MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONS 87many of the arguments offered within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam come
historically from Greek monotheism. Hindu monotheism, perhaps untouched
historically by Greek natural theology, nonetheless contains similar arguments.
There can be evil if Greek monotheism is true. There can be defective things,
things that are poorly realized members of their kind that are incapable of becoming
better-realized members. There can be wrong human choices, instances in which
persons voluntarily go against their knowledge of what is right. But these evils cannot
be evidence against the existence of God, as God is construed in Greek monotheism.
This sort of deity, as we have noted, does not even know that particular persons exist.
No truths that might have been false are objects of divine knowledge, and all historical
claims, biological accounts, all descriptions of physical or psychological reality, have
in common the feature that even if they are true, they might have been false. A Greek
deity is not culpable for lacking such knowledge; it is logically impossible that the
deity of Greek monotheism have any knowledge of what might not have been true.
Nor can the God of Greek monotheism bring about occurrences in space or time; no
divine action is possible. So while there can be natural evils (“monsters” or strongly
defective members of species) and moral evils (wrong human actions), these evils
cannot be evidence that Greek monotheism is false. This points to an interesting
feature of monotheisms. A monotheism without any doctrine of creation or providence
can offer neither God’s help in salvation nor God’s answer to prayer, God’s forgiveness
or God’s aid, and neither is it possible for such a monotheism that the existence of evil
be offered as any evidence against its truth. A monotheism with a doctrine of creation
or providence can offer God’s help in salvation or God’s answer to prayer, God’s
forgiveness or God’s aid, and it is possible that for such a monotheism the existence
of evil be offered as evidence against its truth. Whether evil really is evidence against
monotheism is another matter; the point is that only for certain sorts of monotheism
does the question even arise.
There being things that might not have existed is something to be explained.
There might not have been any human beings, any lions, any trees, any rocks, any
atoms. There are all of these things. There being these things has an explanation. A
common strategy, fine so far as it goes, explains the existence of larger things by
reference to the existence of smaller things of which the larger things are made. But
perhaps sooner or later one gets to things so small that they are not in turn made of
still smaller things; call these things simple units. There might not have been any
simple units, so their existence too has an explanation. But simple units cannot be
explained by reference to the things they are composed of; they are simple, not
composite. So their existence has to be explained in a different way. Alternatively,
suppose that, so to speak, things are composite all the way down – everything is made
up of some things that are also made up of some things, and so on for ever. Then the
question arises as to why there is this dizzying series of composites of composites.^4
Either way, the idea is, we must appeal to something whose non-existence is not an
option, something that exists necessarily. So if there is anything at all, something
exists necessarily. It is obvious that things do exist; so something exists necessarily. This