The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

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The Idea of God 27 of the form, ‘God did x and it was wrong of God to do x’, that person must be mistaken: either God did not in fact do x, or it was not wrong of God to do x. (Of course, because God is very different from human beings and stands in very different relations to created things from those human beings stand in, what would be a moral defect in, or a wrong act if performed by, a human being is not automatically a defect in, or a wrong act if performed by, God. Suppose, for example, that a human being inflicts pain on others—without consulting them—to produce what is, in his judgment, a greater good. Many of us would regard this as morally wrong, even if the person happens to be factually right about the long-term consequences of the pain he inflicts. Let us suppose that this moral judgment is correct. My point is that it does not follow from the correctness of this judgment that it would be wrong of God to inflict pain on human beings—or angels or beasts—without their consent to produce some greater good. That’s as may be; such judgments need to be examined individually and with care, taking into account both the ways in which God is similar to human beings and the ways in which God is different from human beings.) Next, God is —eternal. This attribute is very frequently mentioned in songs of praise and in liturgy; that God has this attribute seems to be emotionally very important to believers—probably because of our sorrow over the impermanence of human things. Here is a bit of Psalm 90 (churchgoers, besides, I hope, being familiar with the psalm itself, will know its metrical paraphrase by Isaac Watts, the hymn that starts ‘‘O God our help in ages past’’): 2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, thou art God from everlasting, and world without end. ... 4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that is past as a watch in the night. It is well known that theists have understood God’s eternity in two ways: He has always existed and always will exist; he is outside time altogether. I shall briefly touch on these rival conceptions of eternity when we discuss free will and divine foreknowledge in connection with the free-will defense. A closely related attribute is this: God is
28 The Idea of God —immutable. That is, his attributes and other important properties do not and cannot change—in the words of Watts’s hymn he is ‘‘to endless years the same’’. Of course, if God is in time, and if he’s aware of the changing world, as he must be, some of his properties, in the broadest sense of ‘property’, the ‘‘Cambridge’’ sense, are going to have to change with the passage of time: in 45 bc, he knew that Julius Caesar was alive, and in 43 bc he no longer had this property. But, to speak the language of metaphysics, his intrinsic or non-relational properties do not and cannot change with time: we get old and grey and become more (or less) wise; in middle age, our youthful idealism is replaced by cynicism, or our youthful improvidence gives way to prudence; we turn from belief to unbelief, or the other way round; nothing in God’s nature corresponds to the mutability that characterizes human existence and the existence of all things present to the senses. (What about such texts as ‘‘And it repented God that he had made man’’? Well, my topic is not biblical hermeneutics.) One of the divine attributes is the spatial analogue of eternity: God is —omnipresent. To say that God is omnipresent is, obviously, to say that God is everywhere: Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? (Jer. 23: 23–4) It was presumably texts like this one that prompted Haeckel’s description of the Judeo-Christian God as a ‘‘gaseous vertebrate’’. There are some serious philosophical questions in the neighborhood of Haeckel’s joke: In what manner does God ‘‘fill’’ heaven and earth—does he do this in the manner of an all-pervasive fluid, like the aether of nineteenthcentury physics? In what sense is God ‘‘everywhere’’? I will not address these important questions at this point. The attribute omnipresence will figure in our discussion of the question (at least this is how some have framed it), ‘‘Why does God hide himself from us?—Why is he a Deus absconditus?’’ It will suit my expository purposes better if we put off discussing omnipresence till we address this question in the final lecture.
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
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Page 35 and 36: Lecture 2 The Idea of God I said th
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: 26 The Idea of God evil. When we fi
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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
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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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