Expert: Joe McSorley - 10/30/2005

Question
My questions are less about the technical aspects of Buddhism and more about your personal beliefs on evil and God from your relgious poin of view. If you feel like you can not answer these questions please email me back. Thank You for your help.
Brie
1. Why is there evil in the world?
2. Why is there so much horrible in the world? Wouldn't just a little evil provide humans with the opportunity to grow and learn?
3. Why would an all-powerful, all loving God allow evil in the world?
4. Do you believe in an intervening God? If so, why does this Divine not intervene when there is a great injustice? (holocaust, baby dying, genetic diseases) Then why does he intervene in trivial affairs? (ex. good grade on a test) Does this seem a little capricious? If you do not believe that God is intervening why not?
5. Do you believe in the fall of human kind by the disobedience of Adam and Eve? If so is it fair that there is such suffering in the world due to Adam and eve disobeying God by eating an apple? If you dont believe this was the fall og human kind, do you believe we had one and if so what was it? If not why not?
6. Why do such bad things happen to good people and good things happen to such bad people?
7. What is your personal religious belief?  

Answer
Dear Brie,
  I am impressed that a course on religion in actually asking you to think critically about these things. This is something that most religions discourage and use the word ‘mystery' whenever a conflict comes up in their philosophy.  Since Buddhism is non-theistic it does not have these problems you present with the concept of a God but I will answer your questions as I can line by line.  Since you asked me my viewpoint that is what my answers will reflect.    
1.   Why is there evil in the world?
My first question is, what do you define as evil? Is there evil in nature or just where there are humans?  So in a sense there is no evil in the world unless there are humans in the world.  To answer the question, why is there evil in humans, I would say because humans are ignorant of their own self-nature.  Being broken from nature they do all kinds of unnatural things, like war and crime, in an attempt to fulfill their desires.  Since our desires are not in touch with reality we create all kinds of problems.  Nature does not intentionally inflict pain on others for its own sick joy, only man does.  We may see a moss growing on a tree and think ‘oh, how beautiful' but the moss may be killing the tree or living in symbiosis with it. What is good for cancer is bad for humans.  Evil is relative in this sense.  What makes cancer an anomaly in nature is that it kills its host eventually.  The wrong that man does to each other or nature will eventually hurt man.  If humans were aware of self and other as intertwined they would not do ‘evil' but since we don't have this awareness we do wrong.
2.   Why is there so much horrible in the world? Wouldn't just a little evil provide humans with the opportunity to grow and learn?
If a volcano erupts and only animals are hurt no one cares really but if there are humans killed then it is horrible.  Is it horrible?  Yes and no, but this is nature and disasters happen.  There is generally no rime or reason to this.  If you live on a volcano you should expect it though.  I often hear people say ‘there most be a good reason for this horrible thing to happen'.  This is really juvenile philosophy.  When we look at tragedy on a small scale we search our reason for why this could happen but what about the large-scale horrors like the massive genocide and rapes in the Sudan and Rwanda and the same in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia in the so-called civilized world.  What good could there possibly be in the mutilation of thousands of women?  Do you think they lay there brutalized and say, “hmmm there must be a lesson God wants me to learn here”.  This is the religion of the rich and comfortable to think this way.  They don't want to believe it can happen to them.  The horror is here because humans can excuse their actions for anything.  You see this in the Catholic Church, the political parties and everywhere else.  It is not until all humans stop making excuses and take full responsibility for all humans' actions that this will change.  Nowhere in nature does this happen, which leads to your next question:
3.   
3. Why would an all-powerful, all loving God allow evil in the world?
The quick answer to this is, “ask him”.  Why would a loving God create Lucifer, slaughter the babies of his enemies to get back at their parents or let the devil cajole him into torturing Job?
He also let the snake into the garden and loves to have animals sacrificed to him.  Theologians will tell you it's a mystery but it is really a huge problem that defies the idea of an all loving or powerful God.

