Using magic to cure diseases, heal wounds, elongate lifespans unnaturally...

> elongate lifespans unnaturally, and resurrect the fallen
According to D&D? No, and they're not made by the gods. They're called Inevitables, they're Lawful Neutral to the extreme, and they are forged automatically in the crèche-forges in the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus. Specifically, the Marut-class Inevitables are the one who hunt down those who extend their own lifespan, including using revival magic multiple times (you have a couple free passes before Mechanus notices).
>bringing disease
Disease sounds pretty True Neutral to me, it's just life trying to spread on the microbial scale. Your organs are their crop fields, too bad for you.

>disease is bad

It's a naturally occurring process, though I'm sure you're going to attempt to contend that you know better than the biological processes that gave rise to you, and will continue to propagate the earth long after your frail, brief existence has concluded.

Except that the gods you're mentioning are works of fiction and you are coloring your viewpoint through the lens of the human interpretation of your DM or the system's writer.

>what druids actually believe

>Except that the gods you're mentioning are works of fiction and you are coloring your viewpoint through the lens of the human interpretation of your DM or the system's writer.
What does this have to do with anything? What is good according to the alignment system is what the good gods say is good.

>naturally occurring process

Which we have been trying to figure out how to eliminate since the time we understood that you could get sick by being around sick people. Stop trying to make some false moral dilemna where there is none, it's stupid. Now if the paladins willingly accepted disease along with their powers, and then prosthelatized the word of their god trying to get people to also willingly accept disease so that it might not fall upon a poor child instead, that's more grey. This is assuming there is one god personally and directly in charge of disease who needs to outsource its work to humans spreading sickness only where they worship, and that's pretty fucking stupid too. Bad thread and you should feel bad.

>Why is screwing with the natural order considered a good deed?
Because the natural order sucks.

>That's implying people get sick because they deserve it which is about the dumbest fucking thing I've read all week.
You have never ever never heard a story where someone gets sick as a divine punishment?
also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job

>It's a naturally occurring process
So's a black hole's gravity. If the entire planet gets sucked into a black hole, then there wouldn't be anyone to worship the gods.

Do you think the gods would intervene if their toys were going to get broken?

Illness is naturally occurring, yes.
So is surmounting it via a medley of means, such as people have been doing for millenia.
Would your strawmen take ire with people using natural remedies (that have been proven to work)?
Good has been defined in every system that I know of that uses alignments as a force that exists outside, and sometimes above, deities, user.
Good is defined by the creators of the system in a meta sense, not in the setting by beings within it.
In the case of OP, willfully spreading plague and death when it is not needed is neutral if it serves an overarching purpose, and evil if it is being done for it's own sake or maliciously (which in this case, it is).

In WH40k Nurgle's agents purposefully spread disease to strengthen their god, even though they know that the resulting mass deaths eventually make his powers wane thus creating a neverending cycle of death and recovery. It works for Nurgle because he knows that everybody else struggles against him to stay alive, thus preventing the entire universe from falling under his sway while he selfishly grabs as much as temporal power as possible.

No I'm saying he was implying that the ONLY people who get sick are ones who deserve it, which we know is not the case. This thread really sucks, you guys are bad at this morally grey stuff because it's pretty clear cut from the word go that spreading disease is bad and preventing disease is good. If a god has a duty to spread disease but does not revel in it, the best they can be is neutral. Because, again, people who get sick don't deserve it, it's just a natural thing that happens. You can't just declare something is good because it's natural. Plenty of nasty shit occurs naturally, doesn't mean we should just let it happen or ignore it.

This

OP here. Natural remedies are part of the natural order, so no. Much like they [the god of disease] want living creatures to succumb to disease, natural remedies are diseases against the agents of their disease, if you catch my drift.

>spreading disease is bad and preventing disease is good.
What if you're spreading disease to control an invasive species (like rabbits or orcs)?
>Plenty of nasty shit occurs naturally, doesn't mean we should just let it happen or ignore it.
You and I may agree, but a Druid might disagree.

>tfw my made up scenario is pretty much Druids as they were intended to be before they were indirectly turned into always-good-natured-tree-huggers

If there is a god of disease, then the god who opposes them would have little issue with the mortals who take effort to stymie him.
A crucial misstep in your assertion is that plague in and of itself is "natural", but most would argue that agent that hijacks the natural life cycles of living beings and ends them sooner, in mass quantities, is the opposite of natural.
see
>willfully spreading plague and death when it is not needed is neutral if it serves an overarching purpose, and evil if it is being done for it's own sake or maliciously
If an entire ecosystem will suffer due to an artificial agent causing havoc in it (the way most diseases tend to), then eliminating it with precision is neutral, especially when there is no other reasonable way to deal with it (see wild pigs in Southeast US).

>most would argue that agent that hijacks the natural life cycles of living beings and ends them sooner, in mass quantities, is the opposite of natural.
Forest fires are both natural and very important to let happen.

friendly reminder that good and evil is subjective and by extension alignment charts care bullshit and should be abandoned

That's kind of the point I'm asking. Is an entity that lets those wild pigs live healthy and happy an agent of good, and the entity killing them by necessity evil? I think disease is more like a natural disaster, neither good nor evil.

This is not only objectively wrong, but has little to do with the subject.
Wild pigs in the southeast us are a destructive foreign agent. They do not promote a healthy ecosystem at all, unlike forest fires as mentioned by .
If let loose, they will disrupt and bring to an end the ecosystem they are in, not promote growth. Disease is the same in that it does not promote health in the ecosystem it is in. White Nose Disease in bats is literally wiping out bat populations in America wholesale. By your argument, this is simply a natural thing that should not be stopped, despite it being a fucking catastrophe for the natural world.
Or is disease perfectly fine when it is only affecting humans, user?

