PEFACE
Preface
During a radio interview [1] a well-known naturalist [WKN] gave a hasty corrective when the interviewer described him as an atheist. The dialogue went something like this: [WKN] “No, I am not an atheist, I’m an agnostic (or words to that effect) .” [Interviewer] “So you believe that God ‘set up’ the system of nature?” [WKN] “No, I do not, but I sometimes think (while observing a termite’s hill) that there is an unobserved observer.” WKN’s take on ‘god’ would, in my opinion, fall into the category of both an impotent and disinterested deity. However. should the Judeo Christian God be a deity who likes to observe his handiwork but has no intention of interfering with or intervening in his world, however ‘messed up’ it may be, we had best forget the whole notion of a personal God and make the most of life without his personal intervention, attention or care. Evil and the Goodness of God is such a ‘big’ subject, a subject that fills the shelves of libraries; indeed, many have devoted their lives to attempting to resolve the issue; the question of how an alleged God of Love, who is ‘All Powerful’, can allow such evil to continue to exist is one that will not go away. But why is it that we humans have the temerity to demand an explanation from God or to doubt the existence of the God of the Bible because we find [this particular] God underqualified or wanting? Doesn’t it strike one as rather odd that the very argument against God’s goodness comes from the notion of the actual existence of ‘good and evil’—a belief that owes its origins to the Judeo/Christian Scriptures.
What guarantee have we that these precious social mores (that we in the ‘West’ take for granted) will not evaporate ‘overnight’ under the weight of ‘other ideas’—ideas that are socially engineered and not universally absolute? Of course, many societies adhere to other ideas—ideas that see ‘black as white and white as black’—yet there is a strange notion of injustice at the ‘heart’—and that is because of the existence of GOD—The Alpha and Omega: ‘who was and is and is to come.’ (Revelation 1:8) If we really believed that ‘Natural Selection’ was, solely, the prime mover of biological life, we ought not to be asking such a question—though the problem can, to some degree, be lessened if our view of God’s involvement in the creative process, i.e., that God’s ‘handiwork’ is undetectable simply because evolution is a natural process and needs no meddling from ‘without’. The undetectability/denial of purpose, or the ‘Hand of God’, is not evidence for purposelessness as there may well be an ‘overall’ purpose to biological evolution. Indeed, this is, mostly, the view of proponents of, what we might term, Darwinism with a theistic touch. Biochemist Denis Alexander points out that, “Nomic (law-like) regularity is a consistent feature’ and that the ‘question of existence’ seems to cast doubt on the claim that, ‘this whole process is without Purpose.” (2018).The question of ‘mere’ existence, may simply exacerbate an already problematic scenario especially regarding the life experience of sentient creatures, yet it is this very sentience that is the key to the problem of evil. I shall return to the implications of sentience later in this book as it is essential to its hypothesis.
The idea of there being a ‘bigger picture’—that the God of the Bible is not the ever diminishing ‘god of the gaps’, is fully appreciated. However, should materialistic world views be allowed to dictate absolute reality there would be little room for the existence of the God of The Bible—for the feasibility of ‘actual’ providence. Should such a God exist, we would expect consistent moral standards—though; it might be argued that the ‘Theistic Evolutionary View’ relieves us from that particular conundrum due to the natural processes that, accordingly, God has allowed to express itself through what is, a facie eius, a purely material process.
It is said that the inherent goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval. i.e., God’s approval, not ours. God, it can be said, is the final standard of good. If this is the case, then we can say that ‘goodness’ emanates from the heart of God; God is ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’ or even malevolent. Goodness then, both seen and unseen, comes from God—though it might be suggested that ‘good outcomes’ emanate via unplanned events—events and outcomes that have nothing whatsoever to do with deities of any kind. If this were the case, we may wish to thank our lucky Stars.
If God is not good, then we have no reason to put our trust in him (if I may be permitted to use the masculine pronoun)—for God may not be trustworthy. If we do not trust God, then we cannot say we have faith in God. To say we have confidence in someone but do not trust them is akin to the phrase The Living Dead’; it is an oxymoron. Hebrews 11:6 though says that without faith/trust, it is not possible to please God.
N.T. Wright (2006) refers to ‘the problem of good’. Why Wright argues, should there be such a thing as good? Wright’s answer is that it is because goodness is the essence of God. This is not to say that we necessarily have what some would describe as ‘coherent’ answers for many big questions about evil and suffering. Presuppositions about evil and God’s alleged culpability will always be with us; some will never be satisfied no matter what is said. Yet, if God is good, we can trust in his goodness—moreover, in his ultimate triumph over all that is perceived to be ‘not good’. That the God of The Bible is absolutely GOOD is the argument throughout this book.