4. Do you believe in an intervening God? If so, why does this Divine not intervene when there is a great injustice? (holocaust, baby dying, genetic diseases) Then why does he intervene in trivial affairs? (ex. good grade on a test) Does this seem a little capricious? If you do not believe that God is intervening why not?
No, for all of the reasons stated above and a host more.  The God of the bible is awfully concerned with trivial human desires, engaging in warfare and slaughter and destroys the creation of nature, which he saw as ‘good' (Genesis) and then calls shellfish and other animals an ‘abomination'.  So why did he make them and why did he let the mosquitoes off the Ark?

5. Do you believe in the fall of human kind by the disobedience of Adam and Eve? If so is it fair that there is such suffering in the world due to Adam and eve disobeying God by eating an apple? If you dont believe this was the fall og human kind, do you believe we had one and if so what was it? If not why not?

God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The problem is you can't tell someone not to do something that is evil is they don't have the knowledge of good and evil to begin with.  So you can't tell them it's evil when they don't know the difference yet.  Another problem along with we all must have been born of incestuous relations after that. And again, God let the snake in the garden, thanks dad.  Also there are two creations, one where Adam and Eve are created simultaneously from the soil and the other where Eve is taken from Adams rib thus the name ‘woman' meaning ‘from man'.  The animals are created in one day and then in the other over several days.  So the mythology is problematic, however, there is something profound in the story.  A myth is created to reveal a truth, not to be taken literally.  The truth here is that humans have fallen from nature, are broken from it, and are trying to get back.  This is the fall of man, for what reason we don't know, perhaps the evolution of a self-conscious intellect.

6. Why do such bad things happen to good people and good things happen to such bad people?
Because they do, nature treats man as straw dogs, life is tenuous and short, live it to the fullest.
We don't want to believe that great pain or disaster can happen at any time but it can.  In Buddhism the first Noble Truth is ‘Life is Suffering”, there is not this idea of a pure good that exists outside of the human condition.  It is contingent upon the individual to come to a realization of the self as all of Nature to escape this condition.

7. What is your personal religious belief?


I find the idea of belief as highly problematic for what does it matter what one believes if it is not reality? .  If one is not exposed to a faith or belief system one does not spontaneously come upon it out of nowhere.  If one is raised in the Jewish, Christian or Islamic faith that is what one generally believes.  It is an accident of birth on which faith many of us will follow.  For others it is something we are taught or learn about later and it makes sense to us but all of it is contingent upon being taught the faith.  What was there before religion?  Is there a religious awakening that is prior to faith?  Is there a religious experience that transcends all faiths and beliefs?  An experience that is trans-historical and trans-cultural?    A problem that I see with faith is that while one who believes expects others to respect his faith rarely do they give this respect to others faiths.  If what I believe is right simply because I believe it to be right then how can I criticize another's faith?  That would give them the ground to criticize my faith.  It's a circular argument, I know, but it is the problem that faith based religions do have.  Just because we believe it doesn't make it a reality.  Many children believe in Santa Claus but that does not make him real.  What does matter is true religious experience.  If a native who had never been exposed to a religion comes to a religious awakening shouldn't he then see the religion that is supposed to be true.  Shouldn't he see ‘Jesus' or ‘Allah' or Krishna?  Has this ever happened that an isolated tribe has a belief in a faith they have never been exposed to?  Not to my knowledge although there are these terribly anecdotal stories of missionaries coming to tribes and being told that ‘they knew this already' only to find they had been approached years earlier by different missionaries
     Buddhism is not a matter of faith but a matter of realizing what the historical Buddha realized; the interpenetration of all things and co origination.  There is no worship of the Buddha or faith to follow but the arduous work of the individual to overcome their dualistic consciousness to realize themselves as an expression of the Universe, here and now.

 My kudos to you or whoever came up with these questions.
 I hope this has helped you.
Take care,
             Joe