Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Atheism and Theism 139
a just God. However, a fully adequate theodicy has to do more than show the
mere compatibility of God and evil: it has to reconcile the two in a religiously
significant manner. Accordingly, it must draw upon philosophical and theological
resources, and in respect of the latter aspect that means invoking
particular claims about God. The neo-Thomistic approach I favour does so
by conjoining Aristotelian metaphysics and Christian revelation.
Earlier I mentioned a ‘reservation’ about the reality of evil. It is the thought
that evil is not something in the world along with other things but a condition
of them involving some deficiency or limitation; it is a ‘privation’. This can be
brought out by reflecting on the fact that like ‘good’, the term ‘bad’ is a
logically attributive adjective: it requires completion by a substantive term
whose meaning provides a criterion of evaluation. 23 If someone says only
‘there’s a bad one in this box’ we are not yet in a position to make sense of his
claim, let alone to assess it. Once he has said what the bad thing is, however,
one can set about checking this. Suppose it is a pair of scissors; then knowing
what scissors are for and what sorts of conditions detract from their effective
functioning, one can determine whether this is a bad (i.e. defective) pair.
Perhaps the blades are blunt, or the metal is fatigued, or the rivet is loose. In
each case the consequence is that the functioning of the scissors is impeded
and because of this we can say that it is a ‘bad’ pair. So it is in general: a heart
is bad because the absence of a valve or an accumulation of fat impedes its
proper function, an apple is rotten because of the presence of certain bacteria
that induce changes in its structure, and so on.
Wherever it is apt to speak of a natural evil there is some further description
of the situation which explains what this consists in and shows how it
arises because one thing is securing its well-being at the cost of that of
another (cats eating mice, bacteria consuming apples), or the proper development
and flourishing of a thing is impeded by external or internal factors such
as a shortage of a necessary element or a superfluity of it – a plant can suffer
from too little water and from too much. Such states of affairs are certainly
bad, but the point is that in order to show why this is so one needs to advert
to certain goods – the presence of actual goods (the cat satisfying its appetite)
or the absence of anticipated ones (the mouse growing to maturity). So part
of the answer to the question of how the existence of a good God is compatible
with that of evil is that God neither creates nor sustains evil; rather he
creates and sustains a system of natural substances and forces whose operation
has the effect that the well-being of some is secured at the expense of that of
others. Where there is a bad there is a good involving the realization of the
powers and liabilities of interacting systems.
In general there cannot be a world of living things developing in accord
with their inbuilt teleologies – growing, moving, sensing, reproducing and so
on – without interactions that are to the detriment of some individuals and