It is common
for the atheist to ask, if there is a good God, why is there evil? It is common
for many people to ask, “Why is there evil?” But M. Scott Peck has a better
question, “Why is there any good?”
“It is a strange thing. Dozens of times I have been asked by
patients or acquaintances: 'Dr Peck, why is there evil in the world?' Yet no one
has ever asked me in all these years: 'Why is there good in the world?' It is
as if we automatically assume this is a naturally good world that has somehow
been contaminated by evil. In terms of what we know of science, however, it is
actually easier to explain evil. That things decay is quite in accord with the
natural law of physics. That life should evolve into more and more complex
forms is not so easily understandable. That children generally lie and steal
and cheat is routinely observable. The fact that sometimes they grow up to
become truly honest adults is what seems the more remarkable. Laziness is more
the rule than diligence. If we seriously think about it, it probably makes more
sense to assume this is a naturally evil world that has somehow been
mysteriously 'contaminated' by goodness, rather than the other way around. The
mystery of goodness is even greater than the mystery of evil.”[i]
Why is there
good? For that matter, why is there a complaint about evil? Why is there not
just “is”? Why is there not just an acceptance of “things are what they are,
and they cannot be put into a moral framework”? Why is there good in this
clearly broken world? From a materialistic point of view Peck is correct, it
would be more rational to consider that we live in an evil world and good has
somehow broken in. From a purely mechanical perspective the fact that there is
good in this world is remarkable.
Consider the
brutal process of evolution via natural selection. You could not conceive a
more evil process for bringing about sentient life. Not only is there all the
suffering of non-sentient creatures, there is the suffering of the increasingly
sentient humans and their presumed predecessors. What a brutal world to be
brough to awareness in. It would take a divine being of a truly wicked character
to invent such a death riddled, pain driven, way of creating living beings. A
being more worthy of being called the Devil than the Lord of life. Such a world
would not be a good world, by any objective definition of God. It is a world
that builds death into the creation of life; brutal, violent, nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw
death. If we truly lived in such a world we should see goodness as the
aberration.
And yet we
do not. It is evil that we know to be wrong. It is evil that we know to be a
twisted and mishappen guest. It is as if we know that we fell from a great
height and are still suffering from the PTSD of knowing what we had once had
and know that we have now lost. Why is there good indeed? Could it be that the
Scriptures are right and we were created for something better but in our
rebellion lost it? I think there is a wealth of wisdom in pondering that, I say
that as someone who believes the Bible to be the true word of God. But even if
you do not, you need to wonder, why is there good? And why do we see evil as the
aberration? Blind or guided evolution could not explain that.
[i] M.
Scott Peck 1990, The People of the Lie, Arrow Books, p45.
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