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Religion & Secularism

Suffering & the Media

Ian Church queries the influence the media has on our perception of evil.

Over the past fifty years, the problem of evil – the problem that the amount or kind of evil or suffering in this world counts as evidence against an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God – has become the central argument against theism within the philosophy of religion. But when you consider that in today’s world, human suffering is, in the scope of human history, at an all-time low, how can we explain this argument’s recent rise to prominence? Wars, for example, are far less frequent than they used to be. Infant mortality is, in most countries, far lower than it was even a hundred years ago. Kids are, on the whole, safer now than they’ve ever been before; and the number of people brought out of abject poverty over the past half a century is truly a triumph and a point of celebration. Amidst all of this, however, the perception of the world as a dark and scary place is on the rise.

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