at all is simply use the magic word "revelation" and we immediately believe. Our naivete is amazing to me these days.

Before dismissing everyone as naive, I recommend a closer, more sensitive reading of the revelations. The BoA has an ancient voice, and weighs in on many of the questions being asked in late antiquity. Even the JST is a lot more complicated than what you are indicating.

[Bikeemikey]

Not true. The historical parts of the Bible are clearly enough historical to be known, understood, and declared as such, even by secular and non-religious scholars.

We probably aren't going to agree on this issue.

[Kerry A. Shirts]

Not true. The historical parts of the Bible are clearly enough historical to be known, understood, and declared as such, even by secular and non-religious scholars.

That depends on entirely who you read and understand. This certainly can be argued...

[Kerry A. Shirts]

Before dismissing everyone as naive, I recommend a closer, more sensitive reading of the revelations. The BoA has an ancient voice, and weighs in on many of the questions being asked in late antiquity. Even the JST is a lot more complicated than what you are indicating.

O.K., I will try.......

[volgadon]

That depends on entirely who you read and understand. This certainly can be argued...

There is certainly a broad spectrum of scholarly views on the Bible.

[Kerry A. Shirts]

I never said the nature of God changes, or that truth from God changes. I said our understanding of the "original revelation" changes, just as our understanding of life, of ourselves, and of everything else changes and evolves as time goes by. It's part of being a human being, and in some way it's the very reason that we even exist. It's called "learning."

Then lets quit pretending and believing the church when it teaches that the revelations are truth. As Harrell has so powerfully pointed out (in his book "This is my Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology) with every single item within Mormonism and the Gospel of the Plan of Salvation, his own understanding evolved, changed, and he continually re-contexted the Bible in order to fit HIS new understanding. If the original revelation in the Bible is NOT the truth, then why bother with it at all? HOW can we be held to believe it is scripture, when even Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders change it to suit their own understandings?! DID God actually reveal the truth anciently or not? Is truth relative? It obviously is not absolute anymore. THe more I read the worse this issue gets for me. Of what value is God's revelations at all if in the course of one person's lifetime (Joseph's for instance, or any of the other prophets, or even ourselves) they are changed, re-contexted to mean something totally foreign to the original context, etc.? That ***IS*** a serious question of mine these days.

[TAO]

HOW can we be held to believe it is scripture, when even Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders change it to suit their own understandings?

Simply. We trust them, and we trust the Spirit which tells us that their interpretations are right.

DID God actually reveal the truth anciently or not?

Did the people of old understand what God said perfectly or not? Did God have all things written down in the Bible?

Is truth relative?

I don't know. But our idea about what truth is, IS relative. I believe God's views are the truth, thus, I will trust him.

You should really check out this other thread, it goes alot into this difficult issue about what truth is:

Edited November 7, 2012 by TAO

[Robert F. Smith]

Then lets quit pretending and believing the church when it teaches that the revelations are truth. As Harrell has so powerfully pointed out (in his book "This is my Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology) with every single item within Mormonism and the Gospel of the Plan of Salvation, his own understanding evolved, changed, and he continually re-contexted the Bible in order to fit HIS new understanding. If the original revelation in the Bible is NOT the truth, then why bother with it at all? HOW can we be held to believe it is scripture, when even Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders change it to suit their own understandings?! DID God actually reveal the truth anciently or not? Is truth relative? It obviously is not absolute anymore. THe more I read the worse this issue gets for me. Of what value is God's revelations at all if in the course of one person's lifetime (Joseph's for instance, or any of the other prophets, or even ourselves) they are changed, re-contexted to mean something totally foreign to the original context, etc.? That ***IS*** a serious question of mine these days.

You are free to pretend that Joseph did not regularly teach that our acquisition of knowledge of the Gospel is progressive and comes in increments -- and nearly always in response to a crisis or question (which is precisely how such progressive Gospel knowledge came within the Bible). You can pretend that Jesus did not teach his disciples in just such a progressive fashion. You can pretend that Paul never advised milk before meat, and that it is all foolishness to you. You can pretend that all knowledge is contained in the first chapter of Genesis (or maybe the first book of the Bible), and that everything else constitutes change and recontextualization "to mean something entirely foreign to the original context, etc."

