Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Introduction: A common hurdle for atheists and agnostics on the road to faith is the problem of suffering. They look at the pain, evil, and injustice in the world and ask how a benevolent, omnipotent God could allow such things. Indeed, in modern atheist discourse the question of suffering (theodicy) often dominates, eclipsing other considerationsthequran.love. Richard Dawkins, for example, infamously described the natural world as one of “no design, no purpose… nothing but pitiless indifference,” defining the universe by its capacity to inflict painthequran.lovethequran.love. With this fixation on life’s shadows, some conclude that if any higher power exists, it must be cruel or incompetent – or more often, that no God exists at all. However, in fixating on the shadows of existence, one risks becoming blind to the light. Suffering is only half of the picture. The other half is the profound order, goodness, and beauty pervading our universe – aspects that, far from undermining the case for God, can powerfully point towards the Divine. In what follows, we invite skeptics to widen their gaze from the reality of pain to the equally real (and arguably “gratuitous”) reality of splendor in the worldthequran.love. By diverting attention to the majestic harmony in nature and the aesthetic joys of life, we illuminate a path from doubt to theism – one well-trodden by philosophers and believers who see beauty as a signpost to Godthequran.lovethequran.love.

Such breathtaking order and beauty in the cosmos have led many observers – ancient and modern – to suspect that it is not a meaningless accident, but rather a “sign” of higher purposethequran.lovethequran.love. The Qur’an praises those who “reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth” and conclude: “Our Lord, You have not created this in vain!”thequran.love In moments of awe under a sky filled with billions of stars, even skeptics may sense that the grandeur of the universe points beyond itself.

Seeing Only the Shadows: Atheism’s Fixation on Suffering

The emotional force of the “problem of evil” is undeniable. Modern atheists often center their case on a moral indictment of God: given all the disease, disasters, and cruelty in the world, the very idea of a benevolent deity seems offensive or absurdthequran.lovethequran.love. The New Atheist movement (figures like Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc.) shifted the debate from “Does God exist?” to “God would be a monster to allow this!”thequran.love. Sam Harris, for instance, argues that the suffering of one innocent child discredits any claims of a loving God – he vividly describes tragedies (like children dying in natural disasters) and insists that only a cruel or indifferent universe would permit such painthequran.love. In this view, acknowledging suffering is equivalent to intellectual honesty, whereas finding meaning in suffering is derided as a “childish refusal” to face realitythequran.love. Hitchens likewise claimed that religions asking believers to trust God’s wisdom in trials were promoting a kind of masochism, calling such faith poisonous.

This atheist fixation on suffering places evil at the center of reality. As a result, the worldview that emerges is disproportionately dark. Dawkins wrote that “the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose…nothing but pitiless indifference”thequran.love. In his eyes, the vast capacity for pain in nature is the truest fact of existence – while any capacity for joy, beauty, and order is brushed aside as a lucky accident of evolutionthequran.love. In other words, through this one-sided lens, suffering is “fundamental” but goodness is incidental. However, this stance has an internal paradox. As that same Dawkins quote reveals, the atheist often denies objective values (asserting “no evil, no good”) yet simultaneously laments the world’s lack of goodness (“pitiless indifference”)thequran.love. The very outrage they feel at suffering implies a tacit belief that things ought to be betterthequran.love. This moral emotion doesn’t neatly fit into a purely materialist universe. Why, in a cosmos supposedly indifferent to values, do humans everywhere cry out for justice, beauty, and meaning?

Psychologically, an excessive focus on the world’s evils can also exact a toll. Philosophers and therapists alike warn that staring too long into the abyss can distort one’s mindthequran.lovethequran.love. Concentrating only on what is ugly or cruel leads to what one scholar called a “distorted map of reality,” in which everything appears ugly and cruelthequran.love. Nietzsche cautioned that those who fight “monsters” can become monsters themselves – and those who gaze into the abyss will find the abyss gazing backthequran.love. In practical terms, continually cataloguing all the world’s horrors can engender cynicism, depression, or compassion-fatiguethequran.lovethequran.love. Some prominent atheists, in their crusade against the “evils” of religion and nature, adopted a tone as dogmatic and harsh as that which they opposedthequran.lovethequran.love. They saw humanity as “DNA’s machines” or a virus, essentially devaluing human life in the very act of professing concern for sufferingthequran.love. As one analysis put it, exclusive attention to pain while ignoring joy acts as a cognitive blinder, “trapping the individual in a self-constructed prison of despair”thequran.love. In short, by seeing only the shadows, one can talk oneself into a very dark place – a place where hope and higher meaning are lost.

