| Is There Meaning in Evil and Human Suffering? |
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| Written by Arron Bergeron |
| Monday, 22 June 2009 20:05 |
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Is There Meaning in Evil and Human Suffering?by Arron Bergeron
During the last three spitfire sessions we’ve been answering the question; “Is there meaning in evil and human suffering”. If you want that question answered, you’ll have to download the sessions (14, 15, and 16). However, there is a point upon which I’ve been meditating which I wanted to re-iterate in this column, simply this; for the atheist and naturalist, there is no answer, and there is no hope in the midst of any suffering anyone endures. If all we are is molecules in motion, if there is no immaterial reality, then when we see suffering it is exactly that, suffering, cold and meaningless. For the atheist, there is an attempt to prescribe personal meanings to things, but they are arbitrary, forced, and temporary. In such a scenario, where the determiner and the determining are inseparable, where no standard is justified or applicable to measure the pain, all the atheist has to truly offer is this response; “Who cares. What is simply is”. I do not mean to be crass. I am not saying that atheists can’t feel for those who suffer. Just as with morality, they lack foundation or justification to deal well or feel sympathy. For the evolutionist, there is equally as deep a problem. If nature is “red in tooth and claw” as Dawkins and other evolution enthusiasts are oft found quoting, when we are witnessing someone in a hospital bed, we are seeing the magic of evolution at work. When someone is fighting against cancer, we are witnessing the work of the gods named time and chance operating by the maxim “survival of the fittest”. In these scenarios the hospitals are the evolutionists’ temples, and the sick beds are the altars. The evolutionist believes that this “inefficient process” is the pathway leading to the apex of all accidents, mankind. In this light, suffering should be cause for excited anticipation of the new thing being produced, but which we will never see due the fact we won’t live the next million years to see the final product. That’s more faith than I have. This is a point often ignored, mainly, the universality of the experience of suffering among all mankind. It should warrant that all worldviews and religions must answer the question elicited from suffering. But that is rarely the case. If the Christian must answer how there can be meaning in suffering, than so must the naturalist. As a Christian I don’t fear the question. What truly does the naturalist have to offer? |