加载中…【上帝、恶与设计God，Evil，and Design】
(2014-04-11 21:31:01)
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In the poem “The Stolen Child,”
W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) reminds us
that we live in “a world more
full of weeping than [we] can understand.”
It is a memorable line and, for
many people, a true description. Terrible
things often happen, causing
immense, undeserved suffering. Diseases
and natural disasters waste
vast numbers of lives. Many times, neither the
victims nor anybody else can
discover a point or a purpose in such
terrible occurrences. In many
cases, the victims seem to be just unlucky.
In the view of the monotheistic
religions, the universe is a divine
creation. Those religions are
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According
to this view, the creator is a
supernatural person, essentially omniscient,
omnipotent, and perfectly
good.
Do the two things square with
one another? Or does the fact of “nature,
red in tooth and claw” “shriek”
against the theist’s “creed”? The words are
those of Alfred Lord Tennyson
(1809–92), from the poem “In Memoriam.”
Some religious believers go
beyond asserting compatibility. Some
believers maintain that, even
though terrible things happen in it, the world
still provides good evidence of
its divine origin.
I take up two questions here.
First, does the idea of a perfect creator
square with the fact that there
is a vast amount of seemingly pointless
suffering and death? And
second, with that fact taken into account, does
the world testify to a divine
source?
In investigating these two
questions, I hope to introduce readers to
fundamental issues in the
philosophy of religion. That raises two related
worries. Can a worthwhile
investigation be a good introduction? Can an
introduction remain
introductory while pursuing a genuine investigation?
Don’t the two things pull
against each other? To some extent, perhaps
they do. However, we must keep
in mind a fundamental fact about the discipline of philosophy
itself. It is that, in its very nature, philosophy is
investigative. So it may be
that proper philosophical introductions will always
be investigations.
My hope is that beginning
philosophers will see the competing ideas
in this book as live options.
An idea is a live option for us when we take
it seriously as something that
might be true. So, when competing ideas
are taken seriously in this
way, it is a small, as well as a natural, step to
try to sort out and adjudicate
those rival claims on the truth. And to take
that step is to engage
philosophically with the ideas themselves, which is
to be underway in investigating
them.
Not all readers of this book
will start out more-or-less unfamiliar
with
An investigation that is also
both an introduction and relatively short
will only go so far.
Accordingly, when we are finished, it will be clear
both
that a lot remains unsaid on
the issues discussed and that nothing has
been said on some neighboring
ones. But I hope that enough will have
been said to provide a good
introduction to the contemporary debates
on the issues discussed, to
make some contribution to those debates, and
to lead to further
inquiry.
The aim of investigation is
discovery.
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