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”.