What is interesting is how you so frequently make off-the-wall statements which you are unable to support with coherent and meaningful research. You don't bother to be specific. Why? Probably because you haven't bothered to take the time to learn the basics before pontificating. Dealing with demonstrating your off-the-wall claims in scholarly fashion is something that clearly does not interest you. You are more interested in quick guerrilla raids and angry attacks than in a rational exchange of views. Real discussion does not interest you. Why? Can that be diagnostic of a deeper problem?

[altersteve]

Then lets quit pretending and believing the church when it teaches that the revelations are truth. As Harrell has so powerfully pointed out (in his book "This is my Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology) with every single item within Mormonism and the Gospel of the Plan of Salvation, his own understanding evolved, changed, and he continually re-contexted the Bible in order to fit HIS new understanding. If the original revelation in the Bible is NOT the truth, then why bother with it at all? HOW can we be held to believe it is scripture, when even Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders change it to suit their own understandings?! DID God actually reveal the truth anciently or not? Is truth relative? It obviously is not absolute anymore. THe more I read the worse this issue gets for me. Of what value is God's revelations at all if in the course of one person's lifetime (Joseph's for instance, or any of the other prophets, or even ourselves) they are changed, re-contexted to mean something totally foreign to the original context, etc.? That ***IS*** a serious question of mine these days.

Sorry, but I'm not going to argue with you. I've made my point.

[Kevin Christensen]

Then lets quit pretending and believing the church when it teaches that the revelations are truth.

Truth being "knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come." Knowing Truth requires omniscience, which phrase is a more than a wee bit of a tautology. Comprehension, when confronted with truth may be a very different thing. "Face the truth!" you say, in effect.

"Okay," I reply. "I'm facing it. Now what? What am I looking at?"

Alma 32 talks about performing experiments, on even a portion of the word, of seeing real effects, seeing growth, feeling an increase in understanding, comprehension, an expansion of the mind. "Is this not real?" Jacob had said truth is a knowledge of things as they are and as they were. Is your knowledge perfect? Alma says, and answers "Nay." It's just the start of a process. The thing is not about immediate ends, but about getting involved in a system tuning into feedback, and following the positive indicators to increased understanding.

I have often told the story of going as a small child to the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur quarry, and there seeing bones in the rocks. Everything about the nature and behavior of the creatures has changed in the intervening years, but what I knew as a child remains. The bones are real. That my understanding is imperfect does not change that. Nor do debates about warm blood or cold blooded, nor does the mistake in creating a creature called the Brontosaurus by putting the wrong head on an Apatasaurus change what a small child knew. The bones are real regardless.

When the archeologists showed the small child the bones in the rocks, where they showing me the truth or not? They were showing me something real, regardless of whether their, or my, understanding was complete. They were showing me something real, something to be accounted for by whatever explanation.

But how can anyone have faith without ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. upheld by unchanging, skeptical human authority?

Ponder that, while waiting for the arrival of the Irony police.

And remember Nibley talking about A.N. Whitehead's interview in late life, recalling how Whithead had gone to Cambridge and studied Math, Science, biology, physics, geology, cosmology, done well, and how he had seen radical changes in all of them in his lifetime. Not just incremental additions to the edifice of truth. but fundamental principles having been rejected and replaced.

So Whitehead comes up with Process Theology, which Joseph Smith already had.

The kind of unchanging consensus view of doctrine or interpretation that you seem to want from the LDS culture these days isn't available anywhere. There are people who want to settle for the Consensus of the Current Moment, which means that a person at least has the Authority of the Moment on one's side. That's really just a children of a different age telling me they know all about the bones in the rocks.

As Harrell has so powerfully pointed out (in his book "This is my Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology) with every single item within Mormonism and the Gospel of the Plan of Salvation, his own understanding evolved, changed, and he continually re-contexted the Bible in order to fit HIS new understanding.

But that sort of thing is basic to any field of study, any human experience. It is exactly what Alma 32 suggests. Growth, change, sprouting, changing shape, putting down roots and up branches that go off in unanticipated directions. Not a seed that grows like a crystal, accumulating size perhaps, but always retaining the same shape, and never meaning anything else.

