https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmallpoxSmallpox is believed to have emerged in human populations about 10,000 BC.[4] The earliest physical evidence of it is probably the pustular rash on the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt.[9] The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans annually during the closing years of the 18th century (including five reigning monarchs),[10] and was responsible for a third of all blindness.[6][11] Of all those infected, 20–60 percent—and over 80 percent of infected children—died from the disease.[12] Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths during the 20th century.[13][14][15] As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.[5]
After vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1979.[5] Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011.[16][17][18]
Mankind has now effectively wiped out smallpox; with that in mind, I ask these questions:
Has mankind managed to do something God cannot?
Was it morally wrong for mankind to wipe out smallpox?
I think the answer to the first one is "yes", but then I do not think he exists. Part of Metacrock's defence of the PoE seems to be that God is not really all that powerful, so I will be interested to see how Christians here answer this. Assuming any of them even can.
I think the answer to the second is "no". Eradicatinging smallpox was morally right because doing so greatly reduced suffering in the world. But again, I think that because I do not believe in God. If you do believe in God, then you might think that God had a good and moral reason for allowing smallpox to flourish through most of human history. If it was morally right for God to allow smallpox to flourish, then it would be morally wrong (if well intentioned) to eradicate smallpox.
