The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

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The Idea of God 21 They themselves address God daily in prayer, so they must consider him a person in my sense. I suspect that they bear allegiance to some analysis of personhood that I would reject. Someone may want to ask me how I can consider God a person when, as a Christian, I’m bound to agree that ‘‘there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost’’. Sophisticated theologians will smile when they hear this question, and tell the questioner that ‘Person’ is a technical term in Trinitarian theology and does not mean what it means in everyday life; they will go on to say that it’s doubtless in the everyday sense of the word that van Inwagen is saying that God is a person—not that they will approve of my applying to God everyday terms that apply to human beings, but they will offer me this escape from straightforward contradiction. I won’t take the proposed escape route, though. In my view, ‘Person’ in Trinitarian theology means just exactly what I mean by it—a being who can be addressed, a ‘Thou’—and it is they who are confused. As to the ‘‘one God, three Persons’’ question—ah, well, that is, as they say, beyond the scope of these lectures. 3 Before leaving the topic of the personhood of God, I should say a word about sex—not sex as the vulgar use the word, not sexual intercourse, but sexual dimorphism—what people are increasingly of late, and to my extreme annoyance, coming to call ‘gender’. We haven’t yet officially said this, but, as everyone knows, God does not occupy space, so he can’t have a physical structure; but to have a sex, to be male or female, is, among other things, to have a physical structure. God, therefore, does not have a sex. It is literally false that he is male, and literally false that he is female. My point in raising the issue is simply to address this question: What about this pronoun ‘he’ that I’ve been using? This problem is raised not by any feature of God’s nature, but by the English language, in which the only third-person-singular pronouns are ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’. We cannot call God ‘it’, for that pronoun is reserved for non-persons—like the Dialectic of History or the Force. It would be nice if English had a sex-neutral third-person-singular pronoun that applied to persons, but it doesn’t. (Many languages do.) English does have sex-neutral pronouns that apply to persons—‘they’, for example—and in fact has a good many sex-neutral pronouns that apply only to persons, such as ‘one’ and ‘someone’ and ‘who’, but it lacks third-person-singular pronouns having these desirable features. (Some of our more enlightened contemporaries have proposed a system of ‘‘divine pronouns’’, but I can’t quite bring myself to say things like,
22 The Idea of God ‘‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Godself ’’.) The only real possibilities are to call God ‘he’ or ‘she’, and both pronouns raise serious problems. Calling God ‘he’, when all is said and done, really does carry the implication that God is male. This is both false and reinforces historical prejudices. Calling God ‘she’, of course, carries the implication that God is female. This implication does not reinforce historical prejudices, but (besides being false) it raises this difficulty: the masculine gender is a kind of default setting in the machinery of English grammar—I believe that you express this idea in linguistics-speak by saying ‘In English, ‘‘masculine’’ is a marked gender’, but I may have got ‘marked’ backwards. However you say it, the reality is this: when you’re speaking English, use of the feminine gender in cases in which there’s no basis for it in the nature of the thing you’re talking about always calls attention to itself, and use of the masculine gender sometimes does not, not if the thing is a person. English is thus an inherently sexist language, but, unfortunately, that fact can’t be changed by fiat or good intentions or an act of will. Well, not all problems have solutions. I’m going to call God ‘he’, but if someone else wants to call him ‘she’, I don’t mind. Let this suffice for an account of the attribute ‘‘person’’. I now turn to some more familiar items in the list of the defining properties of God. The first is familiar indeed. God is —omnipotent (or all-powerful or almighty). This notion is often explained by saying that an omnipotent being can do anything that is logically possible. I have two unrelated difficulties with this definition. The first is controversial; perhaps I alone find it a difficulty, but I can’t ignore it on that ground. It is this. I don’t understand the idea of logical possibility. I understand (and believe in) ground-floor or absolute or metaphysical possibility, but, asfarasIcansee,tosaythatathingislogicallypossibleistosay something with no meaning. I don’t deny that the concept of logical impossibility is meaningful: something is logically impossible if it is impossible simpliciter, absolutely or metaphysically impossible, and if its impossibility can be demonstrated using only the resources of logic. But what is logical possibility? Itwouldseem that a thing is supposed to be logically possible if it is not logically impossible. But this is very puzzling. Why should the fact that a thing can’t be shown to be impossible using only the very limited resources that logic provides show that it is in any sense possible? A strictly Euclidean procedure for trisecting the angle is
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’
Page 17 and 18: xiv Detailed Contents he is ‘‘h
Page 19 and 20: 2 The Problem and Argument from Evi
Page 27 and 28: 10 The Problem and Argument from Ev
Page 35 and 36: Lecture 2 The Idea of God I said th
Page 37: 20 The Idea of God unifying princip
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
Page 61 and 62: 44 Philosophical Failure thesis. Al
Page 63 and 64: 46 Philosophical Failure realist in
Page 65 and 66: 48 Philosophical Failure of our con
Page 67 and 68: 50 Philosophical Failure mere agnos
Page 69 and 70: 52 Philosophical Failure representa
Page 71 and 72: 54 Philosophical Failure minds, say
Page 73 and 74: Lecture 4 The Global Argument from
Page 75 and 76: 58 The Global Argument from Evil I
Page 77 and 78: 60 The Global Argument from Evil ca
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Page 81 and 82: 64 The Global Argument from Evil We
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96 The Local Argument from Evil tha
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98 The Local Argument from Evil (3)
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100 The Local Argument from Evil [T
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112 The Local Argument from Evil ca
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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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122 The Sufferings of Beasts gift f
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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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