Christianity and the Reality of Evil

Kenneth Hynek • 22nd Sep 2009 • Religion, Atheism, Religion, Christianity, Religion, Philosophy, Religion, Theology
atheism, C. S. Lewis, Christ, Christianity, evil, faith, God, good, Jesus, Mark Shea, Out of the Silent Planet, science fiction, the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, Vox Day

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Vox Day offers up a handy explanation of just why the “problem” of evil is not really a problem for Christians. More than that, though, he goes a step further and points out why the existence of evil is ultimately something Christians can take as affirmation of their faith:

Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single one of us sooner or later. I believe in the fallen nature of Man, and I am aware that there is no shortage of evidence, scientific, testimonial, documentary, and archeological, to demonstrate that no individual is perfect or even perfectible by the moral standards described in the Bible. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is the only means of freeing Man from the grip of that evil. God may not be falsifiable, but Christianity definitely is, and it has never been falsified. The only philosophical problem of evil that could ever trouble the rational Christian is its absence; to the extent that evil can be said to exist, it proves not only the validity of Christianity but its necessity as well. The fact that we live in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

…

I suspect that unless you can understand why the first book in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy is called Out of the Silent Planet, unless you fully grasp the implications of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, you cannot possibly understand much about Christianity or the degree of difference between it and other religions. Fortunately for many Christians, intellectual understanding isn’t the metric upon which salvation is based. The Biblical God claims to know everything about the human heart and He would appear to recognize that thinking isn’t for everyone.

Mark Shea is fond of noting that there are only two good arguments for atheism: the existence of evil and the way the world apparently seems to function without obvious influence from God. St. Thomas Aquinas dealt with both arguments several centuries ago, though both persist to this day in various forms. Aquinas’ rejection of the objection from evil is maddeningly short compared to some of his other responses, yet perhaps there is a hidden meaning to his brevity.

In the end, the argument that the existence of evil precludes the existence of God rests on a logical mis-step: the baseless assumption that localized instances of evil cannot exist in a reality proceeding from an infinite good. In other words, that evil exists is (as Vox demonstrates) a more powerful argument in favour of the Christianity it purportedly refutes.

It is pleasantly amusing to think that the saint, in composing his rebuttal, took pains to not overdo things, for fear of arguing away too much.

And I suppose, as well, that there is thus actually only one good argument for atheism.