A debate clip was posted recently on Twitter of Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne making some cursory comments about evil:
“The world is a good place….most people in the world are pretty good people…evil is a minor thing in the world, in the structure of things.”
This caused a mixed reaction, from head-scratching bemusement to outright dismissal. It’s obviously false, right? Evil is a minor thing? Tell that to victims of child abuse! Go preach it in Belsen!
However, when properly understood, Swinburne’s comments strike me as obviously correct, and in fact it’s odd that people should be surprised that a Christian philosopher would say such a thing. I want, therefore, to make just a few very quick observations about the comments.
Firstly, Swinburne is a first-rate philosopher who is incredibly careful and measured in his language. Moreover, Swinburne has written a lot about the problem of evil, and it is clear from his written work – both quantity and style – that he takes it very seriously. His comment in this debate was not intended to dismiss the reality or gravity of individual evils faced by very real people. No Christian writing today on the problem of evil would dismiss the horrendous sufferings of the holocaust, the gulag, napalm, starvation, or disease. It’s not as if Swinburne is looking at a drowning child saying “it’s OK, your suffering is only minor, don’t worry about it!” He’s talking at a higher level than that – about “the structure of things.” Arguing that evil is a minor thing in the world is very different from saying that the evil that happens to people is minor.
Secondly, he’s drawing attention – quite rightly – to the enormous amount of good in the world. Much of this good goes unreported precisely because it’s normal. We look after our elderly parents. We educate and discipline our children. We give to charity. Most of us are productive members of society who add to the common good in hundreds of small ways daily: we thank a taxi driver, we make a cup of tea for an upset friend, we help an elderly man lift his groceries into his car, we hold the door for the person behind us. There’s so much good in the world that it’s utterly banal. Evil in the world stands out precisely because it is abnormal. Of course, the media will always focus on the negative – fear and anxiety is one of the best ways to get a news audience. They will report knife crime in London as if every third person in the city is under threat. It massively distorts our perception of the amounts of good and evil in the world.
Thirdly, and finally, Christians typically have a different understanding of what “the world” actually refers to. To the naturalist the world is simply 13.5 billion years of chaos, and each human life within it nothing other than about 3 score and ten, if we’re lucky. However, that’s not the Christian view of the world at all. For Christians, “the world” is the entire state of affairs including such incommensurable goods as salvation, the ultimate defeat of evil, and eternal life. Whether or not evil is mild or minor if naturalism is true is a different question, and the Christian isn’t obliged to make his case within the confines of a naturalistic worldview. Naturalists – I’m sorry to say – don’t call the tune to which we all must dance.
To illustrate the difference: Imagine a white circle with a diameter of 3 inches. Within this white circle imagine now a large black dot measuring 2 inches in diameter. Let the black dot represent evil and the white dot present good; together they symbolize the good and evil in our world. As things stand the black dot takes up most of the space. That’s perhaps the view of the pessimistic naturalist. But now consider the notion of eternal life in Christianity. The white dot begins to expand, while the black stays steady. Imagine now the white dot measures 58 miles in diameter and the black dot within remains at only 2 inches: seemingly, “evil is a minor thing in the world, in the structure of things.”
Stephen J. Graham
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