A few thoughts about suffering

What causes pain and suffering in the world? 

What does its existence tell us about the possibility of a loving, involved God?

How we answer these questions depends very much on our world view.  In just an hour we could only scratch the surface of this enormous subject, which perhaps goes to the very core of why religions and belief systems exist at all.

Rather like those childhood games challenging us to very carefully manoeuvre a plastic case containing ball bearings and various holes for them to rest in, many of these discussions require considerable mental gymnastics to align the evidence with what we believe. Whereas to allow the balls to lie at the base of their case, the easiest place for them to end up, requires little if any effort, just a willingness to address our belief bias, and face any unpleasant realities that may bring to the surface..

As such I suggest that applying Occam’s razor to the evidence will perhaps lead us towards the most likely explanation.

I start with an assumption – that all life has evolved through the process of evolution, in particular evolution by natural selection. If this is true, the fact that nature is red in tooth and claw is a logical result. Organisms succeed at reproduction by being better at obtaining resources (individually and by species) than others also seeking to consume those resources. Success for some therefore requires failure for others (rather like capitalism, but that’s another discussion).

Of course evolution is not an explanation of where everything came from to being with, and I am not competent to explore the various theories around the big bang and the origins of the universe, multi-universes and the rest. However I see no virtue in ascribing the beginning of everything to a deity, or anything else created by the imagination, when as things stands it would appear we cannot know. To claim some intelligence outside the universe created it is no different to saying that some physical force outside the universe created it, or even that it spontaneously sprung into existence. Whether there was an external agency or not, who can truthfully say they know?

So we have one set of evidence – that resulting from our knowledge of evolution and the competition it encourages resulting in selfish behaviours and motivations. Coupled with this we have accidents, random events, ‘acts of God’. Things that bring suffering to organisms by chance.

Like evolution (once life has been initiated) neither of these things require any external agency in order to happen, no Gods, no Devils.

I suppose then we have to consider why so many consider suffering as evidence of ‘evil’ in the world. That whole mythologies (e.g. Adam & Eve) have been created to explain it suggests that suffering is considered a major challenge to a belief in an involved, caring deity. Many books have been written, mostly by those with a world view that is challenged by the existence of suffering.

Human beings (and as we are beginning to discover at least the higher animals too) experience empathy. We can see and be affected by suffering in others, an experience that can motivate us to action to help alleviate the suffering, but of course not always, and usually only in ways that don’t bring the suffering down upon us or our own (that takes a very different person of courage and high principle – something that too may be an evolutionary trait in a few?). Look for example how whole populations (with few exceptions) can be manipulated into treating people appallingly.

 So perhaps our big brains, allowing us to imagine and conceptualise as they do, have meant that we look at another person suffering and imagine what it would be like if it happened to us. Rather like any behaviour that may appear altruistic superficially, most of our behaviours are driven by a selfish agenda. If I treat others well, and encourage others to treat others well, perhaps I am then more likely to live in a community where I am treated well? Simple pragmatism.

As a side note I also recognise here the opposing trait - the desire for revenge and punishment, but that too is something that has evolved as part of tribal behaviour.

Free will is another aspect that we have to consider here. If, as recent science seems to be showing, free will is largely an illusion, how can there be such a thing as good, or evil? Without the freedom to choose there can be no accountability. Is a lion eating an antelope committing an evil act. Is an insect laying its egg inside another living creature which lives to provide food for a growing larva, being slowly eaten alive, committing evil?

I would tend to the view that what describe as evil is simply events driven by factors largely outside of an individual's control. Steven Fry has written a very good novel, Making History, which explores the imagined scenario of being able to go back in time and poison the well used by Adolf Hitler’s parents. His suggestion is that events could easily have been very similar, with a different name in the leadership role, that the circumstances that led to the awful events of the 1930s and 40s were much bigger than one individual, perhaps even being driven by a wider societal phenomenon. Of course the evolution of societies is also modified by random events, so we can never really know for sure. But it is something to really challenge how we view the role of an individual’s so called choices.

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