the problem of evil argument essays

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

The Problem of Evil

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 1000

Many people believe in God and understand God to be an omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and morally perfect being. [1]

But the world contains quite a lot of evil or badness: intense suffering, premature death, and moral wickedness.

This inspires some questions: Why would God permit such evil? Is there a good reason why? Or does it occur in part because there is no God to prevent it?

Asking these questions involves engaging with the Problem of Evil . [2]

The concern is whether evil provides a reason to disbelieve in God. There are four things one might say about evil, ranging from that it proves that God does not exist to that it provides no evidence at all against God’s existence.

1. The Incompatibility Problem of Evil

The ‘Incompatibility’ or ‘Logical’ versions of the Problem of Evil claim that evil’s existence is logically incompatible with God’s existence: believing in God and evil is like believing in a five-sided square, a contradiction. [3]

Most philosophers today reject this argument. [4] They think that God could have some sufficient reason to permit some evil: e.g., personal growth requires confronting challenges that inherently involve some evil or bad things. These defenses [5] seem to show that it is not contradictory to believe in God and the existence of evil.

2. The Evidential Problem of Evil

Other philosophers argue that the mere existence of evil does not prove that God does not exist, but that the facts about evil provide good evidence against God’s existence. [6]

There are probably billions of evils such that we do not know why God, if there is a God, would permit them. Many argue that if even one of these instances is gratuitous —i.e., God could have prevented it without thereby sacrificing an equal or greater good and without thereby permitting an equal or worse evil—then God does not exist. [7]

Theists have reason to find an explanation or set of explanations that could plausibly justify all evils. This involves trying to find plausible theodicies or explanations of why God would permit that evil or why that evil is not as evidentially weighty as it might seem. Here’s a summary of two of the best theodicies.

2.1. Free Will

Many theists hold that humans’ having significant free will is a very great good, one that is worth the evil that sometimes arises from it. [8]

This being a plausible explanation of evil depends on justifying these claims:

(a) we have libertarian free will [9] (a belief that is mostly rejected by philosophers [10] );

(b) (e.g.) Stalin’s free will was more valuable than the lives of the millions he killed (against, presumably, their freely-willed choices to remain alive);

(d) even apparently natural disasters and disease, including those that harm nonhuman animals [12] , are all the result (e.g.) of free-willed evil-spirits’ choices. [13]

2.2. “Soul-Making”

Perhaps encountering evil and freely responding to it develops various virtues, such as compassion, generosity, and courage. [14]

For this to explain evil, the theist may need to argue that:

(a) God could not have developed those virtues in us any other equally valuable but less harmful ways (e.g,. by creating humans who are more morally sensitive in the first place and reducing evil accordingly);

(b) all evil can reasonably be expected to contribute to soul-making; and

(c) the compassion Smith develops when she sees Jones suffering justifies God using Jones (or allowing Jones to be used) as a means to the end of producing that compassion. [15]

Given these and other theodicies, we must ask how much evidence evil provides, and weigh that against any evidence for God’s existence. This will obviously be very complicated.

3. Outweighing Evidence?

Theists might argue that there is so much evidence for God’s existence that we are justified in being confident that God has a purpose for all evil. [16]

We cannot consider those arguments here, but we should recall how many billions of instances of severe, inscrutable evils there are in the world. Therefore, for this defense to work, perhaps there must be very strong evidence for God’s existence. Also, a substantial majority of philosophers reject theism, [17] and so seem to believe that there is little good evidence for God’s existence. Therefore, this strategy may depend on appealing to a set of generally-rejected arguments to try to explain evil.

4. Evil Is No Evidence?

Some defenses amount to the response that evil is no evidence against God’s existence at all.

Some argue that we should not expect to understand why God would permit evil, and so we should not be confident in our ability to assess whether some evil is gratuitous. [18] If there is a God, God might have a purpose for all the evil in the world, a purpose that we do not or cannot understand, and so we should not trust our doubt that some evil in the world is justified. [19]

Typically, this inspires the question of whether a similar argument can be made about other beliefs we have, thereby threatening to produce a deep, general skepticism about science, morality, and even arguments for God’s existence. [20] If God works in mysterious ways, how do I assess the likelihood that God has some inscrutable reason for tricking me into (wrongly) thinking that other minds exist, that the past exists, that an external world exists, and that I ought to save a child drowning in a shallow pond? This is perhaps the primary focus of the debate about the Problem of Evil in recent years.

Finally, some philosophers argue that God’s existence is actually compatible with gratuitous evil after all, [21] although most philosophers disagree. [22]

5. Conclusion

If each particular evil is even a little bit of evidence against God’s existence, the billions and billions of them in history might really pile up. For many people, the problem of evil is not merely an abstract puzzle, for it challenges their most profound beliefs about what God is like and whether God even exists.

[1] Anselm 1965 [1077-78]: ch. 2.

[2] The Problem of Evil involves engaging arguments from the existence of evil, or types of evils, to the conclusion that God does not exist. So the Problem of Evil is also called The Argument from Evil.

[3] Mackie 1955. “Evidential” versions of the argument, discussed in the next section, typically focus on the totality of evil and can be seen as “Incompatibility” arguments also: the claim is that God’s existence entails that there are no gratuitous or pointless evils—evils God could have prevented it without thereby sacrificing an equal or greater good and without thereby permitting an equal or worse evil—but that there are such gratuitous or pointless evils, which is a logical contradiction.

[4] Rowe 1979: 335.

[5] A “defense” is an attempt to explain why God and evil are not incompatible. Defenses are closely related to theodicies (two of which are presented below) which attempt to explain why God permits evil. Defenses and theodicies are different: defenses hold that there is some possible explanation, even if we’re not sure what it is, while theodicies attempt to supply that actual explanation.

[6] Rowe 1979; Draper 1989; Tooley 2014: § 3.2.1.

[7] Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1999.

[8] Plantinga 1977: 29-59.

[9] For an explanation of what libertarian free will is, see Jonah Nagashima’s Free Will and Free Choice . Libertarians about free will (a view of which has no relation to the political position of the same name) believe that free choices are choices that are not causally determined by the past and the laws of nature (or anything else), and so they believe that determinism is false, yet that such choices are not ultimately random because we are the ultimate source of our choices.

The other broad definition of free will is that of compatibilist free will. On this theory of free will, we can be determined to do what we do, yet our actions can still be done from free will if, e.g., we are doing what we want to do and acting on our own desires. This view of free will seems to allow that God could cause us to not act in horribly evil ways, and that we freely choose to never engage in these evils, and so the free will defense is not available to compatibilists.

[10] Bourget and Chalmers 2014.

[11] So, e.g., Stalin might freely make the choice to kill someone, but whether the effect of that choice—that is, whether someone is actually killed—seems to be another matter. So, a question is whether, if there is a God, God could allow us to freely make decisions (which is assumed to be a great good), but prevent the very bad effects that result from some of them, and God be justified preventing those very bad effects.

[12] Rowe 1979: 337.

[13] Plantinga 1977: 58.

[14] Hick 2007: 253-61.

[15] cf. Kant 1987 [1785]: 4:429; Trakakis 2008.

[16] cf. Rowe 1979: 338.

[17] Bourget and Chalmers 2014.

[18] Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1999: 115.

[19] Wykstra 1998.

[20] Draper 1998: 188; Russell 1998: 196-98. The general response to the Problem of Evil that we are not likely to know whether any evil is gratuitous or pointless is known as “Skeptical Theism,” since skeptics deny that we have a type of knowledge. A concern about skeptical theism is whether the motivations for it lead to or justify other types of skepticism.

[21] van Inwagen 2000; Kraay 2010. van Inwagen’s argument is complex and depends on the (controversial) claim that it can be permissible to allow some unjustified evils, e.g., that it could be permissible to allow someone to remain imprisoned for at least slightly longer than any just imprisonment because sometimes arbitrary lines must be drawn. From there, he appeals to something like a “little by little” argument (based on concerns about vagueness: see Darren Hibb’s Vagueness ). that if a little unjustified evil can be permissibly allowed, then a tiny bit more can be permissibly allowed, so then a little more can be allowed, leading to the conclusion that any unjustified evils can be allowed.

[22] Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1999; Trakakis 2003.

Anselm. (1965 [1077-78]). St. Anselm’s Proslogion . Tr. M. J. Charlesworth. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Bourget, David and David J. Chalmers. (2014). “What Do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies , forthcoming.

Draper, Paul. (1989). “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists.” Noûs 23: 331-50.

———. (1998). “The Skeptical Theist.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 175-92.

Hick, John. (2007). Evil and the God of Love . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder. (1999). “Is Theism Compatible with Gratuitous Evil?” American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (2): 115-30.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals . In Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy . Ed. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 1999.

Kraay, Klaas J. “Theism, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse.” Philosophical Studies 147 (2010), pp. 255-68.

Mackie, J. L. (1955). “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind 64 (254): 200-12.

Plantinga, Alvin. (1977). God, Freedom, and Evil . Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans.

Rowe, William. (1979). “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16(4): 335-41.

Russell, Bruce. (1998). “Defenseless.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 193-205.

Tooley, Michael. (2014). “The Problem of Evil.” In Edward N. Zalta (ed .), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 edition), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/evil/>.

Trakakis, Nick. (2008). “Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?” Sophia 47: 161-91.

———. (2003). “God, Gratuitous Evil, and van Inwagen’s Attempt to Reconcile the Two.” Ars Disputandi 3 (1): 1-10.

van Inwagen, Peter. (2000). “The Argument from Particular Horrendous Evils.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74: 65–80.

Wykstra, Stephen John. (1998). “Rowe’s Noseeum Argument from Evil.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 126-50.

Related Essays

Attributes of God by Bailie Peterson

The Problem of No Best World by Kirk Lougheed

Divine Hiddenness by David Bayless

Hell and Universalism by A.G. Holdier

Because God Says So: On Divine Command Theory by Spencer Case

Possibility and Necessity: An Introduction to Modality by Andre Leo Rusavuk

Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

Design Arguments for the Existence of God by Thomas Metcalf

Free Will and Free Choice by Jonah Nagashima

Bayesianism by Thomas Metcalf

Vagueness by Darren Hibb

Revision History

This essay, posted 8/16/2020, is a revised version of an essay originally posted 4/7/2014.

About the Author

Tom Metcalf is an associate professor at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He specializes in ethics, metaethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Tom has two cats whose names are Hesperus and Phosphorus. http://shc.academia.edu/ThomasMetcalf

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook , Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at the bottom of 1000WordPhilosophy.com

Share this:, 4 thoughts on “ the problem of evil ”.

Pingback: Possibility and Necessity: An Introduction to Modality – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Gorr the God-Butcher and the Problem of Evil - Prindle Institute
Pingback: Free Will and Free Choice – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Attributes of God – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Comments are closed.

Featured Essay The Love of God An essay by Sam Storms Read Now
Faithfulness of God
Saving Grace
Adoption by God

U.S. Edition

Arts & Culture
Bible & Theology
Christian Living
Current Events
Faith & Work
As In Heaven
Gospelbound
Post-Christianity?
TGC Podcast
You're Not Crazy
Churches Planting Churches
Help Me Teach The Bible
Word Of The Week
Upcoming Events
Past Conference Media
Foundation Documents
Church Directory
Global Resourcing
Donate to TGC

To All The World

The world is a confusing place right now. We believe that faithful proclamation of the gospel is what our hostile and disoriented world needs. Do you believe that too? Help TGC bring biblical wisdom to the confusing issues across the world by making a gift to our international work.

The Problem of Evil

Other essays.

“The problem of evil” is one of the most discussed objections to the existence of God and is a top reason many unbelievers give for their unbelief. These objectors argue that since there are so many cases of significant pain and suffering in the world that God could easily prevent, the fact that all this evil was not prevented means it is very unlikely (if not impossible) that God exists.

“The problem of evil” appeals to the phenomenon of evil (significant cases of pain and suffering) as evidence against the existence of God. For many, this evidence appears decisive, because if God existed, he would be powerful enough to prevent such evil, and good enough to want to prevent such evil. Since there is evil, no such powerful and good being exists. For the past two millennia Christians have typically urged two points in reply: theodicy and inscrutability. First, God may very well have a good reason for allowing the evil he does allow – a reason compatible with his holy and good character – and the way of theodicy goes on to list a number of these reasons. Second, the fact that unbelievers may not be able to discern or correctly guess at God’s justifying reason for allowing evil is no good reason to think he doesn’t have a reason. Given the infinity of God’s omniscience, the complexity of his providence, the depth of the goods he aims at, and our own substantial cognitive limitations, we shouldn’t expect to guess God’s reasons.

What Is the Problem of Evil?

The so-called “problem of evil” is an argument against the existence of God that reasons along these lines:

A perfectly powerful being can prevent any evil.
A perfectly good being will prevent evil as far as he can.
God is perfectly powerful and good.
So, if a perfectly powerful and good God exists, there will be no evil.
There is evil.
Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

“Evil,” here is understood as any significant case of pain and suffering in the world, whether “moral” (evil willfully caused by human beings such as murder, adultery, theft, rape, etc.) or “natural” evil (harm caused by impersonal forces of nature such as earthquakes, tornadoes, plague, etc.).

Responding to the Problem of Evil

Nonstarters.

A Christian must be truthful and face the question honestly. It will not do to deny that evil exists (#5 above), for evil is the very presumption of the gospel. Nor can we deny that God could prevent evil (#1 above) or that he is perfect in power and goodness (#3). However, we can (and should) question the second premise above – that a perfectly good God must prevent all evil – for it doesn’t necessarily follow from God’s perfect goodness that he will prevent every evil he can prevent. Perhaps God has a good reason for permitting evil rather than preventing it; if so, then his permission of evil is justified and doesn’t militate against his goodness.

The Ways of Theodicy and Inscrutability

Our response the problem of evil, then, may take either of two approaches. We may argue that the second premise above is false and seek to demonstrate that it is false by showing God’s reasons for permitting evil – the way of “theodicy.” Or we could argue that the second premise is unproven because unbelievers can’t rule out God’s having a good reason for permitting evil – the way of “inscrutability.”

The way of theodicy (from the Greek theos , “God,” and dikaios , “just”; hence, a justification of the ways of God in his dealings with men) seeks to demonstrate God’s reasons for permitting evil. The idea is that by allowing evil God attains greater good than possible apart from evil. The way of theodicy shows that premise (2) is false, arguing that God wouldn’t prevent every evil he could prevent.

The way of inscrutability argues, more modestly, that no one knows that premise (2) is true because no one can know enough to conclude that God doesn’t have good reason for permitting evil. We just cannot grasp God’s knowledge, the complexity of his plans, or the deep nature of the good he aims at in providence. And there is no proof that God does not have good reasons for allowing evil, but because he is good we can only assume that he does. Here we don’t have to come up with ‘theodicies’ to defend God against the problem of evil. Rather, the way of inscrutability shows that it is entirely to be expected that creatures like us can’t come up with God’s reasons, given who God is and who we are.

The Way of Theodicy

Two popular theodicies that have no biblical basis ..

Some theodicies that have been offered lack solid biblical grounding. The free will theodicy , for example, argues that moral evil is due to human abuse of free will. The value of free will is a great good: the possibility of morally good choice and of human beings imaging God by way of these choices. But free will has the unfortunate consequence of allowing for the possibility of moral evil. In response to this we might ask, if free will of this sort is so valuable then why doesn’t God have it, and why won’t we have it in heaven?

The natural law theodicy argues that natural evil is due to the laws of nature. The value of laws of nature is a great good: a stable environment needed for making rational choices of any sort. But laws of nature have the unfortunate consequence of allowing for the possibility of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.). In response to this we might ask, if a stable environment requires the possibility of natural evil by requiring laws of nature then why isn’t there any natural evil in the pre-fall Garden of Eden or in the new heavens and the new earth?

Four popular theodicies have some biblical basis

By contrast, at least four theodicies have been offered that have some biblical basis. The punishment theodicy argues that suffering is a result of God’s just punishment of evildoers (Gen 3:14-19; Rom 1:24-32, 5:12, 6:23, 8:20-21; Isa 29:5-6; Ezek 38:19; Rev 6:12; 11:13; 16:18). In punishment God aims at the good of displaying his judgment against sin. The soul-building theodicy argues that suffering leads us from self-centeredness to other-centeredness (Heb 12:5-11; Rom 5:3-5; 2Cor 4:17; Jas 1:2-4; 1Pet 1:6-7; cf. Prov 10:13, 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-24, 29:15). In painful providences God aims at the good of displaying his goodness in shaping our character for good. The pain as God’s megaphone theodicy argues that pain is God’s way of getting the attention of unbelievers in a noncoercive way so that they might forget the vanities of earth, consider spiritual things instead, and perhaps even repent of sin (Luke 13:1-5). In pain God aims at the good of displaying his mercy that through such warnings we might be delivered from the wrath to come. The higher-order goods theodicy says that some goods can’t exist apart from the evils to which they are a response. There is no courage without danger, no sympathy without suffering, no forgiveness without sin, no atonement without suffering, no compassion without need, no patience without adversity. God must often allow lots of evils to make these goods a part of his world, given how these goods are defined (Eph 1:3-10; 1Pet 1:18-20).

These theodicies fall under the umbrella of the “greater good theodicy.”

A “greater good theodicy” (GGT) argues that the pain and suﬀering in God’s world play a necessary role in bringing about greater goods that could not be brought about otherwise. The question that remains, then, is just this: does the Bible really teach that God aims at great goods by way of various evils?