The Overlooked “Problem of Good”: Is a Random World Supposed to Be This Beautiful?

Critics of atheism point out that if the existence of evil poses a question for the believer, the existence of good poses an equal question for the unbelieverthequran.love. This is sometimes called the “Problem of Good.” We experience a world not only of pain, but of tremendous beauty, pleasure, love, and moral nobility. How do we account for these positives if reality is, at base, “indifferent” or purely driven by survival? In their understandable zeal to solve the problem of suffering, many skeptics systematically suppress this flip-side issuethequran.love. Yet logically, it deserves attention. Why should a blind cosmos accidentally give rise to sunsets that move us to tears, to music and mathematics that stir the soul, or to selfless acts of compassion?

Philosophers have long formulated an Argument from Beauty: the universe contains an “abundance of aesthetic value” and joyful experiences superfluous to mere survival, which materialist accounts struggle to explainthequran.love. As one observer quipped, if God did not exist, we might have to invent Him just to explain why reality has so many pleasures and wonders built inthequran.love. Evolutionary biology can explain a lot about utility – why creatures feel pain (to avoid harm) or hunger (to seek food). But it’s far less clear on why a human being can stand before a mountain vista or a starry sky and feel transcendent awe, or why we perceive any abstract beauty at all (say, in music or mathematics) that has no obvious survival benefitthequran.love. The atheist focuses on “Why do bad things happen?” but ignores the subtler question “Why do beautiful things give us such delight?”thequran.love. This “problem of pleasure” is real: our world is lavish with beauty and enjoyment that go beyond crude survival needs. As one example, human taste buds could have been biologically “satisfied” with bland nutrients – yet we experience rich flavors and invent arts like cuisine for enjoyment. Likewise, evolutionary theory alone finds it hard to justify the almost excessive splendor of many natural forms. Charles Darwin himself was baffled by the peacock’s extravagant tail, admitting that the sight of those brilliant plumage patterns made him “sick” as it seemed inexplicable by natural selection alone. Why would a blind process produce such tantalizing beauty that seems “beyond” what mere survival requires? Modern biologists do propose mechanisms like sexual selection (beauty as an attractor for mates)thequran.love, and indeed that explains some cases. But even they acknowledge that something deeper is at play. A recent report noted that “the extravagant splendor of the animal kingdom can’t be explained by natural selection alone”thequran.love – life often evolves beauty simply because other living things appreciate that beautythequran.love. In other words, nature seems to have a taste for beauty. There is a “startling bias” toward symmetry and elegance written into the fabric of lifethequran.love. From the spiral patterns of galaxies down to the double-helix of DNA, from the fractal branching of trees to the iridescent wing of a butterfly, order and beauty abound in the cosmos far more than random chance would predictthequran.lovethequran.love. It is almost as if the universe prefers beauty to ugliness.

For a convinced materialist, of course, all this must be attributed to chance or brute necessity. Some will say, “Well, if the universe weren’t orderly and fine-tuned, we wouldn’t be here to observe it” – invoking the anthropic principle or multiverse theories to dodge the implication of design. But notice the asymmetry: many atheists are quick to dismiss all evidence of order as a coincidence or byproduct, yet they treat evidence of disorder (suffering) as undeniable proof that there is no designthequran.love. This one-sided approach loads the dice. If a planet like Earth flourishes with life, that’s just a lucky fluke; if an earthquake kills thousands, that’s proof of cosmic cruelty. Is that truly objective? A more balanced view would be: both the world’s pain and its beauty cry out for an explanation. As believers often argue, a world with lavish beauty and moral order is at least as much a pointer to God as a world with suffering is a pointer awaythequran.lovethequran.love. Or as one thinker put it: the atheist who refuses to even look at the “good” – at all the order, goodness, and beauty in creation – “creates a distorted map of reality”thequran.love. They “see the cancer cell but not the immune system; the earthquake but not the outpouring of charity that follows”thequran.love. By selectively zooming in on nature’s cruelty while ignoring nature’s wonders, they miss half the truth of existence.

Ultimately, the “problem of good” challenges the skeptic to account for why a supposedly blind, purposeless universe nevertheless contains so many things that delight, uplift, and edify us. Why is there music in a world of noise? Why is there love in a struggle for survival? Why do the laws of physics produce majestic harmony instead of chaos? These phenomena were historically seen as clues that the universe is not an accident but a creation – the handiwork of a wise, benevolent Creator. As the Qur’an succinctly says: “The work of God, who perfected everything He created”thequran.love. A blind, random world “should be tasteless,” to paraphrase one author, yet our world overflows with tasteful wondersthequran.love. The intuitions of our heart and the evidence of our senses suggest that the glass of reality is at least as much half-full as half-empty. Perhaps, then, we ought to question the narrative that only the empty half is real.

