So first of all how do we define God and and this may seem rather narrow but the fact

is that in the
western tradition the discussion of God has been that of an omnipotent omniscient perfectly good
creator of the universe now obviously there are lots of religions besides judeo Christianity uh the
there are that have lots of demigods and all sorts but we're not concerned with those we are just
concerned with if you like the god of the philosophers the absolutely perfect all powerful all knowing
perfectly good creator of the universe i'm going to use the term omni perfect to describe that being
why might we be inclined to postulate a perfect God an Omni perfect God well there are different
ways of explaining this David Humes is a somewhat cynical one he suggests that once people get a
favorite God and it's clear that historically you know if you look at the the Old Testament for example
it seems that it was freely accepted that there were a number of different gods but the Hebrew God
was the one the favorite of the people who actually you know we're writing those scriptures and
what he was suggesting was that any particular tribe that has a favorite God is very inclined to flatter
that God and inflate that God as much as possible and tell you end up being carried away to the idea
of absolutely perfect God that obviously is not a very flattering explanation of the theory Richard
swinburne probably the most notable philosopher of religion of the later 20th and early 21st century
he was actually professor in Oxford for many years he he has a theoretical explanation for the perfect
God he says that if you're looking for a hypothesis to explain the universe then other things being
equal you should prefer a hypothesis that it is as simple as possible right that's what scientists do
when scientists are trying to explain you know the motion of planets around the sun for example
people like corpus and Galileo why did they favor the hypothesis that the sun is in the center with
the planets going around that well because it's simpler I'm sorry you have a question I I'd rather not
question till the end if you don't mind it's alright we have plenty of time for it then I hope yeah
because all this stuff is highly controversial right I mean don't take what I say or what anybody else
says as gospel here if you excuse the term but swinburne the basic idea is that in science we are
constantly preferring simpler theories over less simple ones if you think of the sound of the center of
the solar system you get a much simpler account of planetary motions than if you suppose the earth
at the center with the sun going around the earth and then the other planets kind of going aroun to
make sense of the observations So what favours the hypothesis that the Suns at the center is that
that gives a similar account and in exactly the same way if you suppose that the world was created by
one simple God simple in having no limits right because if you were to postulate a God with a
particular kind of limit to his power that would be a complication in the theory if you say no there's
no limits no limits to his power no limits to his knowledge no limits to his goodness that looks like a
very simple theory so according to swinburne the existence of God is is defensible as a kind of
scientific hypothesis and he wants to say the world as we experience it is in fact just the sort of God
we'd expect a perfect God sorry sorry world we would expect the perfect God to create and that
being so that strongly supports the hypothesis of theism and just one God not lots of demigod but
against that perfect God does have some problems it doesn't seem to provide us great an
explanation as some have claimed and it's very imprecise in predictions I'm supposed to be accept
the claim that the world that we experience with all its apparent imperfections is in fact consistent
with having been the creation of absolutely perfect God what made that so if so then obviously you
can't just read off from the theory what the world be like because on the face of it if you say what's
the word like be be like if it is created by a perfect God you think will be everyone's happy you know
there are nasty was nasty diseases etcetera etcetera feels like that so it looks that at best the theory
is gonna be very vague 1 not to draw precise conclusions from it it's not gonna explain why a
particular thing happens rather something else if this hypothesis is compatible with such a range of
outcomes another thing about against the hypothesis of creation by God is that God ways of acting
seem to be magical rather than explicable in standard way so how did God create the world and he
just said let there be a will and there was OK how does that work that's completely different from
anything we normally experience and that seems to count against the idea that that it's a kind of
attractive scientific theory we tend to prefer theories whose ways of working fit with our experience
and this is just radically out of line with experience I mean in our experience the only agents we ever
come across agents who act through physical intermediaries like when when I do an action my brain
is deciding what to do it is sending impulses down my nerves to my hands and so on whereas this
guy is supposed to be able to instantaneously across the universe without any physical
intermediaries at all so again it there's plenty you can say against swinburne's idea he wants to
appeal to simplicity as a reason why we should favor the hypothesis of God but there are quite a lot
of reasons for saying actually maybe it's not such a great a little bit about the fine tuning argument
for the existence of God which you may have come across and my views are slightly heretical on this
because as you may gather I I'm not a believer in God myself I'm an atheist but amongst my fellow
atheists they are slightly scandalized by the fact that I think is actually quite interesting potentially
good argument the existence of God so this debate you know the atheist community if you like what
arguments are good what the bad I think this is by far the strongest potential argument for the
existence of So what is the fine tuning argument it's a very recent argument and it arises from certain
claims that come out of modern cosmology and the basic idea is that if you look at the physical
theories of the universe that this is come up with over the last 20-30 years making it more you find
that those theories include various constants constants of nature which seem kind of arbitrary and
you look at the theory and you think why does that constant have that particular value and the
answer is what we don't know as far as we can tell it could have taken lots of different values it just
happens at the physicists have measured it and it has this particular and now when you look at all
these various theories together and how they fit the various laws of nature with their individual
concepts the claim is that if those constants have been even slightly different there's no way the
universe could have developed in the way that it has and in particular you wouldn't have any
complex galaxies you wouldn't have stars with planets you wouldn't have any intelligent life so just
one example I give at the bottom there the value of the gravitational constant t having different
pieces of matter you know universal proportion to the square of the distance between them
multiplied by the masses and there's a constant that constant is as far as we can tell arbitrary it could
have been something different but if the gravitational constant is too weak relative to the force of
the initial Big Bang which as far as we can tell started off the universal this part of the universe if
gravitational concept was too weak all those particles matter would fly apart and on the other hand