Constructing the “Greater Good Theodicy”: a Three-Fold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

Our argument here is that Scripture combines the ways of theodicy and inscrutability . The biblical accounts of Job, Joseph, and Jesus reveal the goodness of God in the midst of evil, weaving together these three themes:

God aims at great goods (either for mankind, or for himself, or both).
God often intends these great goods to come about by way of various evils .
God leaves created persons in the dark (in the dark about which goods are indeed his reasons for the evils, or about how the goods depend on the evils).

Thus, the Bible seems to strongly suggest that the GGT (God’s aiming at great goods by way of various evils) is in fact his modus operandi in providence, his “way of working.” But this GGT is tempered by a good dose of divine inscrutability.

The Case of Job

In the case of Job God aims at a great good: his own vindication – in particular, the vindication of his worthiness to be served for who he is rather than for the earthly goods he supplies (Job 1:11; 2:5). God intends the great good of the vindication of his own name to come to pass by way of various evils . These are a combination of moral evil and natural evil (Job 1:15, 16, 17, 19, 21-22; 2:7, 10; 42:11). God also leaves Job in the dark about what God is doing , for Job has no access to the story’s prologue in chapter 1. And when God speaks to him “out of the whirlwind” he never reveals to Job why he suffered. Instead, Job’s ignorance of the whole spectrum of created reality is exposed (Job 38:4-39:30; 40:6-41:34), and Job confesses his ignorance of both creation and providence (Job 40:3-5; 42:1-6).

The Case of Joseph

In the case of Joseph we find the same. God aims at great goods: saving the broader Mediterranean world from a famine, preserving his people amid such danger, and (ultimately) bringing a Redeemer into the world descended from such Israelites (Matt 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38). God intends the great good of the preservation of his people from famine to come to pass by way of various evils (Gen 45:5, 7; Psa 105:16-17), including Joseph’s betrayal, being sold into slavery, and suffering unjust accusation and imprisonment (Gen 37, 39). Joseph sees these evils as the means of God’s sovereign providence (Gen 50:20). But God leaves Joseph’s brothers, the Midianite traders, Potiphar’s wife, and the cupbearer in the dark . None of these people knew the role their blameworthy actions would play in preserving God’s people in a time of danger. They had no clue which goods depended on which evils, or that the evils would even work toward any goods at all.

The Case of Jesus

And in the case of Jesus we see the same again. God aims at great goods: the redemption of his people by the atonement of Christ and the glorification of God in the display of his justice, love, grace, mercy, wisdom, and power. God intends the great good of atonement to come to pass by way of various evils : Jewish plots (Matt 26:3-4, 14-15), Satan’s promptings (John 13:21-30), Judas’s betrayal (Matt 26:47-56; 27:3-10; Luke 22:22), Roman injustice (Matt 26:57-68), Pilate’s cowardice (Matt 27:15–26), and the soldiers’ brutality (Matt 27:27-44). But God leaves various created agents (human and demonic) in the dark , for it is clear that the Jewish leaders, Satan, Judas, Pilate, and the soldiers are all ignorant of the role they play in fulfilling the divinely prophesied redemptive purpose by the cross of Christ (Acts 2:23, 3:18, 4:25-29; John 13:18, 17:12, 19:23-24).

Licensing and Limiting the GGT

In each narrative, the first two themes highlight the way of theodicy (God aiming at great goods by way of evils), while the third theme highlights the way of inscrutability (left to ourselves, we cannot discern what God’s reasons are for any case of evil). By way of the first two themes Scripture repeatedly encourages the view that God has a justifying reason for permitting the evils of the world. That is what’s right with the way of theodicy. But Scripture, by way of the third theme, repeatedly discourages the view that we can ever know what that reason is in any particular case of evil. That is what’s right with the way of inscrutability. In contemporary philosophy, these are usually presented as two different ways to solve the problem of evil (theodicy and inscrutability). However, the Bible seems to combine these two ways when it speaks of God’s relation to the evils in the world. That is, it licenses the greater good theodicy as an overall perspective on evil, but wisely limits that perspective in a way that is instructive for both Christians and non-Christians.

Licensing the GGT: God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

God’s sovereignty over natural evil.

It is one thing to acknowledge God’s sovereign and purposeful providence over the moral and natural evils mentioned in the Job, Joseph, and Jesus narratives. It is quite another to claim that God is sovereign over all moral and natural evils. But this is what the Bible repeatedly teaches. This takes us a considerable way towards licensing the GGT as a general approach to the problem of evil. The Bible presents multitudes of examples of God intentionally bringing about natural evils – famine, drought, rampaging wild animals, disease, birth defects such as blindness and deafness, and even death itself – rather than being someone who merely permits nature to ‘do its thing’ on its own. Here are some samples:

Famine (Deut 32:23-24; 2Kgs 8:1; Psa 105:16; Isa 3:1; Ezek 4:16, 5:16-17, 14:13, 14:21; Hos 2:9; Amos 4:6, 9; Hag 2:17)
Drought (Deut 28:22; 1Kgs 8:35; Isa 3:1; Hos 2:3; Amos 4:6-8; Hag 1:11)
Rampaging wild animals (Lev 26:22; Num 21:6; Deut 32:23-24; 2Kgs 17:25; Jer 8:17; Ezek 5:17, 14:15, 14:21, 33:27)
Disease (Lev 26:16, 25; Num 14:12; Deut 28:21-22, 28:27; 2Kgs 15:5; 2Chron 21:14, 26:19-20)
Birth defects such as blindness and deafness (Exod 4:11; John 9:1-3)
Death itself (Deut 32:39; 1Sam 2:6-7)
Ten Egyptian plagues (Exod 7:14-24, 8:1-15, 8:16-19, 8:20-32, 9:1-7, 9:8-12, 9:13-35, 10:1-20, 10:21-29, 11:4-10, 12:12-13, 12:27-30)
‘Impersonal’ forces and objects (Psa 65:9-11, 77:18, 83:13-15, 97:4, 104:4, 104:10-24, 107:25, 29, 135:6-7, 147:8, 147:16-18, 148:7-8, Jonah 1:4, Nah 1:3-4, Zech 7:14, Matt 5:45, Acts 14:17)

God’s Sovereignty over Moral Evil

In addition, and perhaps surprisingly, the Bible presents God as having such meticulous control over the course of human history that a wide range of moral evils – murder, adultery, disobedience to parents, rejecting wise counsel, even human hatred – can be regarded as “of the Lord.” Without erasing or suppressing the intentionality of creatures – and this includes their deliberations, their reasoning, their choosing between alternatives they consider and reflect upon – God’s own intentionality stands above and behind the responsible choices of his creatures. Again, some samples:

Eli’s sons’ disobedience (1Sam 2:23-25)
Samson’s desire for a foreign wife (Jdg 14:1-4)
Absalom, Rehoboam, and Amaziah rejecting wise counsel (2Sam 17:14; 1Kgs 12:15; 2Chron 25:20)
Assassination (2Chron 22:7, 9, 32:21-22)
Adultery (2Sam 12:11-12, 16:22)
Human hatred (Psa 105:23-25; Exod 4:21; Deut 2:30, 32; Josh 11:20; 1Kgs 11:23, 25; 2Chron 21:16-17)

God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

So the Job, Joseph, and Jesus passages are not anomalies, but part and parcel of a more general view the Bible takes on the subject, with respect to both natural and moral evil. Indeed, in addition to this large swath of ‘particular’ texts about individual cases of evil, there are quite a few “universal” texts which seem to trace all calamities, all human decision-making, all events whatsoever, back to the will of God.

God’s sovereignty over all calamity (Ecc 7:13-14; Isa 45:7; Lam 3:37-38; Amos 3:6)
God’s sovereignty over all human decision-making (Prov 16:9, 19:21, 20:24, 21:1; Jer 10:23)
God’s sovereignty over all events whatsoever (Psa 115:3; Prov 16:33; Isa 46:9-10; Rom 8:28, 11:36; Eph 1:11)

Limiting the GGT: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

Establishing the burden of proof.

Of course, each specific theodicy mentioned earlier has significant limitations. For instance, the Bible frequently discourages the idea that the punishment theodicy can explain all evils in the world (Job 1:1, 1:8, 2:3, 42:7-8; John 9:1-3; Acts 28:1-6). More generally, Christians can never know enough about a person’s situation, or about God’s purposes, to rule in a specific theodicy as being God’s reason for permitting evil in a particular case. In fact, it would be entirely presumptuous to do so. But if he who affirms must prove, then the question in the problem of evil is not whether Christians know enough to “rule in” the applicability of a theodicy on any particular occasion, but whether critics know enough to “rule out” the applicability of any theodicy. But how could a critic reasonably claim to know that there is no reason that would justify God in permitting suffering? How could he know that premise (2) of the original argument is true? For why think that God’s reasons for permitting particular cases of evil are the kinds of things that we would discern by our cognitive capacities, if such reasons were there?

Analogies for our Cognitive Limitations

It is widely recognized that we have cognitive limitations with respect to discerning goods and connections, at least in territories where we lack the relevant expertise, experience, or vantage point. Some examples:

It doesn’t seem to me that there is a perfectly spherical rock on the dark side of the moon right now, but that’s no reason to conclude that such a rock isn’t there.
It didn’t seem to any medievals that the theories of special relativity or quantum mechanics were true, but that was no reason to think they weren’t true.
It didn’t seem to humans in earlier eras that fundamental human rights of one sort or another were in fact fundamental human rights, but that was no reason to think there weren’t any such rights.
It wouldn’t seem to a non-Greek-speaker that spoken Greek sentences have any meaning, but that is no reason to think they don’t have a meaning.
It wouldn’t seem to the musically uninitiated that Beethoven projected the ‘sonata form’ onto the symphony as a whole, giving the entire musical work a fundamental unity it would not otherwise have had. But it wouldn’t follow from their ignorance that Beethoven didn’t have such a purpose, much less that he was unsuccessful in executing it.
It might not seem to my one-month-old son that I have a good reason for him to receive a painful series of shots at the doctor’s office. But it wouldn’t follow from his ignorance that there isn’t a good reason.

God is omniscient, which means he not only knows everything that we are likely to guess at, but every truth whatsoever. This means that God knows things that we cannot even fathom. As the above analogies suggest, this is easily demonstrated for a huge range of cases. If the complexities of an infinite God’s divine plan for the unfolding of the universe does involve God’s recognizing either deep goods, or necessary connections between various evils and the realization of those goods, or both of these things, would our inability to discern these goods or connections give us a reason for thinking they aren’t there? What would be the basis of such confidence? But without such confidence, we have little reason to accept premise (2) of the problem of evil. So we have little reason to accept its conclusion.

Biblical Argument for Divine Inscrutability

The theme of divine inscrutability is not only exceedingly defensible common sense. It also looms large in the Bible, having both pastoral and apologetic implications. It closes the mouths of Christians who would insensitively offer “God’s reasons” to those who suffer (when they don’t know such reasons). And it closes the mouths of critics who would irrationally preclude divine reasons for the suffering. Imagine we were on the scene in the cases of Job (as his friend), Joseph (as his brother), and Jesus (as his tormentor). Would we have been able to guess at God’s purpose for the suffering? Would we not instead have been wholly unaware of any such purpose? Does not a large part of the literary power of the Bible’s narrative, and the spiritual encouragement it offers, rest upon this interplay between the ignorance of the human actors and the wisdom of divine providence?

One of the most extended reflections in the New Testament on the problem of evil – in this case, the evil of Jewish apostasy – is Romans 9-11. Paul’s concluding doxology blends together these twin themes of divine sovereignty over evil and divine inscrutability in the midst of evil:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen (Rom 11:33–36).

To the extent that God has not spoken about a particular event in history, his judgments are unsearchable, and his paths are beyond tracing out. But that does not mean there is not a greater good which justifies God’s purposing of that event.

Explaining Evil: Four Views

W. Paul Franks (ed.), Explaining Evil: Four Views , Bloomsbury, 2019, 180pp., $27.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781501331121.

Reviewed by Matthew K. Douglass, Ouachita Baptist University

When confronted with the reality of widespread and terrible suffering, we naturally seek an explanation for why such things happen. In their attempts to make sense of suffering, philosophers have settled on a handful of ways to discuss the problem, dividing it up into smaller, more manageable pieces. It is common, for instance, to distinguish suffering caused by human cruelty from suffering that follows from indifferent laws of nature. Some philosophers address specific instances of suffering that are so horrific or seemingly pointless that they defy explanation, while others focus on why there is so much suffering in the world and why it is unfairly distributed. However, the problem of evil is parsed, it is typically stated as a problem for theism. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect, he must have the inclination and ability to eliminate evil. Why, then, does evil exist?

As valuable as such discussions are, framing the issue as a problem for theism can hide the fact that evil is a problem for everyone, theist and atheist alike. As W. Paul Franks notes in the introductory chapter, "the task of explaining evil is not something that falls to theists alone . . . Non-theists are just as prone to seek out explanations" (2). And because the problem of evil is often stated as an argument against theism, discussions can focus too narrowly on whether this theodicy or that objection to theism is successful. However, Franks continues, "while this is a worthwhile activity, taken alone it doesn't actually give us what we were initially looking for -- an explanation for evil" (2).

The central purpose of the book, therefore, is to keep the bigger question in mind and to find a satisfactory explanation for evil. Toward that end, the book presents four competing explanations for evil. Each chapter begins with a leading essay that presents and defends an account for why evil exists, followed by responses from the other three contributors, and finishing with a reply from the original author. The first two chapters deal with theistic accounts from Richard Brian Davis and Paul Helm, while the final two chapters present the views of atheists Michael Ruse and Erik J. Wielenberg.

It is worth commenting on the scope of the book before I summarize each chapter. In order to explain evil, it is first necessary to at least roughly define what evil is. All four authors, it turns out, conceive of evil in moral terms, and thus "natural evils" like earthquakes, disease, and famine are mostly left out of the discussion. In the introduction, Franks says that separating the problem of moral evil from nature-based suffering helps us see that a solution to one problem may not have anything to do with the other. Moreover, he claims, separating the problems encourages non-theists, who may not think that nature-based suffering poses any philosophical problem, to nevertheless engage with the problem of evil (6). To be sure, there are benefits to focusing on moral evils alone. However, an overwhelming amount of suffering results from the indifferent forces of nature, and even if it poses no special problem for an atheist, it is an acute problem for theists. Thus, even if nature-based suffering does not properly count as evil , it still would have been good for the theists (at least) to discuss the problem more. Having said that, let me turn to the substance of each chapter.

In Chapter 1, Davis explains evil from the perspective of "agent-causal theism." According to this view, evil exists because humans were endowed by God with the power of self-motion, "of initiating volitions to act . . . in light of the reasons [they] have for acting" (14). After briefly giving reasons to think that humans have agent-causal powers, Davis devotes most of his essay to the claim that only agent-causal theism can successfully explain the reality of evil. As Davis describes it, evil essentially involves immoral thoughts, actions, and decisions freely chosen by a conscious moral agent. But free will, he argues, is an illusion if every choice has been predetermined by a series of prior external causes. Consequently, deterministic worldviews -- in particular Darwinian Naturalism and Calvinistic Theism -- will be unable to account for the sort of freedom that makes evil possible. Moreover, he argues, Darwinian Naturalism cannot explain the existence of conscious beings, since there is no way for purely physical causes to produce consciousness. Ultimately, Davis concludes, evil is possible only if theism is true. Thus, ironically, the reality of evil is proof of God's existence.

In Chapter 2, Helm defends Theistic Compatibilism; however, he is careful to note, his compatibilism is not essential to his explanation of evil. Instead, Helm focuses on two distinct questions. First, what is God's purpose for ordaining/permitting evil? Second, granted that God ordains evil, how does it occur? Helm answers the first question by considering God's purpose in creating the world. According to Helm, God creates in order to express his glory, power, goodness, and perfection. Following Alvin Plantinga's felix culpa theodicy, Helm suggests that a world in which God becomes incarnate, atones for sin, and defeats evil is incommensurably better than a world without evil. To explain how evil comes about, Helm interprets "the Fall" story in Genesis as an historical account. On this reading, humanity was originally given a good, but mutable character. Unfortunately -- for reasons that we can never fully understand -- the original humans rebelled against God and now all humanity is bound to sin. Evil, therefore, is the product of this sinful nature, though importantly, God will eventually restore and glorify the original creation. Helm's approach in this chapter follows the scholastic tradition of "faith seeking understanding." For him, philosophy is useful in this search for understanding, but ultimately it is limited; since we are inquiring into the inscrutable will of God, questions will inevitably arise that human reason cannot answer. Similarly, while Helm values the natural sciences, he argues that when science conflicts with faith, faith should take priority: "The important thing is that science is provisional, revelation is not" (61).

Next, the book switches to two atheistic accounts of evil. In Chapter 3, Ruse defends his opening claim that "I believe in the existence of evil" (83), while at the same time rejecting objective morality. An evil action, on his view, is one that goes against the general moral sentiments ingrained in us through evolution. In complex organisms, especially those who live in large social groups, genetically-determined patterns of behavior arise in order to promote the long-term survival of a species. In humans, the sense of right and wrong arose as both a shortcut mechanism for making complex decisions in a social context, as well as a motivator to cooperate despite the inclination to cheat and steal whenever possible. Importantly, on Ruse's account morality depends on human nature and is thus universal, not relative among people or cultures. Thus, evil exists because it is a violation of the natural. "I think Himmler was evil," he writes, "because he consciously of choice went against what it is to be a human being" (101). At the same time, however, morality is contingent since humanity could have evolved differently and some other rules of behavior might have been necessary for long-term survival. Ultimately, then, Ruse affirms the existence and substance of morality, and, in turn, the reality of evil; he simply denies that morality is objective or based on anything non-physical, like Platonic Forms or the divine will.

