Why is there disease and poverty, conflict and violence? Why is there greed and evil, bigotry and terrorism? Why the town- drowning tsunamis, the city-leveling earthquakes, the country- effacing wars? We don’t seem to be getting any good answers at all. In fact, the most easy argument for atheism has become, “If there is a just, loving God, how can he allow suffering and evil?”. Irrespective of whether God exists or not, could we be asking the wrong question altogether ?
“The creative mind can spot wrong answers but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions,” -Antony Jay
Nietzsche was an unorthodox philosopher who declared, ‘God is dead’. What he really meant was that religion’s moral framework had become not only baseless, but harmful for growth. He said that it was detrimental for the flourishing and happiness. On the matter of suffering, he believed that the badge of ‘unwelcome evil’ attached to it was a mistake. In fact, Nietzsche strongly believed that all greatness arose from a background of deep suffering. He also felt that the idea of good vs evil is not a Platonic truth outside of ourselves, but is derived from our social and emotional pressures. In his book, ‘Genealogy of Morals’, he explains how ‘good’ and ‘bad’ human qualities often convoluted into the ‘evil’ and ‘good’ ones because of the dynamics of societies.
How did the personality of a man-made God arise?
It seems to us that the ideas of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ arise naturally from our intuitions, but as a matter of fact, they are strongly influenced by many millennia of social and cultural conditioning. In the beginning, early days of society, nobility, strength, truthfulness, assertiveness, perseverance and power were deemed as good and its opposites were considered as bad. In a society where there were masters and slaves, rulers and commoners, kings and his subjects, the masters could display and express these ‘good’ qualities, but the slaves and the commoners, much more numerous, could not. As a coping mechanism then, they had to adopt the behaviours and attitudes of servility, meekness, sacrifice in order to survive. They gave up truthfulness in order to manipulate the masters to protect themselves and to gain favour. Slowly, they began to resent the situation, and out of this ‘ressentiment’, as Nietzsche calls it, they pushed many of those ‘good’ qualities, which they could not express themselves, to the realm of ‘evil’. The servants and slaves outnumbered the masters vastly, and in time, across all societies, the concept of ‘evil’ took a stronghold. To give the slaves a righteous voice and to keep the masters in check . In parallel, the characteristics of submission, meekness, sacrifice and suffering achieved self-righteous tones of ‘goodness’.
Do you see how it was all a defence mechanics against powerlessness?
Look, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actually arose from a context of powerlessness and helplessness rather than any real value.
Toppling over a God who was created to avoid suffering, in the first place, because he has not avoided it. A strange circularity!
In fact, the concept of ‘suffering’ arose out of this slavish, servile mentality as a coping mechanism against helpless weakness. I am not saying pain actually pleasant, but that it has been convoluted into a demon it might not actually be. The problem is that suffering has become inextricably linked with not only powerlessness but also with punishment. Punishment always accompanies guilt if you look closely. “I am suffering because I am being punished for my wrongdoings!”, we automatically think.
“I must be guilty, so I am being punished”, this thought actually helps derive some meaning from our suffering, which otherwise seems to be unreasonable. No? Guilt, always attached with suffering, is one of the most self-negating and self -righteous emotions of all. Guilt can be used as a tool for manipulation and control apart from being this morbid coping mechanism. Such guilt in fact, is the main reason for religious belief!
“If you don’t have faith God will be angry at you and will punish you!” Powerless Guilt mongering.
“You must have sinned so you suffer“. Helpless fear mongering.
When suffering is attached to punishment, and punishment to guilt in this manner, it is dualy characterised as ‘deserved’ or ‘undeserved‘. Don’t you see? Deserved punishment should rightfully lead to guilt. What about the ‘undeserved punishment’ then, the senseless suffering? That leads to anger.
“Unfair! Undeserved” Rejection and anger. This is how we all really think, right?
Nietzsche says “What raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering”. These questions plague us more than the actual suffering might, and gives novel twists to our troubles with the additional flavours of ‘guilt’, ‘evil’, and also ‘vindictive anger’ at punishment that is ‘undeserved’.
The modern atheistic ideology is thus completely confused and twisted because it is just ‘angry’ over the idea of ‘ Undeserved suffering’.