the content of of radiation was too strong then it would pull those particles matter back together too
quickly and you get a big crunch and no galaxies for me so to get galaxies for me you gotta have
enough gravity to enable the matter to coalesce into galaxies and then into stars within galaxies and
so forth but not too much so that's just one example of of fine tuning so the claim is that if you look
at all these theories ohh sorry all different laws there are lots and lots of these kinds of coincidences
cases in which the constants or the initial conditions of nature so constant gravitational constant
initial condition as in the way the band took place there seem to be lots of coincidences which if they
hadn't been just so there would not have been universe anything like this with a fine structure and
with living creatures and that's supposed to be an argument for a cosmic designer but this was
initially set up in such a way as to generate these results OK so first of all I want to point out some
problems with this argument and and bear in mind I do want to say it seems to me this is this is
actually not a bad argument I mean this general structure of argument I think something to be said
for it but here are some issues I mean relatively and quantum mechanics are in conflict they don't
not consistent each other the physics we have at the moment is not the final physics that's pretty
clear dark matter dark energy these were populated relatively and be together as supposed to make
up something like 95% of the stuff in the universe so if that's right then you know barely 50 years ago
all the matter that everyone always knew about was only 5% of the actual of the universe so the
point I'm making here is we can't just take the latest physics and say you know that's definitive truth
no physics has been hugely influx and will continue to be for some time you can raise questions
about the whole idea of having some probabilistic judgment about what was the probability that the
world would be like this if there were no God is actually what we're discussing is just a single
universe how can we make sense of probability judgments there at all that's because normally we
think probabilities applying where you got a lot of you know population of things look at the statistics
if we only got one universe we only got one example to go on and a popular way of avoiding the fine
tuning argument of avoiding the hypothesis of God is to suggest that there might actually be loads
and loads and loads of universes all with their different laws of nature and if you if you have lots and
lots of universities like that then it's not so surprising that one or two of those would have just the
right kind of combination of laws and constants to enable life to develop and it would be no surprise
if that happened but the universities within which life developed were ones which gave the
appearance of being finely tuned so that's a popular way of kind of escaping from the fine tuning but
but sort of scenario I would give to my atheist friends is this just suppose that in 1000 years time
there is a consistent comprehensive extremely well developed physical theory right maybe maybe in
about the year you know 2100 visitors manage to work it out this consistent and now here we are
you know 900,000 years later and overall that time this theory has just proved itself again and again
and it's still got those constants in there that have been explained as far as we can tell they have a lot
of different values but we've been able to do lots of computer modeling you know fantastic quantum
computers have been around since about 2100 and we've been able to model lots of possible
hypothesis about how the initial universe might been consistently with this theory that's not
survived 900 years with reputation and when we do this we find yes it's true these constants have to
be within a very fine range in order to get anything like this universe not I think if we were in that
situation in 1000 years time or success in that position in 1000 years time they might very well think
this is a puzzle that demands explanation because we got this great physical theory but it's got all
these coincidences in why is it there a lot of universities been kind of selection mechanism maybe
but maybe the physical theory that we have doesn't give any evidence at all the universes and you
can imagine someone coming and saying it seems to be actually the best emphasis here is that there
was some cosmic designer who set this all up and I don't see that that's absurd so actually this
argument could have legs but I don't think we're in a position yet to say anything like that because
the physics is too uncertain but it seems to me that if we got to that situation you know thousand
years time you you either have to go for some kind of design hypothesis or for some selection effect
among multiple universes maybe other ways right there in mind you know a couple 100 years ago
but nobody thought about evolutionary explanation it may be some other kind of explanation will
emerge who knows what future science may hold but judging from where we are now it's not clear
to me that in that situation theism would be an unreasonable explanation but let's think about those
that's right what what what does fine tuning give us evidence for well one question is why pick on
intelligent life as the target I mean because all of this stuff is predicated on the idea that you need
these coincidences in order to bring about as it were an interesting universe with galaxies and stars
and planets and so forth and you by the way a couple of generations of stars to get anything like we
have now but life is not very obviously the most conspicuous feature of this universe you know we're
we can be confident intelligent life emerged one tiny planet amongst these gazillions of stars and
planets and maybe there's more maybe there is but we don't know why I think life why think on this
as what the cosmic designer was after rather than say the esthetics of beautiful spiral Galaxy maybe
you know black holes maybe to create who just loves black holes and the universe seems to be very
good ultimately evolving in that direction well maybe you could say morality consciousness
consciousness in particular you might consider a weird thing and such a wonderful thing but maybe
that strikes us as something that causes me designer might want to bring about another problem is
what should we say about the designer we suppose we suppose we agree that the cosmic designer is
that a reason for going for the full blown on the perfect God and I would say no that is not obviously
kept the case right I mean suppose you encounter a bridge and this bridge is constructed in a very
finely tuned way right because you look at the stuff that the bridge is made of and you think wow it's
amazing that bridge can support my weight you'd never thought looking at the materials and then
you look at it you find every cleverly put together you change it in any particular and it would fall
down but it's so cleverly put together that it will sustain away far greater than you have expected is
that evidence for design yes it is it's evidence that the bridge has been put together very clear is it
evidence that the materials of which the bridge was made were designed to hold hold great weight
no quite reverse but the architect has had to do clear things precisely because the materials with
which the update was working were so ill suited for supporting strong weights so it doesn't seem to
me that even if the tuning argument works it supports the hypothesis of an Omni perfect got it may
support the hypothesis of some cosmic designer who does fantastically well within the limits of the
physical laws available tuning the constants just so you get this cosmic universe you know this this
beautiful complex universe but you have only perfect perfect God doesn't need to create a world