In the final chapter, Wielenberg explains evil from the perspective of "robust normative realism." On this view, being evil is a non-natural property that cannot be reduced to a natural property (like being painful ) or a supernatural property (like being forbidden by God ). In addition, Wielenberg affirms the existence of basic ethical facts -- substantive, metaphysically necessary moral truths that are true without explanation or external justification. These facts form the basis of morality and are not based on anything else. One such ethical fact is that it is evil to cause pain just for fun. But what, precisely, is the relationship between the property being an instance of causing pain for fun and the property being evil? According to Wielenberg, there is a robust causal relationship between the two; the first simply and directly causes the next, without any intermediate law of nature. So, on his view, evil exists in our world because certain non-moral properties, like pain and cruelty, exist. As for the prevalence of evil, Wielenberg turns to the specific evil of dehumanization, in which the perpetrator denies the human personhood of his victim. After describing some examples and common features of dehumanization, Wielenberg concludes that "evolutionary forces have shaped our minds so that dehumanization comes easily to us, though the specific nature of dehumanization varies across cultures" (137).

Overall, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on the problem of evil. It approaches the problem in a way that is refreshingly different from the norm. The position-and-response format allows the reader to grasp the key elements of each view, briefly stated and in conversation with each other. Because the position, objections, and replies are collected together, by the end of each chapter it is clear what the lead position is, as well as its strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately, to allow for such back-and-forth within a short volume, each essay is condensed and several key assertions are left unsupported. Similarly, the brevity of the volume restricts the interaction among the authors. Each leading essay is subjected to three sets of objections, some of which are significant and would require a full essay to address adequately. This is not to say that the arguments are weak or half-baked; the authors frequently refer to previous works where their views are discussed in more depth, and a helpful list of recommended reading is included as an appendix. And for the most part, the authors do a good job of sketching plausible responses to the various objections, though in some instances, serious objections are dispatched with just a few sentences.

Despite these limitations, the book is engaging and accessible for interested readers. The essays are short and clear, giving enough detail to explain each position without overwhelming the reader. In addition, the book touches on a wide variety of philosophical topics -- the nature of free will, normative ethics and metaethics, possible worlds, epistemology, and philosophy of language. For undergraduate classes, the book would be a good introduction to some of these topics and a useful way to show how they are interrelated.

Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Emotions
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Language Acquisition
Language Variation
Language Families
Lexicography
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Media
Music and Religion
Music and Culture
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Politics
Law and Society
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Neuroanaesthesia
Clinical Neuroscience
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Toxicology
Medical Oncology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Medical Ethics
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Security
Computer Games
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business Ethics
Business Strategy
Business History
Business and Technology
Business and Government
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic History
Economic Systems
Economic Methodology
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Natural Disasters (Environment)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
International Political Economy
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Political Theory
Politics and Law
Politics of Development
Public Policy
Public Administration
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of St Andrews in 2003

< Previous
Next chapter >

Lecture 1 The Problem of Evil and the Argument from Evil

Published: June 2006
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter is a defence of the author's approach to the problem of evil, by way of an examination of the argument from evil. Several different ‘problems of evil’ and ‘arguments from evil’ are examined. The contention that there is an ‘overarching’ problem of evil, a problem that confronts both theists and atheists, is considered and rejected.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]
Google Scholar Indexing

Personal account

Sign in with email/username & password
Get email alerts
Save searches
Purchase content
Activate your purchase/trial code
Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with username/password
Recommend to your librarian
Institutional account management
Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institutionâ€™s website and Oxford Academic.

Click Sign in through your institution.
Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institutionâ€™s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see â€˜Sign in through society siteâ€™ in the sign in pane within a journal:

Click Sign in through society site.
When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Rights and permissions
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

The Problem of Evil

The concepts of natural and moral evil

Natural evil is evil which results from the workings of the natural world, such as natural disasters and disease. God designed and created the natural world which seems to make God responsible for the evil and suffering that occurs as a result of nature. This is considered a problem for God’s existence because God could have designed a world without natural evil in it.

Moral evil is evil which is caused by human action, such as murder and torture. There are infamous examples throughout history of evil actions on a mass scale, such as the holocaust and wars. This is a problem for God’s existence because why doesn’t God intervene to prevent these things?

The logical problem of evil

This is the a priori argument that evil and the God of classical theism (as defined as omnibenevolent and omnipotent) cannot exist together.

Epicurus (ancient Greek philosopher, one of the first to formulate the problem of evil)

Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotent
Is God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolent
If God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?
If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?

Mackie reformulated this argument into the ‘inconsistent triad’ which held that the God of classical theism (omnipotent and omnibenevolence) cannot exist if evil exists. Either Omnipotence, omnibenevolence or evil must not exist, since all three are inconsistent. Omnipotence entails the power to eliminate evil. Omnibenevolence entails the motivation to prevent evil. Something cannot possibly exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it. Therefore if evil exists, an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God cannot exist. God could at most be omnibenevolent or omnipotent but not both. This is known as the Logical problem of evil which claims that it is logically impossible for both God (as defined with omnipotence & omnibenevolence) and evil to both exist.

P1. An omnipotent God has the power to eliminate evil. P2. An omnibenevolent God has the motivation to eliminate evil. P3. Nothing can exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it. C1. Evil, omnipotence and omnibenevolence thus form an inconsistent triad such that God (as classically defined) and evil cannot possibly co-exist.

This is an a priori argument because the conclusion follows from a logical analysis of the definitions of the concepts ‘omnibenevolence’, ‘omnipotence’ and ‘evil’, without reference to experience.

The argument is then sometimes developed into an a posteriori argument by referencing our experience of evil and drawing the conclusion not just that God and evil cannot co-exist, but that since evil does exist God does not exist:

P4. Evil exists because we experience evil in the world. C2. Therefore God does not exist.

Whether in its a priori or a posteriori form, the logical problem of evil is deductive. If its premises are true, its conclusion must be true.

The logical problem makes a large claim, that evil and God cannot possibly co-exist. Defeating the logical problem requires conceiving of some logically possible scenario or reason God could have for allowing evil.

The Evidential problem of evil

This is the a posteriori argument that the evidence of evil in the world makes belief in God unjustified. There is a logical possibility that evil and a perfect God exist together, but the evidence is against that possibility actually being true.

The crucial thing to understand about the evidential problem is that it is an inductive argument. It regards evil as evidence against God’s existence. It doesn’t try to claim that evil logically proves God’s non-existence. It makes the lesser, though arguably easier to defend claim, that evil makes belief in God unjustified.

Hume puts forward an evidential problem of evil. Hume is an empiricist and approaches the problem of evil as such. He points out the a posteriori evidence of evil in the world:

1 – Animal suffering. Why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all? 2 – Creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness 3 – Why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil 4 – Why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?

A God could have made this world without such evil, making it evidence against a perfect God existing. Hume says it is ‘possible’ that a perfect God exists but allows evil for reasons consistent with omnibenevolence, ‘but they are unknown to us’. Hume is arguing that whatever speculations theologians like Augustine and Irenaeus might invent about God’s ‘reasons’ for allowing evil, we have no evidence that God has such reasons.

“I conclude that however consistent the world may be … with the idea of such a God, it can never provide us with an inference to his existence.”

“There can be no grounds for such an inference when there are so many misfortunes in the universe, and while these misfortunes could—as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject—easily have been remedied. I am sceptic enough to allow that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such ·divine· attributes as you suppose; but surely they can never prove these attributes.” – Hume.

Hume, as an empiricist, insists that we are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests. The evidence of an imperfect world, while logically compatible with a perfect God, makes belief in a perfect God unjustified. You can’t infer perfect goodness from evil. An empirical inference from evil to belief in a perfectly good God is not valid.

P1. We are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests (empiricism). P2. We only have evidence of imperfection (a world with both good and evil). C1. We are only justified in believing that imperfection exists. C2. So, belief in a perfectly good being is not justified.

The only justifiable route to belief in anything, including God, is through experience. Yet, experience shows us an imperfect world full of evil. So, because of evil, belief in God is not justified.

The evidential problem claims less than the logical problem of evil. Defeating the evidential problem thus requires more. A defender of God must not merely think of some logically possible reason God could have for allowing evil, they must actually show that there is good evidence for thinking that not merely possible but actually true.

Augustine’s theodicy

Augustine’s theodicy was born from his contemplating the origin of sin. By observing himself and others, he thought humans had a natural predisposition to sin, which for him raised the question of where that came from, since it would seem contradict God’s omnibenevolence to suggest that God created it. He concluded that humanity must be to blame for it and looked to the Genesis story as an explanation.

The garden of Eden was a perfect place. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and as a punishment were banished to this earth often called a ‘fallen world’. This episode is referred to as ‘the Fall’. After their sin, God said Eve will now have pain in childbirth and Adam would have to ‘toil’ the land to make food.

Original Sin is the idea that the first sin of Adam and Eve disobeying God’s command resulted in a corruption in all humanity. Original sin is a corruption in human nature which makes people want to sin. All humans have inherited Original Sin from Adam and Eve according to Augustine as we were all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’. Augustine thought that the biological basis for procreation was “some sort of invisible and intangible power … located in the secrets of nature” yet then goes on to argue that all future generations of people are “in the loins of the father”. Augustine claims “We were all in [Adam] … we all were that one man who fell into sin” We existed in merely a “seminal nature from which we were to be begotten” but when that became “vitiated through sin” it became impossible for anyone to be born without original sin. This means that we are all born sinful beings who therefore deserve this punishment of living in a fallen world. God is not responsible for evil as it results from the free will of angels and humans.

“All evil is either sin or a punishment for sin” – Augustine.

Augustine argued Evil does not actually exist. It is merely a privation of good, meaning it is the absence of Good. As humans fell away from God, we fell away from his goodness, resulting in what we mistakenly call ‘evil’. Evil has no ‘positive existence’, only a negative one. E.g. darkness does not actually exist, it’s merely the absence of light. Darkness is not a ‘thing’ but our minds trick us into thinking it is.

Plantinga’s ‘free will defence’

Plantinga’s response to the problem of evil is a development of Augustine’s theodicy.

Plantinga develops a ‘free will defence’ of the co-existence of God and evil. His argument intended to respond to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, which argues that it is impossible for God (as classically defined) and evil to exist together. Plantinga argues that it is possible for God and evil to exist together because evil is the result of free will.

Moral evil results from human actions. Some object that free will cannot explain natural evil, but Plantinga explains that it is logically possible for natural evil to either result from:

The free will of demons and Satan.
The free will of Adam and Eve justifing God in allowing natural evil into the world as punishment.

This raises the question of why God gave us free will at all though. Wouldn’t it have been better for us to live in a perfectly good world yet not have free will? Plantinga answers that if God didn’t give us free will, our universe would have no value. Our lives would have been value-less. Therefore, no matter how much negative value you think giving us free will could result in, value itself would not be possible without it. So, Plantinga thinks we have to accept that our universe is better for having value despite the downsides.

P1. Evil is the result of the misuse of free will. P2. God cannot remove evil without removing free will (that would be logically impossible). P3. Life would be valueless without free will, so it is better to have free will despite the evil its misuse can lead to. C1. It is therefore better for evil to exist than not to. C2. An omnibenevolent and omnipotent God therefore would allow evil.

It is logically impossible for God to remove evil without removing the greater good of free will. A perfect God would therefore allow evil.

Augustine & Plantinga vs the logical problem on moral responsibility

A strength of Augustine’s theodicy against the logical problem of evil is that it does seem logically possible that God allows evil because it is either sin (moral evil) or punishment for sin (natural evil) or the work of satanic energies (natural evil).

Furthermore, Augustine does not make the mistake of arguing that we are morally responsible for Adam and Eve’s actions. His argument is that a factual consequence of Adam’s sin was that all future humanity became infected with original sin and thus deserve punishment. We deserve punishment for being sinful beings.

Weakness: It’s not our fault that we have original sin

Followers of Pelagius objected that Adam’s crime is not a personal crime of his descendants. So, it still seems unfair, unjust and thus incompatible with omnibenevolence to suggest that we deserve punishment for it. This argument is strongest when considering cases like children with cancer. It’s difficult to maintain that a child deserves cancer because it has original sin. Augustine would have to say it is God’s justice for that child to get cancer and that God is still omnibenevolent despite allowing it. That seems logically inconsistent.

Evaluation defending Augustine

It might seem unfair, but Augustine puts it down to the “secret yet just judgement of God”, indicating that it is inscrutable – impossible for us to understand – but we should have faith it is just. Augustine points to Psalm 25:10: ‘All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth,’ and concludes: neither can his grace be unjust, nor his justice cruel”.

Furthermore, children suffering from natural evil could just be the work of demons.

Evaluation criticizing Augustine

The case of innocent children suffering natural evil destroys Augustine’s argument. He could maintain that adults deserve natural evil as punishment for original sin even though it’s not their fault they were born in sin. Augustine still thinks that giving in to original sin counts as a choice. However, he could not argue this about small children who are too young to choose to sin. There is no logically coherent way to claim that small children deserve to suffer. So, Augustine’s theodicy is not logically coherent and thus fails to solve the logical problem of evil.

Whether the doctrine of original sin is supported by the evidence

A strength of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin is that it can be evidenced from observing human behaviour and society

G. K. Chesterton made this point, arguing that you could see evidence for original sin ‘in the street’. R. Niebuhr said original sin was the one ‘empirically verifiable’ Christian doctrine.

When Augustine was 16, he and his friends stole some pears. What Augustine found remarkable on reflection was that he did not steal them because he was hungry (in fact he threw them away). He concluded that he did it just for the pleasure of sinning.

Weakness: The scientific evidence is against Augustine

Geneticists claim that the evidence we have of genetic diversity means that it’s not possible for all of humanity to have descended from two people. This, plus the other evidence for evolution, suggests that we evolved and were not created. Augustine wrongly thought that reproduction worked by there being little people inside men (homunculus theory), so when Adam sinned all future humanity became infected by it. The story of Adam and Eve is unscientific. The notion that we inherited a corrupt nature and guilt from Adam seems to be unscientific nonsense.

Evaluation defending Augsutine

Augustine could still be right that human nature is corrupted by original sin, even if he’s wrong about the Fall being the exact means by which that came to be.

Augustine said that if you doubt original sin exists, ask yourself how you would behave if your city was involved in a catastrophic war. Would you go out on the street and try to help others, or would you hunker down with your family and try to defend what you have? This is the inclination towards self-love and away from love of your neighbor that characterizes original sin.

There is scientific evidence which supports human corruption and corruptibility such as the Stanford prison experiment.

It is also common knowledge that power is corrupting to people. When people gain the opportunity to sin and get away with it, they are more likely to do so.

Pelagius: Augustine’s observations reflect his society, not human nature.

The long habit of doing wrong which has infected us from childhood and corrupted us little by little over may years and ever after holds us in bondage and slavery to itself, so that it seems somehow to have acquired the force of nature” . – Pelagius

Although it might appear that we have strong forces within us that incline us toward evil, Pelagius argues that could simply be because of the way we are raised and it only appears to be our nature because of how thoroughly corrupted we are by our upbringing, which Pelagius refers to as being “educated in evil”.

We could add contemporary historical and sociological evidence to Pelagius’ point. Humans have progressed since Augustine’s time. Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. Steven Pinker attributes to the power of human reason that violence has decreased, even considering the 20 th century. The average human life seems more secure than at any prior point in history. If Augustine were correct that original sin caused an irresistible temptation to sin, then human behavior could not have improved, yet it has.

So, original sin does not exist and can’t be used to justify or explain evil.

Irenaeus’ Theodicy

Instead of viewing the Fall as negative, Irenaeus views it as a necessary stage in the development of humans towards perfection. Adam and Eve are like children who go astray because they lack sufficient wisdom to do what is right. Punishment is a way to help children mature.

On the basis of the quote from Genesis ‘God made humans in his image and likeness’, Irenaeus made a distinction between man being made in: the image of God verses the likeness of God. An image is when you look like something on the surface, whereas a likeness is when you actually are like something.

Creation has two steps for Irenaeus – firstly being made in God’s image where we have only a potential for good due to spiritual immaturity. Step two is where we achieve God’s likeness by choosing good over evil which enables us to grow spiritually and morally. The idea is that encountering and overcoming evil makes us become better more virtuous people.

A biblical example Irenaeus pointed to is Jonah and Whale: Jonah disobeyed God and then the natural evil of a storm and a big fish who ate him and spat him out days later helped Jonah learn his lesson and he then obeyed God. Evil thus serves the good purpose of motivating us to be good.

John Hick’s modern Irenaean Theodicy

Hick argued that human beings were not created perfect but develop in two stages: Stage 1: Spiritually immature: through struggle to survive and evolve, humans can develop into spiritually mature beings. The Fall is a result of immature humans who are only in the image of God. Stage 2: Grow into a relationship with God

Hick argued for the Epistemic distance. This means that we cannot truly know of God’s existence. If God did make himself known to us, we would follow his commands out of obedience to his authority instead of following them because we had figured out that they were the right thing to do. Hick argued that it’s only if we have faith in God and still do good because we want to do good, rather than because we know for sure there’s a God who wants us to, that we can truly grow spiritually and morally. Peter Vardy illustrated this with the example of a peasant girl who a King falls in love with and forces her to marry him. The girl doesn’t really love the King and only does it due to obedience to authority out of fear. Similarly, if God appeared to us we would obey his authority rather than really loving what is good for its own sake, which is the morally superior move and therefore most conducive to soul making.

According to Hick everyone will be saved since a loving God would not send people to hell – universal salvation but post-mortem soul making is needed.

