The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

162 Notes
I believe as strongly as you do in God’s omnipotence and sovereignty;
and, like you, I believe that he is aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit.
Moreover, when I state these beliefs of mine, the words I use to state them
aretobeunderstoodinthesamesensesastheyhavewhenyouusethem
to state your beliefs. If you say that the thesis that there is an objective
moral standard that applies to God is inconsistent with the beliefs I have
professed, I will reply that I deny the inconsistency, and I will point out
that your affirmation of the inconsistency is a philosophical thesis, not
a part of the Christian faith. After all, Abraham said to God (Gen. 18:
25), ‘‘Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with
the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be it from thee!
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’’ (RSV). If you say that you
object only to the idea of a moral standard that is ‘‘external’’ to God, I
will reply that I neither affirm nor deny that the moral standard whose
existence I assert is external to God, for I have no idea what that means. I
do affirm this: that general moral principles, if they have truth-values at all,
are necessarily true or necessarily false, and that God has no choice about
the truth-values of non-contingent propositions. If, for example, it would
be wrong for God to slay the righteous with the wicked, that is something
God has no choice about.
7. I have said that the critical responses of philosophers to the argument from
evil usually consist in the presentation of defenses. There is, as far as I
can see, only one other way for a philosopher who opposes the argument
from evil to proceed: to present an argument for the existence of God
that is sufficiently convincing that rational people who consider both
arguments carefully will conclude either that at least one of the premises
of the argument from evil must be wrong, or will at least conclude that
one or more of its premises may well be wrong. In my view, however,
this possibility is not a real possibility, for no known argument for the
existence of God is sufficiently convincing to be used for this purpose. I
would defend this thesis as follows. The only known arguments for the
existence of God whose conclusions are inconsistent with the conclusion of
the argument from evil are the various forms of the ontological argument.
(Even if the cosmological and design arguments, for example, proved their
conclusions beyond a shadow of a doubt, it might be that the First Cause
or Great Architect whose existence they proved was not morally perfect.
Strictly speaking, an atheist can consistently accept the conclusions of
both those arguments.) And all versions of the ontological argument other
than the ‘‘modal argument’’ are irremediably logically defective. As for the
modal ontological argument, there seems to be no reason why someone
who did not ‘‘already’’ believe in God should accept its premise (that the
existence of a necessary being who possesses all perfections essentially is
metaphysically possible).