Crisis, in such a situation, is a matter of personal reaction to the situation. "That's not what I expected!" Well, given that we start ignorant, why not? Why shouldn't more experiments, more information, more nurturing, more study, lead to changed understanding? The Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth maps it out rather nicely.

If the original revelation in the Bible is NOT the truth, then why bother with it at all?

Truth being "knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come", and truth refering to "what is real." The Bible is a good place to start the process of God wrestling. "Ye must be born again," Jesus says. "What," replies Nicodemas, "Enter again into mother's womb?"

Sigh.

To borrow a phrase from Dilbert, shifting paradigms requires the use of a clutch. You have to disengage a bit, let go, move things around, and let them re-engage in a different context.

HOW can we be held to believe it is scripture, when even Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders change it to suit their own understandings?!

Given the inescapable reality that in this regard, Joseph Smith and Mormon leaders are like all other leaders and individuals on every topic, the HOW here, should not be used as a rhetorical question, a stumbling block placed to close off any possibility of answer, but as a stepping stone that functions as a sincere, heart-felt question that takes the questioner to a different location.

I find "cause to believe" in the testability of the LDS situation, in the results of experiments I have performed, in the expansion of my mind and understanding, in the enlargement of my soul, in the aesthetic beauty and simplicity I see, and in the future promise that I find here. None of these notions in Alma 32, shared by Thomas Kuhn, I notice, and thereby undergirding all process in science, while sufficient for "cause to believe," serve to provide absolute static knowing, supported by skeptical surrender on every point.

DID God actually reveal the truth anciently or not? Is truth relative? It obviously is not absolute anymore.

2 Nephi 25:1-5. We can't know the things of the Jews, save it be we are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews.

The Parable of the Sower. The same seeds [words] can give vastly different yields depending on the soil in which they are planted, and the care and nurture given them. Given that expectation that context can make a hundred fold difference, should I reject or embrace relativity?

Do you have a viable alternative, or just exasperation with reality for not being tidier?

THe more I read the worse this issue gets for me. Of what value is God's revelations at all if in the course of one person's lifetime (Joseph's for instance, or any of the other prophets, or even ourselves) they are changed, re-contexted to mean something totally foreign to the original context, etc.? That ***IS*** a serious question of mine these days.

Of what value is the Parable of the Good Samaritan if I never get past the surface meaning? Suppose it just encourages me to be kind, and not be prejudiced, to help people in trouble, and suppose I miss the deeper Temple Symbolism? What good is that?

Of the parable of the Sower, Jesus says, "Know ye not this parable? How then shall ye know all parables."

Have you read Ian Barbour's Myths: Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study of Science and Religion yet?

FWIW, I'm really trying to help, you know.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

Edited November 8, 2012 by Kevin Christensen

[mfbukowski]

Do you think that people see what they want to see. If you are religious and are expecting natural disasters to warn mankind of the second coming, then you attribute natural disasters to the warning voice of God. If you don't think natural disasters are a warning to the wicked, then you view the increase natural disasters to global warming and not from God's intervention. Any thoughts

And some actually think mankind has caused all this when actually the flying spaghetti monster is just heating up his pasta bowl.

But which is "actually" right?? How could we know which is right?

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

We are all aware of the stories in the Bible and Book of Mormon where God destroyed the wicked by earthquakes, fire, famine, floods etc. Do you think that God really did use natural disasters to destroy the wicked or do you think it was just how people of that time viewed natural disasters? Do you believe God still uses natural disasters to warn people or destroy the wicked. Are there any natural disasters in the past 200 years that you think were caused by God? If not, then do you believe that people are less wicked today then they were in ancient times? If God does use natural disasters in modern times, do you think His message is lost on the wicked?

I have given this more thought...I think God "allows" them to happen.

[Bikeemikey]

I have given this more thought...I think God "allows" them to happen.

What reason would god have to stop them?

God is obviously upset with suffering and obviously has no intention in stopping it.

Disasters occur... What does that have to do with god.

Maybe it was impossible to create the world he needed with out disasters being part of it - while where at it could he redesign humans so we don't have to poop and can still eat as much as we want with out getting fat.

The earth is a highly complex symbiosis of millions of variables. Maybe god can't create a world where disasters don't exist, just as we can't live in a universe where we don't have agency.

Edited November 7, 2012 by Bikeemikey

[california boy]

I have given this more thought...I think God "allows" them to happen.

