“Why do bad things happen?” or “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Why does not God intervene when evil people do evil things to good people?”

Not simplistic, innocuous questions from innocent children. But acerbic, sardonic attacks from intelligent and educated friends, during heated debates about the possibility of the existence of the Divine. I am usually the odd one out and the subject of vitriolic tirades about how one has to be a “complete idiot to believe in God in the face of the plethora of evidence to the contrary.” Right. Agnostics, atheists, rationalists, scientists….they are all right.

But I am also right. In my defence I will evoke my all-time favourite quote. It is from the philosopher Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man”. Arguing that we are both divine and demonic depending on which of our propensities we have nurtured, he wrote, “Thou canst grow downwards into the lower natures which are brutes. Thou canst again grow upwards from thy soul’s reasons into the higher natures which are divine.”

To me “God” is the existence of the good in the complex entity that is human. “Demon” is the existence of evil in the complex entity that is human. What is “good” then? “Good” is the propensity to want to live life happily without harming others and in the process, wherever possible, helping others. What is “evil”? Evil is the propensity to destroy others.

Perhaps we have only watered the weedy propensities of evil within us just because we can. When we gain positions of power, we could go humble or we could go arrogant, becoming complacent, callous, or downright cruel. And perhaps all too often we chose the latter path that slides irrevocably downwards. People in positions of power today trade insults about whose regime registered the worst rapes. It is like saying, “Hey don’t advise me on my disease…..don’t tell me to take medication….Look how diseased you are….you go take medicine.” So no one wants to heal. They water the rotten roots and rapes, murders, violence, like the vermin that infest choked drains, continue to breed.