The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

168 Notes
LECTURE 6 THE LOCAL ARGUMENT FROM EVIL
1. This story has also been used by Marilyn Adams, both in her essay
‘‘Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God’’ and in her book of the same
title. My use of the story is independent of hers: I read the initial reports in
the press of the appalling event recounted in the story (it happened in about
1980, I think) and have been using it as an example in my philosophy of
religion classes ever since. I will also remark that, while both Adams and I
use the word ‘horrors’, she uses the word in a special technical sense and I
do not. Her meaning is ‘‘evils the participation in (the doing or suffering
of) which gives one reason prima facie to doubt whether one’s life could
(given their inclusion in it) be a great good to one on the whole’’. I take no
stand on the question of whether all or any of the events I call ‘‘horrors’’
have this feature.
2. Rowe, ‘‘Problem of Evil’’, 337; in Adams and Adams, 129.
3. See Isa. 30: 27–8 and 45: 7. The latter text reads, ‘‘I form the light and
create darkness: I make peace and create [= cause, bring about] evil: I the
Lord do all these things.’’ According to Peter Baelz (Prayer and Providence,
64), J. S. Mill closed his Bible when he read these words. In the New
Testament, see the story of the tower at Siloam (Luke 13: 1–9) and the
story of the man born blind (John 9: 1–41).
4. Does it not then follow that, for any n,iftheexistenceofatmostnhorrors is consistent with God’s plan, then the existence of at most m horrors
(where m is any number smaller than n, including 0) is consistent with his
plan? No: mathematical induction is valid only for precise predicates.
5. Unless, as C. S. Lewis has suggested, pre-human animal suffering is
ascribed to a corruption of nature by fallen angels. I will briefly discuss this
suggestion in the seventh lecture.
LECTURE 7 THE SUFFERINGS OF BEASTS
1. I endorse an ‘‘abstractionist’’ modal ontology. That is to say, I apply the
term ‘possible world’ to abstract objects of some sort—states of affairs,
perhaps. (See my essay ‘‘Two Concepts of Possible Worlds’’.) I would,
therefore, if this were a work of technical metaphysics, carefully distinguish
‘‘the actual world’’ from ‘‘the universe’’ (or ‘‘the cosmos’’). I would point
out that, while God has created the universe ex nihilo—and might have
created a different one or no universe at all—the actual world is a necessarily
existent (although contingently actual) abstract object, and that God has
not created it but actualized it: indeed (I would point out), God has
probably not done even that; probably he has actualized only some ‘‘large’’
state of affairs that it includes. I would point out that while God is not a
part of the universe (nor does he share any part with it), he exists in the
actual world (as he does in all possible worlds). In this work, I am not