Goethe was six when the earthquake and tsunami devastated Lisbon on All Saints Day, Saturday, November 1, 1755, and caused the death of up to a hundred thousand people. The event raised doubts about God’s benevolence among many thinkers in Europe.
In his memoirs Goethe wrote:
“By treating the just and the unjust in the same way, God had not behaved in the fatherly manner that I had been attributing to him in my catechism…. The wise and learned people around me seemed to be unable to agree on the way in which the phenomenon should be described….”
And Voltaire referred to the Lisbon earthquake when he made fun of Leipniz’s optimism. He wrote these verses:
And can you then impute a sinful deed
To babes who on their mothers’ bosoms bleed?
Was then more vice in fallen Lisbon found,
Than Paris, where voluptuous joys abound?
Was less debauchery to London known,
Where opulence luxurious holds the throne?
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
God sees the little sparrow fall,
It meets His tender view;
If God so loves the little birds,
I know He loves me, too.
He loves me, too,
He loves me, too,
I know He loves me, too!
Because He loves the little things,
I know He loves me, too.
He paints the lilies in the field,
Adds perfume to each bell;
If He so loves the little flowers,
I know He loves me well.
He loves me, too,
He loves me, too,
I know He loves me, too!
Because He loves the little things,
I know He loves me, too.
God made the little birds and flowers,
And all things big and small;
He’ll not forget His little ones,
I know He loves us all.
He loves me, too,
He loves me, too,
I know He loves me, too!
Because He loves the little things,
I know He loves me, too.
We welcome ALL views. Thank you.
Before mankind gained conscious thought, natural disasters occurred. If a tree fell in the void, did anyone care? Natural disasters are not the result of God, well, playing the universal puppet master. They just happen.
To attribute the Divine with the random acts of nature creates a false connection.
But – knowing better – when I am struck by lightning I ask myself whether I deserve it. And you probably think I do.
Shouldn’t the pre-tsunami biblical Flood have raised doubt in Goethe’s mind about benovolence? What’s a mere hundred thousand people?
He was only six.
I am not Goethe, but I remember having the same thoughts when hearing and reading about the Messina earthquake. I remember my mother telling me about it, then reading about it in Axel Munthe. What about the Holocaust ?
See my profound observation about being struck by lightning.
Rabbi Fackenheim believed the survival of the Jews over the centuries could only be explained in metaphyical terms. His life’s work was to grope for an answer to your question about the Holocaust.
On a practical note, in a letter to Voltaire, Rousseau noted that fewer would have died in the Lisbon quake if Lisbon did not have twenty thousand crowded houses of six or seven stories. Many citizens, he believed, would have died trying to rescue their clothing, papers, or money.
After the quake, King Joseph of Portugal developed a life-long fear of living within walls, and the royal court moved into a complex of tents and pavilions in hills outside Lisbon. Maybe the king was the first Noble to go Savage. There were no nuclear power plants in his kingdom. I wonder what he would have thought about our current desperate need for ever-accelerating industrial-economic growth everywhere. And was Rousseau, after all, just a cry-baby?
Gabriel Michaelides.
A most valuable contribution, especially your bon mot about the First Nobel to go Savage.