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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In Evil and a Good God Bruce Reichenbach presents a theodicy for natural evil. According to Reichenbach, natural evil consists in suffering and pain and ‘states of affairs significantly disadvantageous to sentient beings’ which have either nonhuman causes or human causes for which no human being can be held morally responsible. He attempts to provide a morally sufficient reason why natural evil exists. In this paper I will evaluate this reason.
page 91 note 1 Reichenbach, Bruce, Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.
page 91 note 2 Ibid. p. xi.
page 91 note 3 Ibid. p. 101.
page 92 note 1 Ibid. p. 45.
page 92 note 2 Ibid. pp. 104–5.
page 92 note 3 Reichenbach also maintains that even if the alternative of a world that operated by miracles would be free of the other problems that he mentions, it would not solve the problem of evil. He argues that what might be good for or bring pleasure to person P 1 might not be good for or bring pleasure to person P 2. Hence, it would be logically impossible for God to perform a miracle that was good for or brought pleasure to both P 1 and P 2. But this argument is confused. The problem of natural evil is not the problem of why everyone does not obtain what brings him or her pleasure. What gives someone pleasure may not be good and its absence not an evil. Moreover, the atheologian is not asking that God do what is logically inpossible. The problem of natural evil is why there is apparently pointless or gratuitous suffering that is not the result of any action that an actor can be held responsible for, suffering that apparently could be eliminated by an all powerful being without adversely affecting the greater good. See Ibid. p. 106.
page 93 note 1 Ibid. p. 108.
page 93 note 2 Ibid.
page 93 note 3 Ibid.
page 93 note 4 Mackie, J. L., The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1982). p. 21Google Scholar. See also Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 230Google Scholar for another account of miracles that allows for violations of natural laws.
page 94 note 1 Reichenbach, op. cit. p. 108.
page 95 note 1 Ibid. p. 109.
page 96 note 1 Ibid.
page 98 note 1 Ibid., p. 101.
page 98 note 2 Rowe, William, Philosophy of Religion (Belmont: Wadsworth Pub. Co, 1978), p. 88Google Scholar.
page 98 note 3 Reichenbach, op. cit. p. 39.
page 98 note 4 Ibid. p. 44.
page 99 note 1 According to Reichenbach no person can be held accountable for that which it is impossible for the person to have done otherwise. See Ibid. p. 102.
page 99 note 2 Ibid. p. 39.