Soul-making vs the evidential problem on dysteleological evil

Strength of soul-making vs the evidential problem: There is evidence that encountering and overcoming evil develops a person’s character and virtue. This is behind the idea of character development in literature. It is also behind the idea that people become spoiled if they have too much luxury and not enough responsibility or difficulty to overcome. By going through harsh struggles, a person becomes stronger and gains compassion for others. This does seem to be a factual occurrence in life. For example, some people who get cancer gain a whole new lease on life and go about doing all the things they had always wanted to do.

“What does not kill me, makes me stronger” – Nietzsche.

Weakness: the distribution of evil we observe in the world is decidedly not aligned with the soul-making requirements of those who suffer from it.

Some evil is dysteleological (purposeless). It has no chance of leading to spiritual development. For example, a child who dies of cancer. They are too young to even understand what is happening, let alone learn anything from it. Most animal suffering is also dysteleological.

Some evil is soul breaking . It destroys a person’s character rather than building it up and developing it. Some people are crushed into a depression or post-traumatic stress disorder when they experience evil. This suggests that evil doesn’t have this positive purpose that Irenaeus & Hick try to claim.

The holocaust is as an example of evil which is dysteleological, soul-breaking and where the amount of evil outweighs our soul-making requirements. D Z Phillips questioned whether anyone in their “right mind” could say the holocaust was justified because a few survivors were strengthened by it.

Animal suffering is a form of dysteleological suffering. William Rowe gave the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire. We have evidence that such things happen, but no one would ever be able to gain sympathy or compassion from them.

Evaluation defending Hick

Phillips and the dysteleological evil point in general commits a straw man fallacy.

Hick’s argument isn’t that the holocaust is justified by soul-making. It is that an imperfect world and free will which could perpetrate the holocaust is required for soul-making.

“my suggestion is not that each particular evil, least of all [the holocaust], produces its own specific ‘soul making’ benefit” – Hick.

Imagine if all natural and moral evil we observed was perfectly calibrated to the soul-making requirements of those who suffered from it. This would require a perfect natural world and God’s intervention every time someone misused their free will. We would then clearly know that there was a God controlling the process. This would break the epistemic distance. Then, we would only behave morally out of self-interest and be unable to develop virtue.

Hick’s defense is successful because the universe is indeed morally ambiguous.

Hick’s logic is valid. The virtuous character required for salvation can only be developed through free & good response to a world containing evil. The epistemic distance further requires that this evil appear random. So, Dysteleological, soul-breaking & immense evil are exactly what we should expect to find if soul-making theodicy was correct.

Evaluation critiquing Hick

Hick’s logic may is valid, so he may solve the logical problem of evil.

However, by definition, there can be no evidence for the epistemic distance. It’s merely a logical possibility and so can never be used against the evidential problem.

Hick’s defense is that the logic of his theory means we shouldn’t expect to find evidence of his theory. That may be true, but the issue follows that we have no evidential basis on which to justify belief in God. The evidential problem remains.

Soul-making vs the logical problem on God creating us perfect

A strength of soul-making theodicy is its premise that creating us fully developed was logically impossible. A fully developed soul is one which has chosen good over evil. This requires having made a choice. Therefore, it’s logically impossible for God to create us fully developed. Most theologians agree omnipotence does not include the power to do the logically impossible. So, a perfect God would create us undeveloped and allow us the freedom to choose good over evil. Evil is needed because it serves this good purpose of soul-making. So, evil isn’t incompatible with God’s existence. Mackie’s logical problem seems defeated.

Weakness: An omnibenevolent God would not have created us in the first place.

The problem of evil remains, having merely been pushed back to another question. Hick fails to explain why a morally good God would have created us at all.

David Benatar is an anti-natalist philosopher, meaning he argues that creating sentient beings who will suffer is wrong.

Creating beings that will suffer cannot be justified by pointing to benefits of that suffering. This is because if we never existed, then we wouldn’t need those benefits. A morally good God would not create beings whose development required evil and suffering. It would be better for those beings to have never existed.

Final judgement defending Hick

However, this criticism doesn’t apply well to Hick’s theology. Hick survives these questions about God’s decision to create us because he takes care to combine his theory with the proposal that no one ever goes to hell and that we have potentially unlimited attempts to become virtuous in an afterlife.

So, humans eventually receive an eternal good which clearly makes going through the process of suffering worth it. A perfect God thus would create humans in a world mixed with good and evil because it serves that ultimately good purpose.

Final judgement critiquing Hick

Benatar’s logic does undermine Hick’s argument. It is only once we exist that suffering becomes justified as for our development. If we never existed, we wouldn’t need to go through this painful process at all. It would be better for us had we never existed because it would be good that we didn’t suffer and we couldn’t miss the salvation.

So, the suffering attendant on soul-making is ultimately unnecessary and an omnibenevolent God could never be motivated to bring us or it into being. So, the logical problem of evil remains.

Soul-making vs Dostoyevsky

A strength of soul-making theodicy is that evil serving some good purpose seems the best way to make it compatible with omnibenevolence.

This was intentional for Hick, who entitled his book “Evil and the God of love”. Other theodicies are less persuasive because they try to either blame humanity for the actions of their ancestors or even take away God’s omnipotence.

Weakness: Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

“ if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” – Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

The key detail of Ivan’s argument is his connection between the suffering of innocent children and the gain of heaven for others.

People get into heaven because of, on the back of, the suffering of innocent children. Ivan says no good person or God would design this connection into heaven:

“imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?” – Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

It’s not that the evil is dysteleological, nor that the process of soul-making is not worth it. It’s that the whole process of soul-making is actually not morally acceptable. If the suffering of a child was the cost of the of the soul-making of others, Ivan’s point is that this is indecent. It’s not moral. Building heaven on a foundation of children suffering is not what Hick’s supposed ‘God of love’ would accept. So, Hick fails to solve the logical problem of evil.

In Dostoyevsky’s book, the response given to Ivan which perhaps reflects his own response, is that earthly suffering will “pass away in eternity”.

William Lane Craig makes a similar argument regarding child suffering, that they will go straight to heaven.

Heaven is infinite. It is worth suffering from evil to get there.

This critique from Ivan is successful because it gets around Hick’s standard defenses of himself. Hick doesn’t say that every case of evil has a soul-making benefit, but that the possibility of soul-making requires a world in which evil, even purposeless evil, is possible. Ivan’s point is that this is not a morally acceptable system and that his own moral virtue compels him to reject it.

Ivan’s discomfort is logical. It doesn’t seem right to accept heaven for himself if the price is the suffering of innocent children.

The problem of evil & the issue of free will

All popular responses to the problem of evil have a similar strength regarding the interaction between free will and God’s omnipotence.

Plantinga thought the entire response to the problem of evil could be solved by appealing to free will. He developed Augustine’s theodicy into a ‘free will defence’ of God’s possible co-existence with evil. Without free will, our lives would be pointless and valueless. It’s abuse can directly lead to moral evil and indirectly lead to natural evil in the form of punishment, the work of demons, and having to live in a fallen world due to Adam’s misuse of free will.

The power of theodicies then typically functions through attempting to link the existence of evil to free will. They can then argue that removing evil is not logically possible without impacting our free will in some way which would either leave us even worse off or is simply logically impossible for God to do. God’s omnipotence is typically thought by Christian theologians to involve the power to do any logically possible action. God cannot do logically impossible things.

For various theodicies then, it is not logically possible for God to eliminate evil without:

Contradicting his divine justice, since we deserve evil as punishment for our freely chosen evil actions (Augustine).
Removing our free will, since all evil results either directly (moral evil) or indirectly (natural evil) from the abuse of free will (Augustine & Plantinga).
Removing opportunities for growth from evil through freely choosing good over evil (Irenaeus & Hick).

Weakness: the challenge that libertarian free will does not exist

Theodicies rely on the existence of ‘libertarian free will’, meaning the ability to do otherwise.

However, libertarian free will seems to require an undetermined event which is nonetheless somehow also under the control of an agent. This strikes many philosophers as incoherent.

A. J. Ayer argues that our choices are either determined or not. If not, they are random. If determined, they result from prior causes such as our character, which is itself determined by prior causes. In either case, we couldn’t have done otherwise.

Mackie develops this style of argument. Our actions are either the result of randomness, external causes, or our own character. It is those choices which originate from our character that we typically call moral. This must be the notion of freedom theodicies draw on.

However, we did not create our own character. They may be times a person made efforts to change their character. But those efforts were themselves determined by prior states of their character. Mackie concludes that the only coherent definition of free will is a compatibilist one, where “free choice” is when our actions are determined by our character.

This allows Mackie to then argue that if there were a perfect God, he would have made sure to have given us all a morally good character.

Applying this to theodicies, this means:

Adam and Eve would have never disobeyed God. Augustine & Plantinga therefore lose their explanation of natural evil.
All humans would behave morally now, so Augustine & Plantinga lose their explanation of moral evil.
Hick also loses his explanation of why God couldn’t have created us fully or at least better-formed than he did.

This argument attacks the logical coherence of libertarian free will and thus defends the logical problem of evil.

Evaluation defending theodicy

Plantinga responded with his first morally sufficient reason: that it is actually not logically possible for God to create a world where free agents always make good choices. The possibility of a world of free creatures only choosing good depends on their free choices, which God cannot control without taking away their free will. Thus although a world where free creatures only choose good is technically possible, that doesn’t mean God can bring it about since its existence depends on particular free choices being made (i.e. good ones) which God cannot cause without taking away free will.

This response from Plantinga presupposes libertarian free will. However, there are many arguments for it.

For example, Kant argued that human beings are ultimately non-physical souls which exist outside of the realm of cause and effect, so we can have free will despite the physical world being predetermined. It is logically possible that we have souls, so the logical problem of evil is defeated.

Evaluation critiquing theodicy

Plantinga tries to respond that God couldn’t have created us in a way where we would only do good actions, since then we wouldn’t have made a choice.

However, this response fails to consider Mackie’s argument for compatibilism. The notion of libertarian free will which Plantinga presupposes is logically incoherent.

Human free choice simply involves doing what it is in our character to do, but we did not choose our character. We could not have, since we did not exist before it.

Even if our character comes from our soul in some way, we did not create it. Whatever we are, we did not make ourselves.

So, God could have given us all a good character. This would have prevented Adam and Eve from causing the fall. It would make soul-making unnecessary because we would be born with already good characters.

Free will cannot be appealed to when defending God’s existence in the face of evil.

The Problem of Evil

The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable for anyone to believe in the existence of God.

This discussion is divided into nine sections. The first is concerned with some preliminary distinctions; the second, with the choice between deductive versions of the argument from evil, and evidential versions; the third, with alternative evidential formulations of the argument from evil; the fourth, with the distinction between three very different types of responses to the argument from evil: attempted total refutations, defenses, and theodicies.

The fifth section then focuses upon attempted total refutations, while the sixth is concerned with defenses. Some traditional theodicies are then considered in section seven. The idea of global properties is then introduced in section eight, and a theodicy with religious content that is based on that idea is considered in section nine.

1.1 Relevant Concepts of God

1.2 incompatibility formulations versus inductive formulations, 1.3 abstract versus concrete formulations, 1.4 axiological versus deontological formulations, 2. the choice between incompatibility formulations and evidential formulations, 3.1 arguments, 3.2 direct inductive versions of the evidential argument from evil, 3.3 indirect inductive versions of the evidential argument from evil, 3.4 bayesian-style probabilistic versions of the evidential argument from evil, 3.5 inductive logic and the evidential argument from evil, 4. responses to the argument from evil: refutations, defenses, and theodicies, 5.1 human epistemological limitations, 5.2 the ‘no best of all possible worlds' response, 5.3 the appeal to the ontological argument, 6.1 the appeal to positive evidence for the existence of god, 6.2 belief in the existence of god as non-inferentially justified, 6.3 induction based on partial success, 7.1 a soul-making theodicy, 7.2 free will, 7.3 the freedom to do great evil, 7.4 the need for natural laws, 8. defenses and theodicies based on global properties, 9.1 human suffering and the extended free will defense, 9.2 the suffering of beasts and ‘massively irregular’ worlds, 9.3 an evaluation of peter van inwagen's global properties approach, 9.4 human suffering and the rescue-operation story, 9.5 animal suffering and the purported evil of ‘massive irregularity’, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. some important distinctions.

The term “God” is used with a wide variety of different meanings. These tend to fall, however, into two main groups. On the one hand, there are metaphysical interpretations of the term: God is a prime mover, or a first cause, or a necessary being that has its necessity of itself, or the ground of being, or a being whose essence is identical with its existence. Or God is not one being among other beings — even a supremely great being — but, instead, being itself. Or God is an ultimate reality to which no concepts truly apply.

On the other hand, there are interpretations that connect up in a clear and relatively straightforward way with religious attitudes, such as those of worship, and with very important human desires, such as the desire that, at least in the end, good will triumph, and justice be done, and the desire that the world not be one where death marks the end of the individual's existence, and where, ultimately, all conscious existence has ceased to be.

What properties must something have if it is to be an appropriate object of worship, and if it is to provide reason for thinking that there is a reasonable chance that the fundamental human hopes just mentioned will be fulfilled? A natural answer is that God must be a person, and who, at the very least, is very powerful, very knowledgeable, and morally very good. But if such a being exists, then it seems initially puzzling why various evils exist. For many of the very undesirable states of affairs that the world contains are such as could be eliminated, or prevented, by a being who was only moderately powerful, while, given that humans are aware of such evils, a being only as knowledgeable as humans would be aware of their existence. Finally, even a moderately good human being, given the power to do so, would eliminate those evils. Why, then, do such undesirable states of affairs exist, if there is a being who is very powerful, very knowledgeable, and very good?

What one has here, however, is not just a puzzle, since the question can, of course, be recast as an argument for the non-existence of God. Thus if, for simplicity, we focus on a conception of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, one very concise way of formulating such an argument is as follows:

If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
Evil exists.
If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil.
Therefore, God doesn't exist.

That this argument is valid is perhaps most easily seen by a reductio argument, in which one assumes that the conclusion — (7) — is false, and then shows that the denial of (7), along with premises (1) through (6), leads to a contradiction. Thus if, contrary to (7), God exists, it follows from (1) that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. This, together with (2), (3), and (4) then entails that God has the power to eliminate all evil, that God knows when evil exists, and that God has the desire to eliminate all evil. But when (5) is conjoined with the reductio assumption that God exists, it then follows via modus ponens from (6) that either God doesn't have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn't know when evil exists, or doesn't have the desire to eliminate all evil. Thus we have a contradiction, and so premises (1) through (6) do validly imply (7).

Whether the argument is sound is, of course, a further question, for it may be that one of more of the premises is false. The point here, however, is simply that when one conceives of God as unlimited with respect to power, knowledge, and moral goodness, the existence of evil quickly gives rise to potentially serious arguments against the existence of God.

Is the situation different if one shifts to a deity who is not omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect? The answer depends on the details. Thus, if one considers a deity who is omniscient and morally perfect, but not omnipotent, then evil presumably would not pose a problem if such a deity were conceived of as too remote from Earth to prevent the evils we find here. But given a deity who falls considerably short of omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection, but who could intervene in our world to prevent many evils, and who knows of those evils, it would seem that an argument rather similar to the above could be formulated by focusing not on the mere existence of evil, but upon the existence of evils that such a deity could have prevented.

But what if God, rather than being characterized in terms of knowledge, power, and goodness, is defined in some more metaphysical way - for example, as the ground of being, or as being itself? The answer will depend on whether, having defined God in such purely metaphysical terms, one can go on to argue that such a entity will also possess at least very great power, knowledge, and moral goodness. If so, evil is once again a problem.

By contrast, if God is conceived of in a purely metaphysical way, and if no connection can be forged between the relevant metaphysical properties and the possession of significant power, knowledge, and goodness, then the problem of evil is irrelevant. But when that is the case, it would seem that God thereby ceases to be a being who is either an appropriate object of religious attitudes, or a ground for believing that fundamental human hopes are not in vain.

The argument from evil focuses upon the fact that the world appears to contain states of affairs that are bad, or undesirable, or that should have been prevented by any being that could have done so, and it asks how the existence of such states of affairs is to be squared with the existence of God. But the argument can be formulated in two very different ways. First, it can be formulated as a purely deductive argument that attempts to show that there are certain facts about the evil in the world that are logically incompatible with the existence of God. One especially ambitious form of this first sort of argument attempts to establish the very strong claim that it is logically impossible for it to be the case both that there is any evil at all, and that God exists. The argument set out in the preceding section is just such an argument.

Alternatively, rather than being formulated as a deductive argument for the very strong claim that it is logically impossible for both God and evil to exist, (or for God and certain types, or instances, or a certain amount of evil to exist), the argument from evil can instead be formulated as an evidential (or inductive/probabilistic) argument for the more modest claim that there are evils that actually exist in the world that make it unlikely - or perhaps very unlikely - that God exists.

The choice between incompatibility formulations and evidential formulations is discussed below, in section 2.

Any version of the argument from evil claims that there is some fact concerning the evil in the world such that the existence of God - understood as at least a very powerful, very knowledgeable, and morally very good person, and, ideally, as an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person - is either logically precluded, or rendered unlikely, by that fact. But versions of the argument often differ quite significantly with respect to what the relevant fact is. Sometimes, as in premise (5) in the argument set out above, the appeal is to the mere existence of any evil whatever. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is to the existence of a certain amount of evil. And sometimes it is to the existence of evils of a certain specified sort.

