Theology

A man may accept the arguments of the previous two chapters in principle. He may agree that one does need a substantial amount of various kinds of evil in order to provide the opportunity for greater goods, and in particular a choice of destiny for men, to a significant degree. But he may feel that there is just too much evil in the world, and that less evil would produce adequate benefit. It might be said that a God could give to man choice enough by allowing him to inflict quite a bit of pain on his fellows, and could deter a man from harmful actions by some nasty headaches. In our world, the objection goes, things are too serious. There is too much evil which man can do to his fellow, and deterrents of too great seriousness, and so too unpleasant natural evils to give men knowledge thereof. The suffering of children and animals is something which rightly often appals us. The game, it may be said, is not worth the candle. This is, I believe, the crux of the problem of evil. It is not the fact of evil or the kinds of evil which are the real threat to theism; it is the quantity of evil—both the number of people (and animals) who suffer and the amount which they suffer. If there is a God, he has given man too much choice, the objection in effect says. He has inflicted too much suffering on too many people (and animals) to give knowledge to others for the sake of the freedom of the latter; he has given to man too much opportunity to do evil, and used too powerful deterrents to certain bad actions instead of just stopping men from doing them by force. With the objection that if there is a God, he has overdone it, I feel considerable initial sympathy. The objection seems to count against the claim that there is a God.

 

 

I have been suggesting that it is good for God to allow men to have deep responsibility for other men, particularly their children; and for animals, who in turn have responsibility for their own offspring; and that it is good for God to allow men and animals to suffer for the sake of the knowledge provided to themselves and others, and for the sake of the opportunities provided for performing good actions and deepening knowledge. But even if this is correct, does God have the right to inflict harm on us for the sake of this greater good? Surely no one has this right to inflict harm on an agent for his greater good, let alone for the greater good of another, without the agent's consent. We judge that doctors who use people as involuntary guinea-pigs for medical experiments are doing something wrong.

A further argument why God might permit natural evils to be suffered by men is the argument from higher-order goods, the argument that various evils are logically necessary conditions for the occurrence of actions of certain especially good kinds. Thus for a man to bear his suffering cheerfully there has to be suffering for him to bear. Within limits a sufferer can choose whether to react to his suffering with cheerfulness or with self-pity. There have to be acts which irritate for another to show tolerance of them. Likewise it is often said, acts of forgiveness, courage, self-sacrifice, compassion, overcoming temptation, etc., can only be performed if there are evils of various kinds. Here, however, we must be careful. One might reasonably claim that all that is necessary for some of these good acts (or acts as good as these) to be performed is belief in the existence of certain evils, not their actual existence. You can show compassion towards someone who appears to be suffering, but is not really; you can forgive someone who only appeared to insult you, but did not really. But if the world is to be populated with imaginary evils of the kind needed to enable creatures to perform acts of the above specially good kinds, it would have to be a world in which creatures are generally and systematically deceived about the feelings of their fellows—in which the behaviour of creatures generally and unavoidably belies their feelings and intentions. But, it is plausible to suppose,  it would be a morally wrong act of a creator to create such a deceptive world. In that case, given a creator, then, without an immoral act on his part, for acts of courage, compassion, etc., to be acts open to men to perform, there have to be various evils. Evils give men the opportunity to perform those acts which show men at their best. A world without evils would be a world in which men could show no forgiveness, no compassion, no self-sacrifice. And men without that opportunity are deprived of the opportunity to show themselves at their noblest. For this reason God might well allow some of his creatures to suffer in various ways, since this suffering provides the opportunity for especially noble acts.