Why should it be the case that life has value, that suffering matters, that evil is an affront to our standards—more importantly God’s? Imagine that our sense of morality has, somehow, evolved through naturally selective process (in which case, we could expect changes that bring about) we would not expect a universal absolute—an absolute that differentiates, reasonably clearly, between ‘good and evil, between ‘right and wrong’. Indeed, suffering does not and cannot matter to a mindless process that ‘sees not’ and ‘cares not’ yet ‘intervenes’, through biological determinism, for Natural Selection’s ‘objective’ to prevail, or should I say, to continue its program of survival.
In his provocative and controversial work, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins contends that all human behaviour is based primarily on genetic survival. Dawkins [argued] that genes have a long evolutionary history of survival, and they control nearly every aspect of human behaviour. Various proteins evolved and mutated into molecules that copied themselves repeatedly, and eventually, various strands of DNA developed. The DNA replicates itself and determines not only the phenotype (i.e., the organism’s physical characteristics) but the behaviour of the organism as well for the sole purpose of survival. The fundamental rule is that the DNA directs all organisms, from amoebas to apes, for the purposes of adaptation, survival and reproduction. Dawkins advanced the thesis that “…genes function as ‘replicators’; these replicators’ primary task is survival by whatever means necessary—individual humans simply function as ‘vehicles’ for the replicators of survival.” [2]
The question of ‘right and wrong’ (morality) seems to be, mostly. a universal given—inculcated into our very psyche. It is not a natural phenomenon—a by-product of evolutionary biology. Yet, we [the human race] instinctively know that ‘things’ are not the way they should be; we know that the things we do are sometimes an affront to the prevailing moral code. In countries with, what might be termed) a ‘Christian Heritage’ the sense of fairness, the ‘moral compass’ [3] will have been derived, chiefly, from the teachings of The Bible (Old and New Testaments). If this is the case, we should expect to see some evidence of these values.
The Apostle Paul puts it so succinctly when he says that he tried everything, but nothing helped—that there was nothing ‘anybody’ could do for him; then he wrote these words: “The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of my ‘natural inclinations’ to do something totally different.” (Romans 7:25 The Message). When we look at the state of things in the world; when we look at the results of both ‘moral’ and ‘natural’ evil, we may conclude that either God does not abide by ‘His’ own moral code or that there is another explanation for the pain, suffering and death we see all around us. Some philosophers and apologists refer to a ‘greater good’ that somehow all will be made right—that all the BIG questions will have answers—that God will be vindicated because it is God alone who is GOOD. The argument here is that God is GOOD—‘The GOOD’. Quite frankly, though, we do not have enough knowledge of God’s dealings—of ‘a future good’—a good that all those who love him will ‘see’ and all those who are (have been or will be) innocent victims experience—there is ‘a day’.
We may make pronouncements about God’s apparent failures—God’s lack of ‘goodness’, but let us do so with the humility of the ‘uninformed’. It is, as the apostle Paul says: ‘ …we do not see clearly for our vision is impaired’. (1 Corinthians 13:12) The Christian writer Philip Yancey asks why pain is such a big problem when pain’s antonym, pleasure, is, primarily, not a problem at all. Pleasure is what a lot of us live for; without pleasure, life would not be tolerable. The apparent answer to Yancey’s very insightful question is that we don’t like pain: physical, psychological or deprivational, and do not think we should have to endure it. Strangely enough we (at least in the West) do not think we should have to endure it because it is not ‘right’ as it detracts from a ‘better life experience’. Furthermore, we know when something is ‘plainly’ wrong. We do not though complain about pleasure; we do not ask why. In fact, we are able to enjoy the sensation of pleasure—in whatever form it takes. Good ‘experiences’ are not an issue though painful experiences may be—depending on how we cope with the experience—especially people of faith. Oddly enough, the Bible does not refer to ‘the problem of pain’. Of course, it refers to pain and suffering—with a complete book (Job) on the plight of one man in particular. However, as far as one can see, it does not refer to the ‘problem of pain’ per se. Pain does not feature in God’s list of wrongs. I am not, of course, suggesting that pain was/is thought to be a particular blessing. Pleasure, however, causes all kinds of problems. If we were not able to ‘enjoy’ things—it follows that we would not desire them. Some desires drive humans (imago Dei) [4] to commit the most heinous acts; the Biblical Narrative hides none of them. The story of King David, Uriah and his wife Bathsheba is one such story. [5] According to the current understanding of the history of evolutionary physiology, pain is (de facto) a part of the package for particular creatures in the Darwinian ‘Tree of Life’ concept, which is not to be confused with the ‘Tree of Life’ in Genesis chapter three. In the Biblical Narrative, pain is a dé facto part of living—it, i.e., pain, was there at the ‘genesis’—though not necessarily at the intensity experienced presently—even in Eden. One can imagine, for example, that there would have been the process of ‘seed & harvest’, so there would have been a system in which objects of creation brought forth life and then died (see John 12:24-26)[6]. Would not an insect, should it have been trodden on and crushed beyond its ability to survive, have ceased to ‘live’? Childbirth is an example of the awareness of pain. Genesis 3:16 states that, as a result of the fall, the pain of childbirth would increase; it follows therefore that it (the experience of pain) must have been in existence before The Fall. In Genesis 3:17, ‘painful toil’ is to become the order of the day—they knew the effects of pain because it was, de facto, a part of the ‘life experience’. However, as has already been suggested and as the Genesis text allows for, it does appear that pain did not have the same [agonizing] effects, specifically effects on highly sentient beings. There may be no means of providing scientific verification that any such event occurred or that a less injurious state of affairs existed prior to any change that might have been brought about as the result of what many consider as myth or as a fairly recent event that would have had no prior retrospective effect on the biosphere. However, it is possible that there might have been a different physiology—that the effects of pain (in all of its expressions) were not as injurious as they were to become. The very existence of ‘sentience’ requires pain to be a necessary part of the physiology of life. Pain (the nervous system’s reaction to ‘intrusions’ of various kinds) has always been a part of the life experience of sentient creatures.