that takes 13.8 billion years before you get the evolution of intelligent life right and only perfect God
who wants intelligent life just doesn't let any intelligent life right so I don't actually think the fine
tuning argument points in the direction of supporting the traditional Omni God is that a price to pay I
don't think it is actually I mean five years I I think I'd be happy to buy that bullet and just say yeah it
looks to me like the Omni God you know maybe something what did he says philosophy have been
carried away they you know faced with the hypothesis of a creator God they've gone and said we
must be perfect all knowing all everything you don't need that right cosmic design is pretty damn
good I think cosmic design I was convinced such a cosmic designer I think worshipping couldn't worry
about the fact that he is not absolutely capable of doing anything that's logically possible the far
more big problem is the problem of evil and this is often overlooked by those who support this
argument suppose I'm an evil God suppose I want to create a universe in which there is the
maximum possible suffering and nasty people people who all beings of whatever kind you do nasty
things to other things in that case I gotta have a word with individuals capable of suffering I've got to
be have a world in which individuals are capable of perceiving other people suffering and enjoying it
and doing more of it and maybe clubbing together and bullying and you know torturing and all the
rest in that case I need a pretty finely tuned universe I need universe that's capable of sustaining the
evolution of intellig so the problem is an evil God as well or an evil cosmic designer as well as a good
cosmic designer both would want to design A universe capable of sustaining sophisticated life so the
fine tuning argument cannot support the hypothesis but there's a creator who's good rather than evil
even if it works well somebody to get around this by saying well look you need a good God in order
to make sense of morality you know morality is all about doing what is required and if something is
required then you need some being that's requiring it a lawgiver A lawgiver whose rules are kind of
built into the structure of the universe so maybe that gives a way of saying that whatever being lies
behind the universe must be good rather than bad this naturally leads to sort of divine command
theory the idea that what God commands is for that reason good so if you have a a cosmic designer
or a a creator of some kind their laws ordain what is good and evil and you can see this sort of
thought echoed in dostoyevsky brothers karamazov without God on the future life everything is
permitted you need God in order to make sense of morality but the problem is if you say that what
God commands is necessarily by definition good actually you empty the claim that God is good of all
content and this is a problem that Plato recognized in in the the youth of row dialogue it's very
famous dilemma is what is pious loved by the gods because of his pious or is it pious because it is
loved by the gods or putting that within the framework does God command what he does because
it's good or do his commands define what is good and notice the dilemma if you say God commands
what he does because it is good that means you gotta have there has to be some notion of goodness
which is antecedent to the God's commands God's command because it is good so it's not his
command that makes it good on the other hand if you say it is God's commands that make it good
then you are forced to say that if God commanded the torturing of babies then the torturing of
babies would be good and that seems awful at the very least it means that you're saying there is a
God that doesn't rule out there is a God who commands torturing babies example wanted to choose
horrible examples here to remove any controversy over whether what is being described is really
horrible OK some things like that well yes look at look at scriptures of some of our most dominant
religions OK due to romy chapter 20 due to the Hebrew Bible it's recognized also by large numbers of
Christians and Muslims and warriors are commanded in fact to put males to the sword take us your
booty the women the children enjoy the spoil and if you look at verse 1617 you see genocide
prescribed 6 times over the amorites the jebusites and various others they're all destroyed will save
nothing that breathes is the club why because these individuals have the energy to occupying the
land which God has given to the Hebrew so I mean obviously if anything is with any sentence say no
of course scripts were not inspired by God right those are a corruption but the fact is that you know
many people have believed in a God who commands things like that so it's simply not true when
people say ohh look at the Bible or whatever and you will find wonderful moral teachings there I'm
not denying you'll find some wonderful teachings particularly New Testament but plenty else too and
if you look at the 10 commandments for example many people are inclined to see as a kind of
paradigm of morality I disagree the first four commandments focus on duties to got no other gods
before me you won't have any graven images or idols you won't use my name God's name in vain
and you observe the Sabbath right why because well because I rested on the 7th day when I was
creating the world so you do the same it's only that the the next six of the commands that are
basically fairly routine moral commands so it's simply not true through some of the great religions
that you find great moral commands you so one point important point I want to make is I I think it's
utterly wrong when people say without religion there is no morality that's incredibly dangerous thing
to say because if it's true that religion religious beliefs do not have a solid foundation and there
plenty of people myself included who don't think they have a solid foundation and you get obviously
lots and lots of conflicts or disagreements between different religious beliefs we surely don't want it
to be the case that if people's religious beliefs evaporate their moral beliefs also evaporate that really
would be a disaster so let me assure you that although fewer than 20% philosophers these days a at
more than 60% philosophers and moralists so you know philosophers generally agree that there's no
contradiction between being a moral realist believing that moral statements really are true and false
and being atheist and you can found morality on quite a lot of different considerations I've listed a
few there which are quite independent of religion so I'm actually gonna reject the idea that morality
depends on religion that we need to hold to atheistic view in order to make sense of morality that's
simply not true perspective on morality having my own perspective on reality is very much based on
a kind of evolutionary perspective I think the reason we have moral views that we reason we have
moral sentiments the reason we feel emotionally empathetic with each other and so forth is for a
very solid evolutionary reason right that's what makes humans so successful as a species the fact
that we are so good at cooperating with each other and cooperation this hugely helped if our
emotions are in tune with that if we naturally feel empathy towards each other we want to do things
other people approve of we want to help each other and that is what the success of the human
species is so largely built on and so you don't need to be a theist to explain both our moral views and
our moral sentiments the reason why we approve of people doing good things the reason why we
we feel resentment towards people who cheat or take advantage and so forth that was sent in
evolutionary context and this by the way doesn't imply debunking I'm not suggesting this is a
