Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

244 J.J. Haldane
actual. Since any purported parallel will be an example of a created reality,
which is precisely not simple, any analogy will be imperfect, but consider the
cases of white light, ideal numbers, and intellectual ability. The first ‘contains’
a plurality of colours, not realized as in a rainbow but existing virtually in
a way that allows for their expression out of it. The number 28 both ‘contains’
and is the sum of its factors (1, 2, 4, 7, 14), but they exist in it not as
members of a set, though they can be extracted from it. When we say that
someone was ‘full of ideas’ we mean he had an ability to conceive and formulate
them, not that he contained them as a book contains sentences.
In each case what come to be diverse in their expression pre-exist without
actual difference in their source: from one reality come many effects. Likewise,
the diversity of natures and existents are contained virtually and abstractly
in God. Order in nature calls for an explanation which is provided by the
hypothesis of a divine designer. It would be problematic if this meant that the
designer’s mind had to exhibit the same order; but it does not. In general it is
a fallacy to suppose that the number and diversity of effects has to be matched
by a corresponding number and diversity of causes or aspects. Certainly what
produces the effects must have the power to do so, and on that account it may
be redescribed severally by reference to its products. On this account we may
say that the effects (pre)exist eminently in the cause. It is quite compatible
with this, however, that an intrinsic characterization of the cause should lack
any differentiation of parts or aspects. Of course, natural causes are complex
in respect of their actual structure and attributes, but from the theistic perspective
they belong on the side of created effects. As ultimate cause, God
cannot be complex, and nothing in the notions of efficient, formal, material
or final causality per se, requires that he should be.
7 God, Evil, and Hope
In discussing the problem of evil I proceeded directly to offer a theodicy
(a justifying explanation of its existence), not marking the usual distinction
between this and a defence (the more limited task of showing that evil is
compatible with the existence of God). I also failed both to separate explicitly
the logical from the evidential forms of the problem, and to address the latter.
In making good these omissions I shall be brief, both for reasons of space and
because I think that the deepest intellectual challenge posed by evil is theological
rather than philosophical. It calls into question not the truth of theism,
but the expectation that we might understand the place of evil in the providential
governance of the world. My seeing it in these terms is, of course,
connected with my philosophical belief that there are good reasons to believe
in God, and with my theological belief that God made us to know him.