Re: Why?

[Evolvinghuman]

I don't know if this is helpful but I wrote this as a piece on the problem of theodicy some time back. The diseases and afflictions  have changed over the centuries. As our understanding of the disease process improves and newer treatments are initiated, we get better results. What appeared to be a God-sent punishment of the Plague centuries ago is seen as an epidemic nowadays. Many of you probably have read a popular children's book The Velveteen Rabbit. In this book much is said about scarlet fever, which claimed many lives in decades past due to infection caused, by Strep. Even though Strep is still around, a simple antibiotic usually takes care of it nowadays. As our understanding of the disease improves, is it possible that there would be no calamity, no pain, nor suffering? No, the mode of these and their degrees change but these negative things exist as a constituent of the processes of the world of creation. It is engrained in the laws governing the biosphere. It is inherent in the order of the universe. The same environmental stimulus (UV rays) that allows plants to produce energy and survive may produce damage to the nuclear material of a cell and cause cancer. The death of a person by an infection is in fact superior growth of a different life form, namely bacteria. Since diseases can be explained most of the times by physical/biological/biochemical phenomena, it would stand to reason that they occur as part of nature.

Fariborz Davoodi, MD ----------
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