Why Is There Evil?

No one has an answer to this question that is both logically consistent and emotionally satisfying. The traditional answer is that God allows us free will and that, alas, leads to evil.

I find this answer lacking for a variety of reasons--even though it has been endorsed by theologicans who are far more learned than I am.

To begin with, modern neuroscience seems to indicate that free will, if it exists at all, is much more limited than we would like to believe. As a simple example, consider fetal alcohol syndrome. One feature of FAS is that it impairs moral reasoning and the ability to make moral choices. The kids lack the ability to say "If I do x, then y will follow. Outcome y is immoral and undesirable. Therefore, I should not do x. " The kids did not make the choice to be exposed to alcohol in the womb and yet their ability to make moral choices is compromised by that exposure.

Other examples are available. People who have led normal, moral lives develop Alzheimer's disease and engage in acts of theft and physical agression. People with traumatic brain injuries experience severe personality changes as formerly easygoing people become angry and irritable.

These special cases point to the fact that behavior and personality have a large neurological component and that one's neurology is not usually a matter of choice. I believe these examples, extreme as they are, make us aware that "free will" has physical limits. If we are not aware of the limits of our own personal free will, I suggest that this is not because those limits don't exist, but that we are immersed in a society of people with similar limits and therefore don't notice them because we are not "different."

Even the most basic spiritual choice, the choice to reach out to God, may have genetic roots. Dean Hamer's book The God Gene offers the provocative hypothesis that religiosity is genetic. The Catholic faith has always taught that faith is a gift. Perhaps genes are the mediators of this gift.

In my struggle to understand this question, I have concluded that God loves us all personally but when he gave us physical life, he made us subject to physical laws and that these laws operate impersonally and, from an individual point of view, even cruelly. These laws govern not only our physical bodies but the workings of our minsd, our thoughts, and our emotions.

As Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matthew 5:43-45 NIV)

Neurology, like the rain, operates according to arbitrary but absolutely impartial laws of nature. Behavior is a result of the workings of the laws of nature and as such, produces results that can sometimes strike us as spectcularly cruel.


I once worked in a psychology lab and raised rats. If a rat pup was sickly, the mother would often kill it and cannabalize it. This made sense: by consuming this food, the mother needed to spend less time away from the nest searching for food and was better able to protect her newborns. The mother rat was behaving "naturally" but it was an injustice to the individual pup.

Most evil originates in either natural causes like fires or hurricanes or in human actions. If we see human actions as being governed by the same physical laws that govern non-human phenomena, evil stops being mysterious although it certainly doesn't become easier to bear.

Why did God create nature in this way? Why did he make us fragile, physically, intellectually, and yes, morally limited. (I believe original sin may lie in our genes.) Why did he design the universe so that we ultimately perish, usually painfully and with great difficulty?

I don't have the answer to this but let me suggest two things. First, we would not enjoy a world that was not structured by these laws. Second, we don't object to the laws of nature and in fact even benefit from them as long as those consequences apply to someone else and not ourselves.

Try to imagine a world without the laws of nature. None of us is pleased to fall but without gravity, the molecues of our body would not adhere together and we could not exist. If nothing died--no plants and no animals--we would be unable to feed or clothe ourselves.(at least in natural fibers.) Imagine no birthday parties, no backyard barbecues, no cotton clothing or leather shoes.

A more human example: Younger people at the peak of their physical attractiveness and strength are preoccupied with career, travel, and relationships. As people age, they become less interested in these things, maybe out of necessity, and turn their efforts toward nurturing others. Perhaps this is the reason why grandparents have such a tender love for their grandchildren and why children, often with some justice, complain that they never got the tender love and high level of investment from the same parent that lavishes love and attention on the grandchild.

If we are honest, we will admit that while we don't want to die, we want animals and plants to die, even if we don't say so directly. Harried parents of small children benefit from the fact that their aging parents are less interested in hot dates and more interested in taking the grandkids to the park. They want these benefits even though they result from the aging and physical decline of their parents.

In short, we want other people and things to be subject to the laws of nature but we want an exemption for ourselves.

Yet even though we are not and will not be exempt from the laws of nature, we can use this insight to see our physical selves as part of the continuing cycle of life.

I like to imagine life as a kaleidoscope. Hold it up to the light and an intricate but transitory pattern appears. Twist the kaleidoscope and the first pattern that enthralled us is destroyed and replaced by another intricate pattern that is equally intriquing. In order for that new pattern to appear, the old one had to be destroyed to provide the building blocks for the new one.

In a similar way, we participate in physical life forever because the atoms that are part of our body are recycled into newer forms of life. I am reminded of Jesus' saying that he who seeks to save his life will lose it. Compare the pharaohs to simple Egyptian laborers. The laborers were buried in a field. Their bodies returned to the soil and that soil was used to nourish other life. The Pharaoh was embalmed, his remains sealed in a sarcophagus. In his quest for immortality, he was entombed in a pyramid. The molecules of his body were removed from the larger ebb and flow of life and he did indeed lose a form of immortality in his quest to become immortal.



Death and a recycling of our bodies awaits as all. As a Christian, I hope to be one with the infinite universe when I enter the next world, one with no death or illness but also one without many earthly experiences that we covet--like sexuality and marriage and, therefore, childbirth and the creation of families.

Although we will lack these good things, we will, I believe, experience the love of God and the communion of saints even more fully than we do now.

And, I have to admit, that my solution--if it is indeeed a solution--only pushes back the problem a step and does not really solve it. After all, God made the laws of nature and they are concerned with life as a whole and apparently not with individual life. This is one example of why the arguments against religion are ultimately stronger than the arguments for it.