Non-belief, Pt. 4: Theodicy

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Well, why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't bad things happen to good people sometimes? Why in the world would we expect good people to be immune to such things? You see, this isn't a problem for atheists, since it's exactly what we should expect. Of course bad things happen to good people. We wish it weren't that way, but it's certainly not anything that has to be explained away.

Remember when Christianity was clinging desperately to the Earth as the center of the universe, with the sun and stars and planets all revolving around us, as clearly indicated in the Bible? When better telescopes began to show the errors in that, Christians developed increasingly elaborate models to try to explain what astronomers were seeing while still maintaining their faith that the Bible was true. Of course, there was a relatively simple explanation, that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but believers simply couldn't accept it.

(Ptolemaic astronomy, from Wikipedia)

Likewise, there's an obvious explanation for why bad things sometimes happen to good people, but Christians won't accept that, either. For any believer in an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent god, it's a profound problem. Countless essays and books have been written about it, and theologians have been pondering the question for centuries. But the debate resembles the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If you recognize that angels don't exist, there's nothing to debate.

Historically, I don't believe it was a problem. Long ago, gods were capricious, jealous, self-centered, vindictive, and cruel. And randy, always very randy. In fact, they were very much like powerful human beings (not surprisingly). You had to placate the gods with sacrifices - generally to their priests, of course - in self-defense. But for the most part, you just wanted them to leave you alone. Coming to the attention of a powerful deity - or a powerful human king, for that matter - rarely turned out well.

You wanted to keep your god pleased with you just so he might pester some other mortal instead. And, unfortunately, you also needed him for defense against other gods. Your god might be dangerous, but your neighbor's god was positively malicious. You needed your own god just like you needed your own king, but you never expected either of them to love you. And like your king, your god was far from perfect.

Back then, gods were neither omniscient nor omnipotent. They could be tricked (though seldom for long). They could be defeated by other gods. They could be distracted by lovely mortal virgins, or just lose control in a jealous rage. So it was no surprise at all when bad things happened to good people. No matter how much you sacrificed, it was just to give yourself the best possible chance. There were no guarantees.

But our ideas of deities slowly changed. The Old Testament god is as jealous, vindictive, and blood-thirsty as they get, and it's pretty clear that he wasn't the only god around. He was the tribal god of the Jews, but other peoples had their own deities. Eventually, though, he evolved into the only god of Abrahamic religions, the all-powerful, all-knowing god of everyone (whether they realized it or not). And in this modern interpretation, he supposedly loved his creations.

But this interpretation had a serious flaw. If God was omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly benevolent, why was there evil in the world? More importantly, why did bad things happen to good people? A Pandora's Box kind of mythology might serve to explain the existence of evil - well enough for people who wanted to believe, at least. But if God was all-knowing and all-powerful - and if he actually loved his creation - why did bad things happen to his faithful worshipers? That's been a problem for Christians, and all sorts of explanations have been advanced to try to explain it.

Naturally, it's not a big problem when bad things happen to other people. In that case, clearly, they just weren't good enough. They must not have given enough money to the church. Or their faith just wasn't strong enough. Did they have doubts? Well, that explains it, right? Satan can sneak through the tiniest crack. Obviously, if bad things happen to other people, it must be their own fault. That's simple enough.

Unfortunately, bad things don't just happen to other people. Sometimes, they happen to you. Sometimes, they even happen to God's priests. Theologians were never too eager to advance that "personal error" explanation then. And seriously, we all know that bad things do happen to good people. You'd have to be the world's biggest cynic not to recognize that. We don't always deserve what happens to us. In fact, we seldom do.

For a long time, magic was used as an excuse. Christian churches always believed in magic (they opposed it, but they always believed it existed). Maybe it was your neighbor, giving you the evil eye. Maybe it was the witch down the street who regularly cavorted with Satan (in your dreams, at least). Human beings always like to find a scapegoat. So when bad things happen, just burn a few witches, just torch the ghetto. What could be simpler?

But God is omniscient and omnipotent, so how could a witch hope to overcome his protection, even with Satan's help? If you really believed, if you faithfully worshiped your god, if you did everything you were supposed to,... why didn't God protect you? Why did he let your children die, one after another, before they even had a chance to grow up? Why were your crops stricken with disease, flattened by wind and hail, and dessicated by drought? If God had both the power and the will to defend you, why didn't he?

OK, maybe there are still some bad people in your neighborhood. Maybe you haven't driven out every Jew. But is God so inept that he can't target the bad guys and leave the good ones alone? Can't he use a blocked artery, rather than a region-wide famine? And when he does use a blocked artery, or some painful, disfiguring disease, why is his aim so poor? Why does he so often strike down the good, rather than the bad.

Free will has been the traditional explanation. Mankind has to be allowed to make the wrong choices, not just the right ones, and suffering is the inevitable consequence of this. But that doesn't explain natural disasters (so-called "acts of God") and it doesn't explain disease. The bad things that happen to good people aren't always due to human errors. Sometimes, they just happen.

Furthermore, is that much suffering really necessary? Coveting your neighbor's wife is supposed to be a sin - just the thought itself. So certainly the intention of committing rape should be enough free will for God's purposes, don't you think? Why should some innocent woman have to suffer the rape itself, just to allow the rapist free will? And if the act itself really is necessary, why should rapes sometimes result in pregnancy, venereal disease, and/or subsequent death in childbirth? Surely those are things God could easily prevent, without the slightest effect on the free will of a rapist.

