The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

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The Problem and Argument from Evil 17 Or, to quote another cleric, ‘‘Everything is what it is, and not another thing.’’ 19 It has been said that the greatest benefit Oxford confers on her sons and daughters is that they are not afraid of the obvious. I seem to enjoy the benefit without the bother of the degree. It is just obvious that Neiman’s attempt to identify an overarching problem of evil that is confronted in one way by Leibniz’s Theodicy and in another by Jenseits von Gut und Böse fails, and must fail, because there is no such problem. 20 The problem of evil is a problem about God and about the evils, both ordinary and radical, that are such a salient feature of, as I believe, the world he has made. In these lectures I will discuss this problem. In the next lecture, I will discuss this God whose non-existence the argument from evil is supposed to prove.
Lecture 2 The Idea of God I said that in this lecture I would ‘‘discuss this God whose non-existence the argument from evil is supposed to prove’’. My purpose in this lecture is to say what a being would have to be like to be God, to count as God, to have the attributes, qualities, properties, characteristics, or features that are the components of the concept of God. But can this be done in any principled way? Do people who say they believe in God not disagree about his attributes? Who’s to say what features God is supposed to have? I will respond to these questions with a proposal, a proposal I do not think is arbitrary. It is this: the list of properties that should be included in the concept of God are just those properties ascribed to God in common by Jews, Christians, and Muslims—the properties that adherents of these religions would all agree belong to God. 1 Having said this, I now qualify it. If we obtain a list of properties by the method I have proposed, the list will contain some properties that are thought to belong to God only contingently or accidentally: the property of having spoken to Abraham, for example. Let us therefore restrict our list to properties that Jews, Christians, and Muslims will agree would have been properties of God no matter what—that belong to God independently of the contingencies of history, independently, indeed, of whether there is such a thing as history, independently of the existence of a created world, independently of any contingent matter of fact. Thus our list of properties, the defining properties of the concept of God, will be a list of his essential properties—although, of course, it is not meant to be a complete list of his essential properties. Now a further qualification. By ‘‘Jews, Christians, and Muslims’’, I mean those Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have attained to a high level of philosophical and theological reflection; for some of the properties in the list I shall propose will be ones that most ordinary believers will not have so much as heard of. (I do not take seriously the idea that ‘‘the God of the philosophers’’, the bearer of the attributes in
Page 4: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Page 7 and 8: 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX
Page 10 and 11: Preface These lectures were deliver
Page 12: Outline Contents Detailed Contents
Page 15 and 16: xii Detailed Contents agnostics’
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Page 19 and 20: 2 The Problem and Argument from Evi
Page 27 and 28: 10 The Problem and Argument from Ev
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Page 37 and 38: 20 The Idea of God unifying princip
Page 39 and 40: 22 The Idea of God ‘‘God was in
Page 41 and 42: 24 The Idea of God And Demiourgos i
Page 43 and 44: 26 The Idea of God evil. When we fi
Page 45 and 46: 28 The Idea of God —immutable. Th
Page 47 and 48: 30 The Idea of God worlds: those in
Page 49 and 50: 32 The Idea of God (it would certai
Page 51 and 52: 34 The Idea of God Now why do I dra
Page 53 and 54: 36 The Idea of God not a possible p
Page 55 and 56: 38 Philosophical Failure Note the w
Page 57 and 58: 40 Philosophical Failure proved by
Page 59 and 60: 42 Philosophical Failure which prem
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Page 63 and 64: 46 Philosophical Failure realist in
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98 The Local Argument from Evil (3)
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114 The Sufferings of Beasts the ac
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116 The Sufferings of Beasts balls
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118 The Sufferings of Beasts state
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120 The Sufferings of Beasts Let us
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124 The Sufferings of Beasts What I
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126 The Sufferings of Beasts on the
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128 The Sufferings of Beasts a worl
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130 The Sufferings of Beasts told t
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132 The Sufferings of Beasts to ens
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134 The Sufferings of Beasts warned
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136 The Hiddenness of God hiddennes
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138 The Hiddenness of God admiratio
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140 The Hiddenness of God Theist. S
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142 The Hiddenness of God about the
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144 The Hiddenness of God If this w
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146 The Hiddenness of God (2) Patri
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148 The Hiddenness of God in genera
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150 The Hiddenness of God intellect
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Notes LECTURE 1 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
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154 Notes 14. But here is a defense
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156 Notes to the metaphysical probl
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158 Notes greatest possible being m
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160 Notes matters was said only to
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162 Notes I believe as strongly as
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164 Notes 10. Note that I do not sa
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166 Notes Christianity.) Let us say
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168 Notes LECTURE 6 THE LOCAL ARGUM
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170 Notes of them: all of them but
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172 Notes 20. One might, however, w
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174 Notes 3. Those who think that t
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176 Notes that the first conjunct i
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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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