Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (24 page)

In a word, Clearithes, a man who follows your hypothesis is
able, perhaps, to assert or conjecture that the universe sonte-
tinte arose from something like design: But beyond that position lie cannot ascertain one single circumstance, and is left
afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, f for aught he knows,
is very faultyand imperfect, compared to a superior standard;
and was only the first rude essay of some inlimt deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed o(his lame perlornumce: It
is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the
object of derision to his superiors: It is the production of old
age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since
his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and
active fi)rce which it received from him ... And I cannot, fior
my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology
is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.

And this takes us inevitably to:

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Most systems of religion want more from their gods than the very
abstract qualities of `necessary existence'. They want love and con tern. A god that created the world and then walked off the site
leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a
source of moral authority. So the traditional attributes of God include moral perfection. God is to be all-powerful, of course, allknowing, but also all-caring. But then there arises the classic
argument against the existence of God: the problem that, in the
world that he (or she, or they) created, this care seems sadly lacking. As Philo says:

His power, we allow, is infinite; whatever he wills is executed:
But neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore, he
does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite; he is
never mistaken in choosing the means to any end; But the
course of Nature tends not to human or animal felicity:
Therefore, it is not established for that purpose. Through the
whole compass of human knowledge there are no inferences
more certain and infallible than these. In what respect, then,
do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and
mercy of men?

Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered.

Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he
both able and willing? whence then is evil?

Cleanthes' problem is that the world as we have it is at best mixed,
in terms of the happiness of its creatures. Life is tough, and for
many it is short, brutal, filled with want and pain. The well-being
of many creatures depends on the disease and death of others. But
it is absurd to argue from a mixed creation to a perfect creator. Even
a moderately good parent does not wilfully choose to put his or her
children into a brutal environment if at no cost they could choose a better one. The very analogies that Cleanthes prizes speak against
him here.

Suppose you found yourself at school or university in a dormitory. Things are not too good. The roof leaks, there are rats about,
the food is almost inedible, some students in fact starve to death.
There is a closed door, behind which is the management, but the
management never comes out. You get to speculate what the management must he like. Can you infer from the dormitory as you
find it that the management, first, knows exactly what conditions
are like, second, cares intensely for your welfare, and third, possesses unlimited resources for fixing things? The inference is crazy.
You would he almost certain to infer that either the management
doesn't know, doesn't care, or cannot do anything about it. Nor
does it make things any better if occasionally you come across a
student who declaims that he has become privy to the mind of the
management, and is assured that the management indeed knows,
cares, and has resources and ability to do what it wants. The overwhelming inference is not that the management is like that, but
that this student is deluded. Perhaps his very deprivations have deluded him. Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of
Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient,
and able to fix everything.

Similar remarks apply to the belief that this world is a `vale of
tears', which is a kind of proving ground for that which is to come.
The inhabitants of my dormitory might believe this: the management is looking to see how they behave in order to sort them into
better or worse-indeed, perfect or hellish-dormitories next
year. This might at a stretch be true. But they have no shadow of a reason to believe that it is true, based on what they have got. All
they have to go on is what they see of the management. And if he,
she, they, or it does not establish good conditions here, why suppose that they do so anywhere else? It would be like supposing that
since it is warm here, there must be a dormitory somewhere else
where it is perfectly hot, and another where it is perfectly cold. The
inference is crazy.

Cleanthes is especially vulnerable to this, because he attempted
a reasonable inference, based on analogy, from the way of the
world to the nature of the creator. But even putting aside the other
difficulties with the design argument, from a mixed and spotty
world he is bound to be left with at best a mixed and spotty creator.
Or:

The true conclusion is that the original source of all things ...
has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold,
or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy.

Demea-the character who sympathized with the ontological and
cosmological argument-has a different problem. He is not attempting to reason from the way of the world to his deity, so he is
not vulnerable in the same way at this point. The difference is that
since Cleanthes is arguing from the world as we have it, to the nature of God, he needs to show that the world is what you would expect from the assumption of an all-knowing, all-powerful,
all-caring God. He needs that the world fitsthe idea of such a being.
Demea can admit it is not quite what you would have expected, but
claims only that it is compatible with his deity. It does not refute the
idea of such a being.

Still, he has to face `Epicurus' old questions'. The strategy he follows has become ever more popular in the succeeding centuries. It
is to take refuge in the mysterious and incomprehensible nature of
the divine mind. Demea is opposed to impious attempts to understand God's goodness on the model of human goodness, or God's
intentions or perceptions or understanding on the model of
human intentions or perceptions or understanding.

The problem then becomes one of explaining how it should
have any consequences whether we believe in an incomprehensible
God. As Wittgenstein was to say later, in a different connection:

a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which
nothing could be said.

