Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
First, a paradox, a problem in the problem of evil. I shall call it ‘the paradox of evil’.
On the one hand it is of course widely held that the evils in the world present an insuperable difficulty for Judeo-Christian theism. Russell, to take a conspicuous example, challenges any orthodox believer to visit the bedside of a child terminally ill with cancer and yet to retain his faith without hypocrisy (cf. ‘Why I am not a Christian’). No paradox here; just the familiar problem of evil.
1 This essay represents an attempt to give a unified presentation of the thesis advanced in my ‘Religious Morality’ (Mind, April 1963) and ‘Religious Morality: A Reply to Flew and Campbell’ (Mind, forthcoming).