The Beauty of Creation as a Path to God (An Islamic Perspective)

If the natural world is filled with “signs of goodness”, might those signs point to something – or Someone – greater? Theistic traditions have always answered yes. In particular, Islamic scripture and theology emphasize beauty and order as direct pointers to God. The Qur’an invites people repeatedly to look at nature with an open heart. Far from dismissing the physical world as insignificant, the Qur’an calls it an Ayah (sign) of the divine. “Beauty in the natural world has long evoked wonder, prompting humanity to seek deeper meaning beyond the material,” writes one scholar, “and in Islamic thought, the majestic harmony and aesthetics of creation are seen as unmistakable signs (āyāt) pointing to the wisdom and presence of the Creator.”thequran.love The idea is that the majestic harmony we observe – from the grandeur of the galaxies down to the intricacy of a leaf – is not just random. It reflects intentional design by a Creator who “has perfected everything which He created.”thequran.love In fact, one of God’s names in the Qur’an is Al-Muṣawwir, “The Fashioner (Shaper) of forms”thequran.lovethequran.love. The infinite variety and beauty of creatures testifies to this artistry: as classical commentators noted, even within one species no two individuals are exactly alike (no two human faces are carbon copies) – such endless diversity within an underlying order bespeaks a Creator who “loves variety” and crafted each being with carethequran.lovethequran.love. The Qur’an 30:22 alludes to this, pointing out the diversity of our languages and colors as a sign for those who reflectthequran.love. In other words, where a skeptic sees “random variation,” a believer sees intentional artistry. Nothing is truly ugly or pointless in creation; everything has its proper form and purpose, even if we don’t immediately perceive its beautythequran.love. As one exegete quipped, “even the rear of a monkey” has a function and thus a certain beauty in contextthequran.love – a humorous way to say that God’s creative work marries function with form in an excellent balance.

Islamic teachings explicitly link God with beauty. A famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ states: “God is Beautiful and loves beauty.”thequran.lovethequran.love This concise hadith carries a deep message: beauty (jamāl) is an attribute of God Himself, and He loves to see beauty manifest. Appreciating beauty, then, is not just sensory pleasure – it is a spiritual instinct that draws us toward the Author of Beautythequran.love. The Quranic worldview holds that everything God created is endowed with beauty because the Creator’s own nature is beautiful: “He has made beautiful all that He created.” (Qur’an 32:7)thequran.love. Moreover, “His are the most beautiful names” (Qur’an 59:24), meaning all the qualities of perfection belong to Himthequran.love. When we encounter beauty – whether in a landscape, a work of art, or a virtuous deed – we are, in a sense, encountering a reflection of the divine. The Qur’an often directs us to look to the heavens for an illustration of this truth. “[God] created seven heavens in layers. You do not see in the creation of the Most Merciful any inconsistency. So look again: do you see any flaw?” (Qur’an 67:3)thequran.love. It then challenges the skeptic to keep searching for imperfections: “Then return your vision twice again… your vision will return to you humbled and exhausted [finding no flaw]” (67:4)thequran.lovethequran.love. Medieval commentators marveled at this verse, noting how it dares the listener to honestly scrutinize the universe for any true defect – and implies that a sincere observer will come away astonished at the seamless order of creationthequran.lovethequran.love. “No rifts or cracks in the sky,” they wrote; the cosmos is a “flawless craftsmanship”thequran.love. The more you examine nature, the more you discover intricate laws, regularities, and symmetries – from the orbits of planets to the geometry of snowflakes – all of which suggest “a singular, omnipotent Designer” behind the scenesthequran.love. Thus the Qur’an uses the beauty of harmonious law in nature as evidence of a Wise Creatorthequran.love.

