HKB
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Often appears with: the problem of evil and theodicy · justice as a virtue · the nature and attributes of God · providence and divine governance · fate, destiny, and necessity · reason and the intellect · prayer and worship · zoroaster dualists · virtue and vice · theodicy · the passions and the emotions · the harmony of nature
Usually: argument (15) · crisis of belief (11) · detachment (9) · skepticism (7) · curiosity (2) · indignation (2) · reverence (2) · dialogue (1) · reflection (1) · injustice endured (1)
“Either then corruption injures not, which cannot be; or which is most certain, all which is corrupted is deprived of good.” Augustine, of Hippo, Saint, The Confessions of St. Augustine · insight
“In short, I repeat the question: Is the world, considered in general, and as it appears to us in this life, different from what a man, or such a limited being, would, beforehand, expect from a very powerful, wise, and benevolent Deity?” David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion · insight
“The true conclusion is, that the original Source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles; and has no more regard to good above ill, than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy.” David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion · observation
“Our planetary system composes such an isolated work, which is complete also when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal, each man furnishes one such work, to a certain point of perfection.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · observation
“One must judge the works of God as wisely as Socrates judged those of Heraclitus in these words: What I have understood thereof pleases me; I think that the rest would please me no less if I understood it.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · precept
“the best course is not always that one which tends towards avoiding evil, since it is possible that the evil may be accompanied by a greater good.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · insight
“Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) · precept
“God will at last punish him severely; he is reserved for the judgment, and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.” Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe · precept
“Wings, also, will I fasten to thy mind wherewith thou mayst soar aloft, that so, all disturbing doubts removed, thou mayst return safe to thy country, under my guidance, in the path I will show thee, and by the means which I furnish.” Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy · insight
“For if the whole comes from and is governed by an intelligent being, it is impossible to conceive anything in it which tends to the evil or destruction of the whole” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius · insight
“He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up fictitious excellences--belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human-kind--and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues.” John Stuart Mill, Autobiography · insight
“In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own image.” Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary · insight
The editor addresses the problem of evil by arguing that evil cannot exist in the ordered whole, human knowledge is limited, and apparent disorders do not overturn providential order.
principle; that if we admit the existence of a deity, we must also admit that he orders all things wisely and well (IV. 27; VI. 1; IX. 28; XII. 5). But if all things are wisely ordered, how is the world so full of what we call evil, physical and moral? If instead of saying that there is evil in the world, we use the expression which I have used, “what we call evil,” we have partly anticipated the emperor’s answer. W…
He argues that corrupted things are still “good” insofar as corruption cannot exist without diminished goodness, claims evil is not a substance but a lack, and praises God’s ordered creation.
in Him, I cannot in myself; but He remaining in Himself, reneweth all things. And Thou art the Lord my God, since Thou standest not in need of my goodness. And it was manifested unto me, that those things be good which yet are corrupted; which neither were they sovereignly good, nor unless they were good could be corrupted: for if sovereignly good, they were incorruptible, if not good at all, there were nothing in t…
Mill explains his father’s rejection of religious belief: influenced by Butler’s Analogy yet driven morally by the problem of evil, rejecting revelation and natural religion and arguing religion demoralizes morality by lowering moral standards.
this respect, my early character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true account of my education. I was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. My father, educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief…
Kant claims the moral law determines God’s attributes as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, something speculative reason could not achieve, and he sketches how early Greek philosophers first sought one rational cause but were held back by world evils.
{BOOK*2|CHAPTER*2 ^paragraph 80} When I now try to test this conception by reference to the object of practical reason, I find that the moral principle admits as possible only the conception of an Author of the world possessed of the highest perfection. He must be omniscient, in order to know my conduct up to the inmost root of my mental state in all possible cases and into all future time; omnipotent, in order to a…
He replies that God’s existence can be proved, offering five classical arguments—motion, efficient causes, possibility/necessity, gradation toward a maximum, and governance of the world—while answering the problem of evil.
word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist. Obj. 2: Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. F…
Friday struggles with Robinson’s claim that God will eventually punish the devil, asking why God does not kill the devil now, leading Robinson to stress that only divine revelation can teach redemption through Jesus.
our affections, and to adapt his snares to our inclinations, so as to cause us even to be our own tempters, and run upon our destruction by our own choice. I found it was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the devil as it was about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause, an overruling, governing Power, a secret directing P…
Leibniz argues that apparent proofs against God can be nullified by stronger reasons, then uses the problem of evil to say natural theology still faces questions about how an all-good God permits sin and suffering.
hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men, having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment. 48. The Schoolmen have spoken in like manner. M. Bayle quotes a beautiful passage from Cardinal Cajetan (Part I, *Summ.*, qu. 22, art. 4) to this effect: 'Our mind', he says, 'rests not upon the evidence of known truth but upon t…
Returning to Zoroaster, Leibniz discusses dualism versus monism in explaining evil, reviewing Bayle’s critique and insisting that particular individual evils can be compatible with the best whole under divine understanding and will.
