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Swinburne on Natural Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David O'Connor
David O'Connor
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University
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Extract

In his recent book, The Existence of God, Richard Swinburne argues that the world as we find it is one that a good and omnipotent God would have good reason to bring about. He does not claim to demonstrate, that is, deductively to prove, that the world is God–made but rather to show that the proposition that God exists and made the world is more likely to be true and hence more reasonable to believe, all things considered, than its negation. He recognizes that in order to sustain this position he has to justify the existence of evil, especially natural evil, or at least to reconcile both the existence and enormous quantity of such evil with the claim that God exists. In fact, however, Swinburne aims beyond mere reconciliation to the point that the existence and nature of the world (even including its evils) confirm the claim that God made it (224).

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Type
Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 65 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

page 65 note 1 (Oxford University Press, 1979.) Because all references made in this paper are to Swinburne's book I will incorporate them into my text. As it is used in this paper, the word ‘God’ will be understood to carry all the standard anthropomorphic connotations of traditional theism, i.e. omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness and so on.

page 67 note 1 In general, Swinburne's account of moral value is consequentialist. See his Chapters 10 and 11 especially. However, his moral theory is not of primary concern here and his point about the dependence of moral choice upon acquaintance with natural evil is neutral as regards moral theories.

page 68 note 1 It does not follow from our hearing a warning voice telling us, whenever we are in danger or contemplating evil, even when that voice is the voice of God, that we should thereby know or even believe the voice to be God's. However, this is not a major point and so let us suppose that to hear the voice is to know it as God's.

page 71 note 1 A word about self–interest and moral choice: in the case of a potential evil–doer who decides against a particular evil act because of the punishment to follow, we would say that his reason for avoiding the action was self–interest. But this being so would not necessarily make his decision non–moral, for self–interest is a legitimate moral consideration. At any rate, choices based primarily or even exclusively on avoidance of punishment would make up only a part of the whole class of decisions on moral matters. There would also be those choices of good and against evil made for altruistic reasons, choices which there is no reason whatsoever to suppose, in the event of (14)'s being true, could be made only for self–interested reasons. But, even if this were the only way of making them, it would not thereby disqualify them or set them beyond the justifying pale of moral theory. In brief: my point in the text that fear of punishment is not an illegitimizing factor in moral decisions neither misuses the word ‘moral’ nor demands the adoption of ethical egoism.