A Good God Would Exclude Evil

Philosophy of Religion: Does The Idea of A Good God Exclude Evil?

Philosophical Category: Hume is an empiricist, empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge arises from evidence gathered via sense experience.

David Hume (1711-1776)

Hume argues that a very good, wise, and powerful being, even if not infinite, would not produce a world full of vice, misery, and disorder as our own. These ills are the result of four conditions of humans and nature:

1. The striving for survival and self-preservation
2. The limited powers of all creatures to confront their problems
3. The laws of nature(whose results in general bring about these miseries
4. The aberrant, bizarre events in nature itself that result in disorder.

Hume's solution is a skeptical one: that the human mind is incapable of understanding the nature of God. Perhaps God cannot be infinitely perfect, and some of his perfects logically contradict others. If this is the case, then the problem or exists of evil suggests not skepticism, but atheism, that God as traditionally defined cannot, and therefore, does not, exist.

A Good God Would Exclude Evil

• No matter how consistent the world may be, allowing certain suppositions and guesswork with the idea of an all powerful Deity, can never afford us an inference concerning his existence. The consistency is not absolutely denied, only the inference.
•  All that belongs to human understanding is to not admit of any hypothesis whatsoever, especially one that is supported by no appearance of probability.
• Evil, in no way, appears to the human reason as necessary or unavoidable, nor can we suppose evil as such (being necessary).
• The first circumstance which introduces evil is that contrivance (contrivance definition: a cleverly made device or machine to fulfill a need) or economy of the animal creation by which pains, as well as pleasures, are employed to excite the animal to act in self-preservation.
• The second circumstance is the conducting of the world by general laws. Many events are uncertain and many disappoint our expectations. A being who knows the secret springs of the universe, will no doubt, have the power to reverse all these accidents of man to the good of mankind and render the whole world happy.
• The third circumstance, frugality (limited power distributes amongst all beings). This being, like a ridged master, has afforded his creation with just enough power to have what is strictly sufficient to live. There Author of nature is inconceivably powerful; his force is supposed great, there should be no reason for him to observe this strict frugality in his dealings with his creatures.
• The fourth circumstance is the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature. There is no guard against nature's great disorder or confusion. This irregularity is sufficient to involve individuals in ruin and misery.
• So, it is the occurrence of these four major circumstances that all the greatest part of natural evil depend upon. Were all living creatures incapable of pain, or were the world administered by particular volitions (Volition; definition: the ability to make conscious choices or decisions), evil would have never found access to this universe.
• There can be no grounds for such an inference (of a great Deity) while there are so many ills in the universe, and while these ills might so easily have been remedied, as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject (89).