The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

160 Notes
matters was said only to defend my application of the term ‘agnostic’ to
people simply on the ground that they lack certain beliefs—an application
that some might fault on etymological grounds. If the sense of ‘agnostic’
I have introduced by fiat is in any way objectionable, it is at any rate clear
what I mean by the term, and that is all that really matters. (But I do think
that it captures what most people today mean by the term, even if what
they mean is not so noble as what its inventor, Thomas Henry Huxley,
meant by it.) And, in any case, it is ‘‘agnostics’’ in just this sense who must
make up my audience if I am to apply to arguments against the existence of
God the criterion of success in philosophical argument that I have set out.
4. These arguments can be found in my book An Essay on Free Will.
5. If so, my proposed criterion of philosophical success and failure has the
same consequence as the two criteria I have rejected: most if not all
arguments for substantive philosophical conclusions are failures. And it
wasthisconsequencethatwasmyreasonforrejectingthosecriteria.Should
I not, therefore, for just this reason, reject the proposed criterion and look
for some more liberal criterion? Alas, there is no more liberal criterion.
The criterion I have proposed is the most liberal possible criterion. (It is
more liberal than the other two. It sets the philosopher seeking to offer a
successful argument for a philosophical thesis an easier task than the other
two do, even if that task is impossible. If it is objected that one impossible
task cannot be easier than another, I reply that it is in a very obvious
sense ‘‘easier’’ to convince 90 percent of the electorate to vote for one than
it is to convince every voter to vote for one, even if, as things stand, it
is impossible to convince 90 percent of the electorate to vote for one.)
My position, then, is that, sadly, every known argument for a substantive
philosophical position is a failure—by the most liberal (by the most
possibility-of-success-friendly) possible criterion of success and failure.
LECTURE4THEGLOBALARGUMENTFROMEVIL
1. In the poem as it is printed in the novel there are (for reasons of the plot,
as they say: the fictional author of the poem was an educated man who was
attempting to disguise his authorship) several illiteracies (e.g. ‘whose’ for
‘who’s’ in l. 1). I have ‘‘corrected’’ them—with apologies to Martin Amis,
in whose opinion they are an important part of the intended effect of the
poem on the reader (i.e. the effect Kingsley Amis intended the poem to have
on the readers of The Anti-Death League). For Martin Amis’s argument for
this conclusion (and the poem without my officious corrections), see his
memoir Experience, 188.
2. From ch. 4 (‘‘Rebellion’’) of Book V (the quotation is from the Constance
Garnett translation). Ivan is speaking. It is very nearly obligatory for writers
on the problem of evil to quote something from this chapter.