The Problem of Evil: McCabe, “The Statement of the Problem”

* We experience evil in the world. * We recognized the obligation to prevent evil things from happening, but acknowledge that much of it is out of our control. * Recognition of the obligation, implies that the failure to act when one could is itself evil. * God does not intervene to prevent the evil we experience. * Two possible explanations: God is powerless to do so or God fails to do so (God is wicked). * Neither of these possibilities is consistent with the theistic account of God.

* Some people have responded to the problem of evil by distinguishing allowing evil to happen (tolerance) and bringing evil about (willing it). * Classic example (allowing something bad to happen to prevent something else bad from happening). * Maybe God can’t stop the evil we experience because something even worse would occur. * While a something like this may be a feature of human experience, it is so because we lack the power to handle the situation. If we say that God is in the same situation, we are acknowledging that God lacks the power to do otherwise (essentially embracing the first horn of the dilemma).

* Others have insisted that to insist that God could not do otherwise is not to limit God, but to observe something that we have already noted; namely, that God nor any being cannot do that which it is conceptually impossible to do. * If we accept this, then it could be argued that making a world without evil is a conceptual impossibility. * Why? Perhaps because there is no good without evil. * On this line of thinking, “world without evil” is as nonsensical as “square circle.” * McCabe points out that this insistence on qualitative opposition makes a rather fundamental error, failing to distinguish between two forms of opposition: contrary and contradictory. * Contrary: presence of one implies the absence of the other, but not vice versa. * Contradictory: absence of one implies the presence of the other. * This argument assumes a contradictory relationship between good and evil, but surely the opposition is only a contrary one (5).

* The first two responses focus on the first horn of the dilemma (God is powerless). The next three try to dissolve the dilemma by denying the very existence of evil. * The first of these is akin to Kant’s insistence that Being is not a real predicate. * In general, advocates of this position deny that statements like, “X is evil” are really attributing anything to X. Rather, they are expressions of sentiments (synonymous, for example, with “I don’t like X”). * McCabe responds by insisting that statements like “x is evil” may not be predications, but that doesn’t mean they are merely mean they are expressions of feeling either. Though we don’t see it here, he is an Aquinean (Aristotelian) about this and insists that ascription of evil is a categorical rather than predicative ascription.

* Another form that this third response takes is the cosmological (Demean) version that accepts that our experience is experience of evil but that we falsely generalize from that experience to the whole. * The experience of evil is essentially a failure of context. If we could ‘see’ the whole, we’d ‘see’ that it is good. * McCabe’s response covers familiar ground: part/whole thinking. * Essentially, something can be a part of something in one of two ways: Materially (as a whole itself) and Formally (as part of a larger whole). * We can acknowledge that as formal parts of a putatively good universe, the evil bits vanish into the whole, but we can only make the argument in question by ignoring their material being, but it is precisely this which provokes the problem.

* A final form of the dissolution of the problem takes the most direct form: Evil is nothing but the absence of Good. * When we talk about evil, we are mistaking a negation for something that is real. * McCabe insist that there is nothing new in this version. It relies on the same reasoning as Response 2, and fails once again because of a confusion between contrary opposition and contradictory opposition.

* The fourth attempt to respond to the problem of evil attempts to sidestep, rather than dissolve, it by insisting that the causal agency of evil is not God, but humans. * Essentially, this is an attempt to deny the reality of natural evil and reduce it all to moral evil. * Without questioning this reduction, McCabe highlights that even focusing solely on moral evil doesn’t get God off the hook. * God is certainly not responsible for the things we do, but God did create us with certain tendencies, desires, etc., and though we are free, we are not independent of this creation. * God could have created us differently, with different tendencies, desires, etc., still free, but inclined to choose differently than we do.

* At this point, McCabe thinks that he has demonstrated that the problem of evil is a real problem. It can’t just be explained away, and theists do have to address it. * However, there may be two different obstacles to addressing it. * It’s a mystery (can’t be solved). * Can be solved, but not a task for theologians but for philosophers.

* It may be argued that the transcendence of God defeats any of our efforts to approximate an understanding of the divine or its creation. * All of God’s choices are equally absurd from our standpoint, so we should respect that absurdity and not try to make sense of it. * This is the key for McCabe. Accepting the starting point is the right way to address the question, but the starting point doesn’t lead us to acceptance, but to a better understanding of what we are addressing it.

* Speaking of God is the preeminent theological task. * Of course, that doesn’t mean that philosophers can’t chime in.