debunking explanation of reality that somehow morality is bunk because it's evolved no On the
contrary On the contrary that just shows its value it doesn't I I thoroughly approve for example of
parents feeling very strongly about the well-being of their children that's naturally makes sense
evolutionarily but it's also something we strongly approve of the world goes better the parents care a
lot for their children so there's no suggestion of debunking here in fact I think it's a much more solid
basis for morality than some great being commanding that you should do certain things OK let's now
move on to the problem of evil and I I hope you've read the dialogues turning our religion sections
10 and 11 as I think you were asked is that right yeah I mean human language I mean he was a
beautifully elegant writer and just a warning morning as you may have realized he's writing in 18
century English it's not always the easiest it takes a little bit of time to get into his writing but if you
do I think you will find it it's tremendously well written very elegant and often very amusing and
another work that you might want to read is inquiry concerning understanding and very
approachable and if you get your world last tradition you've got an introduction that I wrote which
may not be and no I don't get any royalties from this damn it £3000 total I think I think that was less
than a pound an hour for my work frankly and it's it's yeah it would be nice to get royalties for it
there you go so you have seen this this passage from from the dialogue carries old questions to get
answered is he willing to prevent evil but not able then is he impotent is he able but not willing then
is he malevolent is he both able and willing whence then is evil how can evil in the world be
consistent with an omnipotent God who could remove if he wanted an omniscient God by the way
who knows what the evil is they can't plead ignorance and who supposed to be perfectly good
andromache another philosopher exerciser of mine actually a long time ago and he points out the
that the implicit premise there is an assumption here that perfectly would be would eliminate evil as
far as it can that's that's not an automatic assumption but it's seems very plausible and swinburne
and Mikey by the way would be if you want a sort of one very very good philosophy on each side
who represented the feast from the atheist views kind of in the late 20th century swinburne and like
I think would be the two you choose I'm I'm list is what they're at the end now the problem of evil
actually comes in quite a number of different flavors and on the handout that I've that's on on your
website on the course website I've I've said more about this but I'm just gonna go over it very quickly
now but just be aware that the problem of evil is not just one problem probably isn't really a
problem it's an argument it was called the problem of evil back in the days when nearly everybody
believed in God so the problem was how do you square the existence of God which we all believe in
with the existence of evil that's the problem but nowadays it tends to be an argument used by
atheists to deny the existence of God so there are three different variants of it there's a logical
problem so some people will say look the existence of evil in the world or maybe some particular
type of evil in the world is logically inconsistent with a perfect God if that exists then God couldn't as
a matter of logic and this does the evidential problem with people that's saying if certain types of
people exist in the world or maybe any evil at all then it's extremely implausible to claim that the
universe was created by a perfectly good God maybe not logically impossible but just extremely
implausible and then you get the inferential problem of evil which is the one interview that Hume is
making focused on suppose somebody claims they're using the design argument for like fine tuning
argument saying I have evidence from the nature of the world that there is a perfectly good God and
the inference problem is just saying no you don't you might have evidence for a designer maybe
good designer no perfectly good designer certainly not so the person who who is pushing the
inferential problem is is denying that you can draw a legitimate inference to a perfect God now
somebody who believed in said the ontological argument thesis or the cosmology argument suppose
they had some argument which was a priority which kind of went from logical first principles and
claimed to prove the existence of God right they they could conceivably accept the inferential
problem right they say yeah I couldn't prove it from the nature of the world but I got this other proof
and that's fine but clearly such person would have to deny the logical problem we have to deny that
there's inconsistency between the existence of God and the evils in the world and I don't know they
might take one or another the problem but the point is that these are three different issues is a
logical inconsistency is there evidence once the existence of God is it is there potentially evidence for
the existence of God or is the inferential problem says no so all of these three different varieties and
can focus on different evils in the world so some people might say even if there's a little smidgen of
people in the world enough to prove the non existence of God all the implausibility of the existence
of God or the impossibility of proving a perfect God where some people might say no no no it's
perfectly consistent have a little bit of evil in the world created by perfect God but not as much as we
actually got maybe not the kinds of evil that we actually see in the an important distinction here is
between natural evil and moral evil the problem of pain and the problem of sin if you like so natural
evil think of nasty things that happen because of the way nature behaves like that terrible
earthquake that's happened in Taiwan for example or think about pandemics not by the way
pandemics caused by humans but natural pandemics or think of you know malaria OK and there are
all these horrible things that happen many of which have no human cause it's not humans brought
about they're just there you know through nature one way or another that's a different problem
potentially from explaining moral evil so moral evil is evil behavior by free agents like humans are
supposed to and you might have explanations for the latter which apply to the former I suppose you
say well the reason why this even in the world even though God created it even though it created it
is perfect God wanted there to be morally responsible agents free agents in the world because that's
a good thing right it's a good thing that should be very responsible agents in the world but sadly you
know free agents sometimes do bad things that's what freedom involves the risk of doing bad things
and if the and you can see that's pretty good at explaining sin at least if it works it's good explaining
sin not so good for explaining natural evil you can do it you can explain natural evil in that way but if
you're going to you have to introduce something like you know fallen angels or spirits who who God
creates and then they go astray and do all sorts of nasty things so the reason there earthquakes is
because God created these free spirits these angels but some of them you know went wrong and
there the agents behind both the earthquakes and things so even the problem with earthquakes it
also all comes down ultimately to the wrong actions of free agents you can do that just doesn't look
very pause so the most difficult variety is the problem of evil for the theist to deal with focus on the
evidential problem of rendering God's existence reasonably inferable or even fairly plausible given
