5--Suffering in the Universe-not only on Earth

If we are to consider the problem of suffering honestly, we cannot limit our perspective to Earth.
Our own planet is already filled with pain, disease, natural disasters, and a constant struggle for survival. But why should Earth be the exception in the universe?
Modern astronomy tells us that our Milky Way alone contains hundreds of billions of stars. Many of them have planetary systems of their own. Beyond our galaxy, there are thought to be hundreds of billions of other galaxies, each containing billions of stars.
If life is indeed a common feature of the universe, there could be countless worlds inhabited by sentient beings.
And if similar biological laws prevail there as they do on Earth, then those worlds may also know disease, injury, aging, death, and countless forms of suffering. Perhaps there are predators and parasites. Perhaps there are natural catastrophes. Perhaps intelligent civilizations wage war against one another. Perhaps parents on distant worlds experience the death of their children, just as human parents have experienced it for thousands of years.




Then suffering would not be a local problem confined to our small planet.
It would be a universal one.
The classical problem of theodicy would thereby acquire an entirely new dimension.
For we would no longer have to explain why an omnipotent and perfectly good God permits the suffering of a few billion human beings.
We would have to explain why such a God might have created — or at least allowed to exist — countless billions of suffering sentient beings across millions or even billions of inhabited worlds.
The problem would not merely become greater in quantity.
Its very nature would change.




A God who knowingly creates, or knowingly permits, a universe containing innumerable suffering civilizations would have to possess reasons that go far beyond anything we ordinarily understand by divine goodness.
The larger the universe becomes, the greater the challenge it poses to every classical form of theodicy.
Some religious conceptions focus almost exclusively on Earth and humanity. Yet the universe appears to be so vast that its scale exceeds almost everything the human imagination can comfortably grasp.
If this universe is indeed teeming with life, then the question of God's responsibility has not become smaller.
It has become almost unimaginably larger.
Perhaps this is itself a hint that our traditional images of God are simply too small.


 

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