The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

The Global Argument Continued 85
events of human pre-history. The following story is consistent with
what we know of human pre-history. Our current knowledge of human
evolution, in fact, presents us with no particular reason to believe that
this story is false:
For millions of years, perhaps for thousands of millions of years, God
guided the course of evolution so as eventually to produce certain very
clever primates, the immediate predecessors of Homo sapiens.Atsome
time in the last few hundred thousand years, the whole population
of our pre-human ancestors formed a small breeding community—a
few thousand or a few hundred or even a few score. That is to say,
there was a time when every ancestor of modern human beings who
was then alive was a member of this tiny, geographically tightly knit
group of primates. In the fullness of time, God took the members
of this breeding group and miraculously raised them to rationality.
That is, he gave them the gifts of language, abstract thought, and
disinterested love—and, of course, the gift of free will. Perhaps we
cannot understand all his reasons for giving human beings free will,
but here is one very important one we can understand: He gave them
the gift of free will because free will is necessary for love. Love, and not
only erotic love, implies free will. 10 The essential connection between
love and free will is beautifully illustrated in Ruth’s declaration to her
mother-in-law Naomi:
And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the
Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and
me. (Ruth 1: 16–17)
It is also illustrated by the vow that my creator, Mr van Inwagen,
made when he was married:
I, Peter, take thee, Elisabeth, to my wedded wife, to have and to
hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part,
according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.
God not only raised these primates to rationality—not only made
of them what we call human beings—but also took them into a
kind of mystical union with himself, the sort of union that Christians
hope for in Heaven and call the Beatific Vision. Being in union