The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

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The Sufferings of Beasts 127 The lions, roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, and they get them away together, and lay them down in their dens. (Ps. 104: 20–2) This and many other biblical texts seem to imply that the whole subrational natural world proceeds according to God’s plan (except insofar as we human beings have corrupted nature). And this, as the Psalmist tells us in his great hymn of praise to the order that God has established in nature, includes the phenomenon of predation. 20 However this may be, the composite defense I have offered raises—by the very fact that I have offered it—an obvious question. Why need my defense be a composite defense? Why did I bother with the lengthy and elaborate expanded free-will defense when I had the antiirregularity defense (so to call it) at my disposal? After all, human beings are sentient animals. If the anti-irregularity defense satisfactorily explains the sufferings of sub-rational sentient animals, why does it not satisfactorily explain the sufferings of rational sentient animals, of human beings? I have two things to say in reply to this question. First, or so it seems to me, the sufferings of human beings are a much worse evil than the sufferings of beasts. And it is not only I to whom things seem this way. Almost all human beings agree that, although it is a bad thing for animals to suffer, the sufferings of human beings are to be prevented, if there is no other way to do it, at the cost of animal suffering—even quite large amounts of animal suffering. Not everyone agrees, of course—not Peter Singer, for example. Still, this judgment of mine is not an idiosyncratic one. It seems to me, in fact, that the suffering of human beings, the actual total suffering of human beings, is so much worse a thing than the suffering of beasts, the actual total suffering of beasts, that, although I am confident that I do not know whether a pattern of suffering like the actual suffering of beasts constitutes a graver moral defect in a world than massive irregularity, I am not willing to say that I have no idea whether the pattern of suffering actually exhibited by human beings constitutes a graver moral defect in a world than massive irregularity. In fact, I am inclined to deny this thesis; I am inclined to say that the mere avoidance of massive irregularity cannot be a sufficient justification for the actual sufferings of human beings. (And there is this point to be made: there have been so few human beings, compared with the number of sentient living things that there have been, that it is not evident that
128 The Sufferings of Beasts a world in which all human suffering was miraculously prevented would be a massively irregular world.) Secondly, suppose that, contrary to what I am inclined to think, the anti-irregularity defense does provide good reason to think that no moral case could successfully be made against an omnipotent creator of a world containing human suffering in the amount and of the kinds found in the actual world. It never hurts to have more than one defense. The counsel for the defense who has a plausible story that explains away the prosecuting attorney’s apparently damning evidence does well. But the defense counsel who has two such plausible stories—different stories, stories that are not trivial variations on a single theme—does better. (This sort of case, by the way, shows that a defense need not be probable on the existence of God and evil and what is known to the audience of agnostics. If Theist had ten defenses, defenses that were logically inconsistent with one another, the average probability of these defenses on any proposition could not be greater than 10 percent. But it would be a good thing, from Theist’s point of view, to have ten independent defenses, despite the fact that this would necessitate a low average probability for the individual defenses.) It might also be argued that there was a certain tension between the anti-irregularity defense and the expanded free-will defense, since the anti-irregularity defense implies that there is at least a prima facie case against God’s employing a miracle on any given occasion, and the expanded free-will defense entails that the raising of our immediate nonhuman ancestors to human or rational status was a miraculous event. This argument has little force, however, for the raising of our primate ancestors to rationality could have taken place in a world that contained very little in the way of miraculous irregularity. It would, in fact, require nothing more than a genotypic and phenotypic transformation of a few score or a few hundred, or, at most, a few thousand organisms. It might be asked why the expanded free-will defense need postulate that the genesis of human rationality requires divine intervention at all. There are two reasons. First, human beings and beasts are, as I have noted, radically different. Between us and the highest primates there is a vast gulf. I have a hard time believing that this gulf was bridged by the ordinary mechanisms of evolution in the actual time in which it was bridged. Whenever the first rational primates existed, it is clear that our ancestors of one million years ago were mere animals, no more rational than present-day chimpanzees or gorillas, and a million years is not much time for the evolutionary development of radical novelty.
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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX
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Preface These lectures were deliver
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Outline Contents Detailed Contents
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xii Detailed Contents agnostics’
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xiv Detailed Contents he is ‘‘h
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2 The Problem and Argument from Evi
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10 The Problem and Argument from Ev
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Lecture 2 The Idea of God I said th
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20 The Idea of God unifying princip
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22 The Idea of God ‘‘God was in
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24 The Idea of God And Demiourgos i
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26 The Idea of God evil. When we fi
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28 The Idea of God —immutable. Th
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30 The Idea of God worlds: those in
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32 The Idea of God (it would certai
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34 The Idea of God Now why do I dra
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36 The Idea of God not a possible p
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38 Philosophical Failure Note the w
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40 Philosophical Failure proved by
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42 Philosophical Failure which prem
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44 Philosophical Failure thesis. Al
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46 Philosophical Failure realist in
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48 Philosophical Failure of our con
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50 Philosophical Failure mere agnos
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52 Philosophical Failure representa
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54 Philosophical Failure minds, say
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Lecture 4 The Global Argument from
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58 The Global Argument from Evil I
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60 The Global Argument from Evil ca
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64 The Global Argument from Evil We
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66 The Global Argument from Evil Yo
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68 The Global Argument from Evil Si
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Page 113 and 114: 96 The Local Argument from Evil tha
Page 115 and 116: 98 The Local Argument from Evil (3)
Page 117 and 118: 100 The Local Argument from Evil [T
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Page 127 and 128: 110 The Local Argument from Evil If
Page 129 and 130: 112 The Local Argument from Evil ca
Page 131 and 132: 114 The Sufferings of Beasts the ac
Page 133 and 134: 116 The Sufferings of Beasts balls
Page 135 and 136: 118 The Sufferings of Beasts state
Page 137 and 138: 120 The Sufferings of Beasts Let us
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Page 141 and 142: 124 The Sufferings of Beasts What I
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Page 149 and 150: 132 The Sufferings of Beasts to ens
Page 151 and 152: 134 The Sufferings of Beasts warned
Page 153 and 154: 136 The Hiddenness of God hiddennes
Page 155 and 156: 138 The Hiddenness of God admiratio
Page 157 and 158: 140 The Hiddenness of God Theist. S
Page 159 and 160: 142 The Hiddenness of God about the
Page 161 and 162: 144 The Hiddenness of God If this w
Page 163 and 164: 146 The Hiddenness of God (2) Patri
Page 165 and 166: 148 The Hiddenness of God in genera
Page 167 and 168: 150 The Hiddenness of God intellect
Page 169 and 170: Notes LECTURE 1 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
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Page 175 and 176: 158 Notes greatest possible being m
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Page 183 and 184: 166 Notes Christianity.) Let us say
Page 185 and 186: 168 Notes LECTURE 6 THE LOCAL ARGUM
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178 Works Cited Providence and Evil
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180 Works Cited ‘‘What is the P
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182 Index free will (free choice) 2
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REVELATION
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