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God and Suffering: Peter Kreeft

God and suffering is often cited as evidence against God's existence, but this argument has flaws. It assumes God would not permit unnecessary suffering, yet we observe unjust suffering. However, free will explains how God allows moral evil. Additionally, our very concepts of good and evil presuppose an objective standard, which implies a God. For natural suffering, our sense that some suffering is unjust comes from somewhere. If not God, then nature is all there is and no suffering is ever unjust or in need of explanation. Belief in God allows for ultimate justice and meaning, even if not seen in this life. Without God, a sensitive person could not remain sane in a world with immense, indiscriminate suffering.

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Steven Abdel Messih
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69 views2 pages

God and Suffering: Peter Kreeft

God and suffering is often cited as evidence against God's existence, but this argument has flaws. It assumes God would not permit unnecessary suffering, yet we observe unjust suffering. However, free will explains how God allows moral evil. Additionally, our very concepts of good and evil presuppose an objective standard, which implies a God. For natural suffering, our sense that some suffering is unjust comes from somewhere. If not God, then nature is all there is and no suffering is ever unjust or in need of explanation. Belief in God allows for ultimate justice and meaning, even if not seen in this life. Without God, a sensitive person could not remain sane in a world with immense, indiscriminate suffering.

Uploaded by

Steven Abdel Messih
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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GOD AND SUFFERING

PETER KREEFT

All good people are appalled by the sufferings of the innocent. When an innocent person is
struck by a painful disease, or tortured or murdered, we naturally feel sadness, helplessness,
and often rage.

Many people have claimed that such suffering is a proof that God does not exist. Their
argument goes like this:

God is all good and all powerful. Such a God would not permit unnecessary suffering. Yet, we
constantly observe unjust suffering. Therefore, at least one of the premises about God must
be false. Either God is not all good or He is not powerful. Or He just doesn’t exist.

What’s wrong with this argument?

First, let’s examine what we mean when we say that God would not permit unjust suffering.

There are two categories of suffering: Suffering caused by human beings, which we call moral
evils, and suffering caused by nature, for instance earthquakes or cancer.

Free will explains how God could be good and allow moral evil. Because God has given people
free will, they are free to behave against God’s will. The fact that they do evil does not prove
that God is not good.

In addition, if there were no God, there would be no absolute standard of good. Every judgment
presupposes a standard. And that’s true of our moral judgments, too. What is our standard
for judging evil to be evil? The most we could say about evil -- if there were no God -- was that
we, in our subjective taste, didn’t like it when people did certain things to other people. We
wouldn’t have a basis for saying an act was ‘bad’, only that we didn’t like it. So the problem of
human evil exists only if God exists.

As for natural suffering, that poses what appears to be a more difficult question.

We see an innocent child suffer, say from an incurable disease. We complain. Understandable.
We don’t like it. Understandable. We feel it is wrong, unfair, and shouldn’t happen.
Understandable, but illogical, unless you believe in God!

For, if you do not believe in God, your subjective feelings are the only basis upon which you can
object to natural suffering. OK, you don’t like it. But how is your not liking something evidence
for God not existing? Think about it. It’s just the opposite. Our judgments of good and evil,
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natural as well as human, presuppose God as the standard. If there’s no God, there’s neither
good nor evil. There’s just nature doing what it does.

If nature is all there is, there is absolutely no need to explain why one person suffers and
another doesn’t. Unjust suffering is a problem only because we have a sense of what is
just and unjust. But where does this sense come from? Certainly, not from Nature. There’s
nothing just about nature. Nature is only about survival.

What, in other words, does it mean for suffering to be ‘unnecessary or wrong?’ How is that
determined? Against what standard? Your private standard means nothing. My private
standard means nothing. We can talk meaningfully about suffering being ‘unnecessary’ or
wrong only if we have an underlying belief that a standard of right and wrong objectively
exists. And if that standard really exists, that means there is a God.

Moreover, the believer in God has an incomparably easier time than the atheist psychologically
as well as logically in dealing with the problem of natural suffering.

If you accept that a good God exists, it is possible to also believe that this God somehow sets
things right, if not in this world, then in the next.

For the atheist, on the other hand, no suffering is ever set right. There is no ultimate justice.
The bad win and the good suffer. Earthquakes and cancer kill. End of story. Literally.

If nature is all there is, how can a sensitive person remain sane in a world in which tsunamis
wipe out whole towns, evil men torture and murder innocent victims, and disease attacks
people indiscriminately? The answer is: it’s not possible.

Is that how you want to live?

I’m Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, for Prager University.

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