from the nature of God; but he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil. 145. He treats of the matter with abundant detail in his *Dictionary*, article 'Manichaeans', p. 2025, which we must examine a little, in order to throw greater light upon this subject: 'The surest and clearest ideas of order teach us', he says, 'that a Being…
Leibniz distinguishes God’s freedom from indifference, rejecting the idea that producing what God can would force him to produce sins and sorrows, and says evil can be reconciled with goodness in the whole.
of the divine nature. This perpetual sense of his own fault or imperfection would be to him an inevitable source of grief, as M. Bayle says on another occasion (p.953). 202. M. Diroys' argument contains a false assumption, in his statement that nothing can change except by passing from a state less good to a better or from a better to a less good; and that thus, if God makes the best, what he has produced cannot be …
Leibniz cites the Journal des Savants and Bayle to explain a problem of physical evil: if the best overall system already results from laws, why did God choose laws that cause difficulties?
he has established and (as M. Regis also acknowledged in the same passage) 'the laws that God has established in nature are the most excellent it is possible to conceive'. 358. I will add to that the remark from the *Journal des Savants* of the 16th March 1705, which M. Bayle has inserted in chapter 162 of the _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 1030). The matter in question is the extract from a …
In an appended argument, Leibniz answers an objection that God lacked goodness or knowledge because he created a world with evil, arguing evil can accompany greater good.
Whoever does not choose the best course is lacking either in power, or knowledge, or goodness. God did not choose the best course in creating this world. Therefore God was lacking in power, or knowledge, or goodness. ANSWER I deny the minor, that is to say, the second premiss of this syllogism, and the opponent proves it by this PROSYLLOGISM Whoever makes things in which there is evil, and which could have been…
The passage argues that motion needs an eternal cause and that God exists of necessity; it claims space can be annihilated by divine power, and concludes that God creates the best-harmony world despite remaining evil.
adds that, if some evil has remained notwithstanding, one must believe that these infinite divine perfections could not have (I would rather say ought not to have) taken it away. 7. Chapter II anatomizes evil, dividing it as we do into metaphysical, physical and moral. Metaphysical evil consists in imperfections, physical evil in suffering and other like troubles, and moral evil in sin. All these evils exist in God'…
Voltaire argues that apparent evils are treated as necessary, criticizes theologians, mocks prayer as useless or self-flattering, and contrasts public religious rituals with philosopherly resignation and intellectual restraint.
bladders been subject to being stone quarries? why the plague, war, famine, the inquisition? Turn in every direction, you will find no other solution than that everything has been necessary. I speak here to philosophers only and not to theologians. We know well that faith is the thread in the labyrinth. We know that the fall of Adam and Eve, original sin, the immense power given to the devil, the predilection accord…
The speaker argues that since we only observe the world’s “known phenomena,” we must condemn the universe’s apparent design flaws without claiming to know any perfect plan, and thus cannot infer God’s existence from it.
such subjects are beyond the reach of his faculties. You are obliged, therefore, to reason with him merely from the known phenomena, and to drop every arbitrary supposition or conjecture. Did I show you a house or palace, where there was not one apartment convenient or agreeable; where the windows, doors, fires, passages, stairs, and the whole economy of the building, were the source of noise, confusion, fatigue, da…
Given these four circumstances, the speaker says the ills of the universe cannot justify inferences about God’s goodness, and argues that the universe looks indifferent—unmixed goodness and malice fail to match either evil’s distribution or natural laws.
accuracy, against all disorder or confusion. The irregularity is never perhaps so great as to destroy any species; but is often sufficient to involve the individuals in ruin and misery. On the concurrence, then, of these four circumstances, does all or the greatest part of natural evil depend. Were all living creatures incapable of pain, or were the world administered by particular volitions, evil never could have f…
Philosophy explains that God’s order prevents good rulers’ realm from honoring evil: the good are always strong and rewarded, the bad weak and punished, and the guide will lead the speaker home.
I. Softly and sweetly Philosophy sang these verses to the end without losing aught of the dignity of her expression or the seriousness of her tones; then, forasmuch as I was as yet unable to forget my deeply-seated sorrow, just as she was about to say something further, I broke in and cried: 'O thou guide into the way of true light, all that thy voice hath uttered from the beginning even unto now has manifestly seem…
Boethius argues that if future events are fixed by providence, rewards and punishments become unjust, virtue and vice lose meaning, human wickedness follows from God, and prayer cannot mediate any change.
'"Whate'er I say Shall either come to pass--or not." In that case, too, in what would Divine providence surpass human opinion if it holds for uncertain things the occurrence of which is uncertain, even as men do? But if at that perfectly sure Fountain-head of all things no shadow of uncertainty can possibly be found, then the occurrence of those things which He has surely foreknown as coming is certain. Wherefore th…