Osler's Razor

I'm guessing that is a typo on #3 and you instead intended to use malevolent instead of benevolent.

As to your categories, I'm afraid I'm going to have add another one. The way I see it, God created a perfect and beautiful world in which we were to interact with Him and our surroundings in harmony. But Adam and Eve's disobedience led to this harmony (both with God and our environment) being shattered, leaving us as fallen people in a fallen world.

Thus, while the Bible does give us examples of weather as divine judgment (the examples I can think of are usually Old Testament droughts or more spectacularly the 10 Plagues), natural disasters are most often the result of our inherent sinfulness.
 

Occam's Razor seems to cut away options 2-5 fairly quickly. Sometimes horrible stuff happens, like destructive weather, and there's no ultimate reason behind it other than that it's a part of nature and we just have to learn to deal with it and prepare for it.
 

Perhaps we can accept #5 while also believing in an all-loving God, but it may be necessary for us to accept that this conscious, waking world is not the world of ultimate importance or reality. (Not to say that this world is not important, but perhaps this is what is meant by "For now we see through a glass, darkly.")

This concept is perhaps a bit medieval, but who fears the terror of a dream upon waking? Maybe the pain of this world will similarly fade once we wake, but what wakes? Not our flawed hurting bodies, but the indestructible soul.

I you believe that God set out to create beings that would love Him of their own free will and choice, then it follows that some will choose to reject Him; otherwise, we are slaves. Those who accept God’s gift are not static “saved” souls, but His children who He endeavors to teach and challenge. Suffering is part of that education, for without it what uncompassionate monsters we might be!

For those hurt in this world (all of us, one could say) the Christian response is rarely "God has decreed it" or "God has punished the sinner" for even if it is so, Jesus taught us to respond to suffering with compassion and love. If one's sin causes pain, a compassionate Christian might pray for the tact to reveal this to the sinner, but more importantly, we are to use the gifts God has given us to help alleviate pain, to reflect Christ’s love and sacrifice for the world.

In fact, I believe that our response to pain and disaster is the principle purpose of suffering in God’s plan. Throughout the Bible God has shown that He can intercede in the destruction borne by man, or by the harsh earth that turned against man at his Fall, yet, God's intercession is often only after the humble and pious prayer of the righteous. We must ask two things then about prayer- first, why does it work only sometimes (and is the answer something we can comprehend here, on this earth), and second, whether a prayer is answered or not, what effect does prayer have upon us, the lasting we, the soul?

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world"
-C.S. Lewis
 

Why do numbers 2-4 mean that God is not all powerful? Just because one chooses not to exercise a power does not mean that he doesn't posses it. Just because God chooses not to intervene doesn't mean that he couldn't.
 

Anonymous 3:37-- if God has the ability to intervene and chooses not to, resulting in untold suffering, misery, pain, and death, can he still be called benevolent?
 

I wouldn't know. I wasn't there when he laid the cornerstone of the universe...
 

My guess is god created the world but we messed it up and now it is broken. We killed it with pollution. These storms are our fault.
 

Jeffy-- I must say I agree with you. Suffering can be viewed as God's megaphone to a deaf world--the result of our inherent imperfection and sinful nature. If this suffering is inflicted upon us by God or He chooses to let it happen, however, does not detract from my view of Him as an all-loving God. God disciplines His children, just as we humans discipline our human children-- it is for our own good (because He loves us), so that we might reform our disobedient ways.
 

The hurricane, in my opinion, is just a reiteration of God's past disapproval of the seemingly illogical undertaking of building an entire city below sea level. Do you think that they'll get the point this time?
 

Anon 9:07--

It would seem that God is disciplining the Republican Party by smashing New Orleans with a Hurricane right as they have their convention. It has to be their worst-case scenario. Hopefully, they will keep "Brownie" away from St. Paul...
 

1.

But in all seriousness, the problem of evil sort of hits a wall at so-called "natural evil" because we're personifying hurricanes. Hurricanes and other natural disasters don't hurt us out of malice; they arise because of natural, ordinary, physical processes. That humans have chosen to put themselves in the way of natural phenomena that can be destructive can hardly be laid at any supernatural beings' fate. The suffering experience is fully attributable to humans, rather than supernatural agency.
 

I think the missing link is Clay Aiken.
 

Here's a link to some professionals (philosophers) discussing this very topic: http://philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=223611