the extent of moral but especially natural evil that we see in the world so if you the most difficult
little bit counterintuitive you might think right going back to the different problems you think which
is the most serious problem for the first well surely it's gonna be a logical problem right the logical
problem claims that the existence of any even even in the world is logically inconsistent with the
existence of God surely that's going to be the best way to take the fight to the isn't it no it's not it's
not because the the strongest case against theism is not given by the most ambitious argument right
that argument is very ambitious you can't actually logically prove it that still needs open but you can
show the existence of God is implausible so the person pushes the logical argument right is is trying
for too much it's much more difficult for the to address problems which are more modest which say
look alright I'll allow if you like that there's a consistency between the existence of God and even in
the world allow you that what I want you to do show that it's but it's plausible that perfect God
would allow all this evil world and by the way I'm gonna focus on natural evil the evil that you cannot
blame on the actions of free human beings how you explain that evil spirits really you serious come
off it I mean in the days of play tectonics and biology biology you know how plausible is it to explain
diseases and earthquakes all the rest in terms of evil spirit it is and obviously I'm getting quite close
to here human focus is very much on the the inference problem is slightly different from the
evidential problem but it's very closely related so human is actually standing on very firm ground he's
saying given the nature of the world you're surely not going to tell me that a perfect God can be
inferred from what we see around us so let's look at somebody so a theodicy that's a technical term
of theodicy is an attempt to reconcile the appearance of evil with God's existence and emphasize
appearance because one of the odyssey is to say actually isn't really evil in the world is just an if he
was an illusion then there's no duty to eliminate it or another line you can say why does God allow
such unpleasant illusions isn't that in itself somebody says well even in the world may seem a bad
thing but it's a good thing because it enables us to appreciate the good thing we don't need to
eliminate it right actually that's incredibly implausible you only need a little bit of pain to be able to
appreciate the absence of pain you don't need to have experienced pain day after day after day some
people do in order to appreciate the absence of pain so it's going to be a small amount of anyway
and why did God make us so to appreciate the good we have to experience evil there's no logical
contradiction in somebody experiencing and taking pleasure in the absence of pain without actually
having experience right not logically possible and if goddamnit he just create it so that we did two
rather extreme solutions maybe maybe more plausible but extreme alright alright I'll give up there
are limits to what I can do maybe just God couldn't create a world without evil for whatever reason
OK fine in that case we no longer talk about the problem I mean I would personally invite the press it
further and say yeah where's your evidence God even good right I grant you if you say God is not
perfect sorry God if God is not all powerful that gets God off the hook in the sense that even a
perfectly good God who didn't have the power might not be able to create a world that's without
people fair enough but where's your evidence that the creator is a good God you got consistency
there but again that doesn't do any argument saying that the creator is 1 is good rather than evil or
indifferent so again you see how important it destroy distinction between the logical problem and
the inferential problem some people say oh goodness is a total mystery to us I think there's a
perfectly good God but my grasp of what real goodness is something perfect but for all I know
millions of kids dying of malaria is actually a really good thing really I mean it kind of cuts religion
from practical morality because we're saying in effect whatever whatever good is the only handle we
have on it is what actually happens in the world not interfere with malaria then right maybe it's a
good thing and for all we know you know the suffering of infants is great but it's also completely
ruins the prospect for people who see religion as a sort of comfort but the reason you know hoping
for his religion I read this book and it tells me that if I act well in this world I will have an eternal
afterlife you know with strumming a harp on the cloud or whatever and you know admiring the
divine perfection and enjoying eternal bliss yeah right well if this world is actually compatible with
the perfect goodness of God I've got no reason to suppose any afterlife be any better right and by the
way why should I even expect whoever wrote this book inspired it to be true because he's perfect
goodness is compatible with little babies dying in agony of horrible diseases then perfect goodness
may well be compatible with filling up with lies right so basically if we completely lose our moral
compass if we start saying God's goodness maybe something you know quite quite different from
what we think of goodness a little bit on the design argument you already read a couple of sections
of of the dialogues sections 10118 focuses on this he also discusses the problem of evil in section 11
of the inquiry and there he's focusing very much on the inference problem I just basically it's a good
to go and look at and and but when if you read it that's the focus he's getting there he's saying if you
try to infer the existence of a God from what we see in the world as we find it and then you try to
draw an inference from the nature of God to what the afterlife will be like there's no way you can
legitimately predict that the afterlife that you infer is going to be is going to exhibit qualities that you
don't see in this world so if in this world we do not see for example much in the way of evidence of
justice then if we try to infer over to just God and then argue back and say well because we
experience in this world he must rectify in the next World that's a fantasy because you haven't got
any evidence that whatever created the world is just if your evidence for the nature of God comes
from this world you can't go in for some completely different quality in the next World tamiya puts
what's called the porch view in the dialogues now why is this world so rubbish to be well this world is
about a point in comparison of the universe this life but a moment in comparison of eternity the
present evil phenomena therefore are rectified in other regions and in some future period of
existence and the eyes of men being then open to larger views of things see the whole connection of
general laws and trace with adoration that benevolence The Dirty through all the mazes and
intricacies of his Providence say look pretty rubbish now but when we get there we'll see it's all
wonderful who is actually a believer he's the he's the advocate of the design argument the dialogues
responds no no these arbitrary suppositions can never be admitted contrary to matter of fact visible
and uncontroverted which can any calls be known but from its own effects which can any hypothesis
be proved but from the apparent phenomena to establish 1 hypothesis upon another is building
entirely in the air and the utmost we have attained by these conjectures and fictions the possibility
of our opinion but never can we upon such terms establish its reality OK so to me look you've got this
hypothesis of a perfect God and you're building this other hypothesis there's a future life everything
