Largely thanks to my “Jew-hat”, I have had people throughout the campus’ agnostic majority contending with me about the existence of a Divinity. While the reasons for their disbelief vary, there is one argument against the existence of a Divinity that, regardless of its merit, pulls many away from belief.
This notion is the idea that G-d must not exist because He allows disasters to happen and ecologies to fall into ruin. Clearly, the all-knowing and all-loving G-d will not allow anything short of Utopia and/or Kallipolis to exist in the world, if He is indeed the hallmark of all perfection. Could He have not created a race far more pristine than the humanity that we know, and therefore truly allowed His divinity to manifest in it?
The answer can be found in a primary rule of creation: balance must exist. If there is a great positive aspect in the world, then a negative aspect in the world must exist to balance it. Even in science, the primary of element of creation—the basic hydrogen atom—denotes the positive and the negative forces in tandem, and without the two of them combined, creation cannot be.
If righteousness existed and wickedness did not, the Jewish Rabbinic tradition equates the presence of righteousness to a candle in broad daylight—an image that is far less perfect and much far less meaningful in purpose when compared to the candle in the darkness.
So therefore, if goodness is to exist (and G-d is indeed the source of all goodness), then wickedness—by necessity of this law of creation—must also exist.
But humanity in possessing the divine gift surpasses this rule of nature, largely thanks to what Christians may refer to as the “Original Sin”. The knowledge of Good and Evil makes humans much like G-d, as the serpent says. G-d is above nature, being able to break the laws of balance, and we as humans followed suit and also broke nature’s laws the same way He does.
G-d’s role from the very first time he is mentioned in Genesis is one of a Creator. Only when humanity surpasses nature and commits wicked deeds does G-d activate His destructive powers, such as in the Flood Narrative and with the Tower of Babel. Once Abraham and other righteous people exist on the earth, there is less potential for divine mayhem.
Is there a connection this narrative establishes? Most certainly. The Talmudic Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot) says that G-d created the world with ten utterances for the sake of rewarding the well-doers who honor the world created with ten utterances and to punish those who dishonor the world by means of the ten utterances. Sinning is the reverse function of divine creation. Sometimes sinning can directly harm the world, such as being wasteful, and others times it can indirectly harm the world, as evil begotten to fellow man will in turn only beget more evil.
G-d endowed all with free will, and is capable of letting the world fall apart if humanity commits evil deeds. G-d should not be blamed for all the disasters in the world—humans should attempt to temper their rage, alter their own feelings and natural instincts so as to create the ideal world of love—and then, without sin, G-d will very evidently be the source of infinite goodness, regardless of what else happens.
But even the malevolent power given to humanity (and in turn to G-d) in the form of sins is above all completely divine, as odd as it may seem. Recall the last line of Sophocles’ play “The Women of Trachis” in which the overall state of worldly suffering is declared: “There is nothing here which is not Zeus”.
6 Comments
Amanda M.
1King 19:11
And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the
LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
Why must you not spell out God, yet the blog before yours can talk openly about eating a third grade little girl out?
The very nature and acceptance of these behaviors is the reason God humbles the world and all of his people.
Jared Gimbel
The fact that I do not write out G-d is of my own doing, not the fiat of the Blargus. I just wanted to make that clear.
Why? Religion needs a mystery aspect as well as the fact that when I do write “G-d”, I have my reverence for Him bolstered.
Some things of note:
(1) All pronouns referring to G-d are capitalized. (e.g. “His People”) regardless of whether or not you believe in Him. (Chicago Manual of Style, I think?)
(2) When you use the phrase “His People” it seems to refer to the Jews. While I don’t think that was an anti-Semitic remark, it could be construed as one.
I hope I can keep on assisting believers such as ourselves–thank you for your input.
Amanda M.
Thank you for the grammatical correction. I certainly was not posting to have my writing critiqued. My comment, about “His People” was most defiantly not some sort of racist remark against the Jewish faith or the Jewish people. You can only assume that I am not Jewish myself. The very fact that I posted a scripture should tell you that I am of faith.
I came across your site by accident and I must say I was both appalled and refreshed, appalled first by the mere thought of someone with a relation to sex such as Dylan has giving advice about sex and dating, and then refreshed when I saw your article.
You are talking about something that matters, something that should matter to more people of all faiths. It does not matter if we are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu. We are a growing people that have lost our faith in a higher purpose.
People are evaluating massive tragedies of the earth and saying a good God would not allow this to happen, he would not allow children to suffer and entire civilizations slowly starve and die of sickness. The scripture I posted answers the question to why bad things happen, it is not God in the earthquake, or the fire or the sickness.
Is it not our own responsibility to live in the way of God? If it were not for humanity’s relationship with “stuff”, far fewer people have perished. We have a need to build fantastic buildings and fill them with fantastic things, and it is the very things we covet that brings us to death when the earth does what it must do.
Do we not know that we live on moving plates that crush into one another? Do we not know the physics of the pressure that builds? Do we not know that the pressure must release?
Earth is alive, it moves, breathes, gets sick and heals. We are so small to blame God for the sins of man, even after he warned us where our sins could lead us.
Religion is meant to be mysterious. It is our test from God. We keep the faith when we cannot see and he will give us sight. I’m I wrong?
Marshall Johnson
Jared, I have to disagree that the existence of balance is a “primary rule of creation.” A great many processes crucial to our existence do depend on balance or equilibrium between contending forces–the hydrogen atom you quote, the hydrostatic equilibria that exist within stars, and so forth. But, there are equally important examples of imbalance, of disequilibrium, arising directly from nature, without human intervention.
Perhaps the most primal of these is known as “baryon asymmetry.” Theoretically, one would expect that the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which then should have entirely annihilated each other. This, however, cannot be correct, as we are clearly here and made out of matter, so not all of the matter in the universe can have been destroyed 14.6 billion years ago. While just how this occured has not yet been resolved, it is generally accepted that there must have been slightly more matter than antimatter for some unknown reason, which survived to form stars, galaxies, planets, and now us. So, I would contend that we exist precisely because balance between matter and antimatter (perhaps the quintessential example of opposing “forces” in the physical world (as opposed to the human world of morality)) did not exist in the beginning, and does not exist now.
Fascinating column as always!
Jared Gimbel
Marshall, I ever so apologize sometimes if I treat the athiest a little too roughly.
In response to your point, no rule concerning G-d can EVER be absolute. Think of the recently-passed-on J.D. Salinger, who always made up rules for himself, and then broke them immediately. Like humans, like G-d.
Jared Gimbel
Amanda, despite some lapses of faith experienced by Elie Wiesel in which he believes otherwise, I would say you are completely correct.