Frankly, when it comes to a vengeful god, free will doesn't make any sense anyway. If a mugger sticks a gun in your face, threatening to blow your head off if you don't give him your wallet, you'll probably comply with his demands. So are you giving him your money of your own free will then? Of course not! So when God threatens to torture you for eternity if you don't do exactly what he wants, where exactly is your "free will" in that?

Below the fold, I'll continue looking at religious explanations for why bad things happen to good people. Click to continue...

A friend of mine suggests that you need the bad things in order to enjoy the good things in life. "If God hadn't made evil and good, life would just be one mindless plateau of sameness bordering on ennui. That's what the Garden of Eden was, a sort of pleasant sameness like an eternal warm bath."

Aside from that rather unusual interpretation of Eden, do we really need horrible suffering for... variety? I enjoy good food, and some hunger might be necessary for that. But I've never ever been really hungry, truly desperate for sustenance. Did millions of people really have to starve to death so that I could enjoy a good meal? I don't think so.

I like being healthy, because I've been sick. But the occasional cold would be enough to teach me that. Why should people get eaten alive by cancer, rotted alive by leprosy, or infected with all manner of truly disgusting parasites, just to make other people feel good about their health? That is complete overkill.

If God wanted me to be a careful driver, the annoyance and expense of a possible fender-bender would be enough for that. Children do not have to burn alive in auto accidents just to make me cautious behind the wheel, nor to make sure I'm generally pleased at not wrecking my truck. And children do not have to burn alive just so we can feel happy about not burning alive. I've been lucky enough to never suffer the very worst things that can happen to people. (Indeed, they can be so bad that I don't even want to think about them.) Is it really necessary that some people suffer so terribly just so I can enjoy my own life that much more? No, that makes no sense.

OK, then, maybe bad things happening to good people just... doesn't matter, since all will be corrected after we die. The good will be rewarded and the bad will be punished. True justice will finally be done. Everything averages out.

But really terrible things don't happen to all good people, just some. Why is that? And does that mean that they'll get a better afterlife than the others? Are there different levels of accommodation in heaven, with the very top level reserved for people who suffer horribly on Earth? Do people who had a pretty good life have to spend eternity in the celestial slums, then?

And punishing evil-doers is fine, but it doesn't change the amount of suffering their victims had to endure. Even on Earth, punishing rapists doesn't undo the rape. No amount of "justice" can do that. Sorry, but the suffering of an innocent person always matters. We can't claim that the details aren't important, since the average degree of suffering is OK. No matter how many people are well-off, it still matters when one person suffers unjustly. And contrary to the claim that "what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger," suffering - especially when we're young - often damages us emotionally. Suffering is not a good thing.

But that's yet another argument for why bad things happen to good people. All those bad things, you see, are actually beneficial. Yeah, that rape and subsequent STD were actually good for you! Children burning alive in an auto accident are building character. Parents who, generation after generation, lost children to horrible diseases were actually blessed by their suffering, as were the children themselves. (Presumably, that's why there's no explanation of the germ theory of disease in the Bible.)

One reason why it took so long to use pain-killers in surgery and dentistry was this same idea that pain was actually good for you. Heck, we still see it occasionally in regards to childbirth. Women are supposed to suffer, right? Pain is supposed to be a good thing (at least for someone else). That's an argument about physical pain, while the other is more about emotional pain, but the idea seems to be the same. And I don't buy it in any case. The evidence seems to indicate that just the reverse is true. In the real world, pain is more often emotionally damaging than not.

As you see, there are all sorts of arguments, with believers desperately trying to solve the "problem" of why bad things happen to good people. Deferents and epicycles, equants, more and more elaborate structures to explain what can actually be explained very simply. This is what happens when you cling to dogma instead of relying entirely on the evidence. There are many other arguments - I can't cover them all here, just the most prominent - but there's one more I need to mention.

The inevitable fallback position of believers, when logic fails, is to simply proclaim that "God works in mysterious ways." Anything that doesn't make sense is just because we ignorant humans can't understand an omniscient, omnipotent being. Well, it would be like an ant trying to understand a man. How could we hope to understand what he is or what he wants? We must simply have faith.

The funny thing is that, in most situations, believers claim to know exactly what God wants. God wants us to burn witches alive (or not, at least these days). God wants us to keep slaves (or not). God hates homosexuality and lobsters (or not). Believers don't all agree on these things, but they're all sure that they know what God wants. It's only when they can't explain something that they decide that it's impossible to even try. God is mysterious, except when he's not.

The simple, rational explanation is that there is no god, benevolent or otherwise. The world wasn't designed, and we're just one species of primate which evolved naturally along with the rest of Earth life. Evolution is bloody and cruel, but it wasn't designed by anyone, so we shouldn't expect any different. It's normally beneficial to be "good" - according to our ever-changing ideas of what that might involve - because we are social animals. But it's not magic. Bad things do sometimes happen to good people, just as we'd expect.

There's no guardian angel on our shoulder. There's no omniscient god watching every sparrow fall. The world is a natural, albeit remarkable, place, and the supernatural is as imaginary as Superman. Yes, we wish we could live forever - we especially wish that our loved ones would live forever - and we'd love to see no evil person escape punishment. We also wish we could fly and stop runaway freight trains with our bare hands. But it's all just wishful thinking.

Elaborate explanations are not required, no more than we require excessively elaborate orbital diagrams to model the solar system these days. In both cases, we simply had to throw out ancient dogma and look at the problem with fresh eyes. Of course bad things sometimes happen to good people. Why wouldn't they?

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Note: The rest of this series is here.