The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Notes 167
that does not violate the autonomy of the lover), nor something that ‘‘just
happens’’. If this is right, it is at least true that the ‘‘best sort’’ of creaturely
love, the love that is the best creaturely imitation of perfect love, involves
free choice. This much would suffice for the free-will defense, for it would
explain why God would give human beings free will even at a great price.
(Given that the difference in value between the best sort of creaturely love
and other sorts is great enough, a thesis that can be made a part of the
defense.) I remain convinced, however, that love that is due to chance or
external necessity is not love at all. (The logic of this last sentence is the
same as that of ‘‘Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds’’.)
11. In what sense could these events be ‘‘random’’? Can any event be ‘‘a
random occurrence’’ or ‘‘due to chance’’ in a world created and sustained
by an omnipotent and omnisicent being? My answer to this question is
Yes. For a technical discussion of the issues that the question involves,
see my essay ‘‘The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God’’. The
essential point of the argument of the essay is this. First, God can, if he
chooses, ‘‘decree’’ that it shall either be the case that p or [exclusive] be
thecasethatq, without either decreeing that it shall be the case that p or
decreeing that it shall be the case that q. Then it will either be the case
that p or be the case that q, butwhich of the two will be a matter of
chance. For example, although God said, ‘‘Let there be light’’, he could
have said, ‘‘Let there be either light or darkness’’. If he had issued the latter
decree, there would have been either light or darkness, and it would have
been a matter of chance whether there was light or there was darkness.
Secondly, God might have good reasons for issuing less-than-fully-specific
decrees—explicitly disjunctive decrees like the one I have imagined, or
decrees that are logically equivalent to disjunctions like ‘‘Let there be at
least twelve major gods in the Babylonian pantheon—but not more than
nineteen’’. One such reason might be this: God does not perform pointless
acts, and if the exact number of hairs on my head makes no difference in the
great scheme of things (a plausible enough thesis), it would be pointless for
God to decree (or in any way to determine) that the number of hairs on my
head shall be exactly 119, 202. And, if we have conceded that some states
of affairs have not been decreed by God (and which he has therefore left to
chance), the question ‘‘Which states of affairs has God left to chance?’’ must
be conceded to be a matter for theological or philosophical speculation. It
may well be, then, that such matters as whether a given person dies in some
natural disaster is something God has left to chance. Whether this could
be so is at any rate a matter about which philosophers and theologians can
properly speculate.
12. For a more extensive discussion of the role of chance in the expanded freewill
defense, see my essay ‘‘The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of
Evil: A Theodicy’’.