PHIL/RS 335
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
HUME’S DIALOGUE
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
• The problem of evil is a challenge posed to
theists committed to the claim that there is an
perfectly benevolent, powerful and knowing
God.
• The challenge is how to explain the presence
of evil in a world created by such a being.
• Commonly, discussions of the problem of evil
make an important distinction between types
of evil.
• Natural Evil: evil events or circumstances for which no
agent is responsible.
• Moral Evil: evil done by agents.
HUME, DIALOGUES
• Our reading for this time is another excerpt from
Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
• At this point, Philo is conversing with Cleanthes (our
old friend from the discussion of the design
argument) and another interlocutor, Demea.
• Demea is a natural theologian who previously had offered
a version of the cosmological argument that both
Cleanthes and Philo criticized.
• When we pick up the discussion, Demea has just
finished arguing that the best way to encourage
belief in God is to ask people to reflect on the
"misery and wickedness of men" (261c1).
“MISERY AND WICKEDNESS”
• Philo, with Demea's help, then offers a
catalogue of the miseries plaguing humans.
• There are external miseries, both those
imposed by natural law (261c2, think of Twain's
hookworm), and those imposed by human law
(262c1, think of Jim Crow laws).
• There are internal miseries (262c1), both those
that are beyond our control (like mental illness)
and those that are part of our volitional
scheme (tragic errors of judgment).
• Cf., the summary 262c1-2.
WHAT'S THE UPSHOT?
• Adopting the anthropomorphic account of
Cleanthes, Philo then considers what if
anything we can say about the moral
situation of a theistic deity who would
create and govern such a world.
• His conclusion is stark (262c2-263c1).
• In the context (talking to Cleanthes) he
goes on to note that the problem of evil is
even sharper in the context of the
argument from design.
THE EVIDENTIAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
• The argument offered by Philo is a version of what's
known as the evidential problem of evil.
• The evidential problem of evil is a probabilistic
argument to the effect that, though the existence
of evil is not inconsistent with the existence of God,
it lowers the likelihood that theism is true.
• The key to the argument is the catalogue of the various
forms of wickedness and suffering.
• Given the vast extent of evil, of all of the various forms, it
seems highly unlikely that all of it is somehow necessary or
essential.
• If it's not, and a theistic God could and would prevent it, it
follows that it is unlikely that such a God exists.
DEMEA’S RESPONSE
• Demea, consistent with her cosmological perspective,
offers the objection that our perspective of evil is just
that, a perspective, and that what we are missing, is
how it all balances out (263c2).
• Philo doesn’t need to respond to this, for Cleanthes
(who has already expressed his dissatisfaction with
Demea's approach), offers the obvious rejoinder, that
to speculate about what in principle we cannot
perceive, is essentially useless, and certainly does not
overwhelm what Demea has already insisted is evident
and obvious to us (i.e., the presence of evil in the world).
CLEANTHES’S RESPONSE
• For his own sake, Cleanthes responds by just
denying what both Demea and Philo have
insisted, “The only method of supporting Divine
benevolence, and it is what I willingly embrace, is
to deny absolutely the misery and wickedness of
man…And for one vexation which we meet with,
we attain, upon computation, a hundred
enjoyments” (264c1).
• In other words, Cleanthes is trying to undercut the
argument by contesting the inductive ground of
the argument: the catalogue of misery and
wickedness.
PHILO’S RESPONSE
• Philo criticizes Cleanthes's denial of the
significance of the experience of evil on a number
of grounds.
• First, even granting what Cleanthes was insisting, though
evil be less common, it is much more “violent and durable.”
• Second, without granting Cleanthes’s claim, Philo notes
that Cleanthes leaves an important theological concern
(the moral status of God) on very shaky ground: the
adequacy of Cleanthes’s judgment about the character of
human experience.
• Third, Cleanthes's position doesn’t even answer the
question. Maybe good does outweigh evil, but why would
God permit any evil whatsoever?
• Thus, Philo rejects Cleanthes’s position on the
problem of evil, though with more optimism than
he did his advocacy of the design argument
(265c2).