The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

90 The Global Argument Continued
Here ends the very long story I—it is still Theist who is speaking—said
was consistent with what we know of human prehistory. I will call this
story the expanded free-will defense. I mean it to include the ‘‘simple’’
free-will defense as a part. Thus, it is a feature of the expanded freewilldefensethatevenanomnipotentbeing,havingraisedourremote
ancestors to rationality and having given them the gift of free will, which
included a free choice between remaining united with him in bonds
of love and turning away from him to follow the devices and desires
of their own hearts, was not able to ensure that they have done the
former—although we may be sure that he did everything omnipotence
could do to raise the probability of their doing so. But the omniscient
God knew that, however much evil might result from the elected
separation from himself, and consequent self-ruin, of his creatures—if
it should occur—the gift of free will would be, so to speak, worth it. For
the existence of an eternity of love depends on this gift, and that eternity
outweighs the horrors of the very long but, in the most literal sense,
temporary period of divine–human estrangement. And he has done
what he can to keep the horrors of estrangement to a minimum—if
there is a minimum. [Here is a brief parenthesis in propria persona:inthe
next lecture I shall defend the thesis that there is no minimum amount
of suffering consequent on our separation from our Creator that is
consistent with his plan of Atonement. This point will in fact turn out to
be extremely important in connection with local arguments from evil.] At
any rate, he has made them vastly less horrible than they might have been.
The expanded free-will defense includes evils in the amounts and of
the kinds that we find in the actual world, including what is sometimes
called natural evil, such as the suffering caused by the Lisbon earthquake.
(Natural evil, according to the expanded free-will defense, is a special
case of evil that is caused by the abuse of free will; the fact that human
beings are subject to destruction by earthquakes is a consequence of
an aboriginal abuse of free will.) I contend that the expanded free-will
defense is a possible story (internally consistent, at least as far as we
can see). I contend that, given that the central character of the story,
God, exists, the rest of the story might well be true. I contend that,
in the present state of human knowledge, we could have no reason for
thinking that the story was false unless we had some reason—a reason
other than the existence of evil—for thinking that there was no God.
I concede that the expanded free-will defense does not help us with
cases like ‘‘Rowe’s fawn’’—cases of suffering that occurred before there