To formulate the argument from evil in terms of the mere existence of any evil at all is to abstract to the greatest extent possible from detailed information about the evils that are found in the world, and so one is assuming, in effect, that such information cannot be crucial for the argument. But is it clear that this is right? For might not one feel that while the world would be better off without the vast majority of evils, this is not so for absolutely all evils? Thus, some would argue, for example, that the frustration that one experiences in trying to solve a difficult problem is outweighed by the satisfaction of arriving at a solution, and therefore that the world is a better place because it contains such evils. Alternatively, it has been argued that the world is a better place if people develop desirable traits of character - such as patience, and courage - by struggling against obstacles, including suffering. But if either of these things is the case, then the prevention of all evil might well make the world a worse place.

It seems possible, then, that there might be evils that are logically necessary for goods that outweigh them, and this possibility provides a reason, accordingly, for questioning one of the premises in the argument set out earlier - namely, premise (4), where it is claimed that if God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.

But there is also another reason why that claim is problematic, which arises out of a particular conception of free will - namely, a libertarian conception. According to this view of free will, and in contrast with what are known as compatibilist approaches, free will is incompatible with determinism, and so it is impossible even for an omnipotent being to make it the case that someone freely chooses to do what is right.

Many people claim, however, that the world is a better place if it contains individuals who possess libertarian free will, rather than individuals who are free only in a sense that is compatible with one's actions being completely determined. If this claim can be made plausible, one can argue, first, that God would have a good reason for creating a world with individuals who possessed libertarian free will, but secondly, that if he did choose to create such a world, even he could not ensure that no one would ever choose to do something morally wrong. The good of libertarian free will requires, in short, the possibility of moral evil.

Neither of these lines of argument is immune from challenge. As regards the former, one can argue that the examples that are typically advanced of cases where some evil is logically necessary for a greater good that outweighs the evil are not really, upon close examination, convincing, while, as regards the latter, there is a serious problem of making sense of libertarian free will, for although there is no difficulty about the idea of actions that are not causally determined, libertarian free will requires more than the mere absence of determinism, and the difficulty arises when one attempts to say what that something more is.

But although these challenges are important, and may very well turn out to be right, it is fair to say, first, that it has not yet been established that there is no coherent conception of libertarian free will, and, secondly, that it is, at least, very doubtful that one can establish that there cannot be cases where some evil is logically necessary for a greater good that outweighs it without appealing to some substantive, and probably controversial, moral theory.

The upshot is that the idea that either the actuality of certain undesirable states of affairs, or at least the possibility, may be logically necessary for goods that outweigh them, is not without some initial plausibility, and if some such claim can be sustained, it will follow immediately that the mere existence of evil cannot be incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being.

How does this bear upon evidential formulations of the argument from evil? The answer would seem to be that if there can be evils that are logically necessary for goods that outweigh them, then it is hard to see how the mere existence of evil — in the absence of further information - can provide much in the way of evidence against the existence of God.

What if one shifts to a slightly less abstract formulation of the argument from evil that is based upon the premise that the world contains a certain amount of evil, or upon the premise that the world contains at least some natural evil? Then one is including marginally more information. But one is still assuming, in effect, that most of the detailed information about the evils found in the world is completely irrelevant to the argument from evil, and a little reflection brings out how very implausible this assumption is. So, for example, consider a world that contains a billion units of natural evil. Is this a good starting point for an argument from evil? The answer is that whether this fact is an impressive reason for questioning the existence of God surely depends on further details about the world. If those billion units are uniformly distributed over trillions of people whose lives are otherwise extremely satisfying and ecstatically happy, it is not easy to see a serious problem of evil. But if, on the other hand, the billion units of natural evil fell upon a single innocent person, and produced a life that was, throughout, one of extraordinarily intense pain, then surely there would be a very serious problem of evil.

Details concerning such things as how suffering and other evils are distributed over individuals, and the nature of those who undergo the evils, are, then, of crucial importance. Thus it is relevant, for example, that many innocent children suffer agonizing deaths. It is relevant that animals suffer, and that they did so before there were any persons to observe their suffering, and to feel sympathy for them. It is relevant that, on the one hand, the suffering that people undergo apparently bears no relation to the moral quality of their lives, and, on the other, that it bears a very clear relation to the wealth and medical knowledge of the societies in which they live.

The prospects for a successful abstract version of the argument from evil would seem, therefore, rather problematic. It is conceivable, of course, that the correct moral principles entail that there cannot be any evils whose actuality or possibility makes for a better world. But to attempt to set out a version of the argument from evil that requires a defense of that thesis is certainly to swim upstream. A much more promising approach, surely, is to focus, instead, simply upon those evils that are thought, by the vast majority of people, to pose at least a prima facie problem for the rationality of belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.

Given that the preceding observations are rather obvious ones, one might have expected that discussions of the argument from evil would have centered mainly upon concrete formulations of the argument. Rather surprisingly, that has not been so. Indeed, some authors seem to focus almost exclusively upon very abstract versions of the argument.

One of the more striking illustrations of this phenomenon is provided by Alvin Plantinga's discussions of the problem of evil. In God and Other Minds , in The Nature of Necessity , and in God, Freedom, and Evil , for example, Plantinga, starting out from an examination of John L. Mackie's essay “Evil and Omnipotence” (1955), in which Mackie had defended an incompatibility version of the argument from evil, focuses mainly on the question of whether the existence of God is compatible with the existence of evil, although there are also short discussions of whether the existence of God is compatible with the existence of a given quantity of evil, and of whether the existence of a certain amount of evil renders the existence of God unlikely. (The latter topic is then the total focus of attention in his long article, “The Probabilistic Argument from Evil”.)

That Plantinga initially focused upon abstract formulations of the argument from evil was not, perhaps, surprising, given that a number of writers — including Mackie, H. J. McCloskey (1960), and H. D. Aiken (1957-58) — had defended incompatibility versions of the argument from evil, and it is natural to formulate such arguments in an abstract way, since although one may wish to distinguish, for example, between natural evils and moral evils, reference to concrete cases of evil would not seem to add anything. But once one shifts to probabilistic formulations of the argument from evil, the situation is very different: details about concrete cases of evil may be evidentially crucial.

The problem, then, is that Plantinga not only started out by focusing on very abstract versions of the argument from evil, but also maintained this focus throughout. The explanation of this may lie in the fact that Plantinga seems to have believed that if it can be shown that the existence of God is neither incompatible with, nor rendered improbable by, either (1) the mere existence of evil, or (2) the existence of a specified amount of evil, then no philosophical problem remains. People may find, of course, that they are still troubled by the existence of specific evils, but this, Plantinga seems to be believe, is a religious problem, and what is called for, he suggests, is not philosophical argument, but “pastoral care”. (1974a, 63-4) [ 1 ]

Plantinga's view here, however, is very implausible. For not only can the argument from evil be formulated in terms of specific evils, but that is the natural way to do so, given that it is only certain types of evils that are generally viewed as raising a serious problem with respect to the rationality of belief in God. To concentrate exclusively on abstract versions of the argument from evil is therefore to ignore the most plausible and challenging versions of the argument.

Consider, now, the following formulation of the argument from evil, which, in contrast to the abstract version of the argument from evil set out in section 1.1, focuses on quite concrete types of evil:

There exist states of affairs in which animals die agonizing deaths in forest fires, or where children undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, and that (a) are intrinsically bad or undesirable, and (b) are such that any omnipotent person has the power to prevent them without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.
For any state of affairs (that is actual), the existence of that state of affairs is not prevented by anyone.
For any state of affairs, and any person, if the state of affairs is intrinsically bad, and the person has the power to prevent that state of affairs without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good, but does not do so, then that person is not both omniscient and morally perfect.

Therefore, from (1), (2), and (3):

There is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.
If God exists, then he is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.
God does not exist.

As it stands, this argument is deductively valid. [ 2 ] (Here is a proof .) However it is likely to be challenged in various ways. In particular, one vulnerable point is the claim, made in the last part of statement (1), that an omnipotent and omniscient person could have prevented those states of affairs without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good, and when this is challenged, an inductive step will presumably be introduced, one that moves from what we know about the undesirable states of affairs in question to a conclusion about the overall value of those states of affairs, all things considered — including things that may well lie outside our ken.

But the above argument is subject to a very different sort of criticism, one that is connected with a feature of the above argument which seems to me important, but which is not often commented upon — the fact, namely, that the above argument is formulated in terms of axiological concepts, that is, in terms of the goodness or badness, the desirability or undesirability, of states of affairs. The criticism that arises from this feature centers on statement (3), which asserts that an omniscient and morally perfect being would prevent the existence of any states of affairs that are intrinsically bad or undesirable, and whose prevention he could achieve without either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good. For one can ask how this claim is to be justified. One answer that might be offered would be that some form of consequentialism is true — such as, for example, the view that an action that fails to maximize the balance of good states of affairs over bad states of affairs is morally wrong. But the difficulty then is that any such assumption is likely to be a deeply controversial assumption that many theists would certainly reject.

The problem, in short, is that any axiological formulation of the argument from evil, as it stands, is incomplete in a crucial respect, since it fails to make explicit how a failure to bring about good states of affairs, or a failure to prevent bad states of affairs, entails that one is acting in a morally wrong way. Moreover, the natural way of removing this incompleteness is by appealing to what are in fact controversial ethical claims, such as the claim that the right action is the one that maximizes expected value. The result, in turn, is that discussions may very well become sidetracked on issues that are, in fact, not really crucial — such as, for example, the question of whether God would be morally blameworthy if he failed to create the best world that he could.

The alternative to an axiological formulation is a deontological formulation. Here the idea is that rather than employing concepts that focus upon the value or disvalue of states of affairs, one instead uses concepts that focus upon the rightness and wrongness of actions, and upon the properties — rightmaking properties and wrongmaking properties — that determine whether an action is one that ought to be performed, or ought not to be performed, other things being equal. When the argument is thus formulated, there is no problematic bridge that needs to be introduced connecting the goodness and badness of states of affairs with the rightness and wrongness of actions.

How is the argument from evil best formulated? As an incompatibility argument, or as an evidential argument? In section 1.1, an incompatibility formulation of a very abstract sort was set out, which appealed to the mere fact that the world contains at least some evil. That formulation involved the following crucial premise:

The problem with that premise, as we saw, is that it can be argued that some evils are such that their actuality, or at least the possibility, is logically necessary for goods that outweigh them, in which case it is not true that a perfectly good being would want to eliminate such evils.

In section 1.4, a much more concrete version of an incompatibility argument was set out, which, rather than appealing to the mere existence of some evil or other, appealed to specific types of evil - in particular, situations where animals die agonizing deaths in forest fires, or where children undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer. The thrust of the argument was then that, first of all, an omniscient and omnipotent person could have prevented the existence of such evils without thereby either allowing equal or greater evils, or preventing equal or greater goods, and, secondly, that any omniscient and morally perfect person will prevent the existence of such evils if that can be done without either allowing equal or greater evils, or preventing equal or greater goods.

The second of these claims avoids the objections that can be directed against the stronger claim that was involved in the argument set out in section 1.1 - that is, the claim that if God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil. But the shift to the more modest claim requires that one move from the very modest claim that evil exists to the stronger claim that there are certain evils that an omniscient and omnipotent person could have prevented the existence of such evils without thereby either allowing equal or greater evils, or preventing equal or greater goods, and the question arises as to how that claim can be supported. In particular, can it be established by means of a purely deductive argument?

Consider, in particular, the relevant premise in the more concrete version of the argument from evil set out in section 1.4, namely:

How would one go about establishing, via a purely deductive argument that a deer's suffering a slow and painful death because of a forest fire, or a child's undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, is not logically necessary either to achieve a greater good or to avoid a greater evil? If one had knowledge of the totality of morally relevant properties, then it might well be possible to show both that there are no greater evils that can be avoided only at the cost of the evil in question, and that there are no greater goods that are possible only given that evil. Do we have such knowledge? Some moral theorists would claim that we do, and that it is possible to set out a complete and correct moral theory. But this is certainly a highly controversial metaethical claim, and, as a consequence, the prospects for establishing a premise such as (1) via a deductive argument do not appear promising, given the present state of moral theory.

If a premise such as (1) cannot, at least at present, be established deductively, then the only possibility, it would seem, is to offer some sort of inductive argument in support of the relevant premise. But if this is right, then it is surely best to get that crucial inductive step out into the open, and thus to formulate the argument from evil not as a deductive argument for the very strong claim that it is logically impossible for both God and evil to exist, (or for God and certain types, or instances, of evil to exist), but as an evidential (inductive/probabilistic) argument for the more modest claim that there are evils that actually exist in the world that make it unlikely that God exists.

3. Inductive Versions of the Argument from Evil

If the argument from evil is given an evidential formulation, what form should that take? There appear to be three main possibilities that have been suggested in recent discussions. The first, which might be called the direct inductive approach, involves the idea that one can show that theism is unlikely to be true without comparing theism with any alternative hypothesis, other than the mere denial of theism. The second, which can be labeled the indirect inductive approach, argues instead that theism can be shown to be unlikely to be true by establishing that there is some alternative hypothesis — other than the mere negation of theism — that is logically incompatible with theism, and more probable than theism. Finally, the third possibility, which might be referred to as a probabilistic or Bayesian approach, starts out from probabilistic premises, and then attempts to show that it follows deductively, via axioms of probability theory, that it is unlikely that God exists.

The first and the third approaches are found, for example, in articles by William Rowe, while the second approach has been set out and defended by Paul Draper. These three approaches will be considered in the sections that follow.

3.2.1 A Concrete, Deontological, and Direct Inductive Formulation

The basic idea behind a direct inductive formulation of the argument from evil is that the argument involves a crucial inductive step that takes the form of an inductive projection or generalization in which one moves from a premise concerning the known moral properties of some state of affairs to a conclusion about the likely overall moral worth of that state of affairs, given all its moral properties, both known and unknown.

Such a direct inductive argument might, for example, take the following form:

Both the property of intentionally allowing an animal to die an agonizing death in a forest fire, and the property of allowing a child to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, are wrongmaking characteristics of an action, and very serious ones.
Our world contains animals that die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children who undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer.
An omnipotent being could prevent such events, if he knew that those events were about to occur.
An omniscient being would know that such events were about to occur.
If a being allows something to take place that he knows is about to happen, and which he knows he could prevent, then that being intentionally allows the event in question to occur.
If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then there are cases where he intentionally allows animals to die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer.
In many such cases, no rightmaking characteristics that we are aware of both apply to the case in question, and also are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking characteristic.
If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then there are specific cases of such a being's intentionally allowing animals to die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, that have wrongmaking properties such that there are no rightmaking characteristics that we are aware of that both apply to the cases in question, and that are also sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking characteristics.

Therefore it is likely that:

If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then there are specific cases of such a being's intentionally allowing animals to die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, that have wrongmaking properties such that there are no rightmaking characteristics — including ones that we are not aware of — that both apply to the cases in question, and that are also sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking characteristics.
An action is morally wrong, all things considered, if it has a wrongmaking characteristic that is not counterbalanced by any rightmaking characteristics.
If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then there are specific cases of such a being's intentionally allowing animals to die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, that are morally wrong, all things considered.
If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then that being both intentionally refrains from performing certain actions in situations where it is morally wrong to do so, all things considered, and knows that he is doing so.
A being who intentionally refrains from performing certain actions in situations where it is morally wrong to do so, all things considered, and knows that he is doing so, is not morally perfect.
If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then that being is not morally perfect.
There is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being.
If God exists, then he is, by definition, an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being.

When the argument from evil is formulated in this way, it involves nine premises, set out at steps (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (7), (10), (13), and (16). Statement (1) makes a moral claim, but one that, setting aside the question of the existence of objective values, is surely very plausible. Statement (2) makes an empirical claim, and one that is surely true. Statements (3) and (4) are true by virtue of the concepts of omnipotence and omniscience, together with the nature of the events in question, while statement (5) is true by virtue of the concept of intentional action. Statement (7) follows from the relevant facts about the world, together with facts about the moral knowledge that we possess. Statement (10) obtains by virtue of the concepts of rightmaking and wrongmaking characteristics, together with the concept of an action's being wrong, all things considered. Statement (13) follows from the concept of moral perfection, while statement (16) simply states what is involved in the concept of God that is relevant here. So all of the premises seem fine.

As regards the logic of the argument, all of the steps are deductive except for one — namely, the non-deductive move from (8) to (9). The deductive inferences, however, are all valid. The argument stands or falls, accordingly, with the inference from (8) to (9). The crucial questions, accordingly, are, first, exactly what the form of that inductive inference is, and, secondly, whether it is sound.

3.2.2 A Natural Account of the Logic of the Inductive Step

A familiar and very common sort of inductive inference involves moving from information to the effect that all observed things of a certain type have a certain property to the conclusion that absolutely all things of the type in question have the relevant property. Could the inductive step in the evidential argument from evil perhaps be of that form?

One philosopher who has suggested that this is the case is William Rowe, in his 1991 article, “Ruminations about Evil”. Let us consider, then, whether that view can be sustained.

In that article, Rowe formulates the premise of the crucial inference as follows:

( P ) No good state of affairs that we know of is such that an omnipotent, omniscient being's obtaining it would morally justify that being's permitting E 1 or E 2 .

(Here E 1 refers to a case of a fawn who dies in lingering and terrible fashion as a result of a forest fire, and E 2 to the case of a young girl who is brutally raped, beaten, and murdered.)

Commenting on P , Rowe emphasizes that what proposition P says is not simply that we cannot see how various goods would justify an omnipotent, omniscient being's permitting E 1 or E 2 , but rather,

The good states of affairs I know of, when I reflect on them, meet one or both of the following conditions: either an omnipotent being could obtain them without having to permit either E 1 or E 2 , or obtaining them wouldn't morally justify that being in permitting E 1 or E 2 . (1991, 72)

Rowe then goes on to say that:

… if this is so, I have reason to conclude that: ( Q ) No good state of affairs is such that an omnipotent, omniscient being's obtaining it would morally justify that being's permitting E 1 or E 2 .

