Natural World and God Essay

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C.S. Lewis and Suffering

The problem of human suffering has been one that has plagued many philosophers, skeptics, and Christians alike. For some, it is difficult to understand how an all-good and all-powerful God could, or would, allow suffering to plague humanity to the extent that it does. Most people want to believe that God would want all creatures, especially those who are made in his likeness, to be happy. Therefore, when people begin to come to terms with the fact that many people are unhappy and many people are in a state of suffering and misery, it can be difficult not question the will of God and question your own faith. C.S. Lewis apparently wrestled with such questions himself which led him to many insights. Lewis writes (Popova, 2014):

"There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by itself as a "self," can exist except in contrast with an "other," a something which is not the self. . . . The freedom of a creature must mean freedom to choose: and choice implies the existence of things to choose between. A creature with no environment would have no choices to make: so that freedom, like self-consciousness (if they are not, indeed, the same thing), again demands the presence to the self of something other than the self."

This sense of the freedom of choice is what serves as a foundation for Lewis's arguments for the reason that pain and suffering can coexist beside a all-good deity.

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However, challenging the problem of pain is one that has loomed for millennia on a theological basis and therefore Lewis has his work cut out for him. Lewis argues that God cannot do what is not intrinsically possible for him and there is a special provision that is inherent in the granting of free will, that a level of the freedom to choose comes with some consequences.

By introducing the concept of free will, it follows that God could not give us free will and deny us the possibility to choose evil at the same time, or this would violate the laws of noncontradiction. That is to say, part of being human and having consciousness also involves a level of suffering that is inherent in the mere act of being alive in the material world (Harmon, 2012). The fact that we live in a natural world that is….....

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