Why Good Things Happen

Theologians have long wrestled with the thorny question of why God, who is Good, would allow bad things to happen (by which the religious always mean "happen to *people*"). I will not try to duplicate or even to discuss that conversation, for it's been well handled over the centuries. I think what explanations there are, are about as good as they're going to get.

What strikes me is no one discusses the logical inverse of this proposition. I personally have no trouble at all wondering why bad things happen. They just happen. Rocks fall and every once in a while some poor sap is underneath one of them. There's nothing really to explain, once you get past the physics.

It is a wonder, though, why good things happen. I suppose this is the great conundrum for the atheist. The religious don't have to explain it because God causes all good things, right? Problem solved. They then turn to the atheist, smiling smugly, and ask how in a world without God, anything good could possibly happen.

The question stems in part from the view of the religious that humanity is fundamentally flawed. Pick your religion, they all hold the same tenet: there is Something Better out there and it ain't us. So we need some sort of help, some discipline, some forgiveness, some catastrophe to happen and then and only then can we hope to become Better.

Wouldn't it be interesting, though, to suppose that neither Good nor Bad is in need of explanation. Humans do good things (or bad things) because we do things and some of these things are judged to be good and some are judged to be bad. We are judge, jury, prosecution, defense, the accused, and the victim. There is no god but us and we are our own prophet, thank you very much.

If you look at any particular time and any particular place, you'll find there's quite a bit more Good than Bad going on. Bad gets all the press, and Good is usually rather boring, but in sheer quantity over the course of twenty-four hours, basic decency wins. We're usually polite to one another. Most of us care for each other most of the time. Most of us like doing kind things for each other. What's to explain?

Yes, we can go grievously wrong from time to time. Spectacularly wrong. But it's from time to time, not all the time. It's some of us, not most of us. After all, being wicked takes work.

So, why do Good things happen? Because there are people.

BTW, if you read sacred texts that narrate the actions of gods, I'd say their record of doing Good Things versus doing Bad Things is heavily weighted toward the Bad. Gods tend to blow shit up, tear things down, kill people and animals. Only very occasionally, indeed almost randomly, do gods build cities, raise families, heal the sick, bring peace and justice, create beauty. Doesn't seem to be their specialty.