have never found an atheist who can state the problem of evil with the logical cogency and force and personal passion of a theist. The most sympathetic case for atheism in the history of the world, it seems to me, has been made by one of the great theistic writers, Fyodor Dostoevsky. IvanI often teach philosophy of religion, and I play Socrates. I try to get the class to dialogue. I divide them into two groups— believers and unbelievers, or believers and skeptics, or strong believers and weak believers. Once I get the two groups, I say, “Now, we’re going to dialogue about whether there’s a God, but those of you who classify yourselves as believers, you’re going to have to argue for atheism. And you who classify yourselves as unbelievers, you’re going to have to argue for theism.” They say, “That’s ridiculous,” and I say, “No, it isn’t. If you don’t understand the other position, you can’t really argue against it.”
I’ve done this three or four times. It’s always turned out exactly the same way. There’s no discernible difference in the intelligence level between the atheists and the theists, but the atheists always make a ridiculously weak case for theism and the theists always make a knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out case for atheism. And it’s always based on the problem of evil— by far, the strongest argument for atheism.
So, after that happens, and the students are kind of surprised, I ask, “Why did that happen?” And then the real argument begins. The atheists, who were pretending to be theists, said, “Well, you had us argue for Santa Claus; it was a ridiculous position that you gave us.” The theists, who are pretending to be atheists, said, “No, we see both sides; you don’t. We see your best arguments; you saw our weakest ones,” and then they argue about that.
Let me give you the strongest argument for atheism that I know, based on the problem of suffering. Emotionally, it’s something like Ivan Karamazov, but intellectually— since being almost a New Yorker, I am impatient, and I like philosophers who can say much in few words— I love Thomas Aquinas, who in a single paragraph can write as much as modern theologians would take a lifetime to write.
Here is his incredibly succinct formulation of the problem of evil: “If one or two contraries is infinite, the other is completely destroyed, but God means infinite goodness. Therefore, if God existed, there would be no evil discoverable anywhere, but there is evil. Therefore, God does not exist.” It’s a very powerful argument. How do you answer it?
Atheists and agnostics also want an answer to suffering, although God is not in their equation. So, the question of suffering is universal, but it’s worse for a theist.
I will try to give you six answers, none of which is original. Three of them come from natural reason— philosophical reasoning without any reliance on religion or divine revelation— and three of them do come from religion or divine revelation. The first answer, which is basically the answer of ancient Stoicism, is that we are finite creatures. We have desires that are not going to be satisfied; so, we have a choice of either adding to our inevitable frustration or not.
Here you are in the dentist’s chair and the Novocain hasn’t taken effect and the dentist says, “We’re doing root canal work; so, you have to tell me where the pain is. There’s no alternative.” What choice do you have? You have a choice between enduring the physical pain and rebelling against it. If you rebel against it, you add psychological pain and terror and fear and make the pain worse. So, why not be a Stoic and just accept it? Red Sox fans understand that. So, one possible explanation for suffering is “We’re animals; we are finite creatures.”
A second answer that comes from an older source, namely all the myths, just about all the myths of all the cultures of the world, is that something happened way back when before history. Things aren’t supposed to be like this. Once upon a time, Adam and Eve ate an apple. Once upon a time, Pandora opened a box. Once upon a time, the magic bird that was supposed to drop the magic berry of heavenly happiness into the mouth of primal man fell in love with himself and swallowed the berry.
There are various versions of the story, but it is astonishing how almost every culture has some myth of paradise lost. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s true, but it does mean that it’s in the collective unconscious, and to say that there’s no truth in it at all is to be a snob. This is my fundamental argument against atheism, by the way. If atheism is true, then the incredibly small minority of human beings— most of which are concentrated in our uprooted society— are the only ones who are wise, and everyone else is living their lives with a fundamental illusion at the center, exactly like Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. He believes in this thirteen-foot-high, invisible rabbit, even though he’s in his forties. That’s a pretty grim view of humanity. It doesn’t prove anything, but at least it ought to give you a bit of pause.
This universal myth that our present situation is unnatural seems to correspond to our present psychological data, that is, we all have a lover’s quarrel with the world. We can’t obey the advice of our pop psychologists to accept ourselves as we are and to accept the world as it is. We just can’t do it, if we’re human. Animals can. There is a perfect ecological relationship between the animals’ instinctive desires and their environment. What they want they can get, but there is one thing we want that nobody in the world has ever gotten: complete happiness. It’s our glory that we can rise to the dignity of despair. Thus, a nihilistic existentialist like Nietzsche is nobler than a nice pop psychologist. He rises to this dignity of despair.
A third and very traditional answer to why we suffer comes from the Greeks and Red Sox fans: Suffering makes us wise. To quote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “The man who has not suffered, what could he possibly know, anyway?” Or to quote Aeschylus, “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of the gods.” If wisdom is more important than pleasure, then it’s a good deal. If we’re so foolish that we wouldn’t voluntarily make that deal, then how wise of the gods— whoever they are— to force us to that deal. While you’re suffering, you don’t want to make the deal. After you’re finished, you’re glad.
Think of the hardest thing you ever did or the biggest pain you ever had. Are you glad now that you have gone through that? Oh, yes! To quote Nietzsche again, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” But, of course, while you’re there, you don’t think that.
Suppose you throw God into the package. What’s God’s answer to the problem of suffering, when he finally appears and gives Job, the archetypal sufferer, his answer? Job asks all sorts of great questions, and God doesn’t answer a single one of them. He says basically— if I may summarize his great rhetoric in a few much less great words: “Hush, child, you couldn’t possibly understand. Who do you think you are, anyway? I’m the Author; you’re the character.”
After the first shock, we realize that makes immense sense. If, in fact, we are characters in a story written by a transcendent Author, then for us to understand each syllable of this mysterious play would refute the hypothesis that there is a transcendent Author. He would no longer be transcendent. He would be us; he would be a projection of us. In other words, it’s utterly rational that life be irrational.
Or to use another argument, probably the most difficult verse in the whole Bible to believe, the most astonishing claim, the one that, like Socrates’s almost last words, seems ridiculously wrong, is Romans 8:28: “All things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Come on. You’ve got to be kidding.
Well, wait a minute; let’s deduce that from three premises— and
