Saints and Sceptics

We’ve laboured over several posts to demonstrate that the existence of evil and suffering do not disprove the existence of God. We’ve already pointed out that Christians can point to some plausible explanations for suffering. Suffering might be a consequence of our free-choice to abandon God; this meant that we would face a dangerous world without his help or guidance. When God withdrew his presence from us, our capacity for cruelty developed and grew exponentially. So God allows suffering as a consequence of our free choices; he also uses it to teach us virtues like compassion and to call us back to him.

But does Fry have a deeper point? He could argue that, while suffering does not prove that atheism is true, suffering does provide good evidence against theism. What do we mean by evidence? Simply put, good evidence for a hypothesis  would be observations that are much more likely to occur if  the hypothesis is true than if it  is false. So, if a particular observation is less surprising on your hypothesis, then it is evidence for that hypothesis over other viewpoints. And if a particular observation is very surprising on your theory compared to others, then the observation is evidence against it.

Now, who would predict that a world created by a God of limitless love and power would contain suffering? Not many people, if we are honest. So it seems that suffering could count as evidence against God’s existence. However, we have also pointed out that suffering is not completely inexplicable for theists. Still, if atheists have a neat account for suffering and evil, then we would have evidence for atheism and against theism.

So does atheism do a better job of explaining the existence of evil and suffering? It’s not clear that it does. Consider human suffering. Obviously, this requires conscious human beings. It’s not at all clear that atheism can explain the existence of consciousness. Furthermore, the human body exhibits an extraordinary degree of organized complexity – apparent design which is highly unlikely if evolution is an unguided process. And our universe needs to be “finely-tuned” to a remarkable degree for embodied conscious creatures to exist. The fact that anyone is here to experience anything, including suffering, is more than a bit of a surprise on atheism.

And consider evil: can atheism explain objective moral values? It doesn’t seem so. Logic does not dictate that the world contain moral values – we can easily conceive of possible worlds which do not contain objective good and evil. In fact, some atheists think that this world does not contain objective moral values. While this view seems unconvincing, it doesn’t seem to be logically incoherent. So, given that their non-existence was logically possible, why do moral values exist? Atheists don’t have a good explanation.

Given that most atheists believe that the universe is just material, we have to ask where values come from. Would they exist in hadrons, or in the Strong Nuclear Force? They cannot exist in human psychology – because whatever is man-made can be unmade by man. But objective moral values exist no matter what humans desire or think.

So it is not clear that atheism’s universe has any room for good and evil, right and wrong. Nor can atheists explain why anyone is around to experience suffering[i] – so it is arguable that atheism does not do a good job of explaining evil. Now, while suffering is surprising on theism, it is not completely inexplicable – we noted some theistic explanations for suffering in the first paragraph. However, we should also note that God could have reasons for suffering that humans  have not yet thought of. In fact, there could be good evidence that such reasons exist. Humans have limitations that might prevent them from knowing all the goods that God is aware of.

Consider insects so small that they are invisible to the naked human eye. If an entomologist were to tell you that your arm was covered in such insects, it would not be rational to deny this because you cannot see any insects. You are not in any position to detect these creatures with your eyes. Consider the gap between God’s mind and ours. God might have knowledge of values that we cannot detect. We cannot detect any good that would be realised by certain instances of intense suffering. However it would be false to infer that no goods are realised by these instances of intense suffering.

In fact, the cross and the resurrection give us concrete evidence for believing that human limitations blind us to God’s reasons for allowing suffering. Consider the position of the disciples on Good Friday. Their master had explicitly forbidden violence in the name of the Kingdom, so they could not fight to save Jesus. It was up to God to save him. Yet God allowed Jesus to die – indeed, to the disciples it would have seemed that even Jesus wondered why God had forsaken him. The public humiliation torture and murder of an innocent man is a terrible evil – especially if that man is murdered because he provides hope for the hopeless.

Yet God raised him from the dead. God unexpectedly transformed horrendous evil into the greatest good conceivable: the defeat of death, and the announcement that the universe itself will experience resurrection just as Jesus did. And God confirmed that the cross was not an inexplicable instance of innocent suffering; the sacrificial love of a perfect being for his imperfect creation.

