Fides Quaerens Intellectum

I recently picked up Dinesh D’Souza’s new book at the urging of a friend and colleague, and I’ve been very pleased with it thus far.  The chapter on the problem of evil is required reading for the IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) students for next week, which is when we rollo out the module on evil and suffering.  Although D’Souza isn’t saying anything new by way of explanation of the problem of evil and suffering–much of what he says has been said in the past by C.S. Lewis and others–he does present fresh examples (the recent VA Tech shootings) and challenges atheists to come up with a viable explanation for how atheism can realistically claim any meaningful sense of human injustice. 

“…why do we experience suffering and evil as unjust?  If we are purely material beings, then we should no more object to mass murder than a river objects to drying up in a drought.  Nevertheless we are not like rivers.  We know that evil is real, and we know that it is wrong.  But if evil is real, then good must be real as well.  How else would we know the difference between the two?  Our ability to distinguish between good an evil, and to recognize these as real, means that there is a moral standard in the universe that provides the basis for this distinction.  And what is the source of that moral standard if not God?”*

Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington, DC:  Regnery, 2007):  276-77.