Even Hume, the `great infidel, is quite happy with leaving mysteries. At the end of the Dialogues, Philo, the sceptic, is perfectly prepared to allow one:

If the whole of Natural Theology, as some people seem to
maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat
ambiguous, at least undefined, proposition, That the cause or
causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote
analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not
capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that of fects human life, or can be
the source of any action or Jirrbearance: And if the analogy,
imperfect as it is, can be carried no further than to the human
intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance
of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: If this really
be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and
religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent
to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe that the or guments on which it is established exceed the objections which
lie against it? Some astonishment, indeed, will naturally arise
from the greatness of the object: Some melancholy from its obscurity: Some contempt of human reason that it can give no
solution more satisfactory with regard to so extraordinary
and magnificent a question.

Demea's problem is going to be that having got himself to an utterly mysterious deity, he cannot reap any consequences. You can
check into the Mysterious Mist, if you so wish, but you cannot
check out carrying any more than you took in with you. Religious
belief, reduced to its respectable core, turns out to be completely
inert. It has no consequences.

This is surprising to people-so surprising that many commentators have puzzled at length over whether Hume was really a theist
or an atheist. Many people think that the difference between being
a theist, believing, and an atheist, unbelieving, is incredibly important. But if nothing does as well as something about which nothing
can he said, it vanishes. If all we can reasonably believe is that the
cause of the universe probably bears some remote inconceivable
analogy to the other operations of nature, then we are given no usable comprehension, no real understanding, that we can bring
back from these misty regions. We might say, following WVittgen-
stein's remark, that Hume here `deconstructs' the apparent difference between theism and atheism.

In particular, if `God's goodness' is not to be understood in the
same terms as what we think of as good (so that, for instance, it
might be `good' of God in this different sense to unleash bubonic
plague on defenceless infants) then it has no implications for how I am to live my life. It gives me no way of deciding whether to prefer pleasure to pain, or turning the other cheek to taking an eye for
an eye, any more than it tells me to prefer heat to cold. But religion
is supposed to do these things. It is important, because people take
it to make a difference to how we act. Yet now we find that if we follow the traditional range of arguments, it makes no difference
whatsoever.

Theodicy is the branch of theology that attempts to cope with
the problem of evil. One move is to point out that some values
seem to presuppose pains. We can cheer up people in the mixed
and spotty dormitory, by extolling the virtues of patience or fortitude-goods that require deprivation and difficulty to flourish.
The difficulty with this is that we ourselves think that things are
going better when the situations requiring those virtues lose some
of their edge. The imperfections of Windows have no doubt led to
virtues of patience or fortitude, but even Microsoft have never
used that to defend the perfection of the product, and indeed that
is why they continue to try to improve it.

Again, people sometimes defend belief in a genuinely good
deity, good in a sense we can understand, against the problem by
what is known as the `free will defence'. The idea is that God created
a good universe, and out of his goodness created us with free will.
But by misusing the freedom thus granted, we ourselves brought
evil into an otherwise perfect world. The myth of the Fall and the
expulsion from the Garden of Eden embody the idea.

There are many objections to this defence. First, it seems to depend upon a conception of free will that seems to be incoherent:
the interventionist conception according to which something that is not part of the natural order (the Real Me) occasionally interferes in the natural order. For without this, if free will is understood
in a compatibilist way, my decision-making is done with a natural
endowment which is ultimately, for the theist, due to God. If God
had not wanted Stalin to slaughter millions, he should not have
created the nature that eventually gave rise to the decision-making
modules of such a person.

Second, it is just not true that all, or even many, of the ills that afflict human beings are due to human decisions at all. They are due
to disease, pain, want, and accident. They afflict the animal creation as well as human beings, and did so long before there were
human beings.

Third, even if the metaphysics of free will were accepted, a good
God might be expected to protect some of the weaker from the
misuses of free will of the stronger. A parent might recognize the
value of letting children make their own choices, and give them
some liberty. But if some of the older children show alarming tendencies to murder and mutilate the younger, the parent would be
wise to put them under supervision, or to protect the younger by
diverting the older from their plans. Unhappily, God does not do
this in the world as we have it. There are no natural playpens, in
which the weak are segregated from the strong. We have to try to
create our own safe areas.

My own view about this is that religious traditions are at their
best when they back away from the classical virtues of God. God is
elevated in some traditions to being above good and virtue, or in
Hume's down-to-earth phrase, has no more regard to good above
ill than heat above cold. In other traditions, he is by no means omnipotent, but subject to forces not of his own making. Each of
these at least affords some kind of theodicy. But if we really were
concerned to puzzle out the nature of God's mind from the nature
of his creation, we might look seriously at the idea that he (she,
they, it) is a God with a twisted sense of humour. After all, as the
Jewish joke goes, he led the chosen people round the desert for
forty years just to drop them on the only part of the Middle East
that has no oil.