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If so, why? If not, why? If he didn’t create it, didn’t he at least know it would happen since he knows everything? Did he allow it to happen anyway? What reasons do we have to know this? Mention any relevant philosophers. I’m curious to see what people think...

curiousdannii
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Isabella Henderson
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  • God created dark by making night. So when you stub your toe in the dark is it God's fault!? this might help https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/50546/why-does-god-permit-wickedness/50552#50552 – steveowen Jun 28 '21 at 06:00
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    Hi Isabella, this question needs a bit of focus, but the answer is just going to be a discussion about the passive will of God and theodicy and the same things we talk about all the time. If there was something special about the covid pandemic you'd like to ask about (the virus or the reaction; which some people think is worse) please edit that into your question. But a general "why does God permit evil" question can't really be asked here because the answer needs to be narrowed down to a faith tradition or a teaching authority - not general philosophy. – Peter Turner Jun 28 '21 at 13:31
  • Hi, oh ok I understand 😄 thank you! – Isabella Henderson Jun 29 '21 at 09:36

1 Answers1

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The simple answer is YES. In Christianity, God is the author of life. God creates everything that has life. We need to also remember that coronavirus is just another virus. We might as well ask why God created the 1918 Spanish flu virus which also killed millions, or why God created the 14th century Bubonic plague bacteria which killed 30-60 percent of the European population!

At the same time, God also allows the virus life to be studied scientifically. This is due to a very important feature of God's creation: its orderliness and its openness for empirical investigation, which we shouldn't take for granted. In other words, it's stable enough (unlike quantum particles) and visible enough to be observed (unlike a ghost). Without this feature, science cannot operate. So God allows science, and we should be thankful to God that this enables us to have advances in microbiology, medicine, supercomputing (for DNA sequencing), refrigeration (for the vaccine), transportation, scientific institutions (CDC, labs, pharma companies), established sharing of information via journals and Internet, etc. which allow us in the 21st century to minimize casualties compared to previous pandemics.

The hard question is: why God allows those pandemics to happen? This question is made even harder to answer because Christianity holds that:

  • God is omniscient, which includes even knowledge of the future (if you're not an Open Theist), so God should anticipate how this little being could wreak havoc.
  • God is good, so creates the perennial question on why a good God would allow suffering on such a wide scale to happen.

Several clues for the answer can be found in the following established Christian teachings:

  • Death and disease are evil, a fact of the fallen human nature (after the Fall of Adam) as well as fallen nature in general, groaning to be made anew (Rom 8:19-23).
  • God, by undergoing incarnation in Jesus, can sympathize with a human person's weaknesses and suffering
  • God, by virtue of being outside time and space, can be present in every moment of our lives, so we are never alone (see my other answer for in depth explanation)
  • Suffering and death don't diminish our capacity to be saved, sanctified, and unified with God. In fact, it can help us, if we see those from proper perspective.
  • Life on earth, which is a shadow of what is to come, is not the ultimate reality, not the place where we can expect ultimate happiness. Death or disability by Covid is not the end.
  • What God wants from us most of all is that the strong should not oppress the weak (this is part of his notion of justice), which implies that we should not turn a blind eye to our suffering neighbor (cf. the good Samaritan).
  • God is love and God expects human societies to be Christianized, in the sense that each society should embodies the divine love by each member participating in God's love through grace and THEN by sharing this love to others.

Based on the above, we can then hazard some guesses:

  1. God is using Covid to re-kindle love among people of the Earth, to remind us that at the core we are united in ONE human nature, despite of our nationalities, ethnicities, religions, languages, races, and sex. Everyone is susceptible to Covid infection, everyone knows someone who suffers / dies because of Covid, everyone has the opportunity to love.
  2. God wants to remind us that despite our technological advances we can never be God and should never try be God, and thus we should not repeat the mistake that Adam made in the garden of Eden, or at the Tower of Babel. We should be concerned that in the past 100 years there are many philosophical and scientific positions that negate God's rightful & exclusive privilege in setting the moral standard as well as to relate to us as Creator. Thus, the past 100 years have witnessed yet another (and more serious!) rebellion of people against God:
    • The culture of death in which moral crimes such as abortion and euthanasia are viewed as individual rights.
    • "Make your own ethics" (moral relativity) promoted by philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus.
    • Scientific materialism that asserts how every part of human nature is simply a function of the brain's neurochemistry and neural network, expressed in the belief of Cryonics .
    • Denigrating the image of God in us by saying that someday in a singularity emergent consciousness in Artificial Intelligence will render human nature obsolete.
    • Using genomics and IVF to create designer baby which in turn can lead to injustice, such as explored in the movie Gattaca
  3. God wants us to use Covid as opportunities for mercy and for the stronger to help the weaker, such as when developed countries which have more resources have opportunities to assist developing countries in obtaining vaccines. Or at a smaller scale, how the younger can help the often forgotten and vulnerable elderly to be protected from Covid. We have seen many first responder heroes as a result.