On a more personal level, Islam teaches that noticing and cherishing beauty is part of faiththequran.love. One Islamic scholar explained that believers should adorn themselves inwardly with the beauty of virtue and outwardly with appreciation for the beauty of God’s creationthequran.love. Acts of compassion and moments of witnessing natural beauty both direct one’s thoughts to Allah al-Jameel (God, the Most Beautiful)thequran.love. In this way, beauty is interwoven with worship in the Islamic traditionthequran.lovethequran.love. Consider the aesthetic elements of Islamic culture: the arabesque patterns and geometric designs in Islamic art, the soaring domes and elegant calligraphy in mosques. These aren’t just decorations; they are meant to reflect the underlying order and unity of creation and thereby lead the mind to God, “the Great Geometer”, who designed the cosmos in perfect proportionthequran.love. The Quranic verses rendered in beautiful calligraphy serve as a visual reminder that “His Word is beautiful” in form and meaningthequran.love. Even the rhythms of Islamic worship – the melodious call to prayer, the serene courtyard gardens – aim to create an atmosphere of tranquility and remembrance of God through beautythequran.love. All of this reinforces the idea that for a believer, every beautiful thing ultimately points back to The Source of all Beauty. “The fact that the world contains beauty is a mark of the Creator’s benevolence toward His creatures, inviting them lovingly toward Himself,” as one author beautifully summarizedthequran.love. In other words, all the loveliness we perceive is like a gentle invitation from God – an invitation to discover Him through gratitude and awe.

From Wonder to Faith: How Beauty Beckons Us Toward the Divine

Across cultures and eras, many people – including former skeptics – have found their route to God not through abstract argumentation, but through an experience of beauty. When confronted with something truly sublime or deeply moving, we often feel transcendence breaking into the ordinary. C.S. Lewis spoke of being surprised by a “longing” evoked by music or nature, a yearning for “we know not what” that points to a higher reality beyond this world. St. Augustine, over a millennium earlier, addressed God as “O Beauty ever ancient, ever new!” and lamented that he had wasted years “seeking beautiful things in creation, but not the Beautiful One who made them.” The common thread is the intuition that earthly beauties are signposts: they stir a kind of homesickness for the divinethequran.lovethequran.love. In Islamic thought, this concept is very much alive. The Qur’an (3:191) describes the spiritually attuned as those who “remember God while standing, sitting, and lying on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth,” and who then cry out, “Our Lord, You have not created this in vain; Glory be to You!”thequran.love. In that moment of reflection, the beauty and vastness of the cosmos become a direct line to the Creator – inspiring humility and faith rather than disbelief. Far from being a distraction, the beauty of nature becomes a form of revelation.

Consider the simple act of stargazing on a clear night. As you tilt your head up and see the band of the Milky Way, filled with innumerable stars, you are witnessing a scene of overwhelming splendor. There is no evolutionary advantage, perhaps, in appreciating the Milky Way’s beauty; yet nearly all of us feel something profound in such a moment. Some describe a sense of smallness yet connectedness, a feeling that we are part of something grand. That feeling is not naïve – it is arguably the correct response to reality’s grandeur. The Qur’an would say this response fulfills the verse, “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this [revelation] is the truth” (41:53). To a person of faith, every layer of natural order – every scientific discovery of a new galaxy or a new subatomic particle – is like another brushstroke on the canvas, all contributing to a masterpiece created by God. Even many scientists (often initially agnostic) have confessed that the elegance of physical laws or the fine-tuning of cosmic constants nudged them toward belief in a Cosmic Mind. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek once said, “By studying the world (God’s work) we are indeed studying God”, expressing how rational beauty in physics reflected the intentions of a rational Creator.

Beauty can also melt the heart’s defenses in a way argument cannot. An atheist may debate scripture or dismiss theology, but standing before the Grand Canyon at sunset, or holding a newborn child, or listening to a Mozart concerto, they might feel a rush of meaning and gratitude that catches them off guard. It’s in those undefended moments of wonder that the “still, small voice” of God can be heard. As Rumi, the great Sufi poet, wrote: “If beauty shows itself, love arises. It cannot be otherwise.” The love he speaks of is ultimately love for the Source of beauty. In Islamic understanding, when we admire the beauty of creation, our hearts are implicitly praising God. Even a person who says they don’t believe in God may, in a moment of sudden awe, find themselves using language like “heavenly” or “soul-stirring” – almost as if the soul knows where beauty comes from, even if the mind refuses to name it.

None of this is to deny the reality of suffering. The world has pain and ugliness – shadows, to be sure. But focusing only on the shadows gives an incomplete picture. The light is just as real, and it is in that light that many have found God. In fact, some theologians describe beauty as a gentle proof of God tailored to the human heart. Unlike cold logic, beauty seduces us toward truth. It doesn’t force itself; it enchants and invites. The Qur’an’s approach is exactly that: it points to the evident signs of beneficence in nature – the rain that revives the dead earth, the flowers and fruits of the land, the stars that guide our journeys – and asks, “Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?” (Qur’an 55:13). It’s a rhetorical question imploring us to admit that so much has been given. Yes, there are thorns, but there are millions of roses. Yes, life has storms, but also days of calm sunshine. For every illness, there are countless marvels of the immune system keeping us alive each secondthequran.love. For every instance of human cruelty, there are countless acts of kindness and sacrifice that illuminate our historythequran.love. These too require an explanation. Can a universe of mere “indifference” truly spawn such selfless love and such breathtaking beauty? Or do these hints of transcendence suggest that “the universe is not random at its core but lovingly crafted” by an Artist who imbued His work with splendorthequran.love?

