If God is good, why does "Acts of God" refer to bad things?

I've often wondered about the phrase "Acts of God", which is used in legal and insurance writing to mean disasters like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires...

What are we thinking with a God that routinely does such things when the usual idea is that God is good? What does it say about our opinion of God? Accurate, or confused?

The phrase is not about good or bad. The phrase is about being within human control or not. It is a legal term of art, not interpreted literally as shifting blame to a "god." No god fills any role in the meaning of the phrase, not even as a legal fiction.

Various uses of the phrase "act of God" in the legal context are given in the Oxford English Dictionary:

1648: "This difference betwixt the Act of God, and the Act of the party."

1740: "If Condition be subsequent, it is become impossible by Act of God ..."

In the legal context, "Act of God" merely means something unavoidable, or unattributable to human responsibility. It tends to have a negative connotation only because of how it would arise in a dispute. If no dispute occurred, there would be no event to consider. It is generally only when something has gone wrong, that one has to categorize the cause.

If a contract becomes impossible to execute, one might argue an "act of God" prevented it. If an accident was inevitable, one might argue it was due to an "act of God" rather than any negligence of a party. Etc.

And certainly an "act of God" that creates the "impossibility" to execute the contract may very well be "good," all things considered. It is only a negative in the context of the ability to execute the contract.

The phrase "act of God" is one among a number of phrases — e.g., "God works in mysterious ways", "it's all part of the divine plan" — which suggest that the workings of God are not necessarily comprehensible to human minds. The phrases are usually offered as a form of comfort in the face of some inexplicable, tragic loss, to reassure the bereaved that that they haven't been abandoned by God but are merely experiencing part of some broader plan that is beyond their immediate understanding. It aims to temper the loss by giving it a sense of divine purpose.

This particular phrase was picked up in contract law to cover cases of non-compliance that are absolutely beyond the anticipation and control of the contracting parties. It became a particular caveat of insurance contracts, because insurance companies explicitly cover losses to individuals or other companies. Insurers want to make clear distinctions between human acts that cause loss (theft, arson, vandalism, negligence, malfeasance, etc) and loss events outside human control (lightning strikes, blizzards, floods, etc) because making such distinctions affects their bottom line. The original intent of comforting the bereaved with a sense of a divine plan has been coopted to comfort the financial worries of CEOs, which is a bit of a pity. But such is life…

A »good God« is a Christian presupposition because 'God' with a capital 'G' means (Judeo)Christian God. (Ive said this quite often of late; excuse the repetitiveness). If you want to get out of that narrow bracket, try replacing 'God' by a random selection from {Krishna, Tao, Allah, Buddha-mind, Wakan-Tanka...}. If you want to stay in the bracket this is a Christian question not a philosophy one.

Choose?

If you want a slightly non random choice I'd recommend the God of one of the heterodox (beheaded) Christian sects like the Gnostics. Then the choice is stark:

Which is actually quite close to Hinduism — Vishnu the maintainer is worshipped but mostly in his descents, Ram and Krishna. Shiva the destroyer is universally worshipped, Brahma the Creator is very rarely worshipped.

Good points. "Acts of Tao" seems kind of redundant, but I would go with that one. What's the alternative, really? Happenings that happened... Perhaps the idea that God is good is actually a recent misunderstanding?

Very good repartee Scott — appreciated!

I asked you to choose between taking a philosophical line and sticking to the Christian one.

You have — very adroitly! — not done so.

On the one hand your Good points acks the Christian bias that is a given and is usually ignored.

On the other you ask about the historical origins of the "good God" idea. It means the Christian outlook matters to you. As I have said elsewhere religion can only ever be groked emically. Etic studies will only produce trite nonsense like Holiday of muslims is Friday, of Jews Saturday, of Christians Sunday and other such empty observations.

So some additions.

Christianity, at least the widely known European branches, is a mishmash pastiche containing many more elements from outside the Biblical tradition.

Aristotle's Unmoved Mover is a purely actual being, omniscient in its perfect understanding of itself, and omnipotent as the ultimate cause of motion and existence.

From Plato, via Plotinus we get the One as an infinite, omnipresent source of all being, which emanates the cosmos.

Do we really have the tri-omni God in the Bible? Here are some passages for your consideration.

Genesis 18:21: God says He will "go down" to see if the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is justified.

Genesis 22:12: After Abraham’s test, God says, “Now I know that you fear God.”

... and much else suggest a God who's relational and engaged, not necessarily exercising exhaustive foreknowledge in the philosophical sense.

Psalm 139:7-10:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. ...

This may sound quite like omnipresence but its personal, relational not abstract spatial omnipresence.

Exodus 33:14: My Presence will go with you and I will give you rest Its hard to see how this kind of presence squares with the Greek more abstract one.

So... the tri-omni God is not the original Christian one!

The original Christian God is the beneficient deity

Psalm 31:19 "How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you".

