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With the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of discussion lately about the problem of evil and suffering. If God is truly good and all-powerful, why does He allow such hurt and pain?
Fair question.
But in our present moment, there is another question we must consider as well: Why is there good? In his book Evil and the Justice of God, N.T. Wright states the “problem of good” succinctly: “If the world is the chance assembly of accidental phenomena, why is there so much that we want to praise and celebrate? Why is there beauty, love, and laughter?” (p. 19).
Great question! After all, if there is no God, why is there beauty and objective morality in the first place? We are taken off guard by evil and ugliness, because we expect the world to have goodness and beauty. But why expect the world to be this way? According to Richard Dawkins, an atheist universe has no room for good and evil, beauty, or free will:
“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”[1]
In other words, if there is no God, then we live in a universe without free will, objective morality, and beauty. Our world just is.
But if we’re honest, don’t we know better? Think about it:
Free Will: We know that we make genuine choices about our lives. After all, we can only praise the choices of people, such as this priest who willingly gave up his ventilator to a young patient, if he made an authentic choice that was not a matter of dancing to his DNA.
Morality: We know there is right and wrong, which is why we condemn the actions of people who have willingly spread COVID-19 without care for others.
Beauty: We know there is beauty, which is why we still sneak outside of our homes during the quarantine to see the sunset or stars.
In reality, we all know that the world does operate by physical forces, but that people also make real choices (free will). We know the world is not amoral, but that there are both good and evil actions (morality). We know there is both beauty and ugliness (beauty).
According to Dawkins, the atheist worldview can explain physical forces, but not free will. It can account for ugliness, but not beauty (“pitiless indifference”). And the atheist worldview can potentially account for our belief in morality, but the not existence of good and evil.
Here is the bottom line: The atheist worldview cannot explain the dichotomies of free will and physical forces, good and evil, or beauty and ugliness.
Free Will, Morality, and Goodness In the Christian Worldview
But Christianity can. God is a freeBeing who made us in His image and placed us in a world that operates by physical forces. God is a moral Being who gives us the choice as to whether or not we will enter into a loving relationship with Him and with others. God is a beautiful Being who created a world that reflects His character, but that has been marred by sin.
My point here is not to attempt an answer to the problem of evil and suffering. This is a serious question that requires thoughtful, heartfelt reflection. Nor am I brushing it under the carpet. Dr. Clay Jones and I talk about why God might allow COVID-19 in this video.
Rather, my point is to raise “the problem of good” and the difficulty it raises for any non-theistic worldview. I am a Christian, in part, because it offers a compelling reason for why the world contains the dichotomies of free will and physical forces, good andevil, as well as beauty and ugliness.
Yet as Richard Dawkins notes, the atheist worldview cannot adequately account for any of these dichotomies.
When tragedies like COVID-19 hit, both atheists and Christians rightly raise the problem of evil and suffering. Yet we must not forget the “problems” of goodness, beauty, and free will. Any adequate worldview must account for all of these.
[1] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.