Conclusion: Embracing the Light Alongside the Shadow

Atheists are not wrong to take the problem of suffering seriously – it is indeed a profound challenge for any worldview. But it is a mistake to stop therethequran.love. By fixating on what is tragic, one may miss what is miraculous. The order and beauty in our universe are not trivial byproducts; they are fundamental features of reality that cry out for interpretation. Rather than seeing them as mere background decoration, we should see them as guideposts. Each sunrise that paints the sky in colors, each gentle act of compassion between humans, each elegant equation in physics that unexpectedly describes the cosmos – these are like whispers of the Divine, available to all who haven’t deadened their sense of wonder. The atheistic obsession with pain, as one analysis noted, often necessitates a “cognitive blindness” to these signals of goodnessthequran.lovethequran.love. It is like staring so long into a night of despair that one fails to notice the stars. Yet, ironically, even the atheist’s deep despair at a “meaningless” universe can become a turning point – a kind of negative theology that clears away naive ideas of God and prepares the soul for a more authentic encounterthequran.lovethequran.love. Many former unbelievers have testified that their very crisis of meaning propelled them to seek a spiritual solution. As the Quran promises, “with every hardship, there is ease” (94:5-6); sometimes the collapse of easy answers opens us to a higher truth.

Ultimately, suffering and beauty are both parts of the human story. The difference is that suffering can embitter and close us, whereas beauty has a way of opening us up. The invitation extended here is not to naively ignore evil, but to expand one’s field of vision. Look also at the good – at the astonishing design, the pervasive beauty, the moral grandeur – and ask if it might point somewhere. The Qur’an counsels a balance: “They ponder the creation of the heavens and the earth” and declare “You have not created this in vain”thequran.love. In that integrated view, the shadows of pain are set against the backdrop of a greater light of purpose. Faith, in the end, is about trust – trust that reality is meaningful and tilted toward the good, even when we face difficulties. It is telling that many who come to believe in God describe it as “opening their eyes” or “coming out of darkness into light.” The world didn’t change in that moment – they did. They began to see that “All this is not in vain.”

For the earnest skeptic, then, consider this a gentle challenge: dare to consider the evidence of beauty. Go out on a clear night and stare at the stars; walk in a quiet forest at dawn; listen to a moving symphony or observe the intricate design of a single leaf. Allow yourself to wonder, “Could all this really be just a fluke?” You might find, as countless others have, that your heart recognizes a Presence behind the presence of beauty – a Painter behind the painting, a Composer behind the music. The order, creativity, and compassion woven through reality are like clues, and when followed they lead to a transcendent destination. As one who traveled this path observed: “The atheist is not wrong to focus on suffering; they are only wrong to stop there”thequran.love. Beyond the suffering – alongside it – is a world of wonders testifying to something (or someone) that makes it worthwhile. The shadow makes us aware of the light by contrast; but it is the light that truly illuminates. May those who have dwelt on life’s darkness be gently guided to behold the Light that has been shining all along, through every sunset, every star, every loving smile – leading us home to God, the Beautifulthequran.lovethequran.love.

Sources: The insights above draw on a range of reflections and research, particularly works by Zia H. Shah MD in The Glorious Quran and Science. Shah explores how atheists’ preoccupation with suffering can psychologically blind them to the “Problem of Good” – the abundant beauty and order in existencethequran.lovethequran.love. Islamic perspectives on nature (e.g. “He made beautiful all that He created”) illustrate how the Quran frames beauty as a sign of God’s benevolence, inviting humanity toward faiththequran.lovethequran.love. Examples from biology and cosmology (symmetric galaxies, peacock feathers, firefly lights) show a universe “teeming with mathematical elegance and aesthetic order,” which “hints that the universe is not random at its core but lovingly crafted.”thequran.love Rather than a full theodicy, this article offers a shift in focus – one supported by sages and scriptures – from dwelling on life’s darkness to walking in its light. The path to God, for many, begins by recognizing the sublime hints of the divine woven into the world around usthequran.lovethequran.love. In the words of the Quran: “Truly, in the creation of the heavens and earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for those of understanding” (3:190). Let the seeker not miss those signs.

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