Evil

The problem of evil and suffering

On Ash Wednesday Jeremy Rodell addressed the Westminster cathedral interfaith group on the subject of evil from a humanist viewpoint.

He began with a quote from Stephen Fry and went on to a long quote from “Faith and Unbelief” by Stephen Bullivant. “Even God gets murdered.” Bullivant outlines the following

 1. Forgiveness but the question is forgiving what?

2. Augustinian understanding is that evil is a consequence of free will. However this does not apply to natural disasters unless you resort to original sin.

3. The natural order cannot be changed. But that would be incompatible with miracles or any other kind of divine intervention.

4. We don’t know the answer but we do know that Jesus suffered.

Jeremy said that for the humanist there is no “problem of evil” in the sense of a misfit between a benign deity and the fact that there is suffering in the world. We have to accept that this is the way things are. He listed the following aspects.

1.       Suffering can come from the bad actions of people.

2.       Personal illness.

3.       Natural disaster.

4.       Accident.

5.       Bad luck.

We cannot escape the fact that we will all die. We can reduce the causes and mitigate the effects. He said that saying “I thank God for saving me” from a disaster seems illogical if it has killed others.

He did equate evil with bad human action as we all have the capacity to behave selfishly or in a kind and loving way. There are moral absolutes, based on our shared humanity. In discussion inequality of education was mentioned and the need for a standard of morality to be taught. Stephen Pinker has written about the world has become less violent but there may be an upswing in violence as a result of IS.

John Woodhouse