Is theism capable of accounting for any natural evil at all?

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Volumn 57, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 35-66

  Trakakis, Nick ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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EID: 77951932409     PISSN: 00207047     EISSN: 15728684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11153-004-5895-6     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. According to orthodox theism, God was free not to create a world. In other words, there is at least one possible world in which God creates nothing at all. But then God is a creator only contingently, not necessarily. (However, God is necessarily the creator of any created thing that does exist - that is to say, it is necessarily true that if anything is created then God is responsible for its coming into existence.)
2. To be sure, moral evil encompasses not only the execution of a wrongful intention and the consequences that follow, but also wrongful acts of intention formation, such as forming the intention to murder someone (whether or not the intention is acted upon).
3. A category of moral evil that has not received much attention is that of social evil, evil that is ingrained in the institutions or practices of a society. Examples include the disparity between the poor and the affluent in western countries, apartheid, slavery, and totalitarian regimes. See Philip L. Quinn, 'Social Evil: A Response to Adams', Philosophical Studies 69 (1993): 187-194
4. The class of non-divine agents is the class of all agents other than God, and so includes both humans and angels. 5. The distinction between moral evil and natural evil is drawn in a similar way by such writers as H.J. McCloskey, 'God and Evil', Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1960): 98-100;
5. Edward Madden and Peter Hare, Evil and the Concept of God (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1968), p. 6;
6. Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 30;
7. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1977), pp. 12-13;
8. and William Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth / Thomson Learning, 2001), p. 104.
9. A slightly different way of drawing this distinction is proposed by Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 4-5.
10. The locus classicus for Hick's theodicy is Part IV of his Evil and the God of Love, 1st ed. (London: Macmillan, 1966).
11. Apart from this work, other important presentations of his theodicy occur in 'God, Evil and Mystery', Religious Studies 3 (1968): 539-546;
12. the revised edition of Evil and the God of Love published in 1977, which includes an extra chapter where Hick responds to some of his critics;
13. An Irenaean Theodicy', originally published in Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1981), pp. 39-52, and republished with some minor amendments in the new edition of Davis' collection issued in 2001 (both editions also contain interesting discussions between Hick and the other contributors);
14. and Philosophy of Religion, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), pp. 44-48.
15. Swinburne, Is There A God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 109-110.
16. On pp. 156-58 of Providence and the Problem of Evil, Swinburne compares our world with an Eden-like world in which natural evil is entirely absent. He points out that in Eden our bodies (as well as animals, plants, and the inanimate objects we construct) would not be subject to deterioration over time. In that case, the inhabitants of Eden would not be able to bring about evil by negligently allowing something bad to happen (since nature, left to its own devices, could not cause any harm); instead, they could only bring about evil by actively causing it. Our world, by contrast, provides numerous opportunities for wrongdoing merely through sloth. This, in Swinburne's eyes, shows Eden to be inferior to our world. For Eden lacks the good of having "the opportunity of very serious choice (in our actions towards others) without having to desire to hurt, i.e., to hate our fellows (or animals or the inanimate environment), which is a horrible thing, or even to do anything active (anything which required energy) which will hurt them" (p. 158). Swinburne is correct that in Eden the genesis of any evil E would require active human effort. But the continuation or spread of E may only require inactivity on our behalf. Thus, people in Eden would have the opportunity to allow E to continue unabated merely through sloth, thus making sloth just as much a vice as it is in the actual world. I may add that on my conception of Eden it is not natural deterioration per se that is absent, but natural deterioration that causes pain to some sentient creature.
17. This theme of the necessity of epistemic distance has become a constant in Hick's numerous writings - see, for example, Evil and the God of Love, 1st ed., p. 317, An Irenaean Theodicy', pp. 42-43 (in 1981 edition, or pp. 41-42 in 2001 edition),
18. and Philosophy of Religion, 4th ed., p. 44.
19. O'Connor, 'Swinburne on Natural Evil from Natural Processes', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 30 (1991): 84.
20. Swinburne originally presented this argument in 'Natural Evil', American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978): 295-301.
21. Subsequently, it has been repeated in The Existence of God, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 202-214;
22. 'Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil', in William J. Abraham and Steven W Holtzer (eds), The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of Basil Mitchell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 149-167;
23. Is There A God? pp. 107-108;
24. and Providence and the Problem of Evil, pp. 176-192.
25. It must be noted, however, that the argument from the need for knowledge is only part of Swinburne's theodicy for natural evil, which also includes an appeal to 'soul-making' (natural evil as affording various opportunities to develop good desires and character traits). See, in particular, Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, pp. 160-71.
