My hunch is that the term "natural evil" arose from the older label "the problem of evil" as a way to divide the data into events caused by agents and events not caused by agents. I don't think the choice of terminology is significant. One can refer to the problem of evil as the "problem of suffering" and then distinguish suffering caused by agents from suffering not caused by agents. The background assumption in any case is that suffering -- unlike, say, breathing -- isn't morally neutral: all else being equal, suffering is something undesirable that any morally sensitive person tries to prevent or relieve. So I don't think that substituting "suffering" for "evil" makes a difference to the problem or its solution. From my perspective, the important point is that if an omniscient and omnipotent God exists, then any suffering that occurs anywhere, regardless of its cause, is suffering that God chooses to permit .

On this question, I doubt I can do better than to recommend to you an excellent article written by Professor Donald Hubin, available at this link: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/264974452_Empty_and_Ultimately_Meaningless_Gestures

There's a lot going on in your question, and I doubt that my response will cover all of it. But I'll say, first, that it begs the question against Hawking to demand that he explain "the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the world" if by "creativity" you mean something beyond the everyday creativity acknowledged by both sides of the debate (such as the creativity of human agents). Hawking doesn't accept the assumption that (for example) the laws of physics are the result of someone's creativity. Second, Hawking would likely question your inference from the premise "All created things, such as the jet engine, require creators" to the conclusion "The laws of physics require a creator." The premise is true, but it doesn't imply the conclusion. Third, it's not clear from your description of Hawking's view that he alleges a conflict between theism and the laws of physics. Rather, if I understand your description, Hawking claims that theism isn't necessary to explain what we observe. Now, if...

You seem to be asking an empirical (psychological or sociological) question: Besides enlightened self-interest, what actually motivates atheists to behave morally? The best answer to that question will come from systematic empirical research. I don't know of any, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find some on the web. As for what motivates particular atheists to behave morally, you might consult this collection edited by Louise M. Antony, one of the Panelists on this site. You wrote that the belief "that there is something greater than the self, of which we are a part ... seems to me only to make sense in a spiritual tradition" of the kind that atheists reject. In my reply to Question 5607 , I argued against treating the term "atheist" as implying a lack of regard for anything but gratifying one's own ego: the term simply doesn't have that implication. I see no reason why an atheist shouldn't believe that some things are worth a degree of self-sacrifice. Indeed, some philosophers...

If we are only molecules in motion and a few hundred thousand years from now, the world and history will vanish, then are our moral rules any more than the rules of a club? With all due respect to Prof. Marino, the antecedent of that question is tendentious. According to naturalism, I and a rock both consist of molecules in motion. But naturalism doesn't imply that there are no important differences -- including objectively important differences -- between me and the rock. Even though naturalism says that I consist of molecules in motion, it doesn't say that all agglomerations of molecules in motion are objectively the same: it doesn't say that I'm only molecules in motion, in the reductive sense of "only" implied by the antecedent. As to naturalism's prediction that humanity and its traces will one day be gone: Why must humanity or its traces go on forever in order for anything to be objectively right or wrong? I've never seen a good answer to that question. Several recent writers have...

You seem to be arguing for this claim: Atheism implies that everything is morally permissible. In the view of many philosophers, myself included, that claim is false. These philosophers argue that objective truths about moral right and wrong not only needn't be God-made (or man-made) but couldn't be God-made (or man-made). I recommend reading Wes Morriston, "God and the Ontological Foundation of Morality," and Erik J. Wielenberg, "In Defense of Non-Natural, Non-Theistic Moral Realism" . On the issue of whether all laws require a lawgiver, please see my response to Question 5619 .

I confess I have trouble grasping the answer you gave. You wrote, "God has no other from which it can be distinguished as separate and distinct," which seems to imply that God isn't distinguishable from you or from anything else there is. Did you mean to give your daughter the impression that you and your left shoe are both indistinguishable from God? I presume not. Now, on some views God just is the whole of reality, but even on those views it seems that God would be distinct from any proper part of reality such as you or your left shoe. Why not say, instead, that according to various religious traditions God is a non-physical, spiritual being and therefore not the kind of being that we can expect to see or otherwise perceive with our physical senses?

If the distinction between good and evil depended on God's existence, then -- yes -- there would be something wrong with arguing from the existence of evil to the non-existence of God. For if (a) the existence of evil logically implies the existence of God, then (b) the existence of evil logically implies the non-existence of God only if the existence of evil is impossible . But let me emphasize that the metaethical view you referred to is itself highly questionable, if not just incoherent. For arguments to that effect, see Wes Morriston, "God and the Ontological Foundation of Morality" ; Erik J. Wielenberg, "In Defense of Non-Natural, Non-Theistic Moral Realism" ; and Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? .

It looks to me as if you may be conflating two different arguments (or types of argument) for the existence of God: (1) the Ontological Argument and (2) the Design Argument. As you say, one objection to the Design Argument is that the universe might -- for all the Design Argument shows -- be the creation of a finite, or evil, or incompetent god, or the product of a committee of such gods. You propose to answer that objection by insisting that God is the greatest conceivable being, and therefore God is neither finite, nor evil, nor incompetent, nor equalled by some other god. But why should we grant that God is the greatest conceivable being? To establish that conclusion, you need something like St. Anselm's Ontological Argument, about which you'll find more in this SEP entry . If you reply that God is by definition the greatest conceivable being, then we need a reason to believe that this definition is in fact fulfilled , i.e., that something in fact answers...

I am much more familiar ... with human (or human-like) beings who lust after young peasant women than I am with ones for whom the very experience of lust is unimaginable ... To say nothing of the doctrine, central to one of the major monotheistic religions, that God became a flesh-and-blood human being while somehow remaining an omnipresent and perfect spirit who continued to rule the universe. It's hard to see how the Zeus story is "significantly less plausible" than that!

For what it's worth, I'm confident that you're right: moral rights needn't come from God. On the issues raised by the Euthyphro dilemma, let me suggest that you start with the SEP entries linked here and here . As for human rights properly so-called, I'd urge you to question that concept for the reasons that I gestured at in my answers to Question 5602 and Question 5402 .