For, Against or Both?

Natural suffering and Moral Evil are often used as evidence against the existence of God. And there is something to that, which we have discussed in our ‘God and Suffering’ series.

But what is not often noticed is that whenever we affirm there is something wrong with the world, we are implicitly affirming there really is a way the world is supposed to be. The thing is, if there are truths about the way things should be which are independent of human opinion, that requires purpose beyond humans. That’s quite a big deal…a human-independent purpose requires a human-independent mind. Only minds have intents or purposes or plans. So a purpose for things in this universe makes perfect sense if there is a creator with a mind, but is very hard to explain without such a creator.

So…is there any purpose?

We all know the world is a mess and not the way it should be. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we are also not who we should be. We have a sense of what the world should be like, and what humans should be like. And that isn’t the world that we experience, except in tantalising moments. The gap is obvious.

Our only recourse, if we want to avoid a direct line pointing towards a creator with a mind, is to claim that all our direct experience of the world being “broken” is an illusion and really things just are what they are and there is no such thing as “better” or “worse” really. We have to say this universe has no purpose and no intent and when it’s gone, nothing that happens will ever have mattered. We have to say that genocides and hurricanes therefore don’t make the world any worse (merely not to our liking) and kindness and abundance don’t make the world any better (just more to our liking) because it’ll be all gone soon and in the end, who cares? This does work for some things – we know that some personal preferences and some societal conventions do exist, and we know they need not be universal. I think if we’re rich enough and sufficiently insulated from the really deep challenges of life, (anything too obviously wrong) we can successfully hang on to the idea that this truly applies to everything. Yet, I don’t think the illusion theory really works with the full range of life, it only functions well at the theoretical and surface level.

So what do you think? Are there things that “should” or “should not” happen? Do they happen? Is the world the way it’s meant to be? Would it be okay if everything carried on like this forever? If there’s anything wrong with the world…and I mean genuinely “not right” or “broken”…oddly enough that immediately points to a universal purpose, and that points to a creator with a mind.

Next Question

Two follow-up questions might be:

1. ‘If the world is supposed to be a certain way, then why aren’t things that way?’ – This is the problem of Suffering and/or Evil. I have an article series about that. I can’t speak for other theists, but I can give at least some Christian answers using the Bible and you can see what you think.
2. ‘Is there other evidence for the existence of God?’ – yes, and I’m planning to add more articles here on that topic. It’s worth checking ‘ReasonableFaith.org’ as they have nice youtube videos of a few philosophical and historical lines of evidence.