26. Swinburne, The Existence of God, rev. ed., p. 207.
27. Swinburne, The Existence of God Ibid., p. 211.
28. I may point out that the kind of freedom that, in Swinburne's view, is made possible by natural evil is the 'free choice of destiny', where an agent has a choice of destiny if "among the things which he can affect by his free choice are the desire systems and knowledge systems of himself and (to a lesser extent) of his fellows" (Swinburne, 'Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil', p. 150).
29. See Swinburne, The Existence of God, rev. ed., pp. 203-204,
30. and Providence and the Problem of Evil, pp. 187-188.
31. Swinburne, The Existence of God, rev. ed., p. 205.
32. This is not to deny, however, that in some cases the prior experience from which the induction is made need not be my very own experience. Indeed, as Swinburne points out, in cases involving some of the worst evils the induction can only be made on the basis of the experiences of others. For example, I cannot know by means of my own experience that taking a great deal of heroin over a long period of time will cause death, though I can learn this from seeing it happen to a friend. But even in such cases Swinburne would insist that my knowledge of consequences is 'surer' if it is based on observations I have made as opposed to second-hand reports made on television or in a book. See Swinburne, The Existence of God, rev. ed., p. 206.
33. Swinburne, The Existence of God, rev. ed., p. 211.
34. See Stump, 'Knowledge, Freedom and the Problem of Evil', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1983): 53,
35. where she draws on Jeremiah 42: 1-16.
36. Paul Moser, 'Natural Evil and the Free Will Defence', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1984): 53.
37. In this paper Moser advances a free will theodicy of his own, according to which natural evil is logically necessary not for the acquisition of knowledge of the consequences of our actions, but for the acquisition of the concept of evil. This is an interesting proposal, but one that cannot be examined here. For considerations against Moser's position, see Robert McKim, 'Worlds Without Evil', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1984): 164-165,
38. and Swinburne, 'Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil', pp. 155-156;
39. while for considerations in support of Moser, see Michael J. Coughlan, 'The Free Will Defence and Natural Evil', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 20 (1986): 102-104.
40. See Swinburne, 'Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil', p. 162.
41. Stump, 'Knowledge, Freedom and the Problem of Evil', p. 52.
42. See O'Connor, 'Swinburne on Natural Evil', Religious Studies 19 (1983): 72,
43. 'On Natural Evil's Being Necessary for Free Will', Sophia 24 (1985): 39,
44. and A Variation on the Free Will Defense', Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987): 162.
45. It is important to distinguish this view from Hick's position on epistemic distance. According to Hick, epistemic distance is necessary for freedom with respect to entering into a personal relationship with God (this may be called 'religious freedom'). For Swinburne, by contrast, epistemic distance is necessary for 'moral freedom', that is to say, freedom with regard to the choice between morally good and morally evil courses of action.
46. Similar comments can be made with respect to methods 2-5 above. In personal communication (dated April 30, 2003), Swinburne has replied that these four methods share the weakness of method 1, viz., the abrogation of epistemic distance. In response to 'knowledge machines', for example, Swinburne writes that "faced with such machines, how (since they show all the signs of consciousness by which we regard other humans as conscious) could we fail to regard them as our conscious guardian angels, and therefore approximating to the status of Divinity - with all the disadvantages of the method of direct divine inspiration." But as with the innate knowledge hypothesis, the deliverances of the knowledge machine would provide one with few, if any, clues as to the nature of their source - and this because the information communicated is of a purely factual sort, as opposed to consisting of, say, moral exhortations. (It seems that the same point can also be made in relation to method 1.)
47. Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, p. 180.
48. Cf. Swinburne, 'Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil', pp. 158-159, where the stronger view is advanced that a basic or innate belief (regarding the effects of one's action) would lack any justification at all.
49. See O'Connor, 'Swinburne on Natural Evil from Natural Processes', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 30 (1991): 83,
50. and God and Inscrutable Evil: In Defense of Theism and Atheism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 106.
51. Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, p. 181.
52. Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil Ibid., pp. 181-182
53. Stump, 'Knowledge, Freedom and the Problem of Evil', p. 53.
54. The experiments envisioned by Stump ought to be regarded as moral evils even if in some cases the experiments do not result in any suffering at all, while in other cases the suffering produced is unforeseeable and hence unintentional. For the only reason why such experiments would be conducted is to acquire the kind of knowledge that would increase one's capacity to commit moral evil. Echoes of the legend of Dr Faustus, perhaps.