I am persuaded that pain and suffering existed before the Adamic Fall—but that its effects, as has already been alluded to, would not have been so devastating—so all-encompassing—especially in the world outside of ‘EDEN’. We most likely disapprove of its existence and, should we have been able, we would most probably have created a world without pain. However, this ‘hypothetical’ world may not have been a possibility—similar to the imaginary Multiverse [7] that some theorists may argue exists. We, therefore, could ‘go easy’ on God and accept that this world may well be the best possible world—a world that is ‘fit for God’s purposes’ and not ours. Evil, we may presume, was the only thing that did not inhabit the paradise of God. Yet, the choice between ‘Good & Evil’ was ever-present in the psyche of the first humans—and indeed in extra-terrestrials that may have existed at the dawn of creation, even prior to its actual genesis.
According to the Apostle Paul (Romans 8:20-30), creation had been (no time reference given) subjected to futility; Paul describes it as ‘groaning’ and ‘longing’. In his translation of the New Testament, David Bentley Hart translates Romans 8:20 as “…the creation was subordinate to pointlessness….” So it can be said that, according to the apostle Paul, this world, having gone through somewhat of a negative transformation, could be described as anything other than ‘the best possible world’—though that would be a judgment given from a perspective of ignorance. Indeed, the best of possible worlds envisaged in this book is that which God had, at some point in the space/time continuum, ‘subjected to futility’. Ergo it became something other than ‘our’ best of possible environments. With particular regard to humanity, the apostle writes that “…death spread to all men…” (Romans 5:12). Paul does not refer to other life forms—but specifically to those of the human race—the ‘Image Bearers’ (imago Dei).
The 18th Century, former slave trader John Newton wrote the hymn entitled ‘Amazing Grace’. Newton’s life as the captain of a ship transporting African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean was one of baseness; Newton was a man that cared not for the value of ‘a cargo’ that was held in such low esteem; the ‘humans’ being trafficked had no ‘value’ apart from the gold received for their weight. Then something happened that profoundly changed his life—and ultimately the lives of countless others. It is well documented that the opposition to any form of slavery was the result of ‘consciences’ of those who, it may be said, took cognizance of their own ‘God shaped’ conscience—acting upon that which Scripture advocates, i.e., that every human being has value and that slavery demeans the worth of every human. It is a moral absolute that Scripture affirms, but that is denied by the actions of a ‘seared conscience’ or of those who know better but deny the worth of others for their own purposes or gain. Humans seem to have been affected, or shall we say, infected by the idea that humanity is not perfect but [deep down] ‘OK’—that there is nothing wrong with ‘Adam’s’ race (you and me) that cannot be dealt with, given enough time. However, should the effects of another’s moral failure/ineptitude enter into our world, we may have a different understanding of the matter as it would then be ‘up close and very personal’.
It is when it (evil) ‘shows up on our doorstep’ that we may ask the ‘Why Me’ question—a question directed at the mysterious notion of ‘Right and Wrong’. That there is a ‘flaw’ in the nature of human beings not many would argue with—though there would be ‘defences’ of various genres offered as reasons for such failings. Before Darwin, the cause of this ‘imperfection’ was, seemingly, easily identified and was traceable to chapter three of the book of Genesis. The Fall of the original humans was given as the major reason for the existence of both ‘Natural’ and ‘Moral’ evil—that as a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve—thereafter ‘all hell broke loose’. The argument here (for the existence of evil) has a different dimension to that of the fall of Adam & Eve per se though it does not deny the clearly defined implications given in Scripture.
