The Problem of Evil

As we have noted, many people object to God’s existence because of the presence of death and suffering in the world.

This is what philosophers call “The Problem of Evil” and I have raised two objections to the idea that the presence of evil somehow undermines the existence and goodness of God. It is to my second objection that I now turn.

As I mentioned, I don’t believe that the person who objects to the existence of God has grounds to call anything evil, or good, for that matter. Without a supreme authority in which to ground morality, the atheist and naturalist is left with nothing but the products of evolution, both biological and sociological, and evolution is a process that promotes survival, period. What aids survival has absolutely nothing to do with right and wrong, good and bad. Without an absolute standard of good, how can we say that an action falls short of that standard? And without God, we have no standard. As C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, a man can only tell that a line is crooked if he has a straight line against which he can compare it.

From an evolutionary perspective, an act may assist us in passing our genes on to the next generation which makes it beneficial, not good or bad. Murder may be deemed “bad” because it harms the group, and groups are an important part in aiding survival, so if you want to stay in this group you will refrain from murdering, or raping, or stealing or any number of things. But this doesn’t actually make a thing wrong. At most it makes it socially unacceptable. Indeed one might argue, from an evolutionary perspective, that rape is a good thing as it increases a man’s chances of passing on his genes to the next generation. However, our moral intuitions and life experiences tell us that rape is not simply a social faux pas but an actually evil event.

Without God, all that exists is “survival of the fittest”. If my people can wipe out your people then the strongest will have survived to pass on their genes and the weakest will have perished. The fittest survived. But the genocide of your people wasn’t wrong or evil. It just simply…is.

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