Religion says that earthquakes and plagues and natural evils like that are not moral evils. God can be as loving and good for letting them happen as he can be for stopping them. The wise person sees that natural evil is a serious question, and attempts by religionists to make it irrelevant are unacceptable. If patients die in a doctor's care, that calls for investigation, and it is evil to try to make the deaths irrelevant.
Christian Assertion: Alvin Plantinga says that natural evil was allowed to happen by God because it was the punishment for Adam and Eve's sin. When the Bible says God made all things and it was very good until Adam and Eve sinned, it means it was more than morally good but not less than morally good. Genesis allegedly teaches that humans wanted to be independent of God and thus better than God, which was why they sinned. Let us remember that no matter how many terrible things happen naturally, that God made it all good until we ruined it by sin. When we went wrong, we took nature with us.
Reply: So natural evil is not natural evil at all. Nobody wants a view where babies getting sick and dying is a punishment for sin—the sin of others. The Christian who denies that all suffering is punishment may hold that it is, effectively, or as good as.
It is selfish if we prefer being caught up in a punishment that really belongs to Adam and Eve to being punished ourselves. We feel disassociated from evil. You want Adam and Eve to be punished to distract you from what you deserve.
Genesis speaks of God creating that evil in response to what Adam and Eve did, not just allowing it. Genesis never says it realises that Adam and Eve wanted to be free from God, but it does say they thought he wanted to keep them stupid. That was not a rebellion, but a mistake. The notion of nature going wrong just because we sinned makes sense only if sin has some magical power to damage creation and to lead us to deeper corruption. Sin is a bad thing that creates more bad things. God is doing more than allowing. He has to be giving sin the power to create and to grow. Or he is creating the evil and blaming sin for it. Saying it is allowing, when it is not, is evil.
Some think that it may be impossible for God to create a perfect world, so the universe would still be exceptionally and remarkably good even if there were imperfections. Or perhaps it is more likely that imperfections would develop. So Adam and Eve could have been created innocent and sin-free, but that does not mean they were created perfect. There is no hint of that in Genesis. A competent God would not have let nature turn into such an absolute disaster. Imperfection is no excuse for disasters arising.
God, if he created all things good, used the sin of eating the fruit as an excuse to create it bad. The bad things that the Bible speaks about, such as illness, death, and dangerous animals, were not—and could not—be created by sin, for it is clear only God creates. Sin is not a being, so it cannot really create or design nature in a bad way. Only a God can do that.
Trying to blame sin for it all is unfair. It shows believers spite people, in the sense that they would be unfair to them in that matter, to salvage God's reputation.
Christian Assertion: Natural evils are intended to help us develop better as children of God and as good people.
Reply: What about babies and children that die young? The Church lumps them together with everybody else. But they take priority, for their situation is not the same as for an adult. They are undoubtedly innocent and are robbed of the start they deserve in life. Concentrate on the natural evil that afflicts them instead of trying to mask the evil as being no better than what happens to others.
Christian Assertion: Believers say that "it is not justified natural evil that is the problem for belief in God but unjustified natural evil. So you cannot try to use it to disprove God."
Reply: Read between the lines. They admit they don't care if, say, a city of bandits is wiped out by a meteorite.
What looks like a justified evil might actually be justified or partly justified. And what if an evil looks unjustified but partly or fully is? So, while you see a city of innocents being destroyed by natural disaster, why can't you just say, "Maybe they did deserve it!"?
The Christian attitude to innocent suffering is, "It is probably undeserved, but then again there is a chance it might be." Hear that, loud and clear. Again, it proves that you only make yourself evil by trying to defend the man-made idea of God. You are doing it for man, not God.
Christian Assertion: Evil is just good that is in the wrong place and time. Sin and natural evil is just good that is not good enough. Sin and evil do not really exist—they are just a lack of good.
Reply: The suggestion that evil is just a falling short of good and not a power or force is used to deny that God creates evil. This is an attempt to make the goodness of God fit with the existence of evil. It seeks to miss the point. The point is not what evil is. The point is that evil is.
To be more interested in what evil is than that it is shows you have flaws in your empathy for suffering people. You are turning it into a theory that you can fit with God instead of seeing it for the totally vile horror it is.
Astonishing, truly astonishing, that anybody could accept the suggestion that evil is just misplaced good as an excuse for divine evil! It is very hurtful to tell people that their suffering is nothing but the absence of health. It is very hurtful to say to earthquake victims, "What happened in the earthquake was good, for evil is just lesser good. The earthquake was sent by God, and he didn't do wrong, for the earthquake is simply the absence of stable ground." In fact, as we are bound to respect God if he exists, it would be a sin to see evil as terrible instead of seeing it as just good that was in the wrong place and time. We are to see good as the mirror in which we see God, and it honours him who makes it.
Christian Assertion: Our ideas about natural evil help a bit towards understanding evil and suffering, but we must never think that God lets evil happen for one reason. He has many different reasons, and no reason can cover every case.
Reply: Where is the evidence that there is more than one reason? They should say there may be one reason or many. Leave the question open.
There is no excuse for not being told the biggest or main reason!
Please notice that each refutation of Christian excuses for believing in the love of God, despite or because of (take your pick!) natural evil, is sufficient to show that natural evil disproves God. When a Christian is refuted, she moves on to another argument. Quantity, not quality, is the Christian method, and it is useful for fooling the target audience—the average believer who thinks the religion seems true or could be true when they are scared off by the quantity and complexity.
FINALLY — Attempts to make out that natural evil has nothing to do with suggesting there is no God are too extreme. It is simple—whatever harms people is a serious matter. We should not care if it is an accident or what. That does not matter. It is about the hurt.
Natural evil needs to be personified, as it were, and hated as personal evil. We should feel that way about it, and nature has allowed and made us feel that way. A mature person, however good, accepts and rewards those who are hostile to him or her for letting evil happen to others—even if it is justified. People have a right to their opinion and doubts about the justification, simply because the matter is so serious, as somebody was really hurt.