Darwin and evil

In his 2001 book, Darwin’s God , Cornelius Hunter argues that the theory of evolution was less a solution to a scientific problem than a solution to a moral, theological, and religious problem: the problem of evil. How could one rationally hold to the existence of a good God in the face of the natural evil of the creation? Lacking (due to movements within theology itself) traditional categories such as God’s wrath or the notion of God’s judgment, Darwin’s answer separated God from the creation in a Deistic fashion: God might have kicked things off alright, but since the beginning the world has operated according to natural patterns and laws that God does not control.

As Darwin himself said in his Autobiography: “That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted to explain it in reference to human beings, imagining that it serves their moral improvement. But the number of people in the world is nothing compared with the numbers of all other senient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could created the universe is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient. It revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the suffering of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one; and the abundant presence of suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.”