From the perspective of Good Friday the disciples could not see how God could bring good out of the Crucifixion. Yet, to say the very least, Jesus’s suffering on the cross brought about a greater good: sacrificial love without measure. The Father gave his only Son to the cross; on the cross, God the Son has suffered for us and with us. The Son of God took responsibility for our failures. If we will draw near to him, he will accept us as his children. The blame and the shame will be his and his alone. The price for our failure would be revealed, but paid in full.

Here is the crucial point: we have evidence that this is true. The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not merely found in Christian experience or transformed lives; it is found by a ruthless, critical examination of the historical sources. And this provides us with evidence that God can have reasons for allowing suffering that we have not yet thought of; after all, if Jesus’ family and closest followers could not predict the resurrection then neither would we.

The cross and the resurrection provide us with good, robust evidence that we can trust God. Even if we cannot see any explanation for an instance of suffering we should not conclude that no such explanation exists; because we have good reason to trust a God who can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine; the evidence demonstrates that he can make even the darkest things work together for the greatest good.

“Bone cancer in children: what’s that all about?” Stephen Fry asks God. Or, to be honest, he asks theists. He stated the problem of evil with such vitriol that it’s fairly clear that Fry doesn’t seriously envisage having any sort of conversation with the almighty. His anger is more than likely focused on religious chaps who think he owes a creator a great deal of worship and service.

However, despite Fry’s supreme confidence,  it is fairly clear that theists can offer some reasons which explain why God might allow evil.  Some Christians, in particular, will want to point to free-will and the event known as “The Fall[i]”. However, we need to sound a note of caution. As David has said in a previous article

The atheist might well grant belief in the Fall for the sake of the argument, but still demand an explanation as to why God allowed all the suffering to arise from it. Further explanation, it seems, is still necessary.”

For example, it isn’t entirely clear how the Fall explains animal suffering. Why should animals suffer because of human defects? And why should innocent children suffer because an ancestor failed?

Furthermore, the text is not as clear as literalists contend. It seems highly unlikely that Genesis 1-4 should be read as straight historical prose: it is a highly stylised account and it contains poetic language (such as God “knitting” clothes for Adam and Eve; not even the most reactionary fundamentalist would want to claim that God has fingers!) However, it also seems clear that Genesis refers to an actual event in the history of the human species[ii]. It’s also clear that a Fall would explain much the suffering  we endure.

Nothing and no-one forced humanity to reject God; but we did[iii]. Humans chose to rebel against God. On a Christian understanding, a God of infinite love and wisdom is the ultimate good and the source of everything else that is good. To reject God is to deliberately reject, destroy or pervert what is good. It is to rebel against what ought to be. So rejecting God will always cause human suffering.

At times, pain and suffering are consequences of our rebellion: this is clearly so in times of war or social crisis.  Scripture is also clear that God can use pain to punish us when we deserve it. Of course, that does not obviously explain suffering caused by natural causes; disease, earthquake and famine are not the direct result of the free choices of human beings. We live in a dangerous world; but our choices go some way to explaining why our world can inflict so much pain on us. Living in this world without God means that we must face the hazards alone. If God were present to guide and heal us, life might be a great deal easier[iv].

The doctrine of the Fall reveals an important truth: humans were not created to experience the suffering we endure in this life. This is not how we were meant to live; this is not how the world was meant to be. However, we can only learn virtues such as courage, compassion and hope in a fallen world; these “greater goods” go some way to explaining why God allowed a fallen world to exist. And, as CS Lewis noted, God can use pain to force us to faith and repentance:

We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

So Christians have explanations for the existence of pain and suffering in general. But let’s be clear on what we very often do not have: an explanation for a particular tragedy or horror. We can explain why our world drives us to compassion; but why does God allow the specific disease of bone cancer? Moreover, why should a particular child have this disease? We cannot say for sure; in fact, we must not say for sure. Of course can make conjectures – but we’d have no more success than the theologians who comforted Job.

What we can say is this: those who endure horrendous suffering will receive scant comfort from an academic theory; and they will receive no comfort from the hypothesis that their suffering is ultimately meaningless. A reason for hope can mean as much as medicine to those in crisis, and Christians have that. And the suffering need comfort-  after all, this provides some reason to think that love is stronger than death.

But we only see the tiniest fragment of this world clearly, and we have only the dimmest awareness of God’s love and power. Now we know in part; true understanding lies ahead. So Christians who claim to have the definitive answer to every sceptical question do their own faith a great disservice. We do not know all the answers because we cannot and do not need to have them anyway.