Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

246 J.J. Haldane
but which will not be made the better for being elaborated at length. I do not
assume that we can tell what sorts of goods justify these evils, or see how they
might do so in particular cases. I do assume, though, that they have a natural
or supernatural justification. In saying this, however, I think we must be
willing to contemplate the possibility that the occurrence of some evils is, in
a sense, necessarily arbitrary. Consider an economic analogy. Suppose it is
logically the case that certain ranges of high benefit economies require patterns
of innovation in production and use that mean that at any given time
a certain percentage of the population is unemployed or otherwise suffering.
It will then be true that very good economies involve temporary suffering.
Together with certain empirical facts, this will be a sufficient explanation of
why some particular individuals suffer as and when they do. Even so, the
structural feature does not necessitate that it be these individuals who suffer.
A victim or his representative may reasonably say that the overall good did
not require that he or she be among the suffering, but it remains the case that
some needed to suffer in order for the good to be realized. Perhaps matters
could have been arranged so that the identities of those affected were different,
but it could not have been arranged so that no-one suffered. Thus, while
the actual occurrence of suffering was arbitrary, the fact that there was suffering
was logically unavoidable.
If that is how it is in the world more generally, then evil is justified even if
its distribution is to some extent arbitrary, so that the innocent suffer. What
need to be added are, first, the assumption that such a world is on balance a
greater good than one from which such arbitrarily occurrent evils are absent;
and, second, the supposition that God will somehow ‘take account’ of the misfortune
of these victims (and of the perpetrators of great moral evils). I think
these considerations point towards the Christian economy of salvation and to
the four last things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. Addressing myself to
the analytically and dialectically minded I have given little attention to experiential
factors, but I do not at all regard them as unimportant and I choose
to end with an appeal to a common phenomenon, that of religious desire.
There is a style of argument, much ridiculed by its critics, which runs as
follows:
(1) Human beings have a natural desire for eternal life in the company
of God.
(2) Wherever there is a natural desire for something that thing must exist
(or else the desire would be frustrated).
(3) Therefore God exists.
Assuming that the expression ‘the company of God’ is read extensionally,
so that its correct application would imply the existence of its object, and