The Violence Inherent in the System
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed
- Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto 56
With the debate raging about whether to teach intelligent design in the classroom, some in the science community have also suggested that stupid design be taught right alongside it. Why can’t all the nutrients needed for animals to live be found in pond water? Why does nature revolve around a cycle of killing?
Darwin wrote about the Ichneumon spider, who paralyzes its victims, keeps them alive, and lays eggs in them. The victim is still alive when the eggs hatch and the baby spiders eat the live flesh as their first meal. Many in the science community, such as Dawkins and Pinker, point to this as evidence that the natural world was not designed, or, at least, not by a loving God.
Here’s another quote from British philosopher John Stuart Mill:
If there are any marks of all special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals.
Looking at all of this, I don’t blame people for jumping to those conclusions—the violence inherent in nature does seem to be at odds with Judeo-Christian teachings, and also with the consciences of many. If the universe is built to a plan, to a purpose, then that plan and purpose seems to revolve around suffering. Why, for example, does creating life (giving birth) involve so much pain?
Here’s another quote, from Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard:
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth—look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
So if there is a purpose to this life, it is clearly not for our enjoyment.
So why is suffering such an inherent part of the natural world? From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes for a stronger natural world. Survival of the fittest. If only the strong survive, then only the strongest genes are passed on to the next generations. Gazelles are bred by nature to be fast, and wolves are bred by nature to hunt in teams to take down the faster gazelles.
So why wouldn’t that be true on a philosophical or theological level as well? With suffering as a part of our everyday lives, only the strongest beliefs and philosophies get handed down to the next generations. This is obviously less dramatic than the violence in the animal kingdom, but it’s no less important. People who haven’t been tempered by toil and suffering are weaker philosophically. Evidence of this? Paris Hilton.
Here’s a quote from the apostle Paul:
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
- Romans 5:3-5
Christianity, as a religion, was not introduced at a time and place really conducive to the spread of a new religion. The Jewish people were enslaved by the most powerful empire of all time (at that time, at least), and they had their own religion. If God got to pick the time and place to introduce a new revelation to the world, why in the world would he pick this time and place? To ensure that only the strongest and most meaningful ideas got passed down to the next generations of Christians.
At the end of that chain of causes and effects is hope. A common response to the violent and chaotic natural world is a desire for transcendence—a desire to rise above our animal natures, to conquer them, and build something greater. This is something that I believe is built in to humans, although some never see it grow into maturity. And I mean all humans. Christians certainly don’t have a monopoly on transcendence, nor do we all achieve it.
So God doesn’t necessarily want us to be happier—he wants us to be stronger, always growing and maturing. Happiness is a good thing, but it is not a good ultimate goal, either by natural or theological standards.
Anyway, just some late-night musings from your amateur philosopher friend. If I’ve botched or overlooked something, or if you have something to add, click that comments link just below this to speak up.
[And before you say anything, no, I don’t believe that we should allow suffering to happen when we see it. Things like hunger, killing, and foreign worker exploitation are things that are talked about at great length in the Bible, so it’s pretty clear that as a part of our transcendence we’re supposed to take a stand against those things.]
June 10th, 2010 at 5:10 am
I keep thinking of Annie Dillards’ “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” as I read. Other viewpoints, also, can add insight (which you allude to when mentioning that Christians aren’t the only ones who achieve transcendence).
Something I find interesting from a conglomeration of Buddhist-inspired things I’ve read has to do with the idea of sitting with your pain (like any other state/thought) and letting it pass, realizing it’s not your entire idenitity and realizing that it didn’t kill you. (I need to remember that when I’m popping out my second baby in a couple of weeks and then figuring out how to merge newborn life with my two year old’s!
So I’ll be stronger, eh?)
Another point atheists make is that if there is a divine creator, why all this screwing up? When examining evolution and the utter waste of the process, one wonders why we’d attribute “creation” to a god. It certainly makes me think a lot about God’s roll in all things.
June 12th, 2010 at 8:40 am
With all respect, b, I totally disagree with this assessment. Challenges are good for self-improvement, but suffering? Constant suffering breeds fear, paralysis, and inertia. It can bring out the worst in people as easily, if not more easily, than it sparks personal enlightenment. And all too often, it allows the weaker, more stupid theories to thrive because people don’t have time or mental energy to fully exercise their rational capabilities.
