Originally published 25 September 2001
In recent days Americans have confronted the problem of evil as never before in our history. Succinctly, the problem can be stated like this: in a universe controlled by an all-powerful, loving god, why do bad things happen to innocent people? Eighteen-hundred years ago, a Christian named Marcion suggested there could be two gods: a supreme God of love and an inferior God who allows violence, sickness, and pain. Marcion was condemned as a heretic.
Theologians have continued to wrestle with the Problem of Evil ever since, with no satisfactory resolution. Some have suggested that God allows evil as retribution for the Original Sin but do not explain why a forgiving God would punish all of history for our foreparents’ momentary lapse.
Others blame the devil but do not explain why a loving God gives Old Scratch free rein.
Jerry Falwell blames feminists, gays, and secular humanists, but only makes himself look ridiculous in doing so.
For many people, the Problem of Evil is resolved by unquestioning faith in the goodness of a God whose actions are sometimes inscrutable.
The problem did not exist before the rise of monotheism. In earlier times, the world was believed to be in the hands of a multitude of gods of equal stature, some benevolent, some mischievous. The bad gods sometimes got the better of the good gods, and that was that.
Does science throw any light on the Problem of Evil?
Let us agree immediately that good and evil are hugely complex concepts, and that so far, and perhaps forever, they elude scientific explanation.
But insofar as science has addressed the problem of animate evil — aggression, disease, death — the evidence seems to favor the idea that violence and death are necessary conditions for the existence of life.
The argument has been put forward by many scientists and philosophers, perhaps most vividly by Howard Bloom in his book The Lucifer Principle. “Evil is woven into our biological fabric,” he says.
If nature were not cruel, conscious creatures such as ourselves would never have evolved.
The argument goes something like this:
The fundamental principle of life is the persistence of species. What persists is not atoms — we change our atoms every few weeks — but information, a body plan that is encoded in our genes.
To persist, living creatures must take matter and energy from their environment. As life proliferates on the finite surface of the planet, competition for resources inevitably ensues. Aggression becomes advantageous, even necessary.
From the human point of view, the death of an innocent child by malaria, say, is evil. But the malaria pathogen is just trying to survive, as we do. Like the malaria pathogen, we kill and consume other species to endure — plants, or other animals that eat plants.
But violence has a creative side. Competition for resources favors any genetic variation that gives a species a leg up in the struggle for survival. The variations may or may not be random, but competition drives life toward ever greater complexity, and eventually to consciousness.
Humans have appeared on the scene relatively recently, bearing in our genes the baggage of the past, including, apparently, a propensity for aggression, especially among males. We may even carry tendencies towards clannishness or religious extremism, all of which may have given our ancestors a competitive edge. As Bloom writes: “Lucifer is the dark side of cosmic fecundity, the cutting edge of the sculptor’s knife.” Our viler impulses are part of the process nature used to create us.
But our uniquely aware and self-reflective brains offer us escape from the relentless logic of biological destiny. Our genes may predispose us to act in certain ways, good or bad, but they do not constrain us. The complexity of our brains is such that we can choose good over evil, even as the biological devil sits on our shoulders whispering, “Me, me.”
So the Problem of Evil, from a biological point of view, is not a problem at all. The real problem is the Problem of Good: How do we create on the finite surface of the planet a noncompetitive human society?
We attend to our better natures when we choose unselfishly to share our treasure, even with those who are not part of our immediate clan. All of the world’s great religions teach “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In acting upon that instruction we lift ourselves from the good-evil bipolar logic of evolution toward justice and the good.