55. A similar point is made by Stump in fn.5 on p. 58 of her 'Knowledge, Freedom and the Problem of Evil'.
56. Stump, 'Knowledge, Freedom and the Problem of Evil', p. 53, emphasis hers.
57. Swinburne has objected to this image on the grounds that "trial and error is. . . a virtually impossible method unless you have some notion of the range of alternatives within which your trials are likely to have some success. . . Before it would be rational to undertake trials. . . one would need to believe that some trial would be more likely to lead to the death of Eve than to the death of Adam" (personal communication, 30 April 2003). But one can imagine Adam forming a hypothesis as to which trials are likely to succeed and then putting this hypothesis to the test. And given that the number of ways one can carry out a murder are virtually infinite, it will not take Adam long to find an effective method for accomplishing his murderous intention.
58. It may be held that even if induction is not the only way to acquire knowledge of the effects of our actions, it is nevertheless the best way. Such a view is implicit in Swinburne's claim that it is only by experiencing the consequences of a particular action that we become fully alert to the consequences of that action - a report (whether oral or written) about the consequences of an intended action will of necessity "fail to capture the detail and bring home the feel of those consequences" (The Existence of God, rev. ed., p. 213).
59. In addition, it may be argued out that knowledge obtained by induction requires experiment and hard co-operative work in order to learn how nature works and so what would be the consequences of our various actions. On the other hand, if knowledge of the effects of our actions were divinely bestowed or available 'on tap', there would be no temptation to act in ignorance, and so the goods of learning from experience and choosing to discover the workings of nature would be forfeited (see Swinburne, 'Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil', p. 163,
60. and Providence and the Problem of Evil, p. 182;
61. cf. Coughlan, 'The Free Will Defence and Natural Evil', p. 107). I may point out, however, that the two proposals defended above, involving innate knowledge and trial-and-error, are not affected by these lines of thought, since room has been created in each for inductive knowledge.
62. See O'Connor, 'On Natural Evil's Being Necessary for Free Will', pp. 40-41.
63. It may be objected that our natural dispositions incline us (perhaps strongly) to do more evil than good (our nature is 'fallen', as some theologians would say). In that case, however, that we are endowed with such dispositions cannot be morally irrelevant, but must be thought of as something that is intrinsically bad and hence a natural evil (even if this natural evil serves some outweighing good). If this view is correct, then my hypothetical Eden world will contain natural evil after all, but it will be natural evil of a very limited sort.
64. A further weakness in these theodicies is their failure to account for animal suffering brought about by natural processes, a problem shared by most natural evil theodicies. According to Hick, animal life (including animal suffering) is necessary to create the optimum epistemic distance between humanity and God - see Hick, Evil and the God of Love, rev. ed., pp. 315-316.
65. Apart from the problems noted above with the appeal to epistemic distance, it seems grossly unjust that animals suffer merely for our benefit. To overcome this difficulty, one may allow (as Hick does not) that animal pain can be compensated for in an afterlife - such a theodicy for animal suffering is defended by Robert Wennberg, Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil', Christian Scholar's Review 21 (1991): 120-140.
66. The gist of Swinburne's solution to animal suffering is that it is only by means of induction from past experience that higher animals (or vertebrates) can acquire knowledge of, for example, how to save their lives and those of their offspring from a forest fire (The Existence of God, rev. ed., p. 208, and Providence and the Problem of Evil, pp. 189-190).
67. It is not clear, however, why this knowledge (or survival mechanism) could not be purely innate or instinctual, as is much animal behaviour. A further difficulty emanates from Swinburne's view that an animal cannot merely depend on its own past experiences in order to acquire the necessary knowledge, but must also rely on the observations it has made of other animals' experiences - he writes, for example, that "If deer are to learn how to help prevent their offspring from being caught in fires, some fawns have to be caught in fires for the deer to see what happens" (Providence and the Problem of Evil, p. 190).
68. But as pointed out in the preceding paragraph, unless the suffering fawn is at least compensated for its pain (perhaps in an afterlife), it seems unjust that it suffer merely for the benefit of others. For some telling criticisms of Swinburne's theodicy for animal suffering, see Philip Quinn's 'Review of Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil', Faith and Philosophy 18 (2001): 394-398,
69. and Paul Draper's 'Review of Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil', Nous 35 (2001): 469-472.
