The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

The Local Argument from Evil 107
out, precisely where that cutoff point lies. So perhaps there is someone,
Timothy Williamson, perhaps, who would say that there is and has to be
a smallest number of raindrops that could have fallen on France during
the twentieth century consistently with France’s having been a fertile
country during that century. Well, if there is such a person, that person
is wrong. I want to point out, however, that any theist who accepts this
thesis has, from his own point of view, a very simple way to answer
the local argument from evil: ‘‘There is a smallest number of horrors
such that the real existence of horrors in that number is consistent with
the openness of human beings to the idea that human life is horrible
and that no human efforts will ever alter this fact. And, since God is
good, the horrors that actually exist—past, present, and future—are of
just that number. If, therefore, the Mutilation had not happened, and
if all else had been much the same, human beings wouldn’t have been
open to the idea that human life is horrible and that no human efforts
would ever alter this fact. The first premise of the local argument is
therefore false. You may find this counterfactual hard to believe, but I
don’t. After all, I believe that there is a smallest number of raindrops
such that raindrops in that number falling on France in the twentieth
century is consistent with the twentieth-century fertility of France, and
I therefore believe that it is possible (although immensely improbable:
it is immensely improbable that the number of raindrops that fell on
France in the twentieth century is ‘right at the cutoff point’) that every
twentieth-century French raindrop is such that, if it hadn’t fallen on
France in the twentieth century, France would not have been a fertile
country in the twentieth century. If I can believe that, Icaneasily
enough believe that if the Mutilation hadn’t occurred, human beings
wouldn’t have been open to the idea that human life is horrible and that
no human efforts would ever alter this fact. Here is a simple analogy
of proportion: a given horror is to the openness of human beings to
the idea that human life is horrible and that no human efforts will ever
alter this fact as a given raindrop is to the fertility of France.’’ Here
ends the promised simple reply to the local argument from evil. Having
presented this reply, let us leave to their own devices those philosophers
who say that the boundaries which natural language draws are always
sharp, that vagueness does not exist, that apparent cases of vagueness
are in reality cases in which one is ignorant of where some of the sharp
boundaries that one’s language has drawn lie. Let us leave them and
return to the bright world of good sense.