Friday, November 04, 2016

The Central Questions - Part 2

Evolution, built on a foundation of naturalism and uniformitarianism asserts that what we experience now, including corruption, suffering and death, have been the norm from the beginning of life on the planet.   Death is not an enemy, but is instead part of the engine of progress toward higher life forms. It is necessary for the weak to die so that the strong can prosper.

In it's atheist form, there is no purpose at all to this pattern.  Life arose, but it could have failed to arise.   Creatures that survive are "better"  only in the sense that they were better equipped to survive.

In it's theistic form, God may have devised a universe that made life possible and may in some hidden sense be the energy behind the laws of nature, but the "survival of the fittest" reality is nevertheless the overarching fact of existence.   Death cannot be an enemy if it is a necessary component in the development of more complex life forms.

So why do we suffer?   Because suffering and pain are evolutionary developments that aid our survival, a notion that is brutal if there is no purpose in existence and perhaps far worse if this was "God's method of creation".

In either case the traditional "free will" explanation for the origin of evil and suffering cannot be maintained.   Evil and suffering are part of the fabric of reality from the beginning and by design.   




On occasion, when the latest media reports of some new discovery seemed to indicate that the "fact" of evolution was undeniable, my faith would be significantly challenged.

But much later in a short stint in seminary, my faith was shaken.   Calvinism in its most rigid form, asserts that God's will in the form of his eternal decrees.   In our present reality, human free will is in complete bondage to corruption, pride and rebellion.  Only by the grace of God extended to those whom he chooses, can the will be moved to desire the ultimate good.  On these ideas Christians generally agree.  Humans have been corrupted.  ("Good" is a term that needs context.   Bad people can do things that are "good" in a relative sense, better than something worse, but even the best we do is tainted, corrupted and mixed with evil).

But the Calvinist view goes much further.   Human choice and human freedom are contingent on the  will of a sovereign God.   There are shades of difference but in some forms of Calvinism, the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden was part of God's eternal decree, thus every evil act is in some way connected to a Master Plan that only God can ever know or understand.   It was a Calvinist who pointed out in Seminary that no Calvinist can use the "free-will" defense to explain the existence of evil.

Hearing this at an Evangelical Christian seminary shook me more than any other idea that had ever challenged my view of reality.

What then is the purpose of suffering and evil, if suffering and evil are somehow part of the mystery of God's sovereign plan?   In fact, what are even the definitions of suffering and evil if the free choices of men are determined by the sovereign decree of God?   

In both cases, that of evolutionary thinking and the logical end of Calvinist thinking, the universe is deterministic, free will is an illusion, and suffering and evil are simply part of the reality of the universe as it is or as it was intended.   Evil, death and suffering are not intruders on a reality that was intended to be good, rather they are necessary cogs in the machine that marches toward some other end, an end that requires evil, suffering and death.

Such a view is not in any way emotionally comforting.   Neither is it psychologically helpful.  If suffering and death are "just they way things are supposed to be" as in the naturalistic reality post-Darwin, then we are left with a bleak pessimism overcome only by temporary grasping for temporary joys.  If on the other hand, suffering and death are part of God's will shrouded in some mystery hidden by His inscrutable wisdom, then we can never know the reason why cancer ravages the body of a human being other than "it is God's will".   Calvinism fares better in that the end of suffering is envisioned, but resting in the eternal presence of the God who decreed that the suffering was necessary in the first place seems a conflicted stance to take.

But intellectually, Calvinism is fraught with contradictions that make it entirely unsatisfactory to me.   God is good but he decrees that evil will occur., Death will be swallowed up in victory but death was part of the very plan God put into effect from the foundation of the world.  Christ will put an end to sin, but it was the decree of God that made sin inevitable.

And intellectually, Evolution falls short as well.   For the very meaning of suffering is confused.   If infirmity, disease and suffering are necessary for the perfection of species then in what sense do we call cancer evil?   Is it not good that a body wracked with diseased cells slip into non-existence?   Atheists recoil in horror at the charge that Hitler was influenced by Darwin, but if one race is truly inferior to another, and species better equipped to survive should survive, then on what moral grounds does the atheist object to helping evolution along?  Even more to the point, if there is no God and no "cosmic guarantees of human values" (Humanist Manifesto 1), then why is survival itself deemed to be good?   If the end of our 70 years is nothingness, then why should we not hurry to our eventual end?  And will we care what is "good" or "bad" once we are gone?





No comments: