GOD AND EVIL

A Cyrilsophy

GOD AND EVIL

Why suffering O Lord if you are there?

Introduction

The agonising question as the how a world of so much suffering and pain could be reconciled with a God of love and power is one of such magnitude than many thinkers (especially those of a more mystical bent) suggest that perhaps the best response we can come up with- and the only one worthy of a person of religious faith- would be humble, thrustful silence. But such apparently hasty retreat behind the bulwark of mystery and blind faith can seem equally offensive to many of our contemporaries. Nor can we blame too easily those who scoff at such a response as a convenient escape that tries to cover up our ignorance, unfeelingness and laziness. It is also a safe bet to say that this phenomenon of evil and suffering is the biggest stumbling block to religious faith in the world and that every day more numbers are added to the list of lapsed believers and drop outs from the ranks of those whose naive religious formation has not been able to help them integrate a painful human experience of suffering or the death of a loved one into a personal conviction concerning all-powerful and all-loving God!

1.1 The word “theodicy”

The controversy has indeed spawned a specialised term to refer to the whole issue, theodicy. It comes from two Greek words, one of which, theos, is an old friend which means, as we all know, God: the other, dike, means justice. In other words, theodicy would be a word formed in parallel with jurisprudence and the law courts, where a defence lawyer would try to justify (prove innocent or just) someone against whom some charge or the other had been introduced. In effect, the philosopher would see himself as the self-appointed lawyer to God, trying to acquit the all-loving and all-powerful divinity of the charge of the colossal mismanagement of the cosmos. The whole endeavour smacks of the arrogant and the presumptuous (not to mention the blasphemous and the impious), in the sense that a puny human being has abrogated to himself the need to rush to the defence of the infinite whose behaviour as seen by us from our limited human perspectives, has been found to be negligent! Be this as it may, it was the German rationalist Gottfried Leibnitz (1656-1716) who coined the phrase and preserved it in the title of a book… whence it passed into vocabulary of most major European languages.

But however much we might regret the implications of the term, we cannot deny that it points, albeit clumsily, to a serious question that we can’t afford to brush aside too easily. If we understandably baulk at justifying God, we certainly can try to understand God’s “ways to man”, as Milton put it. If there are proud and irreligious theodicies, there can also be humble and sensitive approaches to this mystery which we are struggling not to comprehend, but apprehend. This is all the more so when a fair-sized part of our effort consists in clearing up mistaken and misleading assumptions on which much of the issue is based. If we refuse to even wrestle, however unsuccessfully, with the God and Evil enigma, our faith might helplessly find itself mired in sinking sand in a moment of crisis.

1.2 A problem or a Mystery?

Many thinkers prefer to speak of the problem of evil rather than dub it a mystery. This is because they are averse to the penchant of religious leaders who try to squirm out of having to answer difficult questions by involving the useful cover-up of mystery! thus, ignorance and lazy cowardice is given a respectable cloak of pseudo-religiosity it’s all a mystery. Ours not to question why, ours but to believe and die!

However, I would still persist in referring to the issue as a mystery. But here I am not using it in the usual sense of “something too complicated for our limited minds to understand” and hence left aside as not meant for us to trouble ourselves about! rather, I am using the term in the sense of Gabriel Marcel. I call evil a mystery in the sense that I do not see it as a baffling riddle, a disorder which I view from the outside (in other words, a typical problem in the Marcelian conception), but as a disturbing reality that has its roots within me! Evil is not a mere matter of “the wicket world out there” with its unjust structures, false values and criminal acts. Their lurks within me a selfish craving, an urge to use others for my pleasure or benefit, a drive to exploit those weaker and poorer than myself:  the call of evil outside of me finds a responsive chord within me. It is a sobering and easily-forgotten truth that when we wrestle with horrendous fact of evil and wickedness, we are struggling to make meaning out of a powerful aspect of ourselves. indeed, a serious plumbing into the depths of our own self-seeking urge will more likely throw a lot more light on its nature and origin than a detached survey of it from outside.

1.3 Gathering things, Old and New

There remain some questions to answer and pretty radical ones at that. For instance, why is there within us a tendency to evil at all? Whence does it come? Could such a natural tendency, involving a drive for selfishness, come originally from God? why. indeed did God make us free at all, granted that he had the foreknowledge to see how we human would abuse this awesome potential? And what about all those other evils that can’t be blamed on a perverse misuse of human freedom-cyclones, floods, earthquakes and so on? What about diseases like cancer, which is all too often strike wholly innocent people, who have done nothing to bring on the malady? What about little babies being born deformed or handicapped? Was it really necessary for God to have given us a world in which there would be killer viruses and microbes that could cause lingering, painful deaths? Finally, why did God make us embodied? After all, it is only because we have bodies that we can feel pain, sicken, grow old and eventually die. All this would have been avoided if God had created us bodiless spirits, like angels. Then we would be immune to suffering, disease and death. We must grapple with each of these questions in turn, upsetting though they be.

1.4 Reviewing God’s omnipotence

God is omnipotent, or almighty, to use a more Anglo-Saxon word. But all too often, people think that this means that God can do “anything at all” square circles, a whole which is smaller than a part and even (as some people think is the case in christian doctrine of the Trinity) 3=1! But this is definitely not the case.

God cannot do anything that involves a flat contradiction. To do that God would have to contradict his/her own nature which is also truth. God cannot make square circles and all that sort of thing, just as God cannot sin! The fact that God cannot do these things, as we shall see, does not stem from some lack within God, but from something self destructive in the thing itself. 

Now, the fact that I can sin and God can’t, might make it seem, at first sight that I am freer than God- I m able to do something God cannot bring Himself/ Herself to do! A little reflection should help us to realise that the ability to sin Is not so much an expression of freedom as resulting from deficiency of freedom! Freedom, remember, is a means to an end: liberation, because we are not fully actualised or liberated, it is possible for us to choose something which brings us fulfilment in only on isolated area of our many-faceted existence, while ending up in harming our total personal growth (in other words, such an act make us less liberated)

We will try to show, quite soon, that God cannot make finite persons who are not embodied, not placed in an evolutionary world (a world where things are not finished products) and so on. For God to do this would be equivalent to making square circles or round triangles. If God could have done otherwise making square circles or round triangles. If God could have done otherwise but did not, then one can raise valid doubts about God’s goodness or omnipotence. But such was not the case, as I hope to show as we proceed.

2.1 Approaches to the Issues

The way one views a problem cannot but have an impact on the kind of response one would make it. The man who views something as mere stumbling block will reach to it in a very different way from the one who sees it as a stepping stone! A river may be viewed plainly and simply as nuisance, something to be got over as quickly as possible so as to get on with ones proper goal and purpose… or one can see it as a welcome break from the ardour of the quest dive in, relish the river, enjoy a swim and then, with renewed and rejuvenated spirit, re-commit oneself to what lies ahead.

So it is with the mystery of evil. Of course, I am not trying to advocates as some theodicies do that “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so“ (Shakespeare, II, 2). Try telling an Indian Dalit whose wide has been raped, stripped naked and paraded in the market place that what happened to that poor woman was not “evil in itself” or try to uphold such a view if you were a person wasting away with AIDS or cancer… and does one really agree that the only difference between a terrorist who sets of time-bomb in a crowded marketplace and social worker who takes the mangled victims of the blast and orphaned children of those who died there by is the perspective from which we view them? What I mean is saying that the agonies of a cancer person will summon forth different practical responses from one who views them as a punishment for the person’s sin, or those of his parents or those committed in a former life or by one who views them as not directly willed by God at all; similarly, evil looked at against a static understanding or reality will be made sense of- and responded to in a totally different way from evil considered within a dynamic world-view.

2.2 Augustine VS Irenaeus

I am indeed grateful to the British scholar, John Hick, who in his epochal work, Evil and the God of love, Glasgow, Collins, 1978, drew my attention to the fact that there have been basically two approaches to the odessy in the western tradition: one is better known, more generally followed and received more conscious thematic elaboration- that of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). The other dates from much earlier, is less known and did not receive any studied formulation and was not so extensively passed on developed by St. Irenaeus of Lyons (140-202). Whether one is Christian or not, whether one agrees with their interpretation of Genesis or not, what they have to say is worth listening to. Augustan’s approach was based on a more static, pessimistic view of the human person and of the world and came to be generally upheld by the Roman tradition in Christianity which for political and other reasons, became the dominant one. Irenaeus’ view implied a more optimistic perspective and was developed from a more dynamic vision of reality and became characteristic of the Greek school of Christianity. Irenaeus was not systematic thinker like Augustine and it was the Augustinian-Roman way of looking at things that won the day over the Greek alternative and in spite of the contribution of St. Clement of Alexandria (150-214), the Irenean- Greek theory never really got the chance to work itself out into the teachings of a well-established school. Nevertheless, from time to time, various thinkers- both Christian and non-christian came up with clumsy and more thought our ideas that could have gained more precision and depth had they known of, or drawn upon, the Irenean insight. I myself had been an uneasy Christian as far a Augustinian theodicy was concerned.  

2.2.1 Where their views differ

Perhaps we should let John Hick summarise for us the key elements whereby the dynamic understanding of the Adam and Eve story of Irenaeus differs from the traditional static conception of Augustine. After all, it was Hick that pioneered this breakthrough discovery in his research.

“Instead of the Augustinian doctrine that man was created finitely perfect and then incomprehensibly destroyed his own perfection created as an immature, imperfect creature who was to undergo motion intended for him by his maker. Instead of the fall of Adam being presented, as in the Augustinian tradition, as an utterly malignant and catastrophic event, completely disrupting God’s plan, Irenaeus pictures it as something that occurred in the childhood of the race, an understandable lapse due to weakness and immaturity rather than an adult crime full of malice and pregnant with perpetual guilt, and, instead of the Augustinian view of life’s trials as a divine punishment for Adam’s sin, Irenaeus sees our world of mingled good and evil as divinely appointed environment for man’s development towards the perfection that represents the fulfilment of God’s purpose for him.”

2.2.2 Implications of Augustine’s View

What concerns us here is the difference in implication of these two rival interpretations of the Genesis myth. It is the respective philosophy of the human person and our environment that is relevant for us in elaborating a new theodicy, one which is more in keeping with the present-day dynamic vision of reality that we share, rather than the out-dated static perspective of the traditional one.

In Augustine’s understanding, Adam and Eve were created by God as perfect as finite beings could be. They could not have been absolutely perfect, of course, because that would have required them to be uncreated and infinite (which is clearly impossible). But he saw them as endowed with “preternatural gifts” such as immortality and the fullness of knowledge. As a result of the “fall”, whereby Adam and Eve failed the “test” God had given them, the couple forfeited (fell from the grace) the high estate God had favoured them with, far above and beyond their natural deserts and exigencies. Their nature became corrupt, ‘wounded’ and prey to the various evil tendencies act. Catholics and protestants might differ as to precisely the degree of corruption that entered human life and how much of freewill survived the onslaught, but all seemed to agree that “concupiscence” (understood as the inner prompting to evil consequent upon the original sin of Adam and Eve) had begun to vitiate all our best efforts. This how, in the Augustinian perspective, we are to account for the tendency to evil we notice in ourselves.

Furthermore, not only has our very nature become “wounded” incurably by “original sin”, our whole life had to be lived out in punishment in this world which was meant to be a “vale of tears”. No longer had we access to the pleasant Garden of Eden which was God’s original plan for us, if only Adam and Eve had exercised a little more self-control.

It should be noticed, just for the record, that there is nothing in the Genesis story to corroborate the notion that our first parents enjoyed any “supernatural” qualities, as St. Augustine was so convinced about. In other words, the original myth doesn’t imply that there was “a fall”, since there was no previously elevated state to fall from. Nor is there any use of the universalisation of sin, as humankind freely and progressively turned its collective bak on God’s love and God’s call. Today, most theologians and biblical scholars would prefer to speak of “cosmic” or “universal” sin and nature of sin and its consequences (alienation from fellow humans and from nature): it is not interested in telling s how sin began, what was the first historical sin committed ans such like matters.

In his celebration City of God, as in other writings, Augustine presents us with detailed description of the ideal condition of Adam and Eve in paradise, prior to their fatal “fall”. They were endowed with immortality (they would never die, nor would they grow old), they had total control over their bodily passions and rejoiced in infallible moral judgements and other insights. They lived in close intimacy with God and their love for God was imperturbatus( undisturbed, unclouded, untroubled) . They experienced no “inner tendency to evil” in them originally, no hankering for the forbidden fruit. In Augustine’s own words:

In paradise, then man… lived in the enjoyment of God, and was good by God’s goodness; he lived without any want, and had it in his power ti live eternally. He had food that he might not hunger, drink that he might not thirst, the tree of life that old age might wither him. There was in his body no corruption, nor seed of corruption, which could produce in him any pleasant sensation. He blessed hi body, absolute tranquility his soul. As in paradise there was no excessive heat nor cold, so its inhabitants were exempt from the vicissitudes of fear and desire. No sadness of any flowed from the presence of God, who was loved ‘out of pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. ‘the honest love of husband and wife made sure harmony between them. Body and spirit worked harmoniously together. No languor made their leisure wearisome; no sleepiness interrupted their desire to labour.

In all this, Augustine was but following some ancient rabbinical traditions, which also idealised Adam’s state, envisioning him as endowed with extraordinary stature, dazzling physical beauty, all-surpassing wisdom and so on, as Hick has noted.

2.2.3 The difficulty with Augustine’s Approach

Now, the main reason why Augustine “pilled it on”, making Adam and Eve as perfect creatures as possible and situating them in an idyllic utopia, was because he was overeager to get God “of the hook” for having created anything that was evil-not even indirectly, remotely or even potentially. This zeal solve one problem, he created another, far more disastrous in its implications than the first one, as far as we humans are concerned. For, if Augustine succeeded to establish, in one deft description, the innocence of God and the abhorrent perversity to the human person in bringing sin (and its consequent punishments) into this world, he presents us, by the same count, with the absurdity of the finite creature creating evil ex nihilo, out of nothingness. As Hick asks, “How, then, we may well wonder, did sin enter into this paradisal state? How is it that Adam and Eve, with all their perfect maturity and intelligence, their lack of “inner concupiscence” and perfect self control, were enable to resist the blandishments of a talking snake? Augustine, not very logically, recognised that since “our first parents were able to succumb to the temptations of the devil there had to be some kind of “evil will” in them: “the wicket desire already existed in them and the open sin was but its consequence”. As for this evil desire it was nothing other than the will to be self-sufficient. Thus we have a “theodicy” which, in order to establish God’s innocence of all evil, depicts God as having created humans would load punishment after punishment, not only on them, but also on all their offspring ever after, for this were already “seminally present” in Adam’s to pass over those passages where the great “Doctor of the Church” finds himself hurled along, by the very force of his arguments, into saying that-in effect- God created some people with express purposes of damning them. Indeed, a strange theodicy, that ends up making God a petty, revengeful tyrant.   

2.2.4 Augustine’s Understanding of Evil/ Sin

The traditional Augustinian understanding of evil, which Aquinas and the entire Western Christian tradition as a whole (with rare exceptions) follows sees evil as privation boni, a privation of good, that is, lack of some positive equality that was supposed to be there Evil, as such, doesn’t really exist. It is not metaphysically speaking, evil is not a positive entity but, as Aquinas would put it, a relative non-being. Evil is not so much a being as the absence of a being, to be more precise, it is the absence of something positive in some reality. The inability to see in a human being is an evil, because humans are supposed to see. But the inability of, say, a table or a stone, to see is not an evil for neither of these beings are meant to live in water like a salmon an evil, for humans are not supposed to have the qualities that would enable them to do these things. Were an eagle or Solomon to lack these abilities, respectively there would be “evils’ for them, however. Yet, for Leibnitz (the German rationalist of the eighteenth century) any lack, whether due or not, is an evil, a “metaphysical evil”, as he would say. Thus, the fact that we lack some of God’s qualities-infiniteness, omniscience (all-knowingness), omnipotence (all-powerfulness), etc.-would be examples of “metaphysical evil” for him. So would the dog’s inability to plunge under water! I don’t see it very meaningful to refer to the lack of something which wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place, as an evil by any name whatsoever.

Following upon his general definition of evil (which I have outed above), Augustine proceeds to sub-divide it into two broad categories, physical evil and moral evil. Physical evil is the absence of some due physical quality in a material being. All the examples given above, of blindness in humans or an eagle’s inability to fly could be cited here. Moral evil is defined as the absence of a due orientation in a free personal act. thus, a lie is a moral evil, because it implies the absence of a due orientation in an act of speech. The natural purpose of speech (its due orientation) is to communicate, to share ones knowledge and a lie does just the opposite.

Now Augustine’s definition is very convenient-for God! It requires no “maker”. so, God can’t be blamed for its existence-since it has no existence, strictly speaking: it is the mere absence of existence in something. This is very ingenuous, but it hardly holds water in the light of modern developments in the medical sciences. For the physical evil of sickness is much more than the mere absence of health. We know that cancer, leprosy, diabetes etc are caused by the actual presence of something in the devastated body that is causing these deadly diseases. Besides if each and every malady-from a tooth-ache to kidney failure-were mere absence of health how would we distinguish one illness from another? Assuredly it’s the presence of some awfully real in one person that gives him a head-ache as opposed to someone else’s measles!  

2.2.5 Irenaeus’ Understanding of Evil

Let us, once again, recall that Irenaeus, unlike Augustine, was not a systematic thinker and didn’t put down his ideas in an orderly manner in well thought out treatises (which is one of the reasons why his views were not so well known as Augustine’s). We have to seek for and cull his views from  scatter asides here and there in various writings and notes which he jotted down as occasion and polemic demanded. Especially relevant in this regard is a text which was entitled (probably by someone other than Irenaeus himself), rather unecumenically, Against the Heretics. His understanding of evil must be extracted from the context of his dynamic (we might prefer to say, evolutionary) understanding of creation, especially the human person. Evil is a kind of unfinishedness , a stage of as yet unrealised development in the evolutionary process. It sometimes results from the clash of different processes of development colliding with each other. The need of the lion to grow the clashes with the need of the deer to grow and the natural development of the former results in the physical evil of the hurt and death of the latter. So, too, the natural development of the virus or microbe to grow ends up in its entering a living organism and bringing about sickness and perhaps death, in a plant, an animal or a human. Adam and Eve’s sin was seen by Irenaeus as moral evil all right, but as a kind of inevitable possibility in the context of their immaturity as they struggled within their environment to attain the goal of responsible and matured freedom as adults. Moral evil is an inevitable option to humans in their finiteness as they make their stumbling way to becoming fully human, fully alive (another catch-phrase from Irenaeus). This doesn’t mean that humans can’t be blamed for their wrong choices: of course we are guilty of all the rapes and murders or even petty lies and unfaithfulnesses- of which we are responsible. How blameworthy we are depends on how knowledgable and free we were at the time of doing these acts, but  they must be all put in their proper context. If no one is perfectly mature and fully in command of his/her situation, no one who’s not mentally deficient or an addict can be let off his or her peccadilloes and well-planned crimes! As for physical evils, these are not seen (as Augustine did) as divine punishments let loose upon hapless humans. Rather, they are the unavoidable necessary consequences attendant on that evolutionary world which alone would give us finite persons the required environment for growing in to mature and responsible adults. As for human error, accidents and mistakes that sometimes lead to suffering, pain and death, these are the natural result of our inherent frailty as embodied beings. This in a nutshell is the Ireanean based theodicy which we shall uphold. Now let us go into it in more details.

2.2.6 Epistemic Distance 

Epistemic comes from episteme (Greek word) and means “having to do with knowledge. It is John Hick that i’am indebted for this key term in my theodicy. When God create a finite person, God must do so in such a way that he/she be given a certain “distance” to traverse in order to grow to the fullness of maturity. Obviously this can’t be a physical distance to cross over and “epistemic” would seem to be the best term.

An adult person worthy of the name is one who is able to make free and responsible decisions and, thereby, be able to love in as selfless and unconditional way as is humanly possible. None of us is ever “perfectly human”, capable of absolutely mature, responsible and unconditional decision-making and loving: that is a kind of goal that we’re forever approaching and falling away from. Thus authentic personhood is not something we can be given on a plate, as it were; rather, is it something that we must strive towards, fighting against our passions, our immaturities and our self love. We must struggle towards, self-awareness, gradually getting to distinguish our real true selves, from the false consciousness that psychologist have spoken of those layers of wrong ideas and false notions of superiority (base on gender, ethnic origin, colour of skin and so on that questionable social conditioning has foisted upon us). All too many of us are so uncritical of ourselves and our social roots  that we tend to “blindly follow the crowd” and consequently, our free actions are more the brain-washed responses of a thoroughly conditioned individual who is reacting, rather than acting, in response to the situations around us. If God wants finite persons to exists, God has no other choice than to bring us into existence in such a way that we have to attain personhood as the fruit of our efforts, trials and failures, relentlessly pursuing that as an elusive goal. In a very real sense, persons aren’t born, but made- and it is the persons themselves who have to do the making! We see this happening all around us and we are not through the process as far as each of us is concerned. Infants frow through babyhood, gradually learning to become aware of others and their needs and slowly, as they stumble through the awkwardness of adolescence, learning to be more other centred as they form their first full-blooded friendships and “boy-girl relationships”. What helps us most in this long process is having parents for us, for each other and for our brothers and sisters and vice versa. When these are glaringly absent, it becomes more difficult - but not impossible to grow in mature love and freedom. Many people help us, our teachers, companions, friends, religious personages… but these can also figure as hindrances to us in the great adventure of “growing up”, which is what “epistemic distance” is all about. This is very evidently an insight which is rooted in a dynamic, evolutionary understanding of reality in general, and of the human person in particular.   

2.2.7 Embodiedness, a pre-condition for epistemic distance

A finite, created person must be embodied. Embodiedness provides us the ideal (and the only) context wherein we can struggle and persevere in relentless effort towards authentic personhood. Knowledge doesn’t come easy to an embodied being, as we know-neither knowledge of external world, nor knowledge of ourselves. We all know how true it is that “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. We study, we research, we inch our way to finding remedies for “incurable” diseases, for “insoluble” problems. We build upon the mistakes and breakthroughs of others. Pioneers dare to dream and ask, “why not”, braving the scorn, the rejection and neglect of academically mediocre people in power who want to retain their strangle-hold of how people thing about human limitations, they starve lonely in their garrets and make shift workplace. Sometimes their sacrifices are eventually crowned with success. Often they are not. But they persevere. They remain true to their convictions. If they do not reach their goals themselves, they make it a little easier for the next dreamer, the next adventurer, the next intrepid explorer who comes after… and thus, not only do they grow in humanness through their motivating others to aim for such higher, nobler goals.   

 So too, does each of us battle on as we seek to understand our deeper truer selves. We seek enlightenment, self-realisation, self-awareness. We ask our companions how we “come across” to them. “who am I, really? We ask ourselves why am I here? What can I do to make of mu life something meaningful and worthwhile? we, every once in a while, become complacent. We think we “have arrived”, have finally “come of age”, have got “everything under control”. Then along comes an unexpected encounter, we are swept of our lives, our feet and end up saying and doing things that make us blush. Our “shadow side” suddenly emerges and throw into disarray all our well-disciplined loves, our finest friendship and loves. Sometimes we are helped along the way by the understanding smile or encouraging word from a person who cares. Sometimes we have to manage by ourselves as best we can. We resume the demanding, challenging journey to personhood, to mature loving, to responsible freedom! 

Embodiedness with its consequent context of struggling to self-awareness, self-mastery and self-realisation, its renewed commitment to know, to understand ourselves, all around us, God-embodiedness provides us with that unique, irreplaceable situation through which we can make this journey to maturity, to authenticity. Our enfleshment, far from being something to regret, is the necessary condition for us to attain full personhood. We are not discarnate spirits; we are incarnate, enfleshment spirits and this is the only way created spirits can ever attain personhood. Our ups and down, our hurts and failures, our sorrows and joys aren’t just “punishments” or “rewards” allotted us by God in response to our sinful or virtuous acts, or as part of the punishment left over for the fault of our “first parents”! They are the very means whereby we become those truly free and loving persons we are called to be and which, by every fibre of our being, we yearn to be. What else could provide us with this “epistemic distance” if it were not our embodiedness?

2.2.8 An evolving world, another pre-condition for epistemic distance

The evolve should make it abundantly clear that this epistemic distance has to be traversed by free beings and no other. For how could we lean to love through making sacrifices, taking risks and persevering in the face of failure and setback if we were not capable of free choice and personal resolve? Nor am I requiring us to have a kind of sovereign, inviolate and inhuman, freedom, in solitary isolation from our situation, as Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist envisages. Ours is an incarnate human freedom rooted in and in response to our world. This its grandeur, as Paul Ricoeur would recognise. It’s a freedom that cannot be given us “on a plate” it is a freedom that has to be fought for, struggling against enslaving passions and societal brainwashing, overcoming complex lurking pressures, internal world. It cannot be attained in a nice “finished product world” as David Hume wants God to have provided us with. In such a set-up, ideal for pampered pets, not for “persons in the making”, everything would be ordered around our convenience. The temperature would be just right, meals would would arrive at the right time and properly cooked, we’d have opt opportunity for struggle, research and quest, as I have described just above. Such a world would be a non-finished-product world, a dynamic one that is yet “in the making”. Hence arises the possibility of earthquakes, cyclones and suddenly active volcanoes- all parts of the evolutionary packaged deal. Only in such a demanding and challenging set-up will we find occasion to exercise our resourcefulness, initiative and daring. Were parents to surround their beloved children with kind of cordon sanitaire of protective servants, eager to prevent them from every mishap or hurt and catering to their each and every whim as soon as it was manifest… their offspring would remain perpetually stunted children. Such a world would soon become boring: there would be no scope for adventure and excitement, no opportunity for courage and daring, little challenge to mature love and friendship. Not has God abandoned us with typical deistic unconcern, to a hostile world. We have intelligence, freedom and talents which must be developed, built up through the shared successes and failure of our fellows. God’s grace and inspiration is there, available to us in and through personal exchanges in the depths of each individual, but also through the events of everyday life and even if we lose and our lives are out short by some tragic event or the goals we dreamt off are not realised by us, still all is not lost. The grave is not the end.       

2.2.9 Whence come our self-seeking urge?

We all recognise within us a selfish, domineering and grasping urge which, ever so often, contradicts and even overturns our most idealistic and altruistic ideals. Something within us sees to respond to “the call of the wild” from outside and we end up bullying the weak, exploiting the poor and taking advantage of the helpless. Whence comes this ingrained “law of the jungle”? In us, this might is right and survival of the fittest drive within us? Is it nothing but the wounding we have done to ourselves and our freedom by participating in original sin through having somehow been “in the loins of Adam when he committed his terrible crime, as Augustine would have distant eons ago of pre-historic times, this were the very laws that helped us to overcome gigantic rivals who outclassed us in size and strength. Our courageous ape-like ancestors, with the passages of time, interiorised as instinctive and relfex strategies, these principles in the daily confrontation of hulking carnivorous monsters with our derisory size and puny strength. As mentioned earlier, it was our having learnt to stand upright and develop our mental powers that won us our hard earned victory. These defence mechanisms and “guidelines for the fray” have lingered on and that is how we find them suddenly merge to channel our careless reactions, from time to time. Now  the horrendous jungle world of the Cromagnon and the Neanderthal is no longer with us, we must set about controlling these urges and drives which once had their positive and necessary role to play in our development and evolutionary ascent. Some of us have acquired through conscious effort, more control of our id and libido than others. On the whole, considerable progress had been made. All in all, our world has become more civilised more refined: human life is no longer nasty, brutish and short, with “man behaving unto man as beast” as Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) once described those remote and awful times. We don’t meet roving bands of “robber barons” and bandit chiefs rating and pillaging the countryside all about us. Governments are rejecting torture and inhuman penalties for minor and major crimes. Even capital punishment is coming under fire, there is mushrooming of protest-groups against cruelty to animals, police brutality, the customer society. People are coming together to protect endangered species, women, gays and oppressed people all over the earth. And it is not just young people who are doing all this. Many of us want to go deeper into self-awareness, self-mastery and self-control. Men, women and even children are singing up for course of yoga, transcendental meditation etc. we are also beginning to realise that, rather than seeking to suppress or deny our shadow side, we’d do better to find more constructive ways to let it express or deny our shadow itself. overcoming, or rather traversing epistemic distance. God helps us in this area too.  

2.2.10 What about the handicapped babies?

From what we have said above, it should be clear that we cannot countenance those who try to explain away the plight of newborn babies who are physically or mentally impaired by saying that this is either due to some punishment being visited on the parents (usually ascribed to pre marital sex) or on a somewhat more charitable note, saying that God was teaching the couple, thereby, to grow in unconditional love or some other human quality. All these deplorable explanations imply that God is treating the innocent little one as merely a means. Such act goes against all fundamental human rights and dignity and is totally abhorrent to all that God is!

May such children are born in slums, favelas and in conditions of misery and acute deprivation. In such cases, the suffering of the affected little ones is due to the malnourished mother not having had access to proper food and medical guidance. Very often, even in advanced stages of her pregnancy, she has to perform protracted hours of demanding work, including fetch water from rather long distances. Is it any wonder that she giver birth to an infant with severe vitamin deficiencies, from which result all kinds of debilities and deficiencies? Of course, occasionally, such infants are born of mother in fairly well-to-do families, who has the best of medicare and a proper diet. In some cases the plight of the child can be put down to sheer negligence or carelessness on the part of the mother: her consumption of alarming amounts of alcohol, indulging in narcotic substances or chain-smoking. At some genetic defect or there is some “incompatibility problem” between the parent’s blood. On rare occasions, some of the drugs and other medicaments given to the nursing mother can have harmful side-effects on the child. The development of medical science and research has made great strides in remedying, if not avoiding, may of these malfunctioning. 

Conclusion

Every aspect of the sorry spectacle of human suffering and evil takes on a wholly new nuance when viewed against eh backdrop of a more dynamic, evolutionary world, such as the one worked out, however sketchily by Irenaeus. Fleshing out the skeleton in the light of modern development and research, while introducing the key insightful notion of John Hick, “epistemic distance”have stood us in good stead as we wrestled with the angel, as it were, trying to make sense of the enigmatic mystery as to why bad things happen to good people-or vice versa! Such disturbing phenomena clamour for an answer. well, we have ventured a response. I do not claim that it is a perfect one, dispelling all possible, further scope for doubt and completely explaining away the mystery (as if one could ever hope to do that). But I do claim that his is a more meaningful theodicy than the traditional alternative provided us by Augustine.

Taking a more dynamic (rather than the old static) conception of the world as our base is not just to be more trendy or mod; it is also something that strikes a responsive chord in many heart. It’s more challenging to see evil, not so much of a mere lack of something somewhere, but unrealised stage of fulfilment in growth process. An evolutionary world, the necessary context of person making motivates us to action for justice; seeing the world as a place of punishment, a “vale of tears” where, from time to time, we must be put to torture, only teaches us to be passive, resigned and submissive. It is more wholesome to see our bodies freedom, rather than despicable wounded aspects of our talented human nature. There still remain areas of darkness, bits and pieces of unanswered questions but I have derived enough vision and insight from this dynamic approach to be able to carry these peacefully to my grave.

FOR AND AGAINST GOD’S EXISTENCE

A Cyrilsophy

Introduction: Avoiding the extreme 

Detaining in our mind, how we would be counter-productive in the long run (not very helpful in the short run either) to advocate the extreme approaches of either blind faith (fideism) or “pure reason” (exaggerated rationalism) in matters religious. Thence, we came to the conclusion that something of middle way between the two would be most appropriate and we have described that as the path of “reasonable risk”. In other words, in establishing God’s existence (as in any ascertaining the authenticity of any interpersonal relationship) we can expect to do no better than indicate sufficient grounds for taking a reasonable risk that what we believe in is real and true and not just a figment of our imagination and pure wishful thinking. There is some evidence, yes; but it is not absolutely conclusive “beyond-any-shadow-of doubt” such a way of proceeding then, by that same token, to be consistent will have to reject also very possibility of falling in love or having a friend: only “reasonable risk” can justify those interpersonal commitments! All commitments presuppose faith and all faith is based on reasonable risk. 

1. Belief “that” and Belief “in”

That last remark necessitates my bringing in the famous distinction between belief in and belief that which, as we shall see, helps throw a lot of light on the relationship between faith and reason. Though in common, everyday speech we use the two phrases as if they had the same connotations yet, philosophically speaking, perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish carefully between their implications. Take the statement, “I believe that the Taj Mahal between exists.” The fact that I say, “I believe…” in this case, and not “I know…” in this case, and not “I know…” of its existence indirectly, through reports of trustworthy people who’ ve been their or from photographs or videos and films. In fact that is precisely the connotation of, “I believe that…” A belief that is a matter of accepting that such and such is the case or that someone exists (e.g. “I believe that Elisabeth II is the queen of England) but a belief in… expresses much more (eg. I say to a friend, “i believe in you!”): trust, personal commitment, love-all of which are missing in a strict “belief that”. Strictly speaking, if we reflect on it a bit, we can only speak of belief in with regard to people whom we love. When people ask us questions like, “Do you believe in God/ the devil/ ghosts?” What they actually mean is, “Do believe that God/ the devil/ ghosts exist?”

2. Proofs and belief that 

Now, a rational proof for God’s existence (whatever be its validity) like a rational proof for anything’s existence- can only give us “belief that”, never belief in. That is to say, rational proofs can, at best, convince us that such and such is the case or that something or someone exists. It can never lead us to trust in, or love someone. A valid proof for God’s existence might elicit from someone a remark like, OK. So this God you talk so much about exists. Fine, so does the Taj Mahal. Both don’t move me to action or have any impact on my life. It’s not enough to “believe that” God exists. Authentic religion begins where belief that leaves off: authentic religion is founded on trust in God, love of God…. Belief in….. and rational proofs cannot give us that.

This is not to say that rational proofs have no use or value at in religion and faith. They help deepen ones convictions and, in their absence, ones faith would be easily shaken (if not lost) in moments of adversity or doubt. Besides rational proofs (base on reasonable risk) would show to another that my faith in God has some basis and it not a kind of infantile blind belief, like a child’s faith in fairies or Santa claus. 

3. Hermeneutics 

Hermeneutics is a fairly new word for something that we’ve all been doing, though not very consciously. Hermeneutics traces its etymology to the Greek god Hermes. Who was supposed to have taught humans how to speak. Significantly enough, he was also the god of lies and deceit. This implies an ancient insight into the fact that language can be equally used to falsely conceal, or truthfully reveal, our thoughts and dispositions. Hence arises the need to interpret and for practical purposes, we, might define hermeneutics, at his stage, as the science and art of hermeneutics. We do hermeneutics several times a day: when we read a letter, scan the newspapers or engage in conversation or study someone’s body language. It is not only done by theologians when they busy themselves with scripture study and interpretation, or with students of literature when they try to figure out that poet or dramatist was trying to say through his/her creative work.

What I want to stress at this point is that much of our so-called rational proofs (whether they concern God’s existence, life after death… whether x is in love with me or not) are not so much rational proofs but interpretations of what we observe. thus, for instance, the atheist and the theist both live in the same world and are confronted with the same factual data. Their difference of conviction arises from how they interpret the same facts. Both, for instance, see and note the horrifying fact of injustice, evil and the suffering of the innocent (side by side with the prospering of the corrupt). The atheist interprets this fact as a proof that God doesn’t exist: “ I can’t believe in a God who would allow innocent children to suffer!” Declared French existentialist, Albert Camus (1913-1961). The theist re-interprets the same fact in another way, say, in the light of the cross, if he/she is a Christian: suffering is our sharing in God’s struggle to liberate the world, as contemporary liberation thinker Gustavo Guttierez would say. 

Summing up

Before we pass on to reviewing the more well-known arguments for and against God’s existence, let us sum up the main points I have tried to make so far. First, I would say that there is not cogent, decisive and conclusive evidence in favour of either theism or atheism; there is sufficient data, however, in favour of either theism or atheism; there is sufficient data however, to make a reasonably good case either way! secondly, hermeneutics, rather than rational proofs is the ultimate deciding factor. And, thirdly, rational proofs are useful up to a point. They help to confirm my already established conviction that God exists (based, as I have tried to show, on my standing of God’s existence). They further enable me to show to an agnostic that my faith in God is, at least, reasonable-unlike a child’s naive belief in the tooth fairy, say. But any proof- however valid- has its belief in. And in the last analysis, it is “belief in” that ultimately matters in religion. With all these provisos, we now take up the (rational) grounds for and against belief in God. After that we will have something to say about leading a person from belief that to belief in.

4.  Arguments for God’s Existence 

4.1 The Ontological Argument

This deft bit of reasoning was first proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), later canonised by the Catholic Church. Her presented it in his famous Proslogion (Chp 2-4). It was taken up by Descartes and Leibniz (Seventeenth Century Rationalists), with a few modifications. It was Kant (1724-1804) who nick named it the “ontological” argument, because it started from a certain way of conceiving the notion of being. Like the pious bishop that he was, Anselm began his proof with a quotation from the Bible, the book of psalms, to be precise: The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.” (14:1). He then proceeds to show why the psalmist is justified in calling the Atheist a fool. His reasoning is that an atheist is a fool because he contradicts himself when he denied God’s existence: he contradicts himself because the very fact that he is able to form the concept of God obliges him to grant God’s existence. In other words, the very concept of God implies God’s existence.

The Atheist, when he denies God’s existence, surely knows what is meant by the word, “God”- if he doesn’t even know what it means, how could he assert that no reality corresponding to it existed? So, he grants the concept of God, at least. Now what does this concept meant? Surely “a being than which nothing greater can be taught”. Once Atheist agree with this definition (which is just about what every dictionary gives as the meaning of the word viz., “supreme being”, infinite being etc), then, according to Anselm, he is “had”! For such a being would have to exist: if it did not, then it wouldn’t be the being than which nothing greater can exist, for anything that exists- even a speck of dust- would be greater than God, for inasmuch as it existed it would be superior to God, who did not exist! Putting it in a slightly different fashion, once could say that, by God, is meant a being who has all perfections. But this would mean that God must have existence, as existence is also a perfection, one could say that, by God, is meant a being who has all perfections. But this would mean that God must have existence, as existence is also a perfection. thus, once you grant the concept of God, you are obliged to grant his existence.  

However, one of the first to leap into the fray was Gaunilon, a monk of Marmoutiers in France and Anselm’s contemporary, who felt that the English that was giving the Atheist a raw deal. In his on Behalf of the fool, he argued that were we to accept the Proslogion proof, all manner of absurdities would follow for, in the same way, the mere fact that one could form  the concept of most perfect Island (or, to use a more modern example, that of a stair way to the stars), we would have to grant their existence; but Anselm retorted and rightly! That Gaunilon had missed the point, only the concept of most perfect being (i.e, one that is perfect from the aspect of being that is, all round perfect) implies its existence. The most perfect island concept is mot perfect from the aspect of island only, not being. So the absurdities do not follow. And as we have said, Anselm was right. It was left to Immanuel Kant to point out the real flaw in Anselm’s argument. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) would repeat and develop the same objection the light of his personal views. It boils down to the fact that Anselm has erroneously treated existence as if it were part of “what a being is” (its essence). Now the concept tells us precisely what something is therefore, it contains only its “whatness”. But existence is not something like that. It doesn’t add to what a thing is: rather it tells us that a thing is. Hence, the concept of anything (even of the most perfect being) does not-cannot-pre-contain its existence! 

The proof doesn’t really hold water. At most it is a help to a better understanding of God. Such is the view of the Swiss protestant theologian Kar Barth (1886-1968)

4.2 The Cosmological Arguments

There are more than two attempts to prove God’s existence, starting with some observed aspect of the world (Greek, kosmos). Their most forceful presentation is the versi of Thomas Aquinas (1224-1275) an Italian monk who was also canonised late. They are to be found among his celebrated “five ways to prove God’s existence” in his epochal Summa Theologiae (Summary of Theology) 1,2,3. He did not invent any of these ways: they had already been used by Aristotle, Plato and others before him. One of more of these arguments, indeed, are to be found in just about every nation and culture, since classical times. Aquinas’ merit was in the way he marshalled them into form. They all take, as their major premiss (to use the terminology of Aristotelian logic, which they fall back upon) some form of the famous “principle of causality”. The minor premiss is some observed fact in the world. Then after rejecting “infinite regress” they arrive at the existence of God who is discovered under the name most appropriately following from the thrust of the argument. The important difference between Aquinas’ approach as contrasted with Anselm’s is that the former starts with some concrete observed data, taken from the actual world, and not a concept, as in Anselm’s method!

Here we will consider only the first, second and third ways:

Form-1 Whatever moves or changes is moved by another. This is the major premiss of the argument (Note: In Latin, movetur can refer to change in general, not just local change or movement: hence we use both words in translation). Now, it is certain that in this world, at least something do change. But there can’t be an endless regress of changing things and changers. Hence there must be some first unchanged changer, which is also translated as unmoved mover. And this is  but another name for God.

Form- 2 whatever happens in the world requires a cause. This is the major premiss, an alternative form of the “principle  of causality” as was expressed above. Now it is certain that some things do happen in this world and their cannot be an infinite regress of causes which, in turn, were caused by other causes. Hence there must be a first uncaused cause, ti start the whole process. And this is but another name for God.

Form-3 Contingent beings presuppose a necessary being. This is a third variation of the principle of causality. As regards the terminology: a “contingent” being is a being which exists but doesn’t doesn’t have to exist; a necessary being is one which exists and cannot not-exists. The minor as is to be expected asserts that “it is certain that there are contingent beings in this world” and cities “generation and corruption as indications of this (viz. the fact of things coming into being and, after some time, perishing). Hence, there must be some first necessary being to get the process going.

However the objection to its argument was not well taken by certain philosophers among which David Hume was one. In the first place, all these “proofs” assume the validity of the famous principle of causality- something which everybody in Aquinas time was quite ready to grant… but, David Hume (177-1776), the Scottish empiricist, who vaunted his universal scepticism, quite satisfyingly showed that it cannot simply be taken for granted. Thus the major premiss or foundation of the whole argument collapses. Furthermore, the ruling out of infinite regress is not so straightway justifiable as even Aquinas noted for it boils down to saying that if we refuse to reject it, then the world would be a mere unintelligible brute fact- but this is precisely what the sceptic holds.  

4.4 The Teleological Argument

This is the argument found in most poplar text books, as it is quite easy to understand and appears to base itself on scientific discovery. Plato uses it in his Timaeus and Aquinas presents it as his fifth way. The scientist-philosopher Kant, though he had his reservations about it, felt constrained to hail it as the oldest, the clearest and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind. 

Order requires a wise order. This major is, once again, a restatement of the principle of causality. It is based on the presupposition  that mere chance can’t explain order and regularity. The minor points out to the fact that there is a natural order in the world- the various laws of nature that science is ever discovering, both at the microscopic and the macroscopic level. Hence the conclusion: there must be an ultimate wider orderer and that is what we mean by God. 

However, the objection to above argument is, apart from the fact that his argument also hands from the shaky nail of the principle of causality, there are other difficulties. As Hume, himself observed, it is inevitable that the universe appear to be the result of intelligent design. But the fact of accommodation and adaptation, on which evolution is based, can afford us another explanation for order. As John Hick, the Anglican Priest and thinker remarks:

“To refer back to the ozone layer, the reason animal life on earth is so marvellously sheltered by this filtering arrangement is not that God created the animals first and then put the ozone layer was there first, and only those forms of life capable of existing in the layer have developed on earth”

4.4 The Moral Argument

Among its more well-known exponents may be ranked Immanuel Kant as also the English Anglican clergyman who later became a Catholic, a Cardinal and whose cause is currently being discussed for canonisation, John Henry Newman (1801-1890). The tone of his argument is more representative of various versions of it had we come across in contemporary religious apologates. Here is a relevant extract from his monumental Grammar of Assent:

If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at the transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is one to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear… if the cause of these emotions do not belong to this visible world, the object to which (the conscientious person’s) perception is directed must be supernatural and Divine. 

The objection is, among these, the most significant is the suggestion that there may be alternative explanations for “the voice of conscience” , namely human needs, self-interest and society. One cannot rule these out a priori: that would be begging the question. On the other hand, it could be pointed out that, as many of us have observed, the “inner voice” very often goes against their very alternatives, so can’t be so simplistically identified with them. Sociologists and psychologists of an agnostic or atheistic stance would bot be convinced by this rejoinder and the discussion would then move onto intricate aspects of depth psychology and the unconscious. 

4.5 The Religious experiences Argument

The most forceful presentation of this approach is that of Bergson or James, to whom I have alluded above. A more recent case is that of Andre Frossard, a former agnostic who, in his God Exist: I have Met Him tells how this France journalist, working for Figaro, experienced a sudden conversion to Catholicism, the decisive moment in this being a strange, irresistible urge that he felt to enter a quiet chapel as he was passing by. There is also the story of the erstwhile persecutor of Christians, Saul, who, after his Damascus experience became an ardent Christian apostle and missionary! 

However one cannot discount the power of such experiences for those who have had them; the problem is trying to convince one who has not had such an experience. David Hume, in his essay on Miracles: An inquiry concerning Human Understanding, notes that one could either deny outright the veracity of such reports or attempt alternative explanations, such as telepathy, hallucinations and the like.  Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) the English thinker and agnostic remarked, tongue in check, that a man who says that God spoke to him in a dream is but a man who has dreamt! Bergson and James, we have seen, assert that the great chorus of witnesses cannot be so easily written off. A good many of them, as was mentioned, can be shown to be people of great moral worth (hence whose veracity can’t be very reasonably questioned) and the general thrust of their very active lives would render charges of hallucination and so on very unlikely. Still the dissenter might end up saying that until a similar experience happened to him/her, he/s would withhold any religious belief or commitment!

4.6 The greater probability Argument

This is the approach favour by many contemporary philosophers of religion. The approach is to take off from a combination of factors, a wider ranger of data than the exclusively teleological or moral and conclude that a theistic or religious worldview is the most reasonable explanation of all these facts. Such a view was espoused by FR Tennant in his two volume opus, Philosophical Theology. Since then many others have emulated and improved upon his method.

A very wide range of relevant data is collected and serves as the starting point for this approach- the teleological character of biological evolution as also the whole wealth of human religious, moral, aesthetic and cognitive experience. An effort is made to show how each of these, independently seems to be pointing towards a supernatural source. Even if one were to say that each separate “pointer” is not a conclusive enough, surely the accumulated evidence of each pointing individually towards the same point would suggest that belief in God would be the most probable worldview wherein to find satisfactory explanation of the listed phenomena. All this is very true but it cannot be denied that the religious conviction that one has sought to vindicate by this approach is based on “greater probability” but by that same token one would have to admit that an atheistic stance is also a viable “reasonable risk” or at leat in the dissenter’s view, perhaps as probable and explanation! 

5. Argument Against God’s Existence

5.1 The Sociological Objection

Emile Durkheim who in his, The Elementary Forms of Religious Experience (1912) typifies, and is the best argued example of the views of his school of nascent sociology. 

Durkheim held that all religion is nothing more than a disguised form of social controls, “the gods were the people considered symbolically” and all this was supposed to be borne out by totemism, which he saw as the most basic steps, updated, here and there, some of his insights but generally kept the basic thrust of his argument.

Once again, we review the main points made above. First it is difficult to explain how the universal reach of a religiously formed conscience could transcend the boundaries of a closed tribal group and attain anything like the universal love of the more open religious community. Nor is it possible to explain how the moral creativity of the prophetic mind developed: how could they have found, once again, within the confines of closed tribal society the insight to make such far-reaching claims on our ethical life? Nor can we account for the socially detaching power of their conscience for prophetic figures have often gone against the norms of this, if we want to explain God as the same society in disguise? 

The sociological theory doesn’t conclusively prove that there is no God!

5.2 The psychological Objection

Freud had sought to show that the whole idea of god and religion is nothing but a kind of mental defence against threats, real or imagined. He dismissed religious beliefs as illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most insistent wishes of mankind. We have also outlined the objections developed by two of his more recent disciples, Makarius and Girard. Freudians agree that “religion is the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity,” as their founding father put it. In Totem and Taboo he brought in the idea of the oedipus Complex to explain the emotional intensity, the sense of guilt and the believers’ sense of moral obligation to obey the alleged behest of the deity: it was all the result of the “primal horde’s crime of having slain (and probably eaten) their father, after having seen him as a rival for their mother’s love. What masquerades as “religion” is nothing more than the sense of guilt and consequent obligation felt to their slain father.

These focus on the simplistic and generalised conclusions that Freud came to, drawing a bit too uncritically from the questionable assertions of early evolutionists, like Darwin and Robertson-Smith. Even contemporary Freudian recognise that his Oedipus complex theory was too hastily extrapolated by him to other cultural contexts. Finally, there has been a lot of rash over-generalisation by Freud from the behaviour of his neurotic and psychotic patients.

Religion is a curious mixture or positive and negative elements of healthy and unhealthy factors. Though wish-fulfilment, escapism and other regrettable ingredients are admittedly found there, we cannot dismiss all religion as “only that and nothing more”! As Bergson has pointed out, there are many psychologically sound believers. Still, religiously inclined people can make good use of Freud’s insights and findings to purify their understanding of God and religion. So, the final verdict, after having reacted to the psychological attempts to disprove God’s existence can only be “not proven”!

5.3 The Scientific Objection

This objection, for quite some time, had been gathering momentum with the tremendous advance and development of science in recent times. It was inevitable that his should have some impact on religion. However, with the advent of postmodernism and the realisation that scientific truths are not the smugly absolute, certain and universal as was once believed, the whole force of this argument has been blunted.

Religion, so the argument goes, is nothing but a cloak for human ignorance. Thus primitives, who had no knowledge of medicine or the physical sciences, felt constrained to postulate gods and spirits to explain many phenomena the science can account for. With the coming of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century and the information explosion in many spheres, especially astronomy, zoology, chemistry and physics it seemed that many issues which churchmen had long thought was their exclusive sphere of control suddenly were explained (if not explained away) by people qualified in other disciplines! There were clashes between scientists and Judaeo-Christian leaders (Heliocentrism evolution) but it was invariably science that was proven right. All this has led many to wonder whether religion is but a “harmless private phantasy” devoid of any real truth in any meaningful sense of the term. The argument seems to be compounded with the development of artificial intelligence (apparently dethroning the unique claim of humans to some kind of spiritual supremacy over the rest of creation) not to mention cloning.

It is true that religion has had to back down in many science versus religion controversies and has learnt to recognise that the Bible (and other revealed scriptures), if they do contain God’s revelation, have clothed it in the imperfect stages of scientific development that they have reached at the time. Of course, there are some “blind fundamentalist” who persist in asserting that everything in the scripture is literally true and must be belief so. The are embarrassment to forward- looking believers and often indulge in fanatic, if not downright, terrorist antics which bring discredit on religion in general and their religion in particular. However, if one is convinced that belief in God is tied to the cultural presupposition of a non-scientific age, then once these have been shown to be invalid, ones believe in God would collapse. But what if-as the latest developments in theology and scriptural study seem to bear out- what if God created an evolutionary world in which humans were allotted sufficient autonomy to relate freely to the divine, gradually and by pen-sticking research, slowly begin to make sense of their world and the cosmos- and in the light of this latter development,  begin to grow in their understanding of God’s word? Scientific progress would be seen as part of the responsibility granted human and, against which background they must learn to grow into all-round mature adults, which includes the religious sphere.

Whether one sees scientific progress as a thread or contradiction to religious faith depends on how ones views both science and religion as well as how ones views their interrelationship. Thus scientific progress presents no real contradiction to religious faith.

5.3 The Fact of Evil and Wickedness

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to belief in God, since time immemorial has been the horrendous fact of the suffering of the innocent no fault of their own. How can there be and all-good and all-powerful God as all the theistic religions, at least claim their is- when the world is in such a mess? Apart from the fact of man-mad ills (rape, murder and so on, the result of human free choice), which we could call, “wickedness”, there are also other awful events that bring a swathe of suffering and devastation in their wake- earthquakes, tidal waves, cyclones and epidemics- for which assuredly no human agency can be brought to book: we could reserve the name evil for such.

Perhaps the most direct and poignant expression of this objection is found in the words of the third century Roam thinkers, Iactantius, who phrased it thus:

God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able and unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able or He is both willing and able. If he is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore is not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source, then, are evils? Or why does He not remove them?

Nearer to our time, David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Reason, took up the objection in grater detail. More to his merits is the part of his treatise where he (in my opinion, quite successfully) show that the principle of causality, upon which most proof for God’s existence depend, needs to be demonstrated and is not a self-evidence truth.

The mystery of evil and wickedness ranks as no mean difficulty in the path to belief in God and theistic religion are very much aware of this, believing, as they do, in an infinity and loving and absolutely powerful God. Various attempts have been made by them to come to grips with the issues.

5.3.1 Dualistic responses

This solution consist in seeing two rival ultimate powers in conflict, in effect, a “good God” and “a bad God”: All evil is the work of the evil god ( and his henchmen); all god is initiated by the good god and his angels and human followers. however, this solution but appears to solve on problem by creating another. It is evident that neither of the tow protagonist is the ultimate being, each is somehow limited by the other’s presence and activity. Hence, neither of them can explain how the came to be; in ancient times, the Manichees (condemned as heresy by early Christianity) taught such a view. In our own days, the parsee religion, still alive in India today, whose prophet Zarathustra is said to have lived in the second millennium B.C. would seem to be a remnant of the faith, but in a much more advanced and developed stage.   

5.3.2 Contemporary Christian Science

This view holds that evil is but an illusion of the human mind. I cannot but react strongly against this kind of answer and quality it has a kind of feelingless response one can expect from people who have never known real prolonged pain and misery. Granted, some of our pain are psychological and there are psycho-somatic illnesses which can be cured by mental power. But his is the kind o response one can expect from first world academics who have never had to know, from inside, the agonise of one wasting away from concern or AIDS, or experience racial or ethnic discrimination. Besides, it is not clear how this group can arrogate to itself the name christian as the New Testament does not make any effort to underplay the harsh and ugly face of evil and presents Jesus as the victim of unjust cruelty, a veritable suffering servant of God.

5.3.3 The Augustinian and Irenean Approaches

Augustine (354-430) and Irenaeus (140-202) were both early christian leaders who played an influential role in the formation of Christian thought. Both were canonised not long after their death and both busied themselves with trying to respond to the objection on against God’s existence from the point of view of the evil in the world. Augustine’s view, which is better known, was elaborated against a static world-view (the notion that God created a non-evolutionary world of finished products) and Irenaeus’ vision, which is less known, is far more “modern” because he is more dynamic, evolutionary understanding of the world and worked out his theodicy (defence of God) from that perspective (which I shall discuss more in detail when I can spare a time). Suffice would it be to point out that his objection is based on some questionable presuppositions. first, it assumes that the human person, as the rest of the reality that surrounds us, if viewed as having come froth from the hand of God as finished products. Secondly, the world is expected to be a place of maximum pleasure and minimum pain (a kind of kennel for God’s pet, the human person) but if the world and the human person are viewed  as Irenaeus does, as a place of person making, fraught with hardship, inconvenience and danger, the only environment in which person can grow into full maturity, then much of the objection crumbles. besides, a whole lot of absurd and undesirable conclusions would follow from the questionable presuppositions I have outlined above above, there would be no real need for work as no harmful consequences would follow. No science and technology would be possible as the laws of nature wouldn’t always work in uniform way (they would be suspended every time they would work to human detriment) and there Ould be little or no scope for sacrifice, courage and higher morality, as everything would be made to work out wall by Devine agency.

General Conclusion

From above it should be clear that we can neither definitively prove or disprove God’s existence. In effect just as accepting God’s existence (religious conviction) is basically a “faith decision”, based on reasonable risk, atheism, too, is a matter of faith for it would equally be based on a reasonable risk.

“Homo sapiens the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable”.

— Henri Bergson

“ The only hope I can see for the future depends on a wiser and braver use of the reason, not a panic flight from it”

— F.L Lucas

“The man who listens to reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her”

“Men can be attracted but not forced to the faith. You may drive people to baptism, you won’t move them one step further to religion”

—Alcuin

“if the work of God would be comprehended by reason, it would no longer be wonderful, and faith would have no merit if reason provided proof”

—Pope Gregory the Great

“Faith and prayers are no substitute for knowledge and courage”

— Josheph Lewis