Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

146 J.J. Haldane
to be the more plausible, yet the former deserves further consideration. In
the case of non-rational agents it is reasonable, both philosophically and as
part of biological science, to maintain that their powers and tendencies are
ordered or adapted to objective natural goods. If the general pattern is to be
maintained we should then say that the power of rational choice is similarly
directed towards states objectively beneficial to the agent. But that claim
seems to be refuted by the fact that agents often choose actions that are
naturally or morally bad. Nevertheless, it may be that every end of action is
objectively good in some respect relevant to the agent’s real interests as a
being of a certain sort, but that this goodness is more or less partial.
This possibility returns us to the idea that evil is a privation. I argued that
God permits moral evil because of the good of free agency that gives rise to it.
There is nothing inevitable about wrongdoing but in creating free agents God
creates the possibility of it. What needs to be added is that for the most part
he even sustains us in our folly and maintains the sources of suffering. This
is because the creative activity of God is continuous and omnipresent; the
qualifying phrase ‘for the most part’ refers to the possibility of special acts or
miracles.
Deists hold that the universe is a strictly deterministic physical system
brought in being by a God who thereafter had nothing further to do with it.
This philosophy of divine indifference is hardly an attractive one; it has very
little explanatory power and it will not sustain a religion of prayer and worship.
According to theism, by contrast, the dependence of the universe upon
God is continuing and complete, for he is active in every event – but not at
the cost of the agency of his creatures. This doctrine of immanent participation
may be comforting but how is it possible? God makes things with their
various defining powers and liabilities; he sustains them from moment to
moment; he provides opportunities for the realization of these powers and,
finally, he concurs in their operation. Nothing happens without God’s active
presence, yet creatures make their own contribution. This account treads a
path between two extremes: quasi-deism according to which God does no
more than create and maintain the existence of basic matter; and occasionalism
in which he is the sole cause of every event – the appearance of secondary
causation (the exercise of powers by creatures) being an illusion resulting
from the fact that God acts regularly on the occasion of the co-presence of
various things.
The present account also provides a fruitful way of understanding something
of the metaphysical nature of miracles. Smart gives a very good assessment
of Hume’s strictures against the miraculous and I refer the reader back
to it. Contra Hume, there is no compelling philosophical case for thinking
that miracles are logically impossible, whatever other reasons there may be for
doubting whether this or that purported event really happened. What I wish