James 1:17 "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father"

John 3:16 "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son"

This verse is obviously central to Christianity. I must admit it annoys me (a non Christian) because I believe "only" is a mistranslation of the Greek μονογενής (monogenis) which would better translate (IMHO) as "unique" — Jesus is unique. So is Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Nanak, Mohammed, Zarathustra... My «favorite teacher» is better than yours is unbelievably puerile

So in short if we erase the external additions of tri-omni God to the basic Christian omni-benevolent God the question becomes (closer to) moot: If I am a young child; my loving parent buys me a shiny new bike; I fall off and hurt myself — I dont blame the parent.

This question only arises in the pastiche Christian context because tri-omni has been added (in my view illegitimately) to the omni-benevolent God.

And so to your question: Is a good God a later addition?

The answer is No the good God is original; the later Greek tri-omni additions have rendered the God-concept inconsistent and incoherent.

I believe that if a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner (to humans) that God is eminently triangular Spinoza

I am sure that the god-idea of any culture or religion is somewhat anthropocentric.

But the Christian view of God-is-a-Man is a more than typically extreme:

Can we try to duck this outlook?

There was this joke I once saw:

Purpose of General Motors

Oh yeah some people do say:

Behind the joke the point is that 'good' is wrt some viewpoint. eg war is good for arms manufacturers.

So to your question "Is God good? The answer is "Whose good?"

God is definitionally good in a surprising slew of religions and cultures. The peculiarity of Christianity is that God is a good guy. Most others dont push the "guy" so hard.

Witness the good ←→ god relation in a variety of languages:

Note: The inversion in Icelandic and the double inversion in Swedish (to German and English)

And in case one is tempted to think the closeness follows from the relatedness of language consider...

Note: shaiva can mean good in a completely secular context. Eg. In Tamil "shaiva food" means "vegetarian food" suggesting cleanliness, wholesomeness

Shiva as the default name of God tends to flip to Vishnu going towards India's north. Vaishnava literally means Vishnu devotee. Yet in the song that was a favorite of Gandhi – Vaishnava jana to "vaishnava jana" more or less secularly means "good person"

A few folks have tried to downgrade the above by referring to the fact that your question is about the law term Act of God. So a word on law.

A key aspect of law is culpability or more technically mens rea — guilty mind. Conversely, lack of mens rea leads to sentences being reduced or altogether abrogated. eg. when the offender is a child, or intoxicated or incensed or...

Culpability or mens rea is ultimately about drawing the lines of responsibility.

So if a person under contract, fails to fulfil the obligation, did he fail within the bounds of his responsibility, or was it outside his control? In a theistic world the "out of man's control" is properly "in God's hands".

Contrary to what some of the answers say that here God is a term of art and has no relation to God, its not so. Even doctors when they are out of options say Weve tried our best. Now its upto God

The legal "Act of God" is no more an empty term of art than the medical "upto God".

Lowri's answer addresses the legal question, but the second sentence of the question seems to focus on more of a philosophical issue. I think there are multiple plausible answers.

Expert's privilege. Suppose you come home one day and Junior has taken your laptop apart. Display, hard drive, mousepad, DVD drive ... all over the table. You might be tempted to conclude, well that was wrong! But now suppose Junior puts together computer systems at a shop, and says he'll have everything back together in 15 minutes with a new larger SSD drive and a less worn-out keyboard. Even if something goes wrong, his wage from the shop can buy a new one. Because you know he can fix it, you don't perceive a wrong done. So if God destroys a neighborhood with a tornado, knowing that everyone will be restored in Heaven and then some, no wrong was actually done.

Relative level of reality. Suppose I'm writing for a Mad Max style film. The cannibal preacher tells his men to fire arrows, and one of the heroes is struck and falls from the bridge to the crazed mob below. Probably he is evil for doing that. Another hero is trying to retrieve the pistol she lost in a fight... but thanks to an Act of Me, she slips on the oil they sprayed on the bridge and tumbles to her death. Am I evil for writing that? Well, if the writers were all saints, our literature would be dull. More to the point, "she" exists only in the minds of me and the audience, so as long as we're happy, no offense ever really happened. Well, what if humans exist only in the imagination of the Creator?

Utilitarianism. I imagine almost everyone reading this knows more about this topic than I do, so I'll be brief: if the Creator knows that a disaster happens to head off some other tragedy, then perhaps it is justifiable. We don't necessarily need to be living in the best of all possible worlds, just one better than if the "Act of God" didn't happen ... when everything is taken into account throughout all of future history.

To me the disparate explanations seem to illustrate a well-known issue: I don't really know much about God.

