God kills through random chance.

I think Krumple is exploring the idea of, why thank god. Should the faithful ever thank god?

We thank god for that which has value and meaning in the universe, life, mind, experience, opportunity, possiblity and creativity. For me that is enough, others seem to want immortality or some form of divine protection. Some always want more, others are thankful for what they have been given. If you do not believe in god or think the universe is blind indifference then I quess you have no one and nothing to thank.
Chrisitans "Praise god from whom all blessings flow"
Plato: To god we attribute that which is good.

I think the point being made is, why thank him? Do you do the opposite for the misfortunes and the horrors that nature imposes on us. Choosing just the good bits is a bit blinkered. How many times do we hear , thanks be to god, while their neighbour cries for their loss.

Personally I think "god" could care less about being thanked. You count your blessings (assuming you think you have any) and look upon life as a glass half full for which you are thankful. You pray in order to align yourself and learn to accept "the natural order of things" not as a plea for divine intervention. " god give me the strenght". I think for the "theist" the horrors of the world are for one reason or another unavoidable but overall life and creation are still on the whole "good" and due to something more than blind purposeless indifference.
A sort of **** eyed optimism of sorts.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport.

King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32-37.(Shakespeare)

Nature kills, sometimes it is random, often it is not. God and nature are not necessarily the same concept. The preservation of individual lives or even of particular species does not seem to be the purpose of nature (assuming you think there might be a purpose at all).

The concept of God, and the concept of Nature, are certainly not the same concepts. But I thought that the issue was whether God and Nature were one and the same thing, as Spinoza argued that they were. After all, different concepts can have the very same thing as their referent. A celebrated case is that of the Evening Star and the Morning Star. Those two concepts are different. But it turned out that they both referred to the planet, Venus. And, as you know, some people claim that the concept of Allah, and the concept of Jehovah, both refer to the same being, namely, God.

Well I quess what caught my attention was the application of "random chance" to natural events. Even though such events may not be predictable by us they are neither entirely random not the result of pure chance. The notion is more one of unpredictable and purposeless death as seen from a human perscpective. Such events still presumably follow the laws of nature. Even if one equates god to nature (as is arguably attributed to Spinoza) such events still would not be random chance.

Spinoza did, most certainly, indentify God with Nature ("Deus sive Natura").

According to quantum physicists (who should know) quantum event are indeterministic (not merely unpredictable).

Not to quibble, but then that is what philosophical discussion is, reasoned argument.
Spinoza's god had infinite attributes of which two only were perceptible to man. Religious scholars and philosophers argue about the exact placement of Spinoza's vision of god (panentheism vs. pantheism generally). In any event the view of nature in Spinoza's time is much different than the view of nature in our time. I think a fair assessment would be that the mechanistic deterministic view of nature arising from classical mechanics was not Spinoza's view at all.


I do not think indeterministic has a mathematical definition (I could be wrong). Stochastic is the term I generally run across. In any event the relationship of quantum mechanics to natural disasters would be as arguable as the relationship of quantum mechanics to free will. At the scale of natural disasters quantum mechanics does not apply.

Spinoza was not merely a determinist. He was a logical determinist. He believe that causal connections were necessary connections, which is why Hume called his view, "Spinoza's horrible hypothesis". Spinoza meant by "Natura" everything. The universe. The "totality of things". And, he identified that with God.

It might be that the effect of micro-indeterminism on macro-events is negligible. That is, of course, a scientific question, which philosophers are not competent to answer.