The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

96 The Local Argument from Evil
that involved much less suffering, and an omniscient God would have
known that and acted accordingly.)
Now a moment ago, I mentioned the enormous amount of evil in
the world, and it is certainly true that there is an enormous amount of
evil in the world. The phrase ‘‘the amount of evil’’ suggests—perhaps
it even implies—that evil is quantifiable, like distance or weight. That
may be false or unintelligible, but if it is true, even in a rough-andready
sort of way, it shows that horrors raise a problem for the theist
that is distinct from the problem raised by the enormous amount of
evil. If evil can be, even roughly, quantified, as talk about amounts
seems to imply, it might be that there was more evil in a world in
which there were thousands of millions of relatively minor episodes
of suffering (broken ribs, for example) than in a world in which
there were a few horrors. But an omnipotent and omniscient creator
could be called to moral account for creating a world in which there
was even one horror. And the reason is obvious: that horror could
have been ‘‘left out’’ of creation without the sacrifice of any great
good or the permitting of some even greater horror. And leaving it
out is just what a morally perfect being would do; such good things
as might depend causally on the horror could—given the being’s
omnipotence and omniscience—be secured by (if the word is not
morally offensive in this context) more ‘‘economical’’ means. Thus, the
sheer amount of evil (which might be distributed in a fairly uniform
way) is not the only fact about evil that Theist needs to take into
account. He must also take into account what we might call (again with
some risk of using morally offensive language) high local concentrations
of evil—that is, horrors. And it is hard to see how the free-will
defense, however elaborated, could provide any resources for dealing
with horrors.
Rowe’s well-known example of a horror, the fawn that died an
agonizing death in a forest fire that was not caused, in any way, however
remote, by human beings—and whose death leaves no trace that could
ever be discovered by human beings—is a particularly difficult case for
Theist. (If the episode left no trace, how do we know it occurred? Well,
we’re not really talking about a particular event, but about a type of
event. Our knowledge of nature and our acceptance of the principle
of the uniformity of nature make it impossible for us to believe that
no events of this type have ever occurred.) True, however sentimental
we may be about animals, this is not much of a horror compared