70. Unfortunately, these critics neglect an additional explanation of animal suffering proffered by Swinburne on pp. 171-173 of Providence and the Problem of Evil, where it is argued that the life of animals "is richer for the complexity and difficulty of the tasks they face and the hardships to which they react appropriately" (p. 173). This is an interesting line of thought, but one that I cannot delve into here.
71. Reichenbach develops his theodicy in 'Natural Evils and Natural Laws: A Theodicy for Natural Evils', International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976):179-196,
72. and in Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), pp. 101-118
73. Cf. F.R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, vol.2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp. 199-200, where emphasis is laid upon the necessity of a physical order characterized by law or regularity in order for the world to be "a theatre of moral life."
74. A similar case against frequent divine intervention in the natural order is offered by David Basinger, 'Evil As Evidence Against God's Existence: Some Clarifications', Modern Schoolman 58 (1981): 180-181.
75. It can also be argued that continuous divine intervention is incompatible with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good God, for such a God would foresee any pointless natural evil and arrange for it to be removed or avoided prior to creation (see Reichenbach, 'Natural Evils and Natural Laws', pp. 183-184,
76. and Peterson, Evil and the Christian God, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982, p. 112). Foreknowledge of this kind, however, will not be possible if natural processes are indeterminate.
77. In particular Michael Martin, 'Reichenbach on Natural Evil', Religious Studies 24 (1988): 91-99, where it is argued that a world of frequent miracles need not rule out rational choice.
78. McCloskey, 'God and Evil', p. 104.
79. Madden and Hare, Evil and the Concept of God, pp. 54-55.
80. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, p. 111.
81. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God Ibid.
82. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God Ibid.
83. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God Ibid., p. 112.
84. The term 'skeptical theist' seems to have been introduced by Paul Draper in 'The Skeptical Theist' in Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 175-192 According to the skeptical theist camp (members of which include Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Peter van Inwagen, and Stephen Wykstra), the immense gulf between God's cognitive abilities and ours renders it highly unlikely that we could discern God's purposes for those pains he allows his creatures to suffer.
85. See Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, p. 116. According to van Inwagen, 'designing' an alternative world, and thus meeting condition (a), requires the following steps to be undertaken: (i) describe in some detail the laws of nature that govern the alternative world W; (ii) describe the boundary conditions under which those laws operate; (iii) provide a detailed account of cosmic evolution in W (e.g., the evolution of large objects such as galaxies and small objects such as carbon atoms), and (iv) provide an account of the evolution of life in W.
86. See van Inwagen, 'The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence', Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 146.
87. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, p. 115.
88. Peterson, Evil and the Christian God, pp. 115-116.
89. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God, p. 116.
90. Similar skeptical sentiments are expressed by David Basinger, 'Evil As Evidence Against God's Existence', p. 181;
91. William Hasker, 'Suffering, Soul-Making, and Salvation', International Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1988): 16-17;
92. William Alston, 'The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition', Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 54-57;
93. Peter van Inwagen, 'The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence', pp. 140-152;
94. Charles T Hughes, 'Theism, Natural Evil, and Superior Possible Worlds', International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 31 (1992): 45-61;
95. and Daniel Howard-Snyder, 'God, Evil, and Suffering', in Michael J. Murray (ed.), Reason for the Hope Within (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 96.
96. Van Inwagen, 'The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence', p. 146.
97. Hasker, 'Suffering, Soul-Making, and Salvation', p. 17.
98. G. Stanley Kane, 'The Failure of Soul-Making Theodicy', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (1975): 6-7.
99. One variety of natural evil that may be amenable to theodical explanation is 'epistemic evil'. This is evil that consists of suffering brought about by erroneous human judgments - these errors, however, are non-culpable since they arise from limitations in the epistemic circumstances of the judge that are beyond the judge's conscious control. To give an example, suppose that some parents have sent their child to a school that they, after diligently researching the matter, consider to be one of the best in their city. To their horror, however, they eventually discover that the school principle is a paedophile who has sexually abused their child a number of times. The parents' error in judgment is ultimately responsible for the suffering that results (both to the parents and the child), although the parents are not morally blameworthy for their erroneous judgment. Such cases of 'epistemic evil' may therefore be thought of as natural evils. But as the above example indicates, if non-culpable human ignorance were entirely removed from the world, our ability to exercise our free will in various harmful ways would be significantly curtailed. Thus, a free will theodicy for at least one form of natural evil (viz., epistemic evil) may be available. For a good discussion of the problem of epistemic evil, see Joel Thomas Tierno, Descartes on God and Human Error (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997).