THE CITY

the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity:
Therefore it is not established for that purpose. Through the
whole compass of human knowledge there are no inferences
more certain and infallible than these. In what respect, then,
do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and
mercy of men? 5
It is important to emphasize here that Philo’s view of goodness is
nothing esoteric or mysterious, and that he insists on an account of
goodness that resembles the ordinary meaning of the term. For the
creator to be good, he must will the happiness of his creatures. But in
view of the widespread misery that characterizes human experience,
it is apparent that our world was not designed to achieve this end.
Philo goes on to argue that it is most probable that the designer
of our world is neither perfectly good, nor perfectly malicious, nor
a combination of these, but rather that he has neither goodness nor
malice. This, Philo insists, seems by far the most probable.
Philo presses home the implications of the hypothesis that God is
morally indifferent in the final dialogue, and there we see what his
belief in God really amounts to. With all moral attributes eliminated,
God is reduced to an explanatory hypothesis to account for the order
in the universe, a hypothesis that warrants “plain philosophical
assent.” This bare assent, however, “affords no inference that affects
human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance.” 6
Bluntly put, this God makes no difference whatever to our lives or
how we live them. Indeed, Hume even goes so far as to suggest that,
since God is so remote from us and his existence has no practical
implications whatever, the dispute between theism and atheism is
nothing more than a verbal one.
But here is the point I want to emphasize. Hume’s argument for
God’s moral indifference is in one way an ingenious move to dissolve
the problem of evil. For if the ultimate source of all things is not
good in the ordinary sense of the word, if he (it?) has no moral
properties, the enormous strain between God and evil is relieved.
Here is why: if the ultimate cause of everything that exists is morally
indifferent and has no concern for our happiness, we should not be
5
Ibid., 63.
6
Ibid., 88.
Winter 2015
53