87: the absence of good. Or was it evil?

One of atheism's great arguments against the sort of God-figure that Christians have is that there is evil in the world. God is not good enough or not powerful enough to prevent it.

There have always been Christian counter-arguments, of course. One of these says that evil is simply the absence of good; the sun is hot and bright and if there are places that are dark and cold, then that means that they are far away from the sun. Where there is evil, it is because people have distanced themselves from God.

I won't try to consider the relative merits of these arguments. I think you'll believe the one side or the other depending on which conviction you already have about God, and that this conviction will have a lot to do with what you have experienced in life and what you are afraid of.

But the assertion that evil is the absence of good has been occupying my mind. Do we really perceive reality like this? Do we see health as the absence of disease, or disease as the absence of health? Do we see injustice as the absence of justice, or justice as the absence of injustice?

I almost think that we don't see evil as the absence of good. We don't have a clear enough picture of good to think of it as being much of anything. If "good" does not have a palpable reality, then it is difficult to think of anything being "the absence of good". Evil, on the other hand, seems to be very easy to picture as something.

This is more than one of those "half-empty/half-full" questions. The fact is that evil has a more palpable presence, one that we can feel; "good", in comparison, is ethereal and almost unreal.

Brutality is "something". You experience it with your senses, it causes a reaction in your mind and body. The same with tension. But peace -- well, what is peace? Where do you localize it? Isn't it simply the absence of tension and violence?

I can't tell what comfort is unless I ask myself about discomfort; but I know discomfort without comparing it to comfort. Discomfort can be localized. Maybe the chair I'm sitting in is uncomfortable, and I can tell that because of what I feel in my lower back. Maybe my shoes are uncomfortable, and I can point to the exact place or places on my feet where I feel the discomfort.

But what is a comfortable chair or a comfortable shoe? Where can I point and say, "ahh, feel that comfort right there"? Isn't it that I can search my body for feelings of discomfort, and, in the absence of such feelings, can consider the chair or the shoe comfortable?

When I think about people I love, I have a hard time putting that feeling into any positive terms. What do I mean when I say that I love my parents? I mean, for example, that I miss them, that I'm afraid about bad things happening to them, and that I feel pity and maybe anger when bad things do happen to them.

So we got "absence" (the sense of missing someone), fear, pity and anger. How can this combination of negative emotions define a positive emotion? The positive emotion? Sure, the emotions are directed against the circumstances surrounding my parents, and not against my parents themselves. But that is like defining something by what it is not. It is a negative print. It is like drawing a horse by drawing everything around the horse and leaving the horse shape itself blank. You could, in a sense, say that you've drawn a horse. But your horse's surroundings have far more features than the horse itself.

What is virtue if not the absence of vice? When we say "humility", don't we just mean the absence of pride? When we say "honesty", do we mean something active that has its own presence, or are we talking about that which happens when the active circumstance of "telling lies" is stopped? Is "chastity" something in itself, is it a power or a force or anything tangible at all, or is it just the absence of sex? Sex, deceit, pride -- all these seem real enough. They seem like actual things we can do and have, and not like the absence of something. It is the corresponding virtues that seem like absence, like Arctic air far removed from the burning sun of passion. Sure, the air may be pure, but what does "purity" mean if not the absence of contamination?

But how could I be a Christian for so many years and yet not have any clearer picture of Christian virtues than to picture them as the absence of vices which I have a pretty clear picture of?

It seems that many Christians will argue that evil is the absence of good, but will live as if, in reality, good is simply the absence of evil. I am in the same category, but now that I have realized it, it really bothers me.