There is a lot of grief in the universe. Stars explode. The radiation from the explosion incinerates planets. Even on a relatively stable planet, like the Earth, disturbances from the sun adversely affect the planet. Winds lash the surface of the planet; storms upset almost everything. Life forms, as marvelous as they are, are still subject to disease, injury, attack from other life forms. Actually, many life forms are devoured by other life forms. There is a lot of grief that we and all other life forms have to deal with in this world. Does it have to be that way? Did the good God have no other choice but to create the world this way?
I think he had a choice. Consider our own bodies, actually any animal’s body. Each body is a vastly complicated and co-ordinated fortress, like a huge chemical factory. We eat something and our digestive system reduces it to its most elementary compounds like simple sugars, amino acids, etc. The compounds pass through the intestinal walls into the blood stream where they are re-polymerized into proteins, carbohydrates, fats common to our own bodies. They become fuel to power our muscles; the waste products eliminated through our kidneys.
An endless stream of nutrients are ingested into the body, digested into basic components, metabolized into our own bodies to power our own muscles or are stored for future use. Undigested material is eliminated to make room for more ingested material. All of this regulated by an intricate and sophisticated balance of chemicals to keep our bodies healthy and functioning. Also, as we are finding out, almost every illness can be corrected by specific chemicals that already occur in nature. It’s amazing! And our bodies regulate this automatically. Our bodies do not need any conscious guidance from us to perform these intricate tasks and to perform them perfectly. This marvelously co-ordinated chemical factory contained in our bodies: it runs automatically. It doesn’t need our guidance. If God has done this even with animals, I think, God could have fashioned a grief free universe.
The same is true for bodily motions. To stand erect, for example, requires coordinated flexing and un-flexing of many muscles in both legs and some means of detecting balance so as to remain erect (the inner ear). All of this delicate sensing of position and correction of stance is done automatically, without our conscious direction, and is done perfectly. How efficiently our bodies are doing this could pass unnoticed until one starts to consider the launching of a rocket. Scientists had to learn very quickly that they had to provide a means to detect if the rocket is beginning to tilt, and they had to provide a series of small jets to correct any detected tilt. And the corrections had to be done so quickly, they needed computers to keep up with the frequent detections of tilt and necessary corrections so that the rocket always stayed on course.
Much more intricate detections and corrections are done by almost all animals automatically as they move effortlessly on the Earth, sure footed and seldom losing balance. When one is young, these corrections are done so smoothly and effortlessly that one pays no attention to it. But when one gets old and the inner ear is slow to detect tilt and the muscles are so weak and flabby that they cannot correct for tilt fast enough, one soon finds that he is having a hard time maintaining his balance. Contrast this to a younger person dancing or doing gymnastics and you can see the difference.
If God can do all of this, I think he could have just as easily created bodies that are perfect, having perfect defenses against disease and illness, and he could have adapted animals so that they eat plants rather than other animals. Actually, I think he is capable of doing anything he wants to do. After all, he is God.
Maurice A. Williams
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