Rowe uses the letter ‘ J ’ “to stand for the property a good has just in case obtaining that good would justify an omnipotent, omniscient being in permitting E 1 or E 2 ” (1991, 73). When this is done, the above inference can be compactly represented as follows:

( P ) No good that we know of has J . Therefore, probably: ( Q ) No good has J .

Rowe next refers to Plantinga's criticism of this inference, and he argues that Plantinga's criticism now amounts to the claim that

we are justified in inferring Q (No good has J ) from P (No good we know of has J ) only if we have a good reason to think that if there were a good that has J it would be a good that we are acquainted with and could see to have J . For the question can be raised: How can we have confidence in this inference unless we have a good reason to think that were a good to have J it would likely be a good within our ken? (1991, 73)

Rowe's response is then as follows:

My answer is that we are justified in making this inference in the same way we are justified in making the many inferences we constantly make from the known to the unknown. All of us are constantly inferring from the A s we know of to the A s we don't know of. If we observe many A s and note that all of them are B s we are justified in believing that the A s we haven't observed are also B s. Of course, these inferences may be defeated. We may find some independent reason to think that if an A were a B it would likely not be among the A s we have observed. But to claim that we cannot be justified in making such inferences unless we already know, or have good reason to believe, that were an A not to be a B it would likely be among the A s we've observed is simply to encourage radical skepticism concerning inductive reasoning in general. (1991, 73)

Finally, Rowe points out that:

… in considering the inference from P to Q it is very important to distinguish two criticisms: One is entitled to infer Q from P only if she has a good reason to think that if some good had J it would be a good that she knows of. One is entitled to infer Q from P only if she has no reason to think that if some good had J it would likely not be a good that she knows of. Plantinga's criticism is of type A. For the reason given, it is not a cogent criticism. But a criticism of type B is entirely proper to advance against any inductive inference of the sort we are considering. (1991, 73-4)

In view of the last point, Rowe concludes that “one important route for the theist to explore is whether there is some reason to think that were a good to have J it either would not be a good within our ken or would be such that although we apprehend this good we are incapable of determining that it has J .” (1991, 74)

3.2.3 An Evaluation of this Account of the Inductive Step

First, Rowe is right that a criticism of type A does involve “radical skepticism of inductive reasoning in general”. But, secondly, having granted that point, how satisfactory is Rowe's account of the reasoning involved? To answer that question, what one needs to notice is that Rowe's claim that “if we observe many A s and note that all of them are B s we are justified in believing that the A s we haven't observed are also B s” is somewhat ambiguous, since while the claim that “we are justified in believing that the A s we haven't observed are also B s” might naturally be interpreted as saying

We are justified in believing that all the A s that we haven't observed are also B s

it is possible to construe it as making, instead, the following, much weaker claim

We are justified in believing of each of the A s that we haven't observed that that A is also a B .

Let us consider, then, the relevance of this distinction. On the one hand, Rowe is certainly right that any criticism that claims that one is not justified in inferring (2) unless one has additional information to the effect that unobserved A s are not likely to differ from observed A s with respect to the possession of property B entails inductive skepticism. But, by contrast, it is not true that this is so if one rejects, instead, the inference to (1).

This is important, moreover, because it is (1) that Rowe needs, since the conclusion that he is drawing does not concern simply the next morally relevant property that someone might consider: conclusion Q asserts, rather, that all further morally relevant properties will lack property J . Such a conclusion about all further cases is much stronger than a conclusion about the next case, and one might well think that in some circumstances a conclusion of the latter sort is justified, but that a conclusion of the former sort is not.

One way of supporting the latter claim is by arguing (Tooley, 1977, 690-3, and 1987, 129-37) that when one is dealing with an accidental generalization , the probability that the regularity in question will obtain gets closer and closer to zero, without limit, as the number of potential instances gets larger and larger, and that this is so regardless of how large one's evidence base is. Is it impossible, then, to justify universal generalizations? The answer is that if laws are more than mere regularities — and, in particular, if they are second-order relations between universals — then the obtaining of a law, and thus of the corresponding regularity, may have a very high probability upon even quite a small body of evidence. So universal generalizations can be justified, if they obtain in virtue of underlying laws.

The question then becomes whether Q expresses a law — or a consequence of a law. If — as seems plausible — it does not, then, although it is true that one in justified in holding, of any given, not yet observed morally relevant property, that it is unlikely to have property J , it may not be the case that it is probable that no goodmaking (or rightmaking) property has property J . It may , on the contrary, be probable that there is some morally relevant property that does have property J .

This objection could be overcome if one could argue that it is unlikely that there are many unknown goodmaking properties. For if the number is small, then the probability of Q may still be high even if Q does not express a law, or a consequence of a law. Moreover, I am inclined to think that it may well be possible to argue that it is unlikely that there are many unknown, morally relevant properties. But I also think that it is very likely that any attempt to establish this conclusion would involve some controversial metaethical claims. As a consequence, such a line of argument does not seem especially promising, given the present state of metaethics.

In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , Hume contended that it was not possible to arrive at the conclusion that the world had a perfectly good cause — or a perfectly evil one — starting out simply from a world that consists of a mixture of good and bad states of affairs:

There may four hypotheses be framed concerning the first causes of the universe: that they are endowed with perfect goodness, that they are endowed with perfect malice, that they are opposite and have both goodness and malice, that they have neither goodness nor malice. Mixed phenomena can never prove the two former unmixed principles. And the uniformity and steadiness of general laws seems to oppose the third. The fourth, therefore, seems be far the most probable. (1779, Part XI, 212)

But if this is right, and the hypothesis that the first cause (or causes) of the universe is neither good nor evil is more probable than the hypothesis that the first cause is perfectly good, then the probability of the latter must be less than one half.

Hume advanced, then, an evidential argument from evil that has a distinctly different logical form than that involved in direct inductive arguments, for the idea is to point to some proposition that is logically incompatible with theism, and then to argue that, given facts about undesirable states of affairs to be found in the world, that hypothesis is more probable than theism, and, therefore, that theism is more likely to be false than to be true.

More than two centuries later, Paul Draper, inspired by Hume, set out and defended this type of indirect inductive argument in a very detailed way. In doing so, Draper focused upon two alternative hypotheses, the first of which he referred to as “the Hypothesis of Indifference,” and which was as follows (1989, 13) [ 3 ] :

( HI ) neither the nature nor the condition of sentient beings on earth is the result of benevolent or malevolent actions performed by nonhuman persons.

Draper then focused upon three sets of propositions about occurrences of pleasure and pain, dealing, respectively, with (a) the experience of pleasure and pain, by moral agents, which is known to be biologically useful, (b) the experience of pleasure and pain, by sentient beings that are not moral agents, which is known to be biologically useful, and (c) the experience of pleasure and pain, by sentient beings, which is not known to be biologically useful, and Draper then argued that, where ‘ O ’ expresses the conjunction of all those propositions, and ‘ T ’ expresses the proposition that God exists, then the probability that O is the case given HI is greater than the probability of O given T . It then follows, provided that the initial probability of T is no greater than that of HI , that T is more likely to be false than to be true.

In slightly more detail, and using ‘ Pr ( P / Q )’ to stand either for the logical probability, or for the epistemic [ 4 ] probability, of P given Q , the logic of the argument is as follows:

so that Pr ( HI )/ Pr ( O ) is defined. Therefore, we can multiply both sides of (11) by Pr ( HI )/ Pr ( O ) which gives:

Then, in view of (16), we can divide both sides of (24) by Pr ( O ), which gives us:

There are various points at which this argument might be criticized. First, it might be argued that the substantive premise introduced at (18) is not obviously true. For might it not be logically possible that there was an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being who created a neutral environment in which evolution could take place in a chancy way, and who afterwards did not intervene in any way? But, if so, then while T would be true, HI might also be true — as it would be if there were no other nonhuman persons. So, at the very least, it is not clear that HI entails ~ T .

Secondly, the substantive premise introduced at (21) also seems problematic. Draper supports it be arguing that whereas the hypothesis of theism involves some ontological commitment, the Hypothesis of Indifference does not. But, on the other hand, the latter involves a completely universal generalization about the absence of any action upon the earth by any nonhuman persons, of either a benevolent or malevolent sort, and it is far from clear why the prior probability of this being so should be greater than the prior probability of theism.

Both of these objections can be avoided, however, by simply shifting from HI to a different alternative hypothesis that Draper also mentions, namely, “The Indifferent Deity Hypothesis”:

There exists an omnipotent and omniscient person who created the Universe and who has no intrinsic concern about the pain or pleasure of other beings. (1989, 26)

Thirdly, it can be objected that the argument does not really move far beyond two of its three crucial assumptions - the assumptions set out, namely, at steps (18) and (21), to the effect that HI entails ~ T , and Pr ( HI ) ≥ Pr ( T ). For given those assumptions, it follows immediately that Pr ( T ) ≤ 0.5, and so the rest of the argument merely moves from that conclusion to the conclusion that Pr ( T ) < 0.5.

One response to this objection is that the move from Pr ( T ) ≤ 0.5 to Pr ( T ) < 0.5 is not insignificant, since it is a move from a situation in which acceptance of theism may not be irrational to one where it is certainly is. Nevertheless, the objection does bring out an important point, namely, that the argument as it stands says nothing at all about how much below 0.5 the probability of theism is. This could be remedied, however, by shifting to a quantitative version of a Draper-style argument. In particular, one can replace (1) above by:

(1 + ) Pr ( O / HI ) = Pr ( O / T ) + k [ 5 ] .

One can then derive the following conclusion:

(*) Pr ( T ) < 0.5 - k × Pr ( HI )/2 × Pr ( O )

(Here is the derivation .) Then, provided that one can estimate k, Pr ( HI ), and Pr ( O ), one will be able to determine a lower bound for the amount that Pr ( T ) is less than 0.5.

Fourthly, objections can be directed at the arguments that Draper offers in support of a third substantive premise — namely, that introduced at (1). Some of the objections directed against this premise are less than impressive — and some seem quite desperate, as in the case, for example, of Peter van Inwagen, who has to appeal to quite an extraordinary claim about the conditions that one must satisfy in order to claim that a world is logically possible:

One should start by describing in some detail the laws of nature that govern that world. (Physicists' actual formulations of quantum field theories and the general theory of relativity provide the standard of required “detail.”) One should then go on to describe the boundary conditions under which those laws operate; the topology of the world's space-time, its relativistic mass, the number of particle families, and so on. Then one should tell in convincing detail the story of cosmic evolution in that world: the story of the development of large objects like galaxies and of stars and of small objects like carbon atoms. Finally, one should tell the story of the evolution of life. (1991, 146)

Such objections tend to suggest that any flaws in Draper's argument in support of the crucial premise are less than obvious. Nevertheless, given that the argument that Draper offers in support of the premise at (1) involves a number of detailed considerations, very careful scrutiny of those arguments would be needed before one could conclude that the premise is justified.

Finally, rather than attacking the argument itself, one might instead argue that, while it is sound, the conclusion is not really a significant one. For what matters is not whether there is some evidence relative to which it is unlikely that theism is true. What matters is whether theism is improbable relative to our total evidence. But, then, suppose that we introduce some different observations — O* — such that it seems plausible that O* is more likely to be the case if theism is true that if the Hypothesis of Indifference is true. For example, O* might be some proposition about the occurrences of experiences that seem to be experiences of a loving deity. The question then is whether the appropriate revision of the first substantive premise is plausible. That is, do we have good reason for thinking that the following statement is true:

(1 & ) Pr ( O & O* / HI ) > Pr ( O & O* / T ) ?

At the very least, it would seem that (1 & ) is much more problematic than (1). But if that is right, then the above, Draper-style argument, even if all of its premises are true, is not as significant as it may initially appear, since if (1 & ) is not true, the conclusion that theism is more likely to be false than to be true can be undercut by introducing additional evidence of a pro-theist sort.

A Draper-style argument is one type of indirect inductive argument from evil. It is important to notice, however, that in formulating an indirect inductive argument from evil, one need not proceed along the route that Draper chooses. This is clear if one focuses upon Hume's formulation, and then thinks in terms of the idea of an inference to the best explanation of the “mixed phenomena” that one finds. If one explains the fact that the world contains an impressive mixture of desirable and undesirable states of affairs by the hypothesis that the creator of the world was an omnipotent, omniscient, and indifferent deity, then nothing more needs to be added. By contrast, if one wants to explain the mixed state of the world by the hypothesis that the creator of the world was an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect deity, one needs to postulate the existence of additional, morally significant properties that lie beyond our ken, and ones, moreover, that are so distributed that the mixed appearance does not correspond to what is really the case. A theistic explanation is, accordingly, less simple than an indifferent deity explanation, and therefore, provided that one can argue that the a priori probability of the latter hypothesis is not less than that of the former, one can appeal to the greater simplicity of the latter in order to conclude that it has a higher posterior probability than the theistic hypothesis. It then follows, given that the two hypotheses are logically incompatible, that the probability of the theistic hypothesis must be less than one half.

In his 1996 paper, “The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look”, Rowe set aside the problem of attempting to find a satisfactory account of the inductive step involved in direct, inductive formulations of the argument from evil in favor of a very different, Bayesian formulation of the argument from evil. The latter argument has been vigorously criticized by Plantinga (1998), but Rowe (1998) has remained confident that the new argument is sound.

3.4.1 A Summary of Rowe's Bayesian Argument

Rowe's new argument can be summarized as follows. First, its formulation involves only three propositions — namely, proposition k , which expresses, roughly, the totality of our background knowledge, together with the following two additional propositions:

( P ) No good that we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting E 1 and E 2 ; ( G ) There is an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being.

Secondly, the object of the argument as a whole is to start out from some probabilistic assumptions, and then to move deductively, using only axioms of probability theory, to the following two conclusions:

(C1) Pr ( G / P & k ) < Pr ( G / k ) (C2) Pr ( G / P & k ) < 0.5.

The first conclusion, then, is that the probability that God exists is lower given the combination of P together with our background knowledge than it is given our background knowledge alone. Thus P disconfirms G in the sense of lowering the probability of G . The second conclusion is that P disconfirms G in a different sense — namely, it, together with our background knowledge, makes it more likely than not that G is false.

Thirdly, in order to establish the first conclusion, Rowe needs only the following three assumptions:

(1) Pr ( P /~ G & k ) = 1 (2) Pr (~ G / k ) > 0 (3) Pr ( P / G & k ) < 1

Fourthly, all three assumptions are surely eminently reasonable. As regards (1), it follows from the fact that for any two propositions q and r , if q entails r then Pr ( r / q ) = 1, together with the fact that Rowe interprets P in such a way that ~ G entails P , since he interprets P as saying that it is not the case that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being together with some known good that justifies that being in allowing E 1 and E 2 . As regards (2) and (3), it certainly seems plausible that there is at least some non-zero probability that God does not exist, given our background knowledge — here one is assuming that the existence of God is not logically necessary — and also some non-zero probability that no good that we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting E 1 and E 2 . Moreover, if the existence of God is neither a logically necessary truth nor entailed by our background knowledge, and if the existence of God together with our background knowledge does not logically entail that no good that we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting E 1 and E 2 , then one can support (2) and (3) by appealing to the very plausible principle that the probability of r given q is equal to one if and only if q entails r .

Finally, to establish the second conclusion — that is, that relative to our background knowledge together with proposition P it is more likely than not that God does not exist — Rowe needs only one additional assumption:

(4) Pr ( G / k ) ≤ 0.5

3.4.2 The Flaw in the Argument

Given the plausibility of assumptions (1), (2), and (3), together with the impeccable logic, the prospects of faulting Rowe's argument for his first conclusion may not seem at all promising. Nor does the situation seem significantly different in the case of Rowe's second conclusion, given that assumption (4) is also very plausible.

In fact, however, Rowe's argument is unsound. The reason is connected with the point that while inductive arguments can fail, just as deductive arguments can, either because their logic is faulty, or their premises false, inductive arguments can also fail in a way that deductive arguments cannot, in that they may violate a principle — namely, the Total Evidence Requirement — which I shall be setting out below, and Rowe's argument is defective in precisely that way.

Let us begin, then, by considering the following, preliminary objection to Rowe's argument for the conclusion that

Pr ( G / P & k ) < 0.5.

The objection is based on upon the observation that Rowe's argument involves, as we saw above, only the following four premises:

(1) Pr ( P /~ G & k ) = 1 (2) Pr (~ G / k ) > 0 (3) Pr ( P / G & k ) < 1 (4) Pr ( G / k ) ≤ 0.5

Notice now, first, that the proposition P enters only into the first and the third of these premises, and secondly, that the truth of both of these premises is easily secured. Thus, for the first premise to be true, all that is needed is that ~ G entails P , while for the third premise to be true, all that is needed, according to most systems of inductive logic, is that P is not entailed by G & k .

Consider, now, what happens if, for example, Rowe's P is replaced by:

Either God does not exist, or there is a pen in my pocket.

Statements (1) and (3) will both be true given that replacement, while statements (2) and (4) are unaffected, and one will be able to derive the same conclusions as in Rowe's Bayesian argument. But if this is so, then the theist can surely claim, it would seem, that the fact that Rowe's ‘P’ refers to evil in the world turns out to play no crucial role in Rowe's new argument!

This objection, however, is open to the following reply. The reason that I am justified in believing the proposition that either God does not exist or there is a pen in my pocket is that I am justified in believing that there is a pen in my pocket. The proposition that either God does not exist or there is a pen in my pocket therefore does not represent the total evidence that I have. But the argument cannot be set out in terms of the proposition that does represent one's total evidence — namely, the proposition that there is a pen in my pocket — since that proposition is not entailed by ~ G .