Look, atheism is a child of religion itself, so naturally has its characteristics. Religion created GOD as a caricature to blame for all ‘suffering’. Atheism loves to hate this GOD who does nothing for ‘undeserved suffering’.The religious god is an all-powerful master who can curse or bless at will. He is a result of powerless, slavish, servile human minds. Minds which cannot deal with pain and suffering, an integral part of human existence. Minds which do not want to take responsibility for it.
Of course, again, this is not to say that pain is pleasurable. In fact, the driving force of all our lives is to move continually away from pain towards pleasure. It is a natural desire. It ought to be that way. No one must wish to languish forever in suffering in pain. No, that is not the point at all.
However, the problem arises when you want to do away with pain promptly, in a magical, miraculous swish. When you do not want to go through it; not own it. Thus comes in the magic wand wielding God who, if pleased enough with you, will erase all your pains in a majestic gesture. Thus comes in a master- slave relationship, of powerlessness against controlling power. Then comes in the slavish mentality, which proclaims us helpless. This idea actually means you do not want responsibility of your suffering, irrespective of whether you created it or it fell upon you. Either way, you want it be God’s problem. Atheists, you assume that suffering should not exist in an ideal world, and if there has to be a God, he should take away all suffering.Well, strangely you are operating in the same model as religion’s, which arose to not look at one’s suffering straight in the eye, but to pass it on to God’s shoulders. To make him responsible.
Do you then realize the circularity in your arguments against this religious God?
One is not claiming suffering is great, it is not. But toppling over a God who was created to avoid suffering in the first place, because he has not avoided it, is a strange circularity!
This is exactly how religions teach us to think about God, in the context of suffering and guilt. God is the powerful master who has control and power, and we commoners try to control this anthropomorphic God. We ourselves decide what his powers and duties should be. These are actually the powers powerless men wish they had, and the duties they think should be done. How strange! God ought to punish us only for our wrongdoings, and for nothing more. God ought to take care of us, make us comfortable.When we sense undeserved punishment; we cry out against such injustice.
When such gratuitous, undeserved evil transpires, we shout from rooftops that God is either horrible or does not exist. Ridiculous!
If we were to decide the fate of God’s existence through logic and a priori reasoning alone, I am reminded of a quote by Epicurus, the famous Greek philosopher. It is another matter that I strongly believe that the puzzle of God’s existence cannot be solved by logic. It is a matter for experimentation, and new types of experimentation at that.
As for what Epicurus said, so disillusioned was he, like many others, with God’s impotence:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
If there really is a God, what makes you think his /its sole motive should be to make your life comfortable? That idea, of a ‘good’ God is a man-made conception; the product of servile, slavish minds. A master-slave, king-kingdom, ruler-commoner relationship. A powerful against a powerless, control vs helplessness relationship. Suffering, punishment, guilt , evil, debt, all of it seems to arise from this ‘Master-Slave’ paradigm.
What if we made a paradigm shift in thought? What if we viewed the problem of suffering from a different vantage point, a different lens?
Say, assume for a moment that God were a parent, whose highest concern was to help actualize his children’s highest potential, like any. Would he worry about making them uncomfortable in the now? In a very practical example, lets say your child is a fairly good student at school, with just optimum effort from his end. What if you wanted him to get into an Ivy League university once he graduated from high school? You would set him up for tougher tests, so that he could raise his standards, won’t you? You would want him to study harder, to develop better skills at handling these tougher tests. Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day, but ones who develop effective tools for higher productivity and faster learning get a lead. Your child could, and in all probability would, suffer through the tougher standards initially. He could be grudging, resentful and angry, feeling that he does not need to be put through these tougher tests. In time though, and eventually, when he found himself armed with a new skill set which he creatively discovered within himself, he will be equal to the demands of the new standard. He would have raised his levels, lead initially through suffering, finally, to the new standard. Which successful child, who went this route, would later grudge the ‘suffering’ to chose the less proficient state over the advanced one? None!
Are we defining the problem of ‘evil’ and ‘suffering’ incorrectly then?
Maybe.
The solution to a problem rarely arises from the same level at which the problem was created.
A radical, paradigmatic shift in thought might be the needed.
A new way of looking at the problem, a new way of defining it.