wonderful but just building 1 hypothesis on another you have any evidence for either of these so
yeah you might be able to establish the logical possibility they haven't made it so again the
distinguish between the plausibility of problem the logical problem I'm illustrating here from human
writings how the atheist is far better focusing on the plausibility and inferential problem rather than
the logical problem because maybe things can make this move from the logical problem maybe this
just can say overall we know in the future life will look bad and it all makes sense yeah maybe but
honestly what's the chance of that not looking very great I mean another example I I have given in
these circumstances to kind of emphasize it's been a restaurant you go to a restaurant and you have
the first course and it's absolutely disgusting it's horrible and imagine the person you're with says
well given that we had is actually horrible first of course I'm sure you know the main course actually
brilliant to make up for it right that's not a logical way to argue the evidence you've got is that the
cooking here is awful so when you're doing an inference about the main course you're gonna
conclude that it's probably similar to the first one quality right not that it's completely contrast
because it's to make up for the I'm quite famous for odyssey and it's quite attractive in a way there's
a guy called John Hick who at University of Birmingham many years coping with evils of the world
provides a challenge that leads to moral and personal growth the world is not intended to be a
paradise it's a place of soul making by struggling through the world we become morally mature and
you can illustrate this with regard to children right parents spend their time guarding their children
from every possibility of hurting themselves and never letting them fall over or you know or play
with things that are dirty or anything like that try to avoid them getting ill or hurt in any way they're
most children are not going to develop into mature adults or at least there's a serious risk they won't
like that with us he allows us to suffer in order to become morally mature John McKee notes that the
logical problem here if God is on impotent God actually makes the laws right God could create beings
who don't need to suffer in order to become morally mature and so forth the parent doesn't like that
right a parent is not making the laws of the universe they're just trying to help their child to develop
as well as possible if given the general constraints of the way things work but God can set the rules
and don't perfectly well if if he wants to create morally mature morally good beings he can create
them just like that he doesn't need to have them suffer in that way OK so that another point actually
a guy I think it's even came up with a nickname he said the world isn't valid soul making and it's just
as plausibly available soul breaking because actually people who suffer terribly in their lives are often
morally wrecked there's as much evidence for you know pain and disease and all the right war and
famine and earthquakes actually turning people into very cynical immoral people who have you
know absolutely um moral despair or are completely turned off moral sorry this is difficult to be
wonderfully moral in a in a world where you're suffering you're struggling to survive OK no one
wants to do is talk a little bit more about this issue we got Matthew there saying look God can if God
can do anything he wants then God can create creatures who are who can be morally mature
without suffering etcetera now somebody might want to say actually you know it's better morally for
individuals to become moral through a struggle through seeing difficulties in the world through
seeing people who need help and it might be that God could just create them in such a way that they
act perfectly morally without going through that stage but maybe it's actually logically a better thing
that they should so one can argue that God can't actually do anything at all that you can describe
God is as it were within the bounds of logic so here's some examples can God create a force too
powerful to control because if you say yes you got a problem oh I see so there is it is possible for to
be powerful to control but if you say no saying no God couldn't do that or something couldn't do it or
can God create a creature that's able to act without his knowledge if you can if it's possible for
something to without his knowledge not knowing but he can't something you can't do I cannot
create utterly pointless evils in the world well if you can't if you can't that's a limit on if you can it
looks like he's not all good so you can you can you can dream of all sorts of paradoxes or or problems
for gods God's qualities now there are ways of getting around this if I were of this I would get around
in this way I would say look when I say God can do anything I mean God can do anything logically
possible right and when I say God is perfectly good and then I add God can do it God's omniscient
omnipotent I only mean to say God can do anything but logically possible for a perfectly good thing
to do so I don't see this as a limit on God but I'm not I'm not committed to these kinds of paradoxes
so there might be some evils in the world that are logically necessary for the achievement of greater
goods John Mackey useful term he calls these absorbed evils so an absorbed evil is 1 which actually
indirectly adds to the perfection of the universe and analogy that's given is certain types of music
and rock music for example music from people like and this these discords attribute of the whole
piece and so somebody might say well in general that you don't get discord you get hard yeah but
these particular discords are there because they so much add to the beauty of the overall piece they
might look like blemishes but actually they're adding to its perfection and the idea is well there might
be some evils in the world that's in that way are absorbed that evil is absorbed within a greater good
so for example sympathy is a great good right the people who feel sympathy for each other is better
than a world that doesn't but you can't really have sympathy without something to be sympathetic
about like pain or disappointment suffering some kind so without suffering you couldn't have
sympathy you only have genuine kind of well founded sympathy is a good thing but you kind of
courage without danger so it's perfectly fine but a good world should have danger in because you
have the courage and the courage and the better than without would be argued that disease bit of a
challenge there without disease you can have a caring disease material of disease is a great good
Swindon has very nice idea he says without regular laws we couldn't learn about the world and
learning about the world both good and bad gives us power over it and therefore therefore extends
our freedom I mean just an example of the crude one but but suppose suppose I don't know that
falling down on the ground hurts in that case I can't get any credit but not pushing you over it's
knowing that I can do you harm but makes me morally responsible for you and ideally means that I'm
deliberately not causing you harm and it's only by learning through experience about what brings
good and bad in the world that we learn to have the power over it that extends our freedom there's
all evils resolved if you say well OK I've got it now the world the only evils in the world are those are
necessary for goods and one of those might be by the way but you know acquiring A moral character
through experience and the way that John describes maybe that is just in itself a good thing so
maybe the world is in fact the best of all possible worlds all evils in it are absorbed all of them are
such that the world would be worse if they weren't there and I think the most appropriate reaction
