The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Preface
These lectures were delivered in the University of St Andrews in April
and May of 2003. It is difficult for me to find words to express my
gratitude to the members of University of St Andrews for giving me the
opportunity to deliver a series of Gifford Lectures in their university.
Having attempted and discarded several more elaborate expressions of
gratitude, I will say only that I am very grateful indeed for the honor
they have done me. I am also grateful to many individual members of
the university for all they did to make my stay in St Andrews a pleasant
and productive one, and for their many acts of kindness to me and to
my wife Lisette and my step-daughter Claire. Special thanks are due
to Professor Alan Torrance, Dr Peter Clark (Head of the School of
Philosophical and Anthropological Studies), Professor Sarah Broadie,
and Professor John Haldane. I wish also to thank the audiences at the
lectures for their insightful comments and questions, many of which I
have responded to (however inadequately) in this book. These responses
are to be found in the endnotes; in a few cases, they have taken the form
of revisions of the text of the lectures. Finally, I thank the two readers
to whom the Oxford University Press sent a draft of the manuscript of
this book. I have tried to meet some of their concerns about particular
passages (and I have responded to some of their more general comments
and suggestions) in the notes and in the text.
I have not, in turning the text of the lectures into a book, tried to
make it anything other than what it was: a text written to be read aloud
to an audience. (With this qualification: in the process of revision, some
of the ‘‘lectures’’ have become too long actually to be read in the hour
that academic tradition allots to a lecture.) Many passages in the text
of the lectures have been extensively rewritten, but all the revisions are
ones I would have made before the lectures were delivered—if only I
had been thinking more clearly at the time.
Most of the material in this book that was not in the original lectures
is in the endnotes. The lectures were written for a general audience (as
opposed to an audience of philosophers). A few of the notes are simply
thoughts that could not be fitted into the text without ‘‘breaking the
flow’’. Most of the others (citations of books and articles aside) are for
philosophers. I advise readers of the book who are not philosophers to