Suffering
Who Is To Blame?
Part Two of a Seven-part Series

There are many explanations that address the question of why there is suffering. Most people are inclined to think there is something terribly wrong about suffering. By that we don’t mean we don’t like suffering; we mean there ought not to be suffering. Many people point to suffering as proof that there either is no god or, if he exists, he is not good. It seems to be a reasonable observation.

What are the logical possibilities for god’s nature? What kind of god are we dealing with? Here are our four basic options:
One) There is no god. We live in a material world as accidents of the evolutionary process (or of some other explanation we have yet to imagine).
Two) God is evil. He (or she, or it, or they) may be completely evil, or he may be a kind-of superhuman, like the Greco-Roman gods. But he is capricious, which is to say, he is selfish, unreliable, and dangerous.
Three) God is good but his powers are limited.
Four) God is good and all-powerful.

Deciding that God does not exist can provide relief. While this perspective provides no relief from physical suffering, it does provide some psychological help. At least we don’t have to feel like we’re being neglected or, worse, targeted for abuse. If suffering seems to be from neglect or cruelty, well, this can be dismissed as mere human construct. Instead, suffering is recognized as “just the way things are”. The sanctuary of the atheist is that there’s nothing personal about misery.

Evolutionary materialism, one manifestation of atheism, will frequently make reference to its central doctrine of Survival. Suffering, from the materialist perspective, is a mechanism that aids our efforts of survival. Suffering may be unpleasant but it serves as a behavioral guide. Without it we would soon be extinct.

This argument does have its limits, given that no one has actually ever survived. Life expectancy, on the increase in the world for the last century, has actually dropped in recent years. Medical advances, while enabling more people to live into their 80s and 90s, also seem to be butting up against the wrinkled ceiling. We’re like bicycle inner tubes. We can be patched up quite a few times but, eventually, our membranes gets brittle and no longer hold air.

Of course, the materialist is not referring to the survival of individuals, but to the survival of humans, as a whole. Out of the hypothesis that humans have evolved on the basis of accidental traits that respond well to environmental pressures, materialists have concluded that survival is an imperative. It is our history, therefore it ought to be. So the materialist looks forward to an evolved, everlasting, superhuman that is soon to emerge/be discovered/be created. But is there evidence for such a thing coming to pass? In our real world it seems the toxic pressures humans are placing on this planet are severe, increasing, and a genuine threat to human existence. Will humans survive 200 years? I don’t know, but the prospects are worrisome. The world was one scary place around 1942. But the worlds’ population, at 7.5 billion, is three times greater today than it was at that time. Nuclear weaponry and nuclear waste are widespread. Pollution is rising in the ranks as a common causes of death. Global warming has become a “hot topic”, if you will. The earth seems unsteady under human stewardship. If we’re getting smarter, how can we explain the primary candidates for the last presidential election in the U.S.? Will we evolve into superhumans in time? Evidently not. It is much more likely that robots will figure out how to take care of themselves, and then exterminate humans in order to preserve the planet.

Materialism is a perspective without hope (not even the hope of science fiction). If god doesn’t exist, we might as well eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we will die. Proclaiming that god does not exist does not really relieve us from suffering then—it is an embrace of a concept that virtually guarantees there will be no relief.

The second perspective is that god exists, but he is evil. If god is evil, it would not help to be an atheist; that would just annoy him. We do not want to irritate an evil god. Perhaps we should build him a monument. Perhaps we should bring him sacrifices, begging that he leave us alone. Perhaps we should offer ourselves as lackeys, hoping this will keep him from harming us. Perhaps we should try the school of fish strategy, doing our best to remain unnoticed. At any rate, there is no point in complaining to or about an evil god. He will only laugh. He will amuse himself by creating new ways for us to suffer.

The third perspective is that god is good but limited. But why be angry at a good god who is doing the best he can? He’s just a government bureaucrat—he can only process so much paperwork in the day. He already works through lunch, eating peanut butter crackers and celery at his desk. Why rail at him? Give him a break. Humans are much more challenging than he ever thought they would be. Maybe we should cheer him on. He might appreciate a little thanks. But, in the end, it won’t matter. He just can’t provide sufficient help. He’s trying, though.

So in review of these first three types of god (or non-god), it becomes clear that they fundamentally have nothing to offer. Of course their being useless does not exclude them as possibilities. One of these realities may be ours. Many on this earth have adopted a rather Stoic philosophy: It is what it is; there’s no point to it all; there’s no point in getting hot under the collar about it. But this perspective leaves us as creatures whose highest achievement is to manage our brief lives in such a way that pleasure exceeds pain. But I can’t understand this perspective. The absence of meaning and the absence of hope are not only intolerable, they are ridiculous.

The fourth perspective is that of the good and all-powerful god. This is the way the Judeo-Christian God presents himself. If God is both good and all-powerful, there is reason to hope for deliverance out of our sufferings. In fact, it is logical to expect such a delivery, since that’s the kind of thing a good and powerful god would do.

Do we believe, then, that God is good and powerful because that is what we want and need him to be? No. Wishful thinking does not make something so. But having a desirable option does give a good reason to examine that option carefully.
The fact that we are creatures who hope does say something significant, though. Why do we hope? Why is it important? An evolutionist would argue that hope is simply a trait we have inherited because it has proved beneficial to our survival—it makes us more resilient and determined, perhaps. (It is an irony, though, that evolutionists are also inclined to scoff at religions, even as they argue that belief systems aid human survival.)

But how is it explained or demonstrated that we are genetically hardwired for such things as hope? This is no survival reflex; it is a mental abstraction, an imagining of something beyond experience. How does a mechanized creature become capable of such abstraction? The claim that hope is hardwired instinct is similar to the old saw that if you put a million monkeys in a room with a million typewriters and gave them enough time, eventually they would produce the works of Shakespeare. Someone actually tried this experiment, on a small scale, of course. A large number of monkeys were placed in a room with enough typewriters for all of them. The monkeys were left to their own devices for a month or so. As expected, they did manage to produce a few two-letter words. But, most noticeably, the monkeys never developed a sense of the relationship between the keys and the printing of letters. Nor did they ever develop a sense of the relationship between letters and ideas. A fundamental principle of evolution is that, given enough time, random activity will produce anything. Reality tends to show, to the contrary, that random events tend to have the characteristics of being random.

The monkeys did find uses for the typewriters, though. They found them to be useful perches for defecation. Genetically stumbling into hope is a lot like monkeys writing Shakespeare. A much more rational perspective is that hope is indicative of something innate in humans, something of a spiritual awareness. We hope for a world of peace and love and health because we sense that this is how life ought to be. We know there is much wrong with this world. How do we know? Because we are more than mechanistic products of this earth. We know because we are made knowing. We know because, in addition to being creatures of this world, we are creatures with awareness of a greater reality.

But if God is good and sovereign, we are still left with the problem of suffering. Can we reconcile the idea of God being good and all-powerful, with the idea of a God who created a world, knowing there would be sin, suffering, and death?

(End of Part Two of a Seven-Part Series)