to that is probably derision laughter Voltaire wrote a parody conduit in which he was basically
laughing at light's claim limits claim that this was the best but it is the best of all possible worlds
philosophically it's a virtual reality as we saw before if you really think this is the best possible
everything that happens actually is the best that completely undermines morality because whatever
you do will be the best right so there's absolutely no need to curb what you do by moral constraints
because whatever you do you know you see that thing that you can steal without any bad effects
nobody gonna see that you're doing etcetera they do it because it's gonna turn out that was the best
so it completely undermines morality and again you get this about the afterlife if the world like this
really is a perfect world then expect the afterlife be better if there is one so this is where the free will
defense comes in and I gather that you have discussed free will but in the in an earlier class I mean
free will is a very big problem I'm gonna say little about but let me explain why the free will defense
is so crucial in the issue of good and evil you can only perfect God it seems plausible to say would not
initiate A causal process but was causally determined to produce unabsorbed evil so unabsorbed evil
remember it's evil that the world would be better off without them allowing the ability can be you
know things like bit of danger to allow for courage and so on so that little bit of table is justified by
the greater good but there's no way God would initiate A causal process that was causally
determined to produce unabsorbed because the world better off without that perfect he had better
alternatives you know that so let's suppose there is some people suppose we think limits was wrong
we do think it's a laughable idea is the best possible world there is some absorbed in the world but
we think there's a God that created it he better not be causally responsible for it so the evil must be
the result of some contractual process process that wasn't causally determined to bring about but
why would God bring such a process into the world why would he want there to be a a process that
risks having terrible results well it looks like that's only gonna be justified if there's some non causal
process that is intrinsically good so we've driven towards the hypothesis that there is some process
in the world which is non goal but whose presence is of such great value that God would see fit to
put in the world even though it's not leading to guarantee good results and it looks like we will be
able candidate so This is why I think the free will defense is such a popular response to the people
talking about this now I'm just gonna highlight some points notice that this argument only works if
have to be incompatibilist I like most of us I'm a compatibilist right I think free will is perfectly
compatible with journalism I don't actually think determinism is true as a quantum mechanics and
stuff but I don't see any problem at all with being free and determined at the same time other
problems and the frequency can only explain moral evil natural evil unless you bring in those four
angels and there's no evidence of those and by the way if you bring in fallen angels if you say well in
order to explain how God can be compatible with the world I'm gonna hypothesis not only God but
all these gods are fallen angels you've got a much more complicated hypothesis so swinburne's
argument that theism is uniquely simple goes out the window and I've got this also this this this nice
logical problem if freedom if free will logically carries a risk of sin which is what you need to say in
order to justify the free will defense right so in order to justify the free will defense was such that
even God couldn't guarantee that we would freely do good things well what about angels and God
himself if angels supposed to be perfectly good and yet free and God is perfectly good and get free
why can't we be perfectly good and get free why couldn't God created us so that we freely do what's
so a lot of problems with freelance and then finally this we come back to this this problem that we
saw also with the fine tuning argument any hypothesis that explains the existence of evil within a
theistic world tends to be equally good at explaining the existence of goodness within an antitheistic
world so this guy here is I call him anti God he's not he's only a devil it's not like you know Christian
God and devil this is anti God this isn't omnipotent omniscient perfectly evil being what we're
considering is why would this being allow goodness into the interesting question would have
goodness in the world think about it this way and see God wants there to be lots of pain suffering
resentment and so on right now if everybody was suffering all the time that would mean that you
didn't have certain possibilities like if I see somebody enjoying themselves right and I can stop them
having that enjoyment I'm doing something evil I wouldn't be able to do that if they didn't enjoy it
right so I'm afraid you have to allow some pleasure in the world in order to allow the existence of
beings who can stop others enjoying that please and another thing of course doing evil freely it is far
worse than doing evil just because you know you don't have any option so if anti God creates
individuals who do evil just because they're programmed that way their economies they may be kind
of superficial but not deeply evil to be deeply evil he has to produce 3 beings who will freely choose
to do evil and I'm afraid that means there's a chance they'll to do for you to do good instead so that's
why the good in the world because there are you know individuals including I've not fallen angels
risen angels who have decided freely to pursue good rather than evil right so so my claim is that
actually you get kind of mirror image or pretty much all the arguments that used to reconcile the
existence of perfectly good God with evil in the world can equally be used to reconcile the existence
of perfectly evil God with the existence of in the if that's true if that's true then the reasonable
conclusion is that whatever created this world is something did we no reason for thinking either
that's perfectly good or perfectly evil if the evidence is compatible either way then maybe the most
reasonable conclusion is moral indifference OK along time ago I wrote a rather scurrilous piece called
devil's advocate which you can find on my website there and there I I pursue this line I basically doing
the mirror image strategy as humans dialogues actually listed the inquiry turn human understanding
but as I say that to you can you can get that

Good question and Swindon actually has a very neat but problematic answer swinburne claims that
moral truths are as philosophers say analytic they're kind of veteran made prior right so he he thinks
that any omniscient being any being who knows everything will thereby know the moral truths so it's
quite elegant theory because it's it's rolling the omnipotence and the omniscience together and then
saying well omniscience automatically brings moral perfection with it I mean he's gonna have the
God is perfectly free and he's gonna say perfectly free being has nothing to stop them acting
according to their perfect knowledge so you know a few more bits to add in then but the basic idea is
that an omniscient being will just so far to know what the moral facts are and notice that this is a this
involves a particular view about the metaphysics of morality right I mean a humian (humes believer)
for example is gonna say actually morality is not about facts morality is much more to do with
intentions and desires and passions not describing the way things are but that's the swinbrune goes