Viruses themselves are not living and do not belong in the natural cycle. They are constructs of suffering made by a mad god, and life has learned to cope with them, an everlasting evil too powerful to be stamped out

Illness and disease have always been painted in a bad light throughout history, this is because it can spread quickly and uncontrollably. What happens if the disease jumps species? What happens if people start eating diseased rabbits and it poisons them? What if the orcs start dying en masse and their rotting diseased corpses taint the water near them which then flows on to who knows where? Naturally occuring processes are necessary, sure, but that doesn't make them inherently good. As for the druid, he can disagree with me all he wants but it doesn't make me wrong.

People aren't trees and dry brush. Yes animals might die in a small forest fire but it also prevents one much worse down the line. You seem to be implying that we need plagues to prevent worse plagues later on, but that's not exactly how disease works. Even still, a forest fire now doesn't insure that you won't have a devastating one in the future. I live in southern California and along with the drought, we also have an invasive variety of beetle from japan that kills our trees and just makes them into fire fuel. There are always other factors to consider when discussing the merits of "natural order".

The Native Americans might be an example of what you're talking about, they were screwed by virtue of their cleanliness because as soon as they started interacting with people who were regularly around shit and disease and harsh conditions all the time, most of the natives died. However, an example of what OP is trying to defend, if you believe the stories, is smallpox blankets being used as biological warfare during colonial times. That should give you an idea of why people are so adamant in their belief that wilfully spreading disease not being a good thing.

A goddess keeping humans healthy and strong enables them to wage wars of conquest, yet she's good. Would she turn evil if she did the same for orcs?

Have you even read that story you ignorant cunt? Job wasn't being punished, he was being tested because some asshole angel was all "Hey God, I bet I can get that Job guy to get angry at you" and god was like "You're on!" And then asshole angel made it so hundreds of people and animals died and made Job get pretty much every disease ever just to mess with him. Until god was like "yo, cut that shit out, Job's not gonna get angry at me" and then Job got twice as many wives and children and got twice as rich as he was before. And I guess his wives and children and servants that died before were cool with that.
Fuck that angel, and god too for going along with it, goddamn assholes.

If orcs are categorical evil, then I believe the answer is "duh"

>A goddess keeping humans healthy and strong enables them to wage wars of conquest, yet she's good
You are making an insincere argument.
Why are you pinning the activities of humans, who are capable of making their own choices, on a higher being who promotes good health?

God of medicine says fuck you, god of disease. An artificial god has practically wiped an entire horseman of the apocalypse off the face of this earth.

>stories
Facts, mate. It's documented. Search up the Siege of Fort Pitt.

There is this one such case, yes, but the way many would tell it is that it was a concentrated effort on many fronts by the whites to spread the disease to all natives. Most of the illness it's suspected though, was spread through natives homelands naturally through interaction with fishermen for years before and colonies too when they arrived, of course.

Yes, I've read it and yes, he wasn't being punished. That's why I wrote "also" not "for example".

Because she's an enabler?

>Using magic to cure diseases, heal wounds, elongate lifespans unnaturally, and resurrect the fallen has caused massive overpopulation, starvation and civil war. The gods of nature, disease and death are rubbing their hands and gleefully watching.

What would a paladin do?

I dunno OP. Will our future society of nanotechnology, fusion power and genetic augmentation be evil?

Is post-scarcity evil?

>implying it won't be
I've watched enough sci-fi to know all of those things are terrible

OP didn't specify whether those gods are good. Nature ones in particular tend to be neutral, death too when it's not arbitrarily evil.

>using unnatural methods (swords and paladins) to bring about an end to unnatural occurrences such as longer lifespans and healed wounds

Doing it wrong. Just let nature take its course. Unless the people have made actual immortality shit, they'll die off naturally sooner or later.

If their goal is to restore natural order and balance then they would be neutral.

>it's unnatural therefore it's evil
wew lad

Anyway, what if magic is only capable of warding disease off (like some sort of "immunity bubble"), preventing people from developing immunity naturally? Or maybe because of extensive magic use diseases acquire magic resistance (sort of like it happened in our world with antibiotics).
The agents of disease god can advocate the benefits of natural immunity and call for restrictions on magic cures. They will act not as crusaders, but as missionaries.

>They will act not as crusaders, but as missionaries.
This.

Yes
Yes (druids as in the priests of nature gods)
Yes
Because "natural order" is a spook. Magic is part of the world, hence any magical act is just as natural as a doe grazing in a wood's clearing.

Would the production and distribution of vaccines along with most of medical science be considered screwing with the natural order?

Yes

No, you've watched a lot of dystopian content. There is more of it because a utopian system were everyones needs are met and there is no conflict doesn't make for an interesting story or sell tickets. Natural processes aren't moral or immoral. They are amoral, having little to do with the construct of reality. Thus, attempting to side with natural processes is not a moral high ground like you seem to think. It isn't a moral standpoint at all, it's neutral.

It's also stupid because humans are "Natural," and thus all of our activities are logicaly consequesces of the natural world's processes.

I was being sarcastic
I suppose it's my fault for being bad at jokes

she's enabling more than war, should all the peaceful farmers and shit also be responsible. Orcs don't usually have peaceful members in d and d that's why they're evil creatures.