From Wikipedia:

In legal usage in the English-speaking world, an act of God, act of nature, or damnum fatale ("loss arising from inevitable accident") is an event caused by no direct human action (e.g. severe or extreme weather and other natural disasters) for which individual persons are not responsible and cannot be held legally liable for loss of life, injury, or property damage.[2][3][4][5] An act of God may amount to an exception to liability in contracts (as under the Hague–Visby Rules),[6] or it may be an "insured peril" in an insurance policy.[7] In Scots law, the equivalent term is damnum fatale,[8] while most Common law proper legal systems use the term act of God.[9]

It is legally distinct from—though often related to—a common clause found in contract law known as force majeure.[10] In light of the scientific consensus on climate change, its modern applicability has been questioned by legal scholars.[11]

[...]

Recently, human activities have been claimed to be the root causes of some events previously considered natural disasters. In particular:

As a general principle of act of God,[17] epidemic can be classified as an act of God if the epidemic was unforeseeable and renders the promise discharged if the promisor cannot avoid the effect of the epidemic by exercise of reasonable prudence, diligence and care, or by the use of those means which the situation renders reasonable to employ.[18]

Not to be confused with divine intervention:

Divine intervention is an event that occurs when a deity (i.e. God or gods) becomes actively involved in changing some situation in human affairs. In contrast to other kinds of divine action, the expression "divine intervention" implies that there is some kind of identifiable situation or state of affairs that a god chooses to get involved with, to intervene in, in order to change, end, or preserve the situation.[1]

The main difference between this answer and the others is "Act of God" is an idiom in English language. For whatever reason, when it's written down versus spoken, it comes off as negative. It's used generally as "I don't take responsibility." Im sort of summarizing better answers, but that wasnt succinctly stated.

In legalese, its mostly used to describe something bad. And that's a standard. But, in general English, it's used to just describe something outside of human control. Like a casual way to brush off causality, or fatalism. "I don't know, it was just an act of God." It can be negative, but it can also connotate serendipity. Or something extremely positive.

We know something happened, but we don't know exactly why. Don't know the cause and don't care, or will never be able to figure it out. "It was an Act of God that I bumped into my future partner on the street today." "It was an Act of God I won the lottery." "It's an act of God I got struck by lightning."

It's a good question, but it's not a really an analytic philosophy question ;). It's an English language-history question.

"Act of God." Should be read as "Act of Nature". It's not a literal reference to God (any God,) or anything good or bad. As @Lowri put well.

Legal documents, including many that found US law and government, use this phrase, when many of the people writing the documents were atheists.

Mark Gergen, a law professor at UC Berkeley, said this legal precedent dates back to at least 1581, when an English court ruled in the property-related case of Wolfe vs. Shelley. That case essentially found that the death of one party in a contract — an “act of God” — was sufficient to make the deal null and void.

Link

The phrase became popular when most people couldn't read. It was a simple way of explaining away unexpected circumstances, useful, but not elaborative.

First of all, this isn't a legal question; it's a question on the boundary between religion and reason.

Just as masturbation is make-believe fulfillment of the mating instinct without actually providing any mate, religion is make-believe understanding of what the hell is going on without providing any actual understanding.

The god myth provides an explanation for bad weather, as long as you leave it at that and after the storm, you clean up the mess.

Another example. The Adam and Eve myth provides a context for why we were children, then suddenly needed to mate all the time and were thrown out of our safe families into the real world where we have to grow old and die.

It doesn't make any sense at all, but that's OK as long as you leave it at that and after mating, you clean up the mess.

How this relates to your question:

In reality, there can be no contradictions. But in the land of make-believe, these imaginary objects can collide.

In the present case, the god myth provides context to the very early memory of the infant, before memories were laid down in a network that provided context.

Praying is an interpretation by the adult of the infant's memory of crying until it gets satisfied by a mysterious god that comes down from the sky and grants its wishes.

The God character is presented as a parent, as in the footprints in the sand / carrying you story. God is taking care of his children.

Height ratio is parent to infant

Note that if this is what's really going on, the relation wouldn't necessarily be parental.

For instance, there might be more than one of them, making it an alien super-race fucking with us, and the relation to us might be as experimenters to lab rats. But the myth provides an emotional context that is integratable into the rest of the brain's neural network.

The problem addressed in this question arises because make-believe can be inconsistent.

If all this was real, one could ask a god, "Say, why do you destroy your children In a furious rage? Are you actually Satan?"

If God is good, why are "Acts of God" bad things?

Because there is no God and the whole thing is an inconsistent, pretend, fantasy story. Any attempt to make it consistent is a fool's errand. There were countless fools in the last 2,000 years, and there are even more of them on the Internet.

The inconsistency created what I call a "context fault," which is a very useful concept that I'd like to talk about sometime.

Usually this occurs when the make believe world crashes into the real one and it can't be covered up. This will happen when Trump's fantasy that China pays tariffs makes prices explode next year.

Sometimes these fantasy worlds collide, and you have a religious war. But they've learned to stay out of each other's way and ignore the contradiction.

This is a rare example a make believe object crashing into itself. Two distinct instances of this god object, conjured out of nowhere, but were created for 2 different purposes:

The two pretend objects collided.

Frankly, I don't believe it's the The Philosophers' job to clean up their mess.