If God Exists, Why Natural Evil?

— Kuhn, Closer to Truth,
Helsingor, Denmark, 2011

If God exists, why natural evil? Holmes Rolston interviewed by Robert Kuhn on Closer to Truth. Filmed at Helsingor, Denmark, 2011.
Online at: https://hdl.handle.net/10217/211041

If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the natural world? Because creativity is impossible without challenge that includes forms of suffering. You cannot achieve the rich genesis in evolutionary natural history without such challenge. Eyes, ears, teeth, legs, muscles evolve to search for food, to seek prey and to avoid predators. The struggle for adapted fit is struggling through to something higher. Biblical faith similarly finds creative suffering. The name Israel means "he who struggles with God," and God struggles to redeem Israel. Jesus lives in creative struggle to become God incarnate, and dies to redeem from sin. The creation is cruciform in that it necessarily requires life and death struggle. Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. The way of nature is the way of the cross.