Hick's Response to Hume

I. The Problem of Evil

• 1. God is infinitely good (good is opposed to evil, so God will eliminate evil as far as God can)

  2. God is infinitely powerful (no limits on what God can do)

  3. Evil exists

This leads to the following argument:

• 1. If God is omnipotent, then God can do anything – including eliminate all evil.

  2. If God is omniscient, then God knows everything – including all evil.

  3. If God is omnibenevolent, then God only desires what is good – never any evil.

  4. Evil exists in the world

  5. If evil and God co-exist, then either God cannot eliminate evil, or God does not know evil, or God does not desire only what is good.

  6. Conclusion: Therefore, God does not exist.

II. Hume’s Use of this Problem

People believe that God is (df.) omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnibenevolent (all-good). However, we know from experience that the world could have been better (the evil in it does not seem necessary). Therefore, we have no reason to believe that God exists.

III. Hick’s Response to the Problem of Evil

Rational belief in God is still possible, even though evil exists.

Negative Theodicy: “It does not claim to explain, nor to explain away, every instance of evil in human experience, but only to point to certain considerations which prevent the fact of evil… from constituting a final and insuperable bar to rational belief in God” (p.106)

III.1. Moral Evil

• • Why and how could God allow people to be wicked?

  • Response: Free-will and sin. Evil enters the world because God created humans to be free.

  • Freedom requires the possibility of doing both good and bad.

III.2. Non-moral Evil: Hick’s Response to Hume

• • Hume believes that, if God exists, then God must have created a perfectly pleasant world.

  • Hick claims that this is an assumption that no rational believer would accept.

  • Instead, the world is a place of ‘soul-making’, which permits humans to develop morally, to become good like God. In other words, evil is necessary. He argues against Hume’s assumption:

  • If the world were perfectly pleasant: no work, no science, no altruism, no needs, no motivation, etc.

  • If such a world exists, morality (right and wrong) would not exist.

  • If no morality exists, human beings cannot become good.

  • Human beings are meant to become good.

  • Conclusion: The world cannot be perfectly pleasant.

IV. Questions:

Would Hick’s solution work for someone who did not believe in an afterlife?

What about the suffering of animals?