The conclusion, in short, is that the above parody of Rowe's argument doesn't work, since the parody violates the following requirement:

The Total Evidence Requirement : For any proposition that is not non-inferentially justified, the probability that one should assign to that proposition's being true is the probability that the proposition has relative to one's total evidence.

But this response to the above objection to the argument for the conclusion that

Pr ( G / P & k ) < 0.5

now makes it clear that there a decisive objection to the argument as a whole. For notice that if P — the statement that

No good we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting E 1 and E 2

— is interpreted in such a way that ~ G entails P , it is then logically equivalent to the following disjunctive statement:

where P * is the proposition that Rowe sets out in footnote 8 of his article, namely:

No good we know of would justify God, ( if he exists ) in permitting E 1 and E 2 (1996, 283)

Once this is noticed, it is clear that Rowe's argument is open to precisely the same response as that used against the objection to the parody argument just considered, since the justification that one can offer for ~ G or P * is in fact just a justification of the second disjunct — that is, P *. This means that in appealing to P (i.e., to (~G) or P *) one is not making use of one's total evidence. So Rowe's argument, if it is to be sound, must instead be formulated in terms of P *.

But while ~ G entails P , it does not entail P *. So the result of replacing ‘P’ by ‘P*’ in statement (1) — that is

(1*) Pr ( P */~ G & k ) = 1

— will not be true, and so an argument of the form that Rowe offers will not go through. Rowe's Bayesian argument is, therefore, unsound.

3.4.3 Can Rowe's Argument Be Revised?

Plantinga has made essentially the same point in terms of the idea of “degenerate evidence”. Rowe has responded to Plantinga by arguing that the parodies that Plantinga offers to show that Rowe's argument must be unsound are not “precisely parallel” arguments. In particular, and putting things in terms of the propositions used above, Rowe's point is that while the proposition that there is a pen in my pocket is evidentially irrelevant to the proposition that God exists, the proposition that no good we know of would justify God, ( if he exists ) in permitting E 1 and E 2 is “ evidentially very relevant to the question of whether God exists.” (1998, 550)

This observation is certainly correct. But how does it help? It does not do so by showing that Rowe's argument, as it stands, is sound after all. For if an argument from premises (1), (2), (3), and (4) is sound, then the corresponding, parody argument must also be sound, since the corresponding premises are equally true. But Rowe's thought may be that the difference to which he has pointed shows that one can add a further assumption, and one that will not be true in the case of the parodies that Plantinga and I have offered. In particular, one can add the following assumption:

(5) Pr ( P */~ G & k ) > Pr ( P */ G & k ).

Then, as Luc Bovens has pointed out, [ 6 ] one can offer a revised Bayesian formulation of the argument from evil. For example, one can argue as follows:

But now the problem is that assumption (5), in contrast to assumptions (1), (2), (3), and (4), is a deeply controversial claim. For while it is true that if God does not exist, then evils such as E 1 and E 2 , which are not justified by any good that we know of, will in all probability arise by the operation of morally blind laws of nature, it might be argued that, even if God does exist, evils such as E 1 and E 2 may very well arise, either because it is good if events happen in a generally regular way, or even because God will sometimes facilitate the occurrence of events such as E 1 and E 2 , for the sake of some greater good that we have no knowledge of. So it is not at all easy to see why assumption (5) is justified,

In addition, however, any plausibility that assumption (5) has appears to be in virtue of the relation between G and proposition Q — that is, the proposition that no good state of affairs is such that an omnipotent, omniscient being's obtaining it would morally justify that being's permitting E 1 or E 2 . For in asking how likely P * is given, on the one hand, G , and, on the other hand, ~ G , is it not likely that one will make use of the fact that if G is true, then ~ Q is true, while if ~ G is true, then Q is, at least, very, very likely? [ 7 ] But if one does make use of these connections in thinking about (5), then it would seem that (5) cannot be plausible unless the proposition that results from (5) when one replaces ‘ G ’ by ‘~ Q ’, is also plausible — that is,

(5*) Pr ( P */ Q & k ) > Pr ( P */~ Q & k ).

But now consider:

(4*) Pr (~ Q / k ) ≤ 0.5.

Assumption (4*) does not seem any less plausible than assumption (4). But it, together with (5*), will enable one to parallel the modified Bayesian argument just set out, and arrive at the following conclusion:

Pr ( Q / P * & k ) > Pr (~ Q / P * & k )

The latter, however, would serve to justify the inductive step from P to Q in the argument from evil. So given the apparent plausibility of (4*), any grounds that one has for questioning the inductive step in the earlier, non-Bayesian versions of the argument are likely to translate into grounds for questioning, first of all, proposition (5*), and secondly, the closely connected proposition (5).

The upshot is that if one tries to avoid the objection that Rowe's original Bayesian argument violates the total evidence requirement by shifting to a modified argument that involves assumption (5), one is faced both with the problem of showing why (5) is plausible, and, even more seriously, with the objection that assumption (5) is tantamount to the assumption that the inductive step involved in direct inductive formulations of the argument is sound. The revised argument therefore begs, in effect, the crucial question.

In section 3.2.1, a concrete, deontological, and direct inductive formulation of the argument from evil was set out. All of the steps in that argument were deductive, except for the following inference:

(8) If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then there are specific cases of such a being's intentionally allowing animals to die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, that have wrongmaking properties such that there are no rightmaking characteristics that we are aware of that both apply to the cases in question, and that are also sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking characteristics.

(9) If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then there are specific cases of such a being's intentionally allowing animals to die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children to undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, that have wrongmaking properties such that there are no rightmaking characteristics — including ones that we are not aware of — that both apply to the cases in question, and that are also sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking characteristics.

The question, accordingly, is whether this inductive step is correct.

The answer, I believe, is that it is. To demonstrate this requires a rather technical argument in inductive logic. But one can gain an intuitive understanding of the underlying idea in the following way. Suppose that there is a rightmaking property of which we have no knowledge. If an action of allowing a child to be brutally killed possessed that property, then it might not be wrong to allow that action, depending upon the weightiness of that unknown rightmaking property. But the existence of unknown rightmaking properties is no more likely, a priori, than of unknown wrongmaking properties. So let us suppose, then, for this illustration, that there are two morally significant properties of which we humans have no knowledge — a rightmaking property, R , and a wrongmaking property W . Let us suppose, further, that these two properties are equally weighty, since, a priori, there is no reason for supposing that one is more significant than the other. Finally, let A be an action of knowingly allowing a child to be brutally killed, and let us suppose that the unknown morally significant rightmaking property R is weightier than the wrongmaking property of knowingly allowing a child to be brutally killed. We can then see that there are four possibilities:

(1) Action A has both unknown properties, R and W . In this case, those two unknown properties cancel one another out, and action A will be morally wrong, all things considered.

(2) Action A has the unknown rightmaking property, R , but not the unknown wrongmaking property, W . In this case, action A may be morally permissible, all things considered, if property R is sufficiently strong to outweigh the known wrongmaking property of allowing a child to be brutally killed.

(3) Action A has the unknown wrongmaking property, W , but not the unknown rightmaking property, R . In this case, action A is even more wrong, all things considered, than it initially appeared to be.

(4) Action A does not have either of the unknown, morally significant properties, R and W . In this case action A is morally wrong to precisely the degree that it initially appeared to be.

The upshot is that in this simplified example, at least three of the four possibilities that we have considered, action A turns out to be morally wrong, all things considered. But what is the situation in general? To answer that question requires a rather lengthy argument in inductive logic. But if one undertakes that task, what is the result? The answer is that if one considers a single action that is morally wrong as judged by the moral knowledge that we possess, then the probability that that action is not morally wrong, all things considered, can be shown to be less than one half. If one considers two actions that are morally wrong as judged by the moral knowledge that we possess, then the probability that neither action is morally wrong, all things considered, can be shown to be less than one third. More generally, one can establish the following result: Suppose that there are n events, each of which, judged by known rightmaking and wrongmaking properties, is such that it would be morally wrong to allow that event. Then, the probability that, judged in the light of all rightmaking and wrongmaking properties, known and unknown, it would not be morally wrong to allow any of those events, must be less than 1/( n + 1).

The upshot is that the probabilistic inference that is involved in the move from statement (8) to statement (9) is inductively sound.

Given either a direct or indirect inductive formulation of the argument from evil, what sorts of responses are possible? A useful way of dividing up possible responses is into what may be referred to as total refutations, defenses, and theodicies. This classification is based upon the following line of thought. The advocate of the argument from evil is claiming, in the first place, that there are facts about evil in the world that make it prima facie unreasonable to believe in the existence of God, and, in the second place, that the situation is not altered when those facts are conjoined with all the other things that one is justified in believing, both inferentially and non-inferentially, so that belief in the existence of God is also unreasonable relative to the total evidence available, together with all relevant basis states. In responding to the argument from evil, then, one might challenge either of these claims. That is to say, one might grant, at least for the sake of argument, that there are facts about evil that, other things being equal, render belief in God unreasonable, but then argue that when those considerations are embedded within one's total epistemic situation, belief in the existence of God can be seen to be reasonable, all things considered. Alternatively, one might defend the more radical thesis that there are no facts about evil in the world that make it even prima facie unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.

If the latter thesis is correct, the argument from evil does not even get started. Such responses to the argument from evil are naturally classified, therefore, as attempted, total refutations of the argument.

The proposition that relevant facts about evil do not make it even prima facie unreasonable to believe in the existence of God probably strikes most philosophers, of course, as rather implausible. We shall see, nevertheless, that a number of philosophical theists have attempted to defend this type of response to the argument from evil.

The alternative course is to grant that there are facts about intrinsically undesirable states of the world that make it prima facie unreasonable to believe that God exists, but then to argue that belief in the existence of God is not unreasonable, all things considered. This response may take, however, two slightly different forms. One possibility is the offering of a complete theodicy. As I shall use that term, this involves, first of all, describing, for every actual evil found in the world, some state of affairs that it is reasonable to believe exists, and which is such that, if it exists, will provide an omnipotent and omniscient being with a morally sufficient reason for allowing the evil in question; and secondly, establishing that it is reasonable to believe that all evils, taken collectively, are thus justified.

It should be noted here that the term “theodicy” is sometimes used in a stronger sense, according to which one who offers a theodicy is attempting to show not only that such morally sufficient reasons exist, but that the reasons cited are in fact God's reasons. Alvin Plantinga (1974a, 10; 1985a, 35) and Robert Adams (1985, 242) use the term in that way, but, as has been pointed out by a number of writers, including Richard Swinburne (1988, 298), and William Hasker (1988, 5), that is to saddle the theodicist with an unnecessarily ambitious program.

The other possibility is that of offering a defense. But what is a defense? In the context of abstract, incompatibility versions of the argument from evil, this term is generally used to refer to attempts to show that there is no logical incompatibility between the existence of evil and the existence of God. Such attempts involve setting out a story that entails the existence of both God and evil, and that is logically consistent. But as soon as one focuses upon evidential formulations of the argument from evil, a different interpretation is needed if the term is to remain a useful one, since the production of a logically consistent story that involves the existence of both God and evil will do nothing to show that evil does not render the existence of God unlikely, or even very unlikely.

So what more is required beyond a logically consistent story of a certain sort? One answer that is suggested by some discussions is that the story needs to be one that is true for all we know. Thus Peter van Inwagen, throughout his book The Problem of Evil, frequently claims that various propositions are “true for all we know,” and in the “Detailed Contents” section at the beginning of his book, he offers the following characterization of the idea of a defense:

The idea of a “defense” in introduced: that is, the idea of a story that contains both God and all the evils that actually exist, a story that is put forward not as true but as “true for all anyone knows”. (2006, xii)

It seems very unlikely, however, that its merely being the case that one does not know that the story is false can suffice, since it may very well be the case that, though I do not know that p is false, I have very strong evidence that it is. But if one has strong evidence that a story is false, it is hard to see how the story on its own could possibly counter an evidential argument from evil.

It seems, accordingly, that some claim about the probability of the story's being true is needed. One possibility, suggested by some discussions, is that one might claim that rather than the story's being a remote possibility that has only a miniscule chance of being true, the story represents “a real possibility”, and so has a substantial chance of being true. Thus, while Peter van Inwagen usually talks about his stories' being true for all anyone knows, he also introduces the distinction between remote possibilities, and real possibilities. (2006, Lecture 4, esp. pp. 66-71)

It is also hard to see, however, how this can be sufficient either. Suppose, for example, that one tells a story about God and the holocaust, which is such that if it were true, an omnipotent being would have been morally justified in not preventing the Holocaust. Suppose, further, that one claims that there is a twenty percent chance that the story is true. A twenty percent chance is certainly a real possibility, but how would that twenty percent chance undermine a version of the argument from evil whose conclusion was that the probability that an omnipotent being would be justified in allowing the Holocaust was extremely low?

Given the apparent failure of the previous two suggestions, a natural conclusion is that the story that is involved in a defense must be one that is likely to be true. But if this is right, how does a defense differ from a theodicy? The answer is that while a theodicy must specify reasons that would suffice to justify an omnipotent and omniscient being in allowing all of the evils found in the world, a defense need merely show that it is likely that there are reasons which would justify an omnipotent and omniscient being in not preventing the evils that we find in the world, even if we do not know what they are. A defense differs from a theodicy, then, in that a defense attempts to show only that some God-justifying reasons probably exist; it does not attempt to specify what they are.

There is, however, one final possibility that needs to be considered. This is the idea that what is needed in a defense is not a story that can be shown to be likely to be true, but, rather, a story that, for all we know, is not unlikely. The thought here is that, even if there is some probability that the story has relative to our evidential base, we may not be able to determine what that probability is, or even any reasonably delimited range in which that probability falls. If so, one cannot show that the story is likely to be true, but neither can it be shown that the story is unlikely to be true.

The question that immediately arises as to whether a proposition that would undercut an inductive argument if one knew it were true can under the argument if one is unable to assign any probability to the proposition's being true, and if so, how. One thought might be that if one can assign no probability to a proposition, one should treat it as equally likely to be true as to be false. But propositions vary dramatically in logical form: some are such as might naturally be viewed as atomic, others are sweeping generalizations, others are complex conjunctions, and so on. If one treated any proposition to which one could not assign a probability as equally likely to be true as to be false, the result would be an incoherent assignment of probabilities. On the other hand, if one adopts this idea only in the case of atomic propositions, then given that stories that are advanced in defenses and theodicies are typically quite complex, those stories will wind up getting assigned low probabilities, and it is then unclear how they could undercut an inductive argument from evil.

5. Attempted Total Refutations

There are at least three main ways in which one might attempt to show that the argument from evil does not succeed in establishing that evil is even prima facie evidence against the existence of God, let alone that the existence of God is improbable relative to our total evidence. The first appeals to human epistemological limitations; the second, to the claim that there is no best of all possible worlds; and the third, to the ontological argument.

The most popular attempt at a total refutation of the argument from evil claims that, because of human cognitive limitations, there is no sound inductive argument that can enable one to move from the premise that there are states of affairs that, taking into account only what we know, it would be morally very wrong for an omnipotent and omniscient person to allow to exist, to the conclusion that there are states of affairs such that it is likely that, all things considered, it would be morally very wrong for an omnipotent and omniscient person to allow those states of affairs to exist.

The appeal to human cognitive limitations does raise a very important issue, and we have seen that one very natural account of the logical form of the inductive step in the case of a direct inductive argument is not satisfactory. But, as I indicated in section 3.5, there is an account that is satisfactory, one that involves a serious use of inductive logic.

In addition, the appeal to human cognitive limitations does not show that there is anything wrong either with the reasoning that Draper offers in support of the crucial premise in his indirect inductive version of the argument from evil, or with the inference to the best explanation type of reasoning employed in the updated version of Hume's indirect inductive formulation of the argument from evil.

A second way of attempting to show that the argument from evil does not even get started is by appealing to the proposition that there is no best of all possible worlds. Here the basic idea is that if for every possible world, however good, there is a better one, then the fact that this world could be improved upon does not give one any reason for concluding that, if there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, that being cannot be morally perfect.

This response to the argument from evil has been around for awhile. In recent years, however, it has been strongly advocated by George Schlesinger (1964, 1977), and, more recently, by Peter Forrest (1981) — though Forrest, curiously, describes the defense as one that has been “neglected”, and refers neither to Schlesinger's well-known discussions, nor to the very strong objections that have been directed against this response to the argument from evil.

The natural response to this attempt to refute the argument from evil was set out very clearly some years ago by Nicholas La Para (1965) and Haig Khatchadourian (1966) among others, and it has been developed in an especially forceful and detailed way in an article by Keith Chrzan (1987). The basic thrust of this response is that the argument from evil, when properly formulated in a deontological fashion, does not turn upon the claim that this world could be improved upon, or upon the claim that it is not the best of all possible worlds: it turns instead upon the claim that there are good reasons for holding that the world contains evils, including instances of suffering, that it would be morally wrong, all things considered, for an omnipotent and omniscient being to allow. As a consequence, the proposition that there might be better and better worlds without limit is simply irrelevant to the argument from evil.

If one accepts a deontological approach to ethics, this response seems decisive. Many contemporary philosophers, however, are consequentialists, and so one needs to consider how the ‘no best of all possible worlds' response looks if one adopts a consequentialist approach.