Regarding ‘Original Sin’, Joel B. Green’s view is that although Israel’s scriptures are less than replete with theological reflections regarding the ongoing significance of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden, a few Jewish texts from the Second Temple Period[8] do work with Genesis 3 as they tell something of the story of sin. Green notes that these texts agree in two important respects: “(1) Adam (or Eve’s) disobedience results in their mortality and in the mortality of all who would come after them, and (2) human beings remain responsible for their actions.” (Green, Joel B., 2017)[9]]
The palaeontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, held the belief that the history of life is not going anywhere intrinsically—that we (Homo sapiens) are the accidental result of an unplanned process, in other words, “…the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable product of any definite process.” Moreover, Gould ‘confirmed’ that, “…biology has no covering law, or trend, enabling one to say that microbes, or mammals, or men could statistically be expected. Evolutionary theory, he states, offers no explanation of the crucial journey; indeed, it claims there is none but that the results are random. All that is selected for its capacity to survive, unrelated to any increase of worth or value.” Of course, this is not just the ‘voice’ of the late-great palaeontologist but the ‘natural conclusion’ of a materialistic world-view.
Contrary to the materialist view of origins etc., the philosopher Alvin Plantinga (2011) rightly, in my opinion, points out that, “…it is perfectly possible that the process of [natural] selection has been guided and superintended by God, and that it (natural selection) could not have produced our living world without that guidance.” Plantinga refers to the work of the biologist Brian Goodwin, in which Goodwin observes that It appears that Darwin’s theory works for the small-scale aspects of evolution—that it can explain the variations and the adaptations with species that produce fine-tuning of varieties to different habitats—however: “The large-scale differences of form between types of organism that are the foundation of biological classification systems seem to require another principle rather than natural selection operating on small variation, some process that gives rise to distinctly different forms of organism. This is the problem of emergent order in evolution, the origins of novel structures in organisms, which has always been one of the primary foci of attention in biology.”[10]
The storyline throughout this book is one that considers all the difficulties that appear to surround the notion of mankind’s relationship with the Creator of the cosmos, i.e., that which has been created by the God of the Judean Scriptures—and not that of some other ‘quirk of the universe’ e.g., the unidentifiable universal ‘consciousness’ of Monism. (panpsychism). The argument here is that there is a ‘God-Driven Teleology’—a ‘goal of creation’ that is purposeful rather than chaotic. Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We, generally, take the side of science despite the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so-stories, because we have a prior commitment—a commitment to materialism…It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Richard Lewontin[11] Et ideo non sequitur
[1] Radio 4 Saturday January 31st 2009
[2] BAD TO THE BONE? ORIGINAL SIN, EVOLUTION AND NATURAL LAW,Craig A. Boyd Dept. of Philosophy Azusa Pacific University.
[3] This is an overused/abused expression—used, mainly, by politicians to bring ‘comfort’ to the distrusting electorate. Nevertheless there is such a beast within us all—a moral compass that, for so many, is but a flickering remnant—the echo of the ‘Thou shall nots…..”
[4] Contrary to various views/ideas regarding the meaning of ‘imago Dei’ (being made in God’s image), the view here is that God’s image in Humankind is not merely one of ‘function’ (the sole purpose being one of functionality i.e., practical governance’) or even of potentiality—i.e., potentiality for a relationship with the Creator—but rather as related to ‘certain attributes or characteristics that we share with the Triune God.’ (Andrews, 2018).
[5] In summary: King David, a man of authority, a man after God’s heart, sees Bathsheba, is rather taken with her, arranges for her husband Uriah to be transferred to the battle front and subsequently killed and then marries her. (2 Samuel chapter 11)
[6] John 12:24-26 New International Version (NIV)
[7] Multiverse is the term used for an imaginary/hypothetical set of universes which, together, produce reality. ‘If not here then—there in another universe’. The idea is supposed to add to the weight of chance over design—that anything can [and does] happen given enough ‘time’, and that there does not have to be a ‘first cause’—God. Of course, should God so desire, make available the necessary information for the process to start and finish. Anything is possible with consciousness but with chance—well that’s another ‘matter’ altogether.
[8] The period between 516BC and 70AD (aka BCE & CE)
[9] Please note that this is, most definitely not, to exclude ‘that which is obvious’—that there is a huge ‘Moral Dilemma’ regarding our species–that many ‘noble minds’, academics and ‘politically minded’ individuals continue to, ignore, deny or vehemently argue against—though this is not the place for that particular argument.
[10] Goodwin, How the Leopard changed its spots, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994
[11] From a piece in the New York Review of Books (January 9,1997), quoted by J. Budziszewski in ‘The Second Tablet Project’, First Things (June/July 2002)
. 
Leave a comment