Many atheists are genuinely troubled by the problem of evil.
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Evil confronts us no
t in abstract only but through bitter personal experience. It meets us in the cancer ward, the nursing home and the crematorium. It assaults us through the carnage of the evening news; it saps us through the daily monotony of failures, feuds and fading hopes. Every one of us knows evil.
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You may have realised that I am using the word “evil” very broadly to include moral evil (deceit, cruelty, pride, etc.), natural evil (disease, tsunamis…) and that last enemy, death. In the truest sense all these “evils” are unnatural, for they are disrupt the peace (shalom) of God’s good creation. They are all signs that things are not they way they ought to be.
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Not surprisingly, people find the experience of evil difficult to reconcile with the existence of a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God. For many atheists this philosophical “problem of evil” is a compelling argument against belief. Eighteen of the essays in 50 Voices of Disbelief at least mention the problem of evil, and for five of these it is their main topic (the essays by Russell Blackford, Nicholas Everitt, Christine Overall, Stephen Law and Gregory Benford).
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It is unfortunate that some atheists wave around the problem of evil like a winning lottery ticket, just as it is unfortunate that some Christians dismiss it with flippant theodicies. (A theodicy is an attempt to justify God’s actions. I do not mean to imply here that all theodicies are flippant, merely that theodicies of the flippant variety are particularly regrettable). However, many other people, atheist and Christian alike, demonstrate a real sensitivity to suffering, often amplified by personal tragedy. Gregory Benford’s article ‘Evil and Me’, for example, is more a sigh of despair than a carefully reasoned case. Many atheists grieve at the injustice and suffering of our world, which seem so clearly to deny God and his goodness.
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So how ought Christians respond to this?
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First, we must respond with tears and compassion, with knees bent in prayer, and arms outstretched in charity. Evil is not an intellectual conundrum; it is a dark and terrible perversion of God’s good creation. If evil seems to atheists to deny God’s goodness that is because it does deny God’s goodness – a quality evident from the time sin first entered the world (Genesis 3:1-5). The whole creation is groaning, and is in bondage to decay (Romans 8:21-22). The present experience of creation is one of futility (Romans 8:20) – a word that evokes all the confusion and frustration evident in the book of Ecclesiastes. We do not understand all the evil in the world, and nor should we expect to. So rather than argue with your atheist friends who are distressed by evil and suffering, why not weep with them?
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Secondly, it is helpful to recognise that the problem of evil actually consists of several problems. There is a philosophical problem – how can we reconcile God’s existence with the existence of evil? There is an experiential problem – we all live under the shadow of death. And most fundamentally of all there is a moral problem – we are culpable for evil, we are guilty. Indeed, the moral problem precedes the experiential – “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). We are perpetrators of evil before we are its victims.
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Thirdly, and most importantly, we must respond with the gospel. We may not have a complete explanation for evil, but we do have something even better – a God-given solution to evil. This solution is both Christ-centred and future-oriented.
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It is Christ-centred: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection deliver us from the guilt, penalty and power of sin. God the Son entered our world, took on our moral evil, and drank the full cup of suffering that was its due. Through his resurrection Christ has conquered death and brought the new age forward into the present.
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But the gospel is also future-oriented: But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13) We still wait for Christ’s return, for the final day of judgement which will establish universal justice and peace, and for a new creation free from the taint of sin and death.
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The gospel, therefore, invites both faith in Jesus and his past achievement, and hope for the glorious future he has already secured. And so, with our future secure in his hands, Jesus enables us to live with love in the present, acting in small but significant ways to alleviate the suffering of others.
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But all of this is something quite different to giving an explanation in answer to the philosophical problem of evil. That is, none of this means trying to reconcile God’s existence with the existence of evil. I, for one, am comfortable with that. After all, why ever would we want to reconcile the two? In the final analysis, one of them must go. The atheist’s mistake is to decide which it will be too soon.
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The experience of suffering and evil drives some people away from God. But it also drives many people to God – as it did with me when I became a Christian as a teenager. When I groaned with creation then, and when atheists groan today, we express the very problem for which the gospel itself is the solution. Don’t withhold it from them!
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For further reading:
- Habakkuk – read and see how it moves from the philosophical problem of evil to hope in a God-given solution to evil.
- Romans 1-8
- Byron Smith’s discussion of the problem of evil has greatly informed my thinking on this question. Check it out on his blog.
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photo credit: allspice1 – Consolation
photo credit: hdptcar – African rebel camp
I like this one a lot more
This kind of assumes that the atheist once held some theistic position doesn’t it? After all, someone who has been an atheist all of their life, babies for example, may never have even considered the existence of a god.
Great article Martin reflecting on the problem of evil. While many atheists present the problem of evil as a principal reason why they are not a Christian, for me the problem of evil is the principal reason why I am not an atheist. The atheists’ resolution to the problem of evil I have always found to be empty at best, and sick at worst, as philosophically it often boils down to “s*** happens”.
I think you’ve caught me out on a piece of rhetoric. (It’s rather nice rhetoric, though, don’t you think?