Yeah no I mean I think that's a fair point I mean it seems to me that you are pulled multiple to the
human position which is to say look facts are one thing desires are another and and and they're quite
separate somebody you you anti God right I mean this is actually argument I put in the beginning
with the person who says oh you can only make sense of relief there's a God I actually say actually
you know we the antigod theory requires people to know what is good and evil because it's only if
you know what's evil and still do it but you're really plumbing the depths of evil so anti God would
actually have a a motive for enabling people to have true moral beliefs because you're only really bad
if you truly know to be bad so yeah so I mean I'm with you there I think something could you there's
no reason why you shouldn't have two beings you were in theory in one world you know you got two
things you know that's one of the most one of motivated the other Swindon has this theory of of of
freedom and if you look at what he says but he he thinks that in the case of God b God is not dragged
down by anything other than you know this in any way impairs perfect freedom he will freely
according to the truth that's the like yeah I'm not persuaded by it but it's an ingenious move yeah
yeah question so Contra causal is always like not causally determined right so Contra causal free will
is so-called libertarian free will so the libertarian is someone who claims that free will is incompatible
with determinism causal determinism and also claims we have it right now so the point here is if
you're a compatibilist as I am if you think it's perfectly compatible for an individual to be free but at
the same time causally determined then God could produce could create a being who freely does the
good by causally determining them to do the good freely OK so God could let me create this being it
will freely act well you've got to do that why would you do it and the libertarian answer the librarian
says they would be really free if God has created in such a way that they they inevitably do good
they're not free that's the claim are you from the big topic and I mean briefly why don't I think
there's any incompatibility I think if we being can be determined and still perfectly capable of doing
other than they do right so suppose I am thinking of what to do in a particular circumstance right
suppose for example I come into a restaurant you know I've I've paid for the set meal or whatever I
come up to have my dessert and I go up to the table and there's three desserts there right there's
there's ice cream there's cake and there's Inglis trifle alright wow you don't even see that here yeah
I've tried on sorry Sir I'm sorry that's the last one it's reserved someone else ohh alright but you can
freely choose cake ice cream ice cream no contest so there's a sense in which I could choose cake I
could choose ice cream I couldn't choose it turned out that wasn't open to me right but anybody
who knows me given the choice of cake and ice cream for complicated but take an ice cream they
know exactly what I'm gonna choose absolutely I'm just constituting such as like the ice cream cake
every time so now does that mean somehow I'm forced to take the ice cream rather than no I'm just
made such a free choice I'm always going to the ice cream the fact that I am determined causally
determined that doesn't undermine my freedom in fact I'm doing exactly what I want to do I'm
taking the ice cream if there was some little demon in my head tossing a coin and you know
randomly leading me to choose the cake rather the ice cream even if the ice cream that's not
increasing my freedom it's decreasing it right so if if after the event somebody says could you have
done otherwise you could have chosen the right so that's just a brief explanation I I'm not pulled at
all by the idea that having some kind of random process in your head somehow make you more free
no freedom is about being able to do more or less what you want to do you'd be able to plan to do it
and so there are some complications right I can't say anything about drug addict or person who's
compulsive and so on and things do need to be said about a difficult issue but on the general point of
to be free do you have to be undetermined I say absolutely not I I don't see any any towards it but I
think the intuitive poll comes because because we approach these things with different perspectives
but we're in the position of actually making a choice we say you know it feels open to me to do
either well actually it is open to me to do either I could take the cake I could take the ice cream it is
open to me but when I go through my thinking should I do this should I do that right open to me to
do different things doesn't mean somehow I'm not determined take another case I like playing chess
let's suppose I'm in a position I'm playing a game in which you know there's no funny business it's
like I'm playing the kid and I want to give a chance anything I'm playing some I actually want to win
and here I have a position and I could do this I could do that I got you know several possible moves I
could play they're all open to me and I do this calculation and I think yeah I'm there checkmate so
let's suppose I do that it's not I could have done things could have other things and somebody know
who knows I'm a decently good chess player if it isn't too difficult would be able to predict Peter will
play that I would play that because of the false see it but that's not pairing my freedom alright I I'm
using my judgment to decide what to do and that's the number of options and actually I'm very
happy that in that circumstance I'm clear I'm very happy that randomness doesn't enter into my
calculation of the move and I can reliably spot you know getting three most of the time so you know
the idea that somehow you're only free of some randomness there I just don't buy that at all anyway
that's a big topic you could say any other questions yeah
well exactly that's that's the problem I one of the little problems I pointed out if if you say humans
cannot be both free and at the same time kind of guaranteed to do good is that supposed to be
some logical contradiction you know God can't create us in such a way that we're free and at the
same time guaranteed to do good that is a real problem how can he create angels who are free but
guaranteed to do good how can even God be such that he's free and guaranteed to do good so yeah I
mean this is just an internal contradiction within the previous framework because I have to answer
this I can just say there's yet another problem for the any more questions yes OK

you bring the second not an anti God but the idea is that God creates Satan but Satan supposed to
be freely gonna stay or something like that right well in I think a lot of people do yeah I mainly lots of
philosophers have yeah I mean I I personally think the theory of Omni perfect God is unjustified
strong shall I go I just don't I don't think it's a possible theory but the fact is that lots of philosophers
through history lots of lots are still do accept it so yeah I I just don't see any good reason for leaving
on the ontological argument is rubbish the cosmological argument is rubbish the moral argument is
rubbish etcetera etcetera I think the only argument sounds the slightest chance is the fine tuning
argument but I think it's fine tuning argument does not prove the existence of a morally perfect
being, as I said and I think the physics on which it's based is you know very uncertain and hence
although I I have conceded at the beginning but in 1000 years time it may look like a really strong
argument it does now but if you know my advice to theists that's your best bet OK it's probably we
should call should be or if there's any more questions have a little bit