The Problem of Pain and Suffering, and God’s Will
I saw this on my Facebook feed (as is the case with the majority of my posts), and this provoked a response. It was an article authored by Christian mother Christine Suhan. She starts off well-meaning, appealing to the common experience faced by people every day: in the face of tragedy and grief, our world seems to crumble around us and we feel as though the very ground beneath us has let us down. During that time, there is always someone who claims, “Everything happens for a reason.”
Inevitably, you tend to hear it enough times that it becomes “all you can do to keep yourself from punching them in the face.” She goes on to say that pain and suffering and loss are part of the human experience. However, she also claimed that God’ will is not his path created for us, but how we walk his path. At first, it sounds profound, until you’re reminded of the theology. For example, “God’s plan is never for someone to have cancer. God’s will is not for an innocent child to be brutally murdered. God’s will is not for a teenage girl to be raped. God’s will is not chronic pain, illness, disability or death.” But none of these things are within the person’s control. Cancer is not within the patient’s control. Murder and rape are not within the victim’s control. Chronic pain, illness, and disability are not in the sufferer’s control.
Who can control bad things happening, according to believers? God. But according to the author, “God’s will is not an event that happens to us, [God’s will] how we respond to what happens.” In other words, God’s will is… our will? She says that God’s will is for us to supposedly “walk with Him” in our time of suffering. But then it brings up J.L. Mackie’s Inconsistent Triad: God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, but evil (or in this case, suffering) exists. If God were truly good, he wouldn’t allow (and I’ll be generous and say “needless”) suffering to exist. If God were truly omnipotent, then again, needless suffering wouldn’t exist. Obviously, evil and suffering exist.
If God were all-good, he wouldn’t force us to suffer through the abuse, the cancer, the deaths and losses. If he were good, he wouldn’t be forcing illnesses upon us to make us love him. Think of all the people you love: would you seriously wish ill circumstances on any of them? Not just in a moment of passion or anger, but truly wish ill will toward them. And yet this is the God Christians worship.
If your argument is to bear the suffering with dignity and grace, then fine. There certainly is an argument there that suffering helps one grow as a person. But the idea that God is loving, good, and all-powerful simultaneously cannot be entertained.
She tries to shift the burden away from god, and away from ourselves: “God is not responsible for our pain. We are not responsible for our pain. What happened in the Garden of Eden is responsible for the human condition. And the human condition is hard wired for pain and suffering.” But again, according to the theology, Adam and Eve, the ancestors of mankind, were the cause through their disobedience and pride (depending on whom you ask). God is at fault for literally planting the seed of temptation there, while Adam and Eve (humans) are at fault for their disobedience. On both counts, she is wrong. Without the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there would be no suffering. If our will is God’s will, then God’s will must have been to allow suffering to enter the world.
If she intends to argue for random chance, that is that random chance is what harms us, then it loops back to the Inconsistent Triad: God cannot be omnipotent if there are circumstances which exist outside of his control.
How I view suffering (at least most of it) is an opportunity to learn, and to pass on our wisdom to others. The pain of heartache can ease another’s in that they can realize someone else has made it through, that many others have made it through, and that the experiences are indeed surmountable. Suffering through an illness can bring about wisdom and insight into the fragility and value of life. It brings sympathy and empathy for others because we as the sufferer have been in such a situation. We also know what, if anything, can relieve it.
To borrow from Buddhism, life is suffering. But we can learn to rise above the cycle of suffering (samsara) in order to achieve nirvana and moksha, that is the “relinquishment” of suffering (as my professor once put it). It is freedom from suffering because we have risen above it. It isn’t that pain no longer exists, but rather we are free from suffering the pain. We can gain wisdom we learn from suffering, to be free of suffering.
The “Radical” Fallacy
This thought came to me the other day and I’ve got time to write some of it down. A lot of our news media is throwing out the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” (I may or may not shorten it to just RIT throughout the rest of this post). President Obama has been criticized for not using the phrase while presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has almost jumped at the bit to use it in her attempts to appeal to the right-wing. In a response to such criticism, Obama has said, “What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to try and kill Americans?”
I think he has a point. What label, what appellation we apply to the act does not change what it is: terrorism. It doesn’t matter whether it’s religious terrorism (Christian, Islamic, etc.), racial terrorism (e.g., race riots, hate crimes), or sexual terrorism (e.g., rape). It’s terrorism. To use the tired cliche, call a spade a spade.
Having said that, calling anything radical invokes the commonly known “No True Scotsman” fallacy. For those unfamiliar, let me put it this way: “No true Scotsman would ever drink piss-warm beer.” Or for a more real-world example, “No true Muslim would ever think to bomb anyone anywhere; Islam is a religion of peace.” For those of you who are familiar with basic philosophy and logic, feel free to comment or just leave the article. For those who’re interested in what I have to say, read on.
Why do I say that it’s fallacious? Because when you label someone or an entire group of people as “radical” based on one qualifier (in this case, being Muslim), you presume to know: 1) that one person’s beliefs, or the beliefs of every single person identified, and 2) the true tenets of Islam, the true meaning of the words supposedly written by the “prophet”. By the nature of it being religion (as well as the fundamental nature of humanity), you cannot claim to know the mind of anyone else, but your own. You cannot without a doubt the mind of a supposed deity (assuming a deity exists). By the same token, you also cannot know the mind of another person. You can predict, and perhaps rightly so, but you cannot know beyond the shadow of a doubt.
As the saying goes, when you assume, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. But mostly you.
My solution? Call it terrorism. It doesn’t matter what the motivation is. All we need to know is someone attacked, how many people were injured or died, and what is our response. Stop calling it lone wolf attacks. Stop calling it gang violence. Call it terrorism. The qualifier for the label should be nothing but the act itself. It should have nothing to do with the attacker’s skin color, gender, religion, or otherwise.
Answers in Philosophy 