Do you believe natural disasters in modern times is a voice of warning from God. Or are natural disasters just something that God allows to happen.

[CV75]

Do you believe natural disasters in modern times is a voice of warning from God. Or are natural disasters just something that God allows to happen.

I think both.

In relation to natural disasters in modern times as a voice of warning from God, the prophecies that they would occur at the Second Coming are definitely warnings. The prophecies and observations that they are on the increase in the latter-days are also definitely warnings. The actual number of naturally-occurring disasters in the earth may or may have not changed (I have reasons to belive they have, as expressed in an earier post), but many things in our relationship with them have changed regardless, which should give just about anyone just about anywhere certain pause:

We are more aware of the number, kind, and the numbers of people affected, and how they are affected, and we are able to see real-time transmission of what is happening anywhere in the world. The infrastructure we depend on is more vulnerable to natural disasters and difficult to replace. We are not resilient and cannot recover as quickly as people of prior generations who lived more simply and prepared better. I think the Lord would be pleased if we were humbled as a result of our increased awareness and dependency, and any resultant “chastening.” Also to whom much is given, much is expected, so I think the Lord would be pleased if we appreciate and share what we have with those that are suffering.

[mfbukowski]

I never said the nature of God changes, or that truth from God changes. I said our understanding of the "original revelation" changes, just as our understanding of life, of ourselves, and of everything else changes and evolves as time goes by. It's part of being a human being, and in some way it's the very reason that we even exist. It's called "learning."

And in fact of course science also changes- our understanding of the world around us is changing constantly.

[brainburn]

The definitions offered for science in this thread are misleading.

Science is the attempt to interpret reality by constructing models and correcting those models for error (based on observation and internal consistency). That's pretty much it. It produces interpretations, not "facts". We popularly understand them as "facts" only by arbitrarily determining they're supported by enough evidence. We often pretend it bridges the gap between interpretations and facts, but only as long as we are convinced our testing and correcting are at an optimal enough level. It's limited but sometimes it's our best answer and sometimes it's our only answer.

Our best scientific answer is to interpret disasters as the result of certain observed forces and laws. But we should remember: science, in fact, has no explanation for those laws or forces. So then it doesn't follow from science that the root cause of natural disasters is not God. In a big picture sense, we just don't know.

[brainburn]

In a big picture sense, we just don't know.

I mean in a big picture sense, science just doesn't know. You could argue that God confirmed himself as the source of disasters by (direct or indirect) revelation, but that argument is just as good as any other claim to revelation, in my view. Technically, you could also argue that God has disconfirmed himself as the source of disaster if you appeal to revelations consistent with this idea rather than revelations which are not.

[TAO]

Good post brainburn!

[harfad]

Technically, you could also argue that God has disconfirmed himself as the source of disaster if you appeal to revelations consistent with this idea rather than revelations which are not.

I know of no revelations consistent with that idea.

[brainburn]

Thanks TAO!

And harfad, I don't mean just revelations from the lds paradigm. You can't imagine a single disconfirming revelation, direct or indirect, from any paradigm, including LDSism?

[harfad]

And harfad, I don't mean just revelations from the lds paradigm. You can't imagine a single disconfirming revelation, direct or indirect, from any paradigm, including LDSism?

No, unless by "revelation" you and I mean two different things.

[thesometimesaint]

The definitions offered for science in this thread are misleading.

Science is the attempt to interpret reality by constructing models and correcting those models for error (based on observation and internal consistency). That's pretty much it. It produces interpretations, not "facts". We popularly understand them as "facts" only by arbitrarily determining they're supported by enough evidence. We often pretend it bridges the gap between interpretations and facts, but only as long as we are convinced our testing and correcting are at an optimal enough level. It's limited but sometimes it's our best answer and sometimes it's our only answer.

Our best scientific answer is to interpret disasters as the result of certain observed forces and laws. But we should remember: science, in fact, has no explanation for those laws or forces. So then it doesn't follow from science that the root cause of natural disasters is not God. In a big picture sense, we just don't know.

Partially true. Facts are facts, but our interpretation of those facts make communication, explanation and understanding possible.

Otherwise we're stuck with "Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that. You can't explain why the tide goes in.”

Bill O'Reilly