Becoming An Atheist: The Problem of Evil

My first real doubts about the existence of god came around the same time frame of our first IVF, though the two were not related. I had recently left the first school I had ever taught at, and was teaching at a magnet school for sixth-eighth graders. We taught in "streams" -- six week courses designed to incorporate all subjects around a bigger theme. My first stream was Conflict, and it featured an in-depth look at WWII.

I had read about the Holocaust before, of course. I had studied it in middle school and high school myself. I read Anne Frank and numerous other books written by survivors. I had taught the book "The Devil's Arith.metic" by Jan.e Yo.len for several years in my reading classes (it is a fantastic example of historical fiction). The Holocaust has always fascinated me, in a somber, heartbreaking way. It was such a terrible, dark, part of human history, and my empathetic nature can't help but put myself in the shoes of the women and children who endured horrors I can hardly imagine.

As part of this particular unit, I chose to read aloud to the students from El.ie Wei.sel's memoir, "Night," a little each day. I had read the book before, of course, and I remember that I was moved by it. But -- something different in me responded this time. There was a particular passage I remember reading to my eighth graders. The room was silent, and my voice broke as I described, secondhand, what Elie witnessed: Nazi soldiers throwing infants into the air and shooting them in front of their mothers who had just finished digging their own graves.

(I will pause for a minute and let you go back and re-read that last sentence. Sit with it for a moment. Let the image sink in.)

We couldn't even discuss our reading that day. I closed the book after finishing that page, and we all just kind of looked at each other for a few minutes until it was time to dismiss. Nobody twittered or fidgeted or tapped their pencils. The air was thick with emotion, and we just sat in the stillness for a moment, afraid to break the spell. I still don't know what was going on in the minds of my students that day -- but I know what was going on in mine.

At that moment, it became impossible for me to reconcile what I had been taught about God and what had unfolded throughout history. How any omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being could allow something like that to happen (and other, far more gruesome things that we never touched on in class), became impossible for me to understand. (It was several years later that I became aware of Epicurus' famous quote, but it certainly hit home for me that day).

I had been told that humans could not understand God's motives, and that his plan made sense on some grander scale that we could not fathom. But at that moment, I began to wonder. What possible reason or plan was God fulfilling? How was he powerless to prevent such evil? I understand that Christians believe that god gave us "free will" and they use that to explain why evil seems to flourish -- but, really? God, had he any power at all, could have prevented the suffering of millions by simply not creating one being in the first place. And, being all-knowing, he knows this. But he does it any way (assuming that God is the creator and giver of life.) How is this benevolence? How is this showing love and mercy? How does the slaughter of millions further God's plans?

I didn't stop believing in God that day, but the very first cracks in my faith began to appear. And the more I thought about the Holocaust in particular, and evil in general, the more I began to doubt in a hands-on, interventionist deity. After all, people around me were praying to pass tests and find their car keys -- and claiming that God answered those prayers -- while he remained silent at the pleas of those suffering more than you or I will ever know.

Though many atheists are themselves portrayed as evil, I would venture to say that for most atheists, evil itself is a reason supporting their very atheism. We are not evil because we reject the notion of a deity -- rather, the presence of evil concerns us so much that it has caused us to spend a great deal of thought trying to reconcile the problems we see every day around us with the notion of a loving god.

And, unfortunately, the answers we've been given do not pass the test. Theists love to give God credit for the good things, and are quick to blame humanity for the bad. Logically, though, the arguments break down -- either God is in control,or he is not. If he is, then he is allowing and/or causing some terrible shit to happen, on a global scale, every single day. If he's not in charge, then he's not God.

You can't have it both ways, though I know that some theists try. (I will tackle the hands-off Creator God in another post). Either way, both theists and non-theists must acknowledge that evil exists (or, to put it another way, bad things happen). The question becomes, whose fault is it?

There are, of course a variety of provable causes: nature, disease, other human beings. But God? How does he fit in? Is he the causer of evil, or the bystander?

According to both the Old and the New Testaments, God is not only capable of intervening, but he has done so throughout history. Why then did he choose this particular point of human suffering, on such a grandiose scale, to disappear? Where was he during the Holocaust? Where is he today?

I'm afraid that the answer is that he is where he always has been -- locked inside our own minds. Neither the perpetrator nor the bystander -- just simply a comforting figment of our own imaginations.