Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Atheism and Theism 141
and to direct its operations in ways beneficial to human and other interests.
Realizing one’s nature as a psychophysical being is a great good, but the
general condition of being able to do so includes various dangers and limitations.
We can try to reduce these but we cannot wholly eliminate them.
Moreover, the hazardous character of organic existence provides occasions to
develop our intellectual and moral powers. The inescapable challenge of life is
to live well, i.e. intelligently and virtuously. To have created a world in which
this is possible is to have made something good, notwithstanding that it is
a place of loss. As the tree grows tall towards the light, the grass beneath it
withers for want of water, food and sun.
So much for natural good and evil. What of moral virtue and vice? How
could a good God create beings capable of the horrors of this and previous
centuries and why does he not intervene to halt them? While theists have
offered a variety of responses, I believe the pattern of reasoning developed
thus far leads towards the conclusion that although God is responsible for
everything we do he is not the author of moral evil, and that it is incompatible
with the good that he has authored in creating rational animals that he
should then override their decisions wherever these are morally wrong.
Moral wrong is a deficiency with respect to reason, emotion and will. The
virtuous agent discerns his own and others’ physical and psychological goods
and strives to achieve and preserve them. The vic[e]ious agent by contrast
culpably either fails to discern the good or acts to inhibit or destroy it. Once
again evil is a privation, not a something added to a life but a lack of what
should be there – in this case certain orientations of thought, affection and
volition. In making human beings, God creates animals with a rational teleology,
including the potential for knowledge and right action. Shortly, I will
argue that he is also creatively involved in sustaining and realizing these
potentialities; however, if we are to be thinkers and doers then the role of
providence can be no more than an enabling and co-operative one. God
cannot do our reasoning and acting for us or else we would not exist. To be
a rational agent is to think and act; so to assert one’s existence as a self is to
claim that there are deeds for which one is responsible. Without God we
would not be, but nor would we be unless God created us free and responsible,
and in making us such he invites us to participate in creation.
Just as in making a world of living things God indirectly causes and continuously
permits the obstruction and destruction that results from the flow
of life, so in making free agents he is causally responsible for circumstances in
which wrongs are done; but in neither case does God directly bring about
evil. In the first case he intends the good of organic life with its inevitable ebb
and flow, and in the second he empowers beings freely to direct their lives
towards moral perfection, but it is logically impossible that he should compel
such a movement towards the good. In short, it is wrong to suppose that if