Further Reading

  1. Why is God allowing the coronavirus pandemic? by Stuart Briscoe
  2. When Someone Asks Me Why God Allows Covid-19 by Kirk Durston who wrote several journal articles on God and evil
GratefulDisciple
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    "The hard question is: why God allows those pandemics to happen?" is equivalent to "Why does God allow people to light their cigarettes?", which can perhaps be answered by considering "What would the world be like if God blew out your match whenever it got near the end of your cigarette?", and then generalize it to include everything else that is bad for us. – Ray Butterworth Jun 28 '21 at 15:05
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    @RayButterworth Do we really want to put them in the same category? Two key differences, in my opinion. First, the lethality of corona/flu/bubonic virus/bacteria is beyond the ability for one person to handle; one can still easily catches it even after reasonable precaution, and may have life-long consequences. This makes coronavirus closer to death, another thing that people can only postpone. But refraining from cigarette is totally within one's control. Second key difference: many innocent people died because of coronavirus, while only the heavy smokers (who are culpable die). – GratefulDisciple Jun 28 '21 at 19:35
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    God of justice and love is supposed to protect the innocent and the weak, but the pandemics expose both to death. It makes sense to compare pandemics to natural disasters like tornado / volcano (or famine and wars in the OT) which kill the innocents as well as the wicked. So this is an age-old question, the Psalmist has been complaining to God about it. Something is wrong in the creation order, and only God can fix it, and thus the perennial question. On the other hand we don't implicate God for allowing smokers to light their cigarettes, because they have the choice to save their lives. – GratefulDisciple Jun 28 '21 at 19:40
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    Or, we could note that God gave us dietary and hygiene standards that would have prevented this disease ever infecting humans in the first place. Like AIDS and most influenzas, COVID-19 originated in animals that wouldn't normally have contact with people, and which the Bible designates as unfit for human consumption. – Ray Butterworth Jun 28 '21 at 20:43
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    There’s a big difference between causing/creating the pandemic and allowing the pandemic. Just because people are sometimes born with birth defects doesn’t mean that God created or wanted them to be that way, but sin has distanced humans from God. Likewise, God doesn’t create diseases that kill indiscriminately; his goal is to eliminate disease completely along with all sin. Isaiah 33:24 –  Jun 28 '21 at 22:09
  • "only the heavy smokers [...] die" — uh... 34,000 people per year (just in the U.S.!) beg to differ. Also, it's questionable whether viruses are "alive" even in the secular biology sense, which is already more inclusive than the biblical sense. Yes, God created the mechanisms for viruses, but I'm not sure it's fair to say He created COVID-19 specifically. (And I won't get into the debate whether or not it was made by a lab in China...) – Matthew Jun 29 '21 at 01:29
  • @Matthew I stand corrected for the effect on secondhand smoke. But I still think a distinction needs to be made especially when we consider how the cigarette is completely man-made and "dead", so responsibility lies 100% on the person who smokes. But the virus has a way to propagate itself parasitically given the right environment. The asymptomatic human carrier may not realize it, so not as directly morally culpable (those vaccinated may still be able to infect others), which I think that is why people need a better explanation from God why this happens without a direct link from human sin. – GratefulDisciple Jun 29 '21 at 05:24
  • I admit there are commonality: as we learn more about cigarette & pandemic virus, we know better how to deal with them and thus become responsible in creating an environment where both smoking and virus transmission can be minimized. Another similarity is that humans were responsible in creating the environment for smoking and virus to flourish in the first place, such as the smoking culture in past century and possible ecological disturbance that caused the virus to invade human society. Maybe this is yet another reason why God allow pandemics: to confront our failure obeying Gen 1:26 well. – GratefulDisciple Jun 29 '21 at 05:27
  • Thank you so much for all your AMAZING answers💖 I have read them all millions of times because they’re so helpful and eloquently written!! – Isabella Henderson Jun 29 '21 at 09:34
  • GratefulDisciple, your big long answer at the top was soooo perfect, thanks for taking the time to write that! – Isabella Henderson Jun 29 '21 at 09:35
  • @IsabellaHenderson Welcome to C.SE I hope you'll take the time to get to know the site better (please take the tour) and to edit the question per Peter Turner's suggestion to make your question more focused so it can be reopened, allowing other contributors to post their answers as well. In the meantime, I recommend the article Did God make pathogenic viruses? which goes deeper scientifically into why God made viruses in the first place. – GratefulDisciple Jun 29 '21 at 13:57
  • "Denigrating the image of God in us by saying that someday in a singularity emergent consciousness in Artificial Intelligence will render human nature obsolete." Is it denigrating the image of God? God created humans in its image, and God is a creator. Thus, the need - and the ability - to Create was imparted in humans from the get go and are crucial parts of humankind. I find it weird that the very thing that makes us different from the other animals is seen as offensive to God by a lot of folks. – T. Sar Nov 12 '21 at 11:27