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But you have made me realise I need to clarify something. Thanks!
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In a sense, both atheists and Christians “decide…too soon”. Atheists deny God, presuming that evil is ultimate. Christians, believing that God is ultimate, wait for him to bring an end to evil.
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But both decisions are made in advance of Christ’s return, when the truth of the matter will be evident to all. Or, from the atheist’s perspective, both decisions are made in advance of death, when the truth of the matter would be evident to all except for the minor hitch that we won’t be around to perceive it.
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In any case, I’d want to go one step further and argue that the Christian’s decision is not in fact “too soon”, because God’s victory over evil is already seen in Christ’s death and resurrection. It is not a blind hope, but a hope based on what God has already revealed in history.
Is this more rhetoric? I doubt any atheists sit around thinking to themselves: “ahh evil, subjective as the term is, must nevertheless be the ultimate.” Personally, I’m an atheist because I haven’t been convinced by any theistic arguments – evil, whatever you take that to be, has nothing to do with it.
When I say “Atheists deny God, presuming that evil is ultimate” I mean two things:
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(1) Many atheists deny God because they presume that evil is ultimate, i.e. their conviction that evil is a fixed and permanent feature of the universe leads them to doubt God’s existence.**
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(2) Even for those who have different reasons for disbelief, the denial of God imples that evil is ultimate. The Christian says, “this is not the way it is supposed to be”. For the atheist that is a meaningless sentence. There is no “way it is supposed to be”. So there is no real hope that anything can change. We might at times be able to alleviate evil, but we will never eliminate it.
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** For example, for most of the 18 atheists who mention the problem of evil in Fifty Voices the existence of evil is at least one reason for disbelief. Taner Edis is an exception – while he thinks that this philosophical reason for disbelief “continues to resonate today”, he admits it has shortcomings.
If I see a child being being physically assaulted by an adult (something I might associate the word evil with), I don’t think that should be, and I will do my best change it. That seems to contradict your claims, does it not?
All I was trying to say was that for atheists nature will always be “red in tooth and claw”. There is no hope that this will ever change, that evil will be eliminated entirely. But I wasn’t saying that you shouldn’t act to alleviate evil when you get the opportunity to do so.
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But let me pick up on your earlier suggestion that evil is subjective. If that’s the case, doesn’t that mean that you face no compulsion to act? At least not until you have ascertained whether, in the subjective opinion of the child, adult, and society as a whole, that this particular activity is regarded as evil. Even then you wouldn’t really be compelled to take action. You could always say, “In my subjective opinion, I disagree”.
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That said, very few of us can live consistently with a framework that views evil as subjective. At the end of the day, there are some things that all of us will recognise as evil.
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So the fact that you feel a moral compulsion to act seems to me to count against the atheist view that the universe is a brute fact, rather than against the Christian belief that it is a good, lovingly designed, purposeful creation.
That is fine, and I personally agree with the following: for as long as humans exist I don’t think evil will ever be eliminated entirely. In fact, with some reasonable assumptions I think it might be possible to prove that evil will always be around.
Let me rearrange your comments a little bit so I can understand them:
First, let’s be clear: evil need not always be considered on an instance by instance basis. For example, I, and I’m sure most people, will always consider the physical abuse of children (to take the given example) evil and it need not be considered on a case by case basis.
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With that established, then of course what you write is true. To rephrase your comment: if a given action is not considered evil then obviously you’re not going to feel compelled to act against that action on the grounds that it is evil, while once an action is considered evil you will feel compelled to act against it (even if that action is simply to voice disapproval per your “In my subjective opinion, I disagree” quote).
I doubt anyone can live perfectly consistently with any framework. At the end of the day the best we can do is hold up something we consider to be an ideal (whether you hold that ideal to be Christianity, secular humanism, etc) and try and support each other in living up to that ideal.
I’m sorry but this doesn’t make sense to me. Yes I, as an atheist, feel a moral compulsion to act in the example given above. But how does this say anything about the universe (existing) being a fact? Or the Christian belief that it is a good, lovingly designed, purposeful creation? It certainly does contradict your claim that “For the atheist … [t]here is no way it is supposed to be. So there is no real hope that anything can change.” which is why I gave the example. Are you trying to establish ‘morality implies a god’?
Hey Ben, thanks for your reply. You’ve got me thinking!
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I guess I do believe that morality, at least in my understanding of the word, does imply God. How so? If we distinguish between good and evil, then we imply that there is something/someone that has set good and evil – there is an external standard. This standard is determined by the character of God, and by how he designed creation. For example, God designed human relationships to reflect his loving, faithful character. Relationships work best when they look like this.
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Clearly you don’t think that morality implies a God. I wonder if we are using words differently. What do you mean by “morality”? And what do you mean by “the way it is supposed to be,” if you don’t believe in any design or purpose for the universe?
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Furthermore you seem to agree that there are some moral absolutes, that there are some things that don’t need to be determined on a case by case basis. On what is morality based?