The Problem of Evil Set 2 Flashcards
What is central to Hicks theodicy?
- Precondition of it is free choice
- If we are genuinely to have real choices then real consequences must be possible
- God creates an epistemic distance, gap in knowledge between ourselves and God that permits us to come to our own rational conclusions
What is Hick’s counter-factual thesis about natural evil?
- He develops a counter-factual thesis, what would the world be like if it was not like ours with pain?
- Hick argues it would be meaningless and we would be less than what we are capable of
- A cricket match where the bowler cannot miss the wicket but a batsman who never missed the ball would hardly be a cricket match - we would never reach God’s likeness
What is the instrumental good for Hick?
- The underlying idea that somethings goodness may very much depend on its purpose
- A world with no evil may be good in itself but in terms of self-development and furthering people it is not (soul-making)
- The world is instrumentally good for serving its purpose, e.g a carving knife is good for cutting meat
Quote poet John Keats in a letter to his brother George
“Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?”
- Gets around the issue of intrinsic good, more promising than the Augustinian argument
What issue does John Hick recognise within his theodicy?
Purposeless or dysteleological evil
What is Hicks argument about regularity within the universe?
- If no harm could be done then God would have to keep intervening, e.g knife would be sharp for meat but soft for people
- Nature would have no regularity, things would be soft and sharp according to the good
- Science would not exist if there was no regularity
- Hick has developed Irenaeus
What is Universal Salvation for Hick?
- He rejects hell, if evil produces good then hell does no good except pain and punishment
- St Thomas Aquinas also rejects the idea of hell
- Hick takes a view that is purgatorial
What is Hicks purgatorial view on hell?
- He believed hell is a place of temporary suffering given for an opportunity of soul-making
- God gives us more time to get ready for him
What is the issue with Hicks view on hell?
- If we will eventually choose God, what’s the point of free will in the first place?
- Even if Aquinas is right that. hell is voluntary separation from God, there is still no hope for improvement
- Annihilationism means we stop and do not improve which is inconsistent with Hicks argument, God would be destroying something he’s made
- Dysteleological evil still remains a problem, hope, not. a philosophical answer
What is the premise for Swineburnes theodicy?
- Soul-making theodicy
- Natural/Physical Evil is a precondition of Natural Evil
- Natural evils are logically necessary for people to know how to create evil or prevent it
What are the 7 stages of Swineburnes argument?
1) People gain knowledge by induction from present events about what will happen in the future
2) If people want to bring about or prevent an event they must understand the consequences
3) People will know actions will have bad consequences if there is previous knowledge of said consequences
4) We only know bad consequences if others suffered them before
5) For evil acts there must have been a first instance, a murderer cannot have known consequences without having first seen murder
6) The first murderer must have gained knowledge from observing the action of killing someone
7) There has to be natural evils for us to know possible evils, this gives us sufficient inductive knowledge
How does Swinburne defend God? (Quote)
- Believes that evil in nature is God allowing us to exercise responsibility
- Some say horrors like Aushwitz are too much to compensate for
“He would be like the over-protective parent who will not let his child out of sight for a moment”
How can Swinburnes over-protective parent analogy be used to against him?
- God is see as a teacher of truth, providing infinite lessons in the possibility of evil
- Can we defend a parent who allows his kid to play on railway tracks to learn it is dangerous
- He is not proving he is not overprotective but being morally negligent
What is wrong with using evil as a purpose to teach?
- Where is mercy and justice if people have still not learned and commit great evils
Why is Swiburnes theodicy insensitive to victims?
- An answer must be directed to the person who suffers
- Saying they are teaching others their responsibility is coldly utilitarian
- Mothers in Aushwitz are one in a million victims
- If the mother was spared the lesson would have been learnt and evil could still be avoided
