This morning I read this book which dealt with natural religion. I stumbled upon this section concerning the problem of evil and helped me look at it in a new way (not solve it).
J.L. Mackie in The Miracle of Theism (Oxford, 1982) writes:
"If a good and powerful God exists, he would not allow pointless evil, but because there is much unjustifiable, pointless evil in the world, the traditional good and powerful god could not exist. Some other god or no god may exist, but not the traditional God."We have this natural expectation that this world should be fair and good. We have a tendency to think that people ought not to suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression. Where did we get such a sense that the world ought to be like that? If we think about natural selection, death, violence of the strong against the weak, and destruction are all natural occurrences. How then does one begin to accuse this world of being unfair or unjust? A non-believer does not seem to have a good basis for being outraged with injustice: the reason for the initial objection. "If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment." (Timothy Keller).
Once someone says that there's evil in the world, they presuppose that it should be a certain way. Who ever got the idea that the universe ought to be that way? It seems like the universe solely does not align with our preference. Oh well.
For me, anyways, it appears to be both a problem for atheists and theists. It's just a thought.
Good Night.
Interesting point.
ReplyDeleteI guess these people who fuss over the PoE are unaware of the fact that by taking the detached "god's eye" point of view on the universe as a whole, they assume the position of a deity, which is absurd, since they're only finite human beings.
To me it's much more interesting to discuss ethical problems by starting from the individual world rather than from the whole world (i.e. the world viewed from a detached, objective, "god's eye" perspective.) Based on this bottom-up approach, we can ask questions like, "what cultural background causes us to feel evil from a particular experience x?" and so forth. The top-down approach is also fun to think about, but very hard to have other people engage in your views... (or at least that's what I found from past experience.)
Enjoy the hockey game tomorrow!
Thanks Kenji,
ReplyDeleteI would like to chat about the bottom up approach. I've never attempted it and it sound quite interesting.