God, Evil and Design: An Introduction to the Philosophical Issues

226 Pages·2008·1.06 MB·English

by  David O'Connor

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God, Evil, and Design
God, Evil, and Design: An Introduction to the Philosophical Issues David O’Connor
© 2008 David O’Connor ISBN: 978-1-405-15770-4
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To Jessica and Sean, book lovers
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God, Evil, and Design
An Introduction to the Philosophical Issues
David O’Connor
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© 2008 by David O’Connor
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First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Connor, David.
God, evil, and design : an introduction to the philosophical issues / David O’Connor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–4051–5770–4 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978–1–4051–5771–1 (pbk. : alk.
paper) 1. Theodicy. 2. Good and evil. I. Title.
BT160.036 2008
214—dc22
2007046400
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Contents
Preface vi
Part I Introduction 1
1 What We Are Going to Investigate, and How 3
2 Terminology 19
Part II The Logic of God and Evil 33
3 Is the Existence of God Impossible? 35
4 A Free-Will Defense of the Possibility that God Exists 50
Part III Design and Evil 73
5 Natural Order, Natural Selection, and
Supernatural Design (1) 75
6 Natural Order, Natural Selection, and
Supernatural Design (2) 91
Part IV Evil and Design (1) 111
7 Is the Existence of God Improbable? 113
8 Skeptical Defenses 129
9 Evaluating Skeptical Defenses 146
Part V Evil and Design (2) 171
10 Greater-Good Defenses 173
11 Evaluating Greater-Good Defenses 190
Part VI Taking Stock 207
12 Taking Stock 209
Index 223
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Preface
1 In the poem “The Stolen Child,” W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) reminds us
that we live in “a world more full of weeping than [we] can understand.”
It is a memorable line and, for many people, a true description. Terrible
things often happen, causing immense, undeserved suffering. Diseases
and natural disasters waste vast numbers of lives. Many times, neither the
victims nor anybody else can discover a point or a purpose in such
terrible occurrences. In many cases, the victims seem to be just unlucky.
In the view of the monotheistic religions, the universe is a divine
creation. Those religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According
to this view, the creator is a supernatural person, essentially omniscient,
omnipotent, and perfectly good.
Do the two things square with one another? Or does the fact of “nature,
red in tooth and claw” “shriek” against the theist’s “creed”? The words are
those of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–92), from the poem “In Memoriam.”
Some religious believers go beyond asserting compatibility. Some
believers maintain that, even though terrible things happen in it, the world
still provides good evidence of its divine origin.
I take up two questions here. First, does the idea of a perfect creator
square with the fact that there is a vast amount of seemingly pointless
suffering and death? And second, with that fact taken into account, does
the world testify to a divine source?
2 In investigating these two questions, I hope to introduce readers to
fundamental issues in the philosophy of religion. That raises two related
worries. Can a worthwhile investigation be a good introduction? Can an
introduction remain introductory while pursuing a genuine investigation?
Don’t the two things pull against each other? To some extent, perhaps
they do. However, we must keep in mind a fundamental fact about the
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Preface vii
discipline of philosophy itself. It is that, in its very nature, philosophy is
investigative. So it may be that proper philosophical introductions will always
be investigations.
My hope is that beginning philosophers will see the competing ideas
in this book as live options. An idea is a live option for us when we take
it seriously as something that might be true. So, when competing ideas
are taken seriously in this way, it is a small, as well as a natural, step to
try to sort out and adjudicate those rival claims on the truth. And to take
that step is to engage philosophically with the ideas themselves, which is
to be underway in investigating them.
Not all readers of this book will start out more-or-less unfamiliar with
the issues discussed. What about them? For one thing, they may notice
my omission of much of the detailed analysis and development of ideas
conducted in the secondary literature. Despite that, as well as other accom-
modations I make to keep the main story-lines in clear focus, I hope
readers already familiar with the issues examined find the discussions here
to be worthwhile.
An investigation that is also both an introduction and relatively short
will only go so far. Accordingly, when we are finished, it will be clear both
that a lot remains unsaid on the issues discussed and that nothing has
been said on some neighboring ones. But I hope that enough will have
been said to provide a good introduction to the contemporary debates
on the issues discussed, to make some contribution to those debates, and
to lead to further inquiry.
3 The aim of investigation is discovery. In our investigations here, I think
that, up to a point, we do discover which ideas are the better supported
by the evidence considered. And verdicts are issued accordingly.
4 Verdicts often provoke disagreements. So, perhaps you will disagree
with mine or with how I arrive at them. Whether you do or not, I hope
that, in one respect, disagreeing with me is easy.
If I am easy to disagree with, whether in the end or along the way,
then the odds are good that I have been clear. If you are unsure what I
am saying, then you are not in a good position to agree or disagree with
me. Furthermore, if you disagree with some, or even with all, of this
book, then perhaps you are engaging in your own philosophical reflec-
tion. And I would be pleased if some things in this book had some of the
responsibility for that.
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viii Preface
The same benefits will be found in agreeing with me, and I hope that
happens some of the time as well.
In another respect, though, I hope disagreeing with me is not easy.
For I hope I am more right than wrong in this book. Furthermore, if
and where I am right about things, I hope it is for persuasive reasons.
However, whether my reasons are persuasive or unpersuasive, let me
be the first to stress that, having written this book as an introduction,
I make no claim to say the last word on any topic discussed in it.
5 I have incurred various debts in writing this book, and, while I can-
not repay my creditors, I would like to acknowledge them. I am grateful
to my children, Sarah, Jeremy, and Adrian, for their continuing interest
in this book and for their encouragement along the way. I am grateful
to Anna Muster for the same. I am grateful to the chair of the philo-
sophy department at Seton Hall University, Vicente Medina, and to the
then dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, Molly Easo
Smith, for a reduced teaching load in the spring of 2006. The reduction
helped me to make a good start on this book. In the fall of that year,
I taught a course on the topics of the book. By that time, I had more or
less a first draft in hand, and I am grateful to students in that course
for their help, as I tried out ideas and illustrations of ideas. I hope their
philosophical education didn’t suffer too much in the process. Two
anonymous readers for the publisher made useful criticisms and sugges-
tions, and the book is the better for them. I thank them for their help.
Blackwell’s Gillian Somerscales did a first-rate job of copy-editing, and
I thank her for many improvements. Finally, I am grateful to Jeff Dean
of Blackwell for his interest in this book from start to finish, and for good
advice at several stages in its development.
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Part I
Introduction
God, Evil, and Design: An Introduction to the Philosophical Issues David O’Connor
© 2008 David O’Connor ISBN: 978-1-405-15770-4