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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.