Look at witch trials in early medieval Europe. Someone’s goat became lame, or a child fell ill, or crops failed. If no easy natural cause could be determined (because science hadn’t begun to probe the complexity of nature), some widow or beggar or minority was blamed for the disaster and summarily executed. Their confessions, obtained under torture, were taken as fact, because who would confess to such a deed only to make the pain of torture stop? Panic set in, and people became obsessed with finding and destroying all witches in an area before they could do any more damage. (The numerous false confessions, confessions that implicated dozens of other innocent people, also provide ample evidence that suffering doesn’t improve one morally or philosophically. Given enough suffering, people will say or do just about anything to make the suffering end.)
As for the idea that only the “best” ideas of Christianity got passed down through the era of Roman persecution, Christianity as we know it didn’t exist until long after Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, gave Christians special protected status and convened the First Council of Nicea. (And Constantine himself wasn’t Christian as we think of it–he just added Jesus-worship to his personal pantheon after he believed the Christian god gave him military victory.) The Gnostics, Arianists, Adoptionists, Marcionists, etc., duked it out for centuries, arguing not only over orthodoxy vs. heterodoxy but even over which texts should be considered biblical canon. They oppressed each other; the only government persecution came when the leader of a province belonged to one Christian faction, and the primary teacher of doctrine in that region belonged to another faction. Christian doctrine wasn’t refined because its central tenets were passed down from one generation of martyrs to the next; it was shaped by which faction had the most political power at any crucial moment in church history. But the earliest church had no consensus on who Jesus was or what exactly his death accomplished, despite the fact that all sects were persecuted with equal vigor in the days of Nero.
And if suffering is really all that good for our improvement, how does that tie into the traditional Christian concept of heaven and hell? In heaven, we’re told, there is no more suffering and no more death, and all beings finally attain perfection. But Christianity also teaches us that no one achieves perfect in this life, so if suffering improves us, why wouldn’t we suffer any more in the afterlife until we attained perfection? And if suffering is a refinement tool rather than a punishment, why are those in hell condemned to suffer for all eternity? Shouldn’t all that suffering finally turn them into their best selves and make them worthy of entering the perfect society of heaven?
June 15th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
All good points, Mina, and some I hadn’t considered. (And sorry for the late response–I didn’t see this one until today.)
An abundance of suffering certainly does bring about a lot of bad things. But, looking back at history, the times Christianity seemed to be most ineffective were the times when it was easiest to be a Christian. Religion usually becomes weak and impotent when it becomes the default option and is applied without personal choice.
Maybe I went further with that thought than I meant to, but I don’t mean to propose that suffering is always a good thing. In copious amounts, anything can be a bad thing, and the threshold for suffering being a bad thing is probably lower than most things. What I’m getting at is that a life free from all struggle does not produce the most sound product. There’s a level of contention that’s healthy, and it doesn’t always overlap with what’s comfortable. Even moderately unhealthy levels of contention can produce a few good results (although I wouldn’t recommend welcoming that to produce those results).
Thanks for the thoughts. I don’t disagree with much of what you said, but I didn’t intend to imply such extremes.
June 19th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Yeah, I figured you meant more “life is hard sometimes” struggles/challenges than torture levels of suffering in your main argument, but the examples you were giving at the beginning (paralyzing spiders, animals being eaten alive) implied profound levels of pain. I think we more or less agree that a certain degree of trial improves most folks.
I still have to disagree that Christianity was less effective in times of its greatest dominance. I guess it depends on what you mean by “ineffective”–if you mean people experienced less personal transformation by attending church and following Christian precepts, maybe that’s true. I just can’t imagine characterizing an entity that shaped politics, society, and (to a degree) scientific thought for so many centuries as impotent. It perhaps was not empowering to all its members, but as an organization it had a lot of power to bend people to its will. I get the feeling you aren’t thinking of power/effectiveness in those terms, though.
Thanks for overlooking all the egregious spelling/grammatical errors in that last post–for an editor, I sure did a lousy job reviewing my own work!