It Takes One To Know One…An Atheist, I Mean
Many people who automatically associate C.S. Lewis with Christianity as a prodigious writer and apologist, may not know that he was a self proclaimed atheist in his younger years. Later on in life Lewis had some rather harsh comments about atheism and even at one time referred to those who avow atheism as being “fools”. A classic quote of Lewis, taken from Mere Christianity, is as follows:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too–for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist–in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless–I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality–namely my idea of justice–was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
I know that Richard Dawkins sees this issue of a cruel and unjust God as being pivotal to the absurdity of Faith. I wonder what underlying principle or justification or philosophical argument Mr. Dawkins has for his assertion of justice or goodness or beauty. The realization of the existence of absolutes must precede their use in discussion, as Nietzsche understood in his statement that God is dead. Nietzsche knew, as Dawkins doesn’t, that God cannot be proclaimed dead unless He was first alive. The very language that Dawkins and his fellow travelers use rings hollow because their presentation depends upon an ontological framework that they say is non-existent. If there is no universal concept of justice based, of necessity, upon a source for this universal understanding of justice that even atheists seem to accept as preexistent to the discussion then the atheist obviously cannot bemoan a world lacking this justice. The difference between these new “dogmatic atheists” and the classical atheists is, among other things, a profound ignorance in the study of philosophy and a well rounded classical education. Immanuel Kant, for instance, rejected the ontological argument based on his theory that reason is too limited to know anything beyond human experience. However, he did argue that religion could be established as presupposed by the workings of morality in the mind (what he referred to as “practical reason”). God’s existence is a necessary presupposition of there being any moral judgments that are objective, that go beyond mere relativistic moral preferences; such judgments require standards external to any mind; hence they presume God’s mind.
An excellent book to read in this regard is Drama of Atheistic Humanism by Henri de Lubac
published by Ignatius Press: http://www.amazon.com/Drama-Atheist-Humanism-Henri-Lubac/dp/089870443X/ref=sr_1_1/102-9061241-4971335?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187220909&sr=1-1
…..but no horses.
“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
Andy said,
September 17, 2007 @ 11:17 am
Nice site, by the way.
I’ve heard it said that the “problem of evil” is the biggest obstacle to Christian belief, and the hardest to answer. I’ve heard a three-step response, though, that I find pretty satisfactory. It’s usually presented in several different ways, but the gist is the same…
1) FOR OUR LOVE
One of the reasons God created us is to love Him, but He had to give us free will in order for our adoration to mean anything. If He simply created us programmed from the beginning to adore Him, it wouldn’t be love at all, it would just be a program. The act of love necessitates the possibility of *not* loving. The act of glorifying necessitates the possibility of *not* glorifying. As a result, we have been created with a full range of thoughts/actions, including the ability to do evil and inflict pain. Thus, God is not responsible for evil in the world - we are. Of course, one might ask, “Couldn’t an all-powerful God create some sort of free will that nevertheless excludes the option for evil?” but this would seem to be self-refuting (a constrained free will would not be free at all). More importantly, it presupposes that God doesn’t have any reason for allowing evil to exist, for the time being.
2.) FOR HIS GLORY
The higher reason God created us was to bring greater glory to Himself (this is entirely within His rights to do so). Jesus demonstrates this several times during his ministry. One of the best examples was when the religious leaders questioned Jesus about a particular blind man. “Who sinned?” they asked, “that caused this man to be born blind?” Jesus answered that this instance of evil was no one’s fault, but rather happened in order to bring greater glory to God. This can be interpreted in two ways: First, when Jesus worked a miracle and gave the blind man sight, it brings God glory in the eyes of those who observe the miracle. But the most important observer is the blind man himself, who went from darkness, nothingness, blindness, into a whole new world of light and color and shape and beauty and form and texture and hue! We tend to take our sight for granted, but for the man who gets sight after a lifetime of blindness, it is truly put into perspective.
In the same sense, if we already lived in a perfect world, free from evil (aka Eden), we wouldn’t realize how good we had it. But when we are taken from a world of darkness and pain and blindness and evil and hurt, and we enter new life of redemption and meaning and love and hope (aka Heaven), we can appreciate it (and by extension, God’s glory revealed) all the more because of the personal knowledge of evil. For as much as people long to return to the innocence of Eden, it is Heaven we should be looking forward to. Still, someone could point out that, while this is a plausible reason for why God would allow evil, it doesn’t explain why he allows *so much* evil, and on such barbaric levels.
3.) FOR OUR PERFECTION
Thus we need to recognize that experiencing evil does not only pay off for us eventually, it is also beneficial to us even at present, in ways we don’t often realize. What would a world without evil, a true Eden, look like? What virtues would exist there? Love, Happiness, Faith, Gratitude, Kindness, etc (although many of these words would lose their meaning, as they are the status quo, with nothing to contrast them against.)
But when you introduce evil, the virtues become enhanced and take on dimension. They become refined, purified… perfected. Love still exists, but now people can act on their love with Grace, or even Sacrifice. Happiness still exists, but now people can be happy regardless of their circumstances, what we call Joy. Faith gets proven in our Perseverance through trials.
All sorts of other virtues become possible that would not exist at all, if not for the existence of evil. Courage, Valor, Forgiveness, Charity, Hope, Patience, Honor, Justice, Compassion, and as mentioned above, Grace, Sacrifice, Joy, Perseverance… While an innocent world would still be virtuous, a fallen world gives the possibility to take the virtues to their *perfection.*
In the end, by the grace of God, even the “problem of evil” is one that that can benefit us far more than it can hurt us. (And that is no small feat.) Why does God allow *so much* evil? Because the greater the evil there is in the world, the even greater potential there is for good.