God is a Deadbeat Dad
One of the questions I’ve often pondered, as has everyone else in existence, is that old chestnut about why there is evil/suffering in existence if God is so good. I was reading an article the other day, and I thought the author addressed a couple of notable points fairly well. (I can’t remember where the article was. When I find it, I’ll link to it here.) I thought they were worth sharing.
The two arguments:
1. What humans perceive as evil and suffering is but a small part of God’s bigger plan. We are too “small” to be able to understand the big picture.
2. Evil and suffering are necessary, because without it, humans wouldn’t have free will.
A very dear friend of mine is currently battling cancer for the third time in her 26-year existence. Her older sister recently fought through it, and one of her cousins just died from a different type of cancer. In speaking with her yesterday, she was frustrated but optimistic. She noted that her cousin’s death and her own current illness were part of god’s larger plan for her own life, and for humanity’s existence in a bigger sense.
Basically, she’s making argument 1 for how a loving god can still exist even if there is so much suffering and seemingly needless death in the world. Yeah, her cancer sucks, and it sucks that her cousin died from a brain tumor, but it’s “no biggie”. God is good, so there must be a good result in the end.
In actuality, Christians don’t really believe that there is a greater good in anything that happens from bad things. Let me illustrate:
Suppose that you’re reading the newspaper and you see that a van full of teenagers coming back from Bible Camp was hit head-on by another car, setting both vehicles on fire. Several of the teenagers are unable to free themselves, and they burn to death. Witnesses describe their anguished screams and pleas for help. A baby riding in the other car also dies in this way.
The response from the religious community will almost certainly be something along the lines of “we are unable to comprehend God’s will in this tragic event, but we must trust that only good will ultimately come from it.” In other words, we don’t understand why god chose such bad deaths for these people, but god is good, and therefore good will come out of the situation.
The problem with this theory is that if a Christian were standing nearby with a fire extinguisher, they would not hesitate to put the fire out. They would never think that if they let the teenagers and the baby die that something greater might arise from it. Every time that a Christian thinks or acts with compassion, they convict their own god for failing to carry through on his own requirements of them. The only time there is ever a “greater good” is when no one is around that can actually do something about whatever bad thing is happening. This is very much a “god of the gaps” type argument. If we don’t understand something (or in this case, can’t prevent it), we throw up our arms and say, “well, that sucks; good thing there’s a god somewhere out there who knows why 6 teenagers just needlessly died in a needlessly torturous way”.
It frustrates me that people think like this, but I’m glad that as gaps close, there will be less of them that the g-man can fill. If we can take a pill for something that god previously cured in some miraculous way, our subjugation to superstition lessens.
Anyways, onto the second point: I’ve heard it said that if there were no evil, we wouldn’t be able to truly love god, because we would have no alternative. In other words, our decision to choose god is only meaningful because we have the option not to choose him. If god forcibly removed evil and suffering from the world, he would be stripping humans of their capacity for free will, and thus, their capacity to choose to love god.
Never mind that free will is a myth, clearly rejected by modern neurobiology. For the moment though, let’s suppose that we actually do have free will. In that case, this argument angers me more than almost anything else, as it’s so stupid. Isn’t the very definition of heaven a place where there will be no pain, no suffering, no sorrow, and no evil? Obviously, you don’t need all those things for us to love god. Or, do vans full of drunken teen angels careen around heaven, randomly plowing through people, turning them into angel paraplegics? According to Christianity, you don’t need evil and suffering to be present to love god, otherwise Heaven would suck just as bad as earth does. This idea is just a cop out to defend the idea of a loving god.
As a corollary, let me mention one other related argument: if we had absolute proof of god’s existence, we really wouldn’t have a choice to love him. Thus, god hides himself from us, providing just enough clues for us to want to seek him and love him. Lucifer had absolute proof of god’s existence, and he still chose to rebel. What makes people think that I wouldn’t want to punch god in the balls and go do my own thing too? Maybe god doesn’t want me to get a sweet arm tattoo. Nuts to him! Me and Kat Von D are gonna go crazy. I am going to get that Webster tattoo!
The fact of the matter is–according to Christianity–that even with absolute proof, you are still able not to choose to follow god. Ergo, it’s pointless that god should hide himself from us. And this pretty much makes god a crappy, absentee father.