  • By extension, the very singularity might just be the goal for humankind as far as we know it - dishing out the bad parts of human nature, bodily needs, and letting existence continue in a realm of the mind. Humans were made to end, after all, at some point in the future. The singularity might just as well be the next step in God's plan as far as we know. – T. Sar Nov 12 '21 at 11:31
  • @T.Sar I understand the logic of your argument, made popular by X-Men movies, Star Trek's Borg who says: "We are the Borg. Existence, as you know it, is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.", and the promise of emergent consciousness in androids like Star Trek's Data or the robots in Westworld (2016-) TV Series. To me there are 2 questions: 1) are we naturals less valuable than the next stage; 2) do our "creation" which achieve singularity possess the same kind of soul natural human has to commune with God? – GratefulDisciple Nov 12 '21 at 14:52
  • If we answer 'Yes' to question #1 it's denigrating ourselves as though we are incomplete as we are. It's true that our current body IS incomplete (corruptible, susceptible to death), waiting for the "upgrade": a glorious body to given by God at resurrection. But our soul as it is is complete. Secondly, if we answer 'Yes' to question #2 then we claim to be God who alone (according to Christianity) can give us the soul through which we receive our human rights, God's love for us, and God's redemption. So it's denigrating in another way: lessening the value of our soul. – GratefulDisciple Nov 12 '21 at 14:59
  • @GratefulDisciple Neither of those is denigrating anything. God is show several times on the Bible as enabling people to do marvelous things. If God enables humans to create the next step in evolution in some manner, is that denigrating God's work? The only way you're devaluing anything is when you assume humans are total, perfect, and absolute - and we know none of those are true. If we create sentient AI, and God decides to give it a soul, is it devaluing the meaning of soul? Nah, not at all. – T. Sar Nov 12 '21 at 16:23
  • @GratefulDisciple All of those arguments put humans, and not God, in the spotlight as something special and with value way beyond anything else. But that's not the case - God is almighty, and if God decides that an AI should emerge, have a soul, and be another sentient being, so be it. God doesn't need to create things directly to be responsible for them - guiding an engineer's hand to make a miracle is just God's work as anything else. – T. Sar Nov 12 '21 at 16:25
  • @GratefulDisciple To put it another way - your argument is one that comes from a place of fear, of being replaced in the eye's of God as the next favorite creation. But it fails completely by one single truth - God can do anything, and if God feels a sentient AI should emerge, then so be it. You can't forbid God of granting inspiration to an engineer so they can make wonderful works. And if God feels we should be replaced, then we should be replaced. (The flood was kinda like that, wasn't it?) – T. Sar Nov 12 '21 at 16:32
  • @GratefulDisciple If anything, if an AI created by us - a machine with no fear or needs - decides to worship God, even without a soul to be saved, it would be even purer and holier than humans. If there is no reward possible for it, and yet it chooses to follow the teachings and be a good, moral being regardless, how can it have less value than a being with a soul that does good because of a promise of reward? – T. Sar Nov 12 '21 at 16:37
  • @T.Sar Just letting you know that I appreciate your thoughtful response, which deserves a full reply in its own Q&A, not in comments. I just comment for now that I disagree with many of your premises, such as 1) assuming it's God's plan to create a new species with human's assistance; 2) assuming machine can one day be "sentient"; 3) assuming God provides a soul to a "sentient" computer (this is speculation), 4) assuming a machine with no fear is more perfect (even Star Trek Data wants an emotion chip), 5) assuming that reward taints love/worship (this is Kant's influence) – GratefulDisciple Nov 16 '21 at 19:38
  • @GratefulDisciple I'm not assuming any of those things. I'm saying those things are things an omnipotent being, like God, is perfectly able to do, and we can't say God can't or won't do any of those - because we're too small, and God is far greater than any of us. We don't, and we can't, understand its plans or see in the future. I'm not saying God will do any of those things with 100% certainty. I'm telling you that you can't be sure that God won't do any of those things with 100% certainty. I'm embracing my limited human nature and asserting that we do not understand God fully. – T. Sar Nov 16 '21 at 19:59
  • @T.Sar I think I understand you. But by merely asserting God can do anything you actually say less than what Christians can say about God, since according to Christianity God reveals his character in a way human can relate person-to-person, beyond the simple proposition that God is omnipotent. In contrast, Buddhism & Agnostics by principle try to say as little about God as possible; they would agree with you. But does it mean their position is more true than the Christian view of God? I think that's why foundationally my position is so different than yours, and here we agree to disagree. – GratefulDisciple Nov 16 '21 at 20:13
  • @GratefulDisciple "his character in a way human can relate person-to-person" And yet, we're discussing on a question on Why did God create the Coronavirus, and why was that so. If Covid from all things can be a way to send a message to humankind, why not AI? Your very own answer shows that the idea of "God reveals his character in a way human can relate person-to-person" isn't that set in stone - not even for you. – T. Sar Nov 16 '21 at 20:18
  • @T.Sar Let's continue this conversation in the C.SE chat room. – GratefulDisciple Nov 16 '21 at 20:21