Initially, it might seem that by combining the ‘no best of all possible worlds' response with consequentialism, one can construct a successful, total refutation. For assume that the following things are true:

(1) An action is, by definition, morally right if and only if it is, among the actions that one could have performed, an action that produces at least as much value as every alternative action; (2) An action is morally wrong if and only if it is not morally right; (3) If one is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then for any action whatever, there is always some other action that produces greater value.

Then it surely follows that it is impossible for an omnipotent and omniscient being to perform a morally wrong action, and therefore that the failure of such a being to prevent various evils in this world cannot be morally wrong.

Consider an omnipotent and omniscient being that creates a world with zillions of innocent persons, all of whom endure extraordinarily intense suffering for ever. If (1), (2), and (3) are right, then such a being does not do anything morally wrong. But this conclusion, surely, is unacceptable, and so if a given version of consequentialism entails this conclusion, then that form of consequentialism must be rejected.

Can consequentialism avoid this conclusion? Can it be formulated in such a way that it captures the view that allowing very great, undeserved suffering is morally very different, and much more serious, than merely refraining from creating as many happy individuals as possible, or merely refraining from creating individuals who are not as ecstatically happy as they might be. If it cannot, then it would seem that the correct conclusion is that consequentialism is unsound. On the other hand, if consequentialism can be so formulated that this distinction is captured, then an appeal to consequentialism, thus formulated, will not enable one to avoid the crucial objection to the ‘no best of all possible worlds’ response to the argument from evil.

A final way in which one could attempt to show that facts about evil cannot constitute even prima facie evidence against the existence of God is by appealing to the ontological argument. Relatively few philosophers have held, of course, that the ontological argument is sound. But there have certainly been notable exceptions — such as Anselm and Descartes, and, in the last century, Charles Hartshorne (1962), Norman Malcolm (1960), and Alvin Plantinga (1974a, 1974b)

If the ontological argument were sound, it would provide a rather decisive refutation of the argument from evil. For in showing not merely that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being, but that it is necessary that such a being exists, it would entail that the proposition that God does not exist must have probability zero on any body of evidence whatever.

The only question, accordingly, is whether the ontological argument is sound. The vast majority of present-day philosophers believe that it is not, and one way of arguing for that view is by appealing to strengthened Gaunilo-type objections — where the idea behind a strengthened Gaunilo-type objection is that, rather than paralleling the ontological argument, as Gaunilo did in responding to Anselm, in order to show that there is an overpopulation problem for reality in the form of perfect islands, perfect unicorns, and so on, one can instead construct versions that lead to mutually incompatible conclusions, such as the conclusion that there is a perfect solvent, together with the conclusion that there is a perfectly insoluble substance (Tooley, 1981). But if the logical form of the ontological argument is such that arguments of precisely the same form generate contradictions, then the ontological argument must be unsound.

A more satisfying response to the ontological argument would, of course, show not merely that the ontological argument is unsound, but precisely why it is unsound. Such a response, however, requires a satisfactory account of the truth conditions of modal statements — something that lies outside the scope of this article

6. Attempted Defenses

In this section, we shall consider three attempts to show that it is reasonable to believe that every evil is such that an omnipotent and omniscient person would have a morally sufficient reason for not preventing its existence, even if one is not able to say, in every case, what that morally sufficient reason might be.

If a given, concrete formulation of the argument from evil appeals to cases of intrinsically undesirable states of affairs that give rise to only to evidential considerations, rather than to incompatibility considerations, then, although the existence of God may be improbable relative to that evidence, it may not be improbable relative to one's total evidence. Theists, however, have often contended that there are a variety of arguments that, even if they do not prove that God exists, provide positive evidence. May not this positive evidence outweigh, then, the negative evidence of apparently unjustified evils?

Starting out from this line of thought, a number of philosophers have gone on to claim that in order to be justified in asserting that there are evils in the world that establish that it is unlikely that God exists, one would first have to examine all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, and show that none of them is sound. Alvin Plantinga, for example, says that in order for the atheologian to show that the existence of God is improbable relative to one's total evidence, “he would be obliged to consider all the sorts of reasons natural theologians have invoked in favor of theistic belief — the traditional cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments, for example.” (1979, 3) And in a similar vein, Bruce Reichenbach remarks:

With respect to the atheologian's inductive argument from evil, the theist might reasonably contend that the atheologian's exclusion of the theistic arguments or proofs for God's existence advanced by the natural theologian has skewed the results. (1980, 224)

Now it is certainly true that if one is defending a version of the argument from evil which supports only a probabilistic conclusion, one needs to consider what sorts of positive reasons might be offered in support of the existence of God. But Plantinga and Reichenbach are advancing a rather stronger claim here, for they are saying that one needs to look at all of the traditional theistic arguments, such as the cosmological and the teleological. They are claiming, in short, that if one of those arguments turned out to be defensible, then it might well serve to undercut the argument from evil.

But this view seems mistaken. Consider the cosmological argument. In some versions, the conclusion is that there is an unmoved mover. In others, that there is a first cause. In others, that there is a necessary being, having its necessity of itself. None of these conclusions involve any claims about the moral character of the object in question, let alone the claim that it is a morally perfect person. But in the absence of such a claim, how could such arguments, even if they turned out to be sound, serve to undercut the argument from evil?

The situation is not essentially different in the case of the argument from order. For while that argument, if it were sound, would provide grounds for drawing some tentative conclusion concerning the moral character of the designer or creator of the universe, the conclusion in question would not be one that could be used to overthrow the argument from evil. For given the mixture of good and evil that one finds in the world, the argument from order can hardly provide support even for the existence of a designer or creator who is very good, let alone one who is morally perfect. So it is very hard to see how the teleological argument, any more than the cosmological, can overturn the argument from evil.

A similar conclusion can be defended with respect to other arguments, such as those that appeal to purported miracles, or religious experiences. For while in the case of religious experiences it might be argued that personal contact with a being may provide additional evidence concerning the person's character, it is clear that the primary evidence concerning a person's character must consist of information concerning what the person does and does not do. So, contrary to the claim advanced by Robert Adams (1985, 245), even if there were veridical religious experiences, they would not provide one with a satisfactory defense against the argument from evil.

A good way of underlining the basic point here is by setting out an alternative formulation of the argument from evil in which it is granted, for the sake of argument, that there is an omnipotent and omniscient person. The result of doing this is that the conclusion at which one arrives is not that there is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person, but, rather, that, although there is an omnipotent and omniscient person, that person is not morally perfect.

When the argument from evil is reformulated in that way, it becomes clear that the vast majority of considerations that have been offered as reasons for believing in God can be of little assistance to the person who is trying to resist the argument from evil. For most of them provide, at best, very tenuous grounds for any conclusion concerning the moral character of any omnipotent and omniscient being who may happen to exist, and almost none of them provides any support for the hypothesis that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is also morally perfect.

The ontological argument is, of course, a notable exception, and, consequently, the advocate of the argument from evil certainly needs to be able to show that it is unsound. But almost all of the other standard arguments are not at all to the point.

What if, rather than holding that there is positive evidence that lends support to the existence of God, one holds instead that the belief that God exists is non-inferentially justified? The claim in question is an interesting one, and a thorough evaluation of it would involve consideration of some deep issues in epistemology. Fortunately, it does seem to make any real difference in the present context whether or not the claim is true.

The reason emerges if one considers the epistemology of perception. Some philosophers hold that some beliefs about physical objects are non-inferentially justified, while others hold that this is never so, and that justified beliefs about physical states of affairs are always justified via an inference to the best explanation that starts out from beliefs about one's experiences. But direct realists as much as indirect realists admit that there can be cases where a person would be justified in believing that a certain physical state of affairs obtained were it not for the fact that he has good evidence that he is hallucinating, or else subject to perceptual illusion. Moreover, given evidence of the relevant sort, it makes no difference whether direct realism is true, or indirect realism: the belief in question is undermined to precisely the same extent in either case.

The situation is the same in the case of religious experience. If, as was argued in the previous section, the primary evidence concerning a person's character consists of what the person does or fails to do in various circumstances, and if, as a consequence, conclusions concerning the character of a deity based upon religious experience can be undercut by the argument from evil, then nothing is changed if one holds that the having of religious experiences, rather than providing one with evidence for the existence of God, makes it the case that one is non-inferentially justified in believing in the existence of God.

Swinburne (1988 297-8) argued in support of the conclusion that theism does need a theodicy. In doing so, however, he noted one minor qualification — namely, that if one could show, for a sufficiently impressive range of evils that initially seemed problematic, that it was likely that an omnipotent and omniscient person would be morally justified in not having prevented them, then one might very well be justified in believing that the same would be true of other evils, even if one could not specify, in those other cases, what the morally sufficient reason for allowing them might be.

What Swinburne says here is surely very reasonable, and I can see no objection in principle to a defense of this sort. The problem with it is that no theodicy that has ever been proposed has been successful in the relevant way — that is, there is no impressive range of undesirable states of affairs where people initially believe that the wrongmaking properties of allowing such states of affairs to exist greatly outweigh any rightmaking properties associated with doing so, but where, confronted with some proposed theodicy, people come to believe that it would be morally permissible to allow such states of affairs to exist. Indeed, it is hard to find any such cases, let alone an impressive range.

7. Theodicies

What are the prospects for a complete, or nearly complete theodicy? Some philosophers, such as Swinburne, are optimistic, and believe that “the required theodicy can be provided.” (1988, 311). Others, including many theists, are much less hopeful. Plantinga, for example remarks:

… we cannot see why our world, with all its ills, would be better than others we think we can imagine, or what , in any detail, is God's reason for permitting a given specific and appalling evil. Not only can we not see this, we can't think of any very good possibilities. And here I must say that most attempts to explain why God permits evil — theodicies , as we may call them — strike me as tepid, shallow and ultimately frivolous. (1985a, 35)

What types of theodicies that have been proposed? An exhaustive survey is not possible here, but among the most important are theodicies that appeal, first, to the value of acquiring desirable traits of character in the face of suffering, secondly, to the value of libertarian free will; thirdly, to the value of the freedom to inflict horrendous evil upon others; and fourthly, to the value of a world that is governed by natural laws.

One very important type of theodicy, championed especially by John Hick, involves the idea that the evils that the world contains can be seen to be justified if one views the world as designed by God as an environment in which people, through their free choices can undergo spiritual growth that will ultimately fit them for communion with God:

The value-judgement that is implicitly being invoked here is that one who has attained to goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptation, and thus by rightly making responsibly choices in concrete situations, is good in a richer and more valuable sense than would be one created ab initio in a state either of innocence or of virtue. In the former case, which is that of the actual moral achievements of mankind, the individual's goodness has within it the strength of temptations overcome, a stability based upon an accumulation of right choices, and a positive and responsible character that comes from the investment of costly personal effort. (1977, 255-6)

Hick's basic suggestion, then, is that soul-making is a great good, that God would therefore be justified in designing a world with that purpose in mind, that our world is very well designed in that regard, and thus that, if one views evil as a problem, it is because one mistakenly thinks that the world ought, instead, to be a hedonistic paradise.

Is this theodicy satisfactory? There are a number of reasons for holding that it is not. First, what about the horrendous suffering that people undergo, either at the hands of others — as in the Holocaust — or because of terminal illnesses such as cancer? One writer — Eleonore Stump — has suggested that the terrible suffering that many people undergo at the end of their lives, in cases where it cannot be alleviated, is to be viewed as suffering that has been ordained by God for the spiritual health of the individual in question. (1993b, 349). But, given that it does not seem to be true that terrible terminal illnesses more commonly fall upon those in bad spiritual health than upon those of good character, let alone that they fall only upon the former, this ‘spiritual chemotherapy’ view seems quite hopeless. More generally, there seems to be no reason at all why a world must contain horrendous suffering if it is to provide a good environment for the development of character in response to challenges and temptations.

Secondly, and is illustrated by the weakness of Hick's own discussion (1977, 309-17), a soul-making theodicy provides no justification for the existence of any animal pain, let alone for a world where predation is not only present but a major feature of non-human animal life. The world could perfectly well have contained only human persons, or only human person plus herbivores.

Thirdly, the soul-making theodicy provides no account either of the suffering that young, innocent children endure, either because of terrible diseases, or at the hands of adults. For here, as in the case of animals, there is no soul-making purpose that is served.

Finally, if one's purpose were to create a world that would be a good place for soul-making, would our earth count as a job well done? It is very hard to see that it would. Some people die young, before they have had any chance at all to master temptations, to respond to challenges, and to develop morally. Others endure suffering so great that it is virtually impossible for them to develop those moral traits that involve relationships with others. Still others enjoy lives of ease and luxury where there is virtually nothing that challenges them to undergo moral growth.

A second important approach to theodicy involves the following ideas: first, that libertarian free will is of great value; secondly, that because it is part of the definition of libertarian free will that an action that is free in that sense cannot be caused by anything outside of the agent, not even God can cause a person to freely do what is right; and thirdly, that because of the great value of libertarian free will, it is better that God create a world in which agents possess libertarian free will, even though they may misuse it, and do what is wrong, than that God create a world where agents lack libertarian free will.

One problem with an appeal to libertarian free will is that no satisfactory account of the concept of libertarian free will is yet available. Thus, while the requirement that, in order to be free in the libertarian sense, an action not have any cause that lies outside the agent is unproblematic, this is obviously not a sufficient condition, since this condition would be satisfied if the behavior in question was caused by random events within the agent. So one needs to add that the agent is, in some sense, the cause of the action. But how is the causation in question to be understood? Present accounts of the metaphysics of causation typically treat causes as states of affairs. If, however, one adopts such an approach, then it seems that all that one has when an action is freely done, in the libertarian sense, is that there is some uncaused mental state of the agent that causally gives rise to the relevant behavior, and why freedom, thus understood, should be thought valuable, is far from clear.

The alternative is to shift from event-causation to what is referred to as ‘agent-causation’. But then the problem is that there is no satisfactory account of agent-causation.

But even if the difficulty concerning the nature of libertarian free will is set aside, there are still very strong objections to the free-will approach. First, and most important, the fact that libertarian free will is valuable does not entail that one should never intervene in the exercise of libertarian free will. Indeed, very few people think that one should not intervene to prevent someone from committing rape or murder. On the contrary, almost everyone would hold that a failure to prevent heinously evil actions when one can do so would be seriously wrong.

Secondly, the proposition that libertarian free will is valuable does not entail that it is a good thing for people to have the power to inflict great harm upon others. So individuals could, for example, have libertarian free will, but not have the power to torture and murder others.

Thirdly, many evils are caused by natural processes, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and other weather conditions, and by a wide variety of diseases. Such evils certainly do not appear to result from morally wrong actions. If that is right, then an appeal to free will provides no answer to an argument from evil that focuses upon such evils.

Some writers, such as C. S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga, have suggested that such evils may ultimately be due to the immoral actions of supernatural beings (Lewis, 1957, 122-3; Plantinga, 1974a, 58). If that were so, then the first two objections mentioned above would apply: one would have many more cases where individuals were being given the power to inflict great harm on others, and then were being allowed by God to perform horrendously evil actions leading to enormous suffering and many deaths. In addition, however, it can plausibly be argued that, though it is possible that earthquakes, hurricanes, cancer, and the predation of animals are all caused by malevolent supernatural beings, the probability that this is so is extremely low.

The fact that agents could be free in a libertarian sense even if they did not have the power to inflict great harm upon others has led at least one philosopher, namely, Richard Swinburne, to argue that, while free will is valuable, precisely how valuable it is depends upon the range of actions open to one. If possible actions vary enormously in moral worth, then libertarian free will is very valuable indeed. But if the variation in the moral status of what one can do is very limited, then libertarian free will adds much less to the world: one has a ‘toy world’, where one has very little responsibility for the well-being of others.

This variant on the appeal to libertarian free will is also open to a number of objections. First, as with free will theodicies in general, this line of thought provides no justification for the existence of what appear to be natural evils.

Secondly, if what matters is simply the existence of alternative actions that differ greatly morally, this can be the case even in a world where one lacks the power to inflict great harm on others, since there can be actions that would benefit others enormously, and which one may either perform or refrain from performing.

Thirdly, what exactly is the underlying line of thought here? In the case of human actions, Swinburne surely holds that one should prevent someone from doing something that would be morally horrendous, if one can do so. Is the idea, then, that while occasional prevention of such evils does not significantly reduce the extent of the moral responsibility of others, if one's power were to increase, a point would be reached where one should sometimes refrain from preventing people from performing morally horrendous actions? But why should this be so? One answer might be that if one intervened too frequently, then people would come to believe that they did not have the ability to perform such actions. But, in the first place, it is not clear why that would be undesirable. People could still, for example, be thoroughly evil, for they could wish that they had the power to perform such terrible actions, and be disposed to perform such actions if they ever came to have the power. In the second place, prevention of deeply evil actions could take quite different forms. People could, for example, be given a conscience that led them, when they had decided to cause great injury to others, and were about to do so, to feel that what they were about to do was too terrible a thing, so that they would not carry through on the action. In such a world, people could surely still feel that they themselves were capable of performing heinously evil actions, and so they would continue to attempt to perform such actions.

A final important theodicy involves the following ideas: first, it is important that events in the world take place in a regular way, since otherwise effective action would be impossible; secondly, events will exhibit regular patters only if they are governed by natural laws; thirdly, if events are governed by natural laws, the operation of those laws will give rise to events that harm individuals; so, fourthly, God's allowing natural evils is justified because the existence of natural evils is entailed by natural laws, and a world without natural laws would be a much worse world.

This type of theodicy is also exposed to serious objections. First, what natural evils a world contains depends not just on the laws, but on the initial, or boundary conditions. Thus, for example, an omnipotent being could create ex nihilo a world which had the same laws of nature as our world, and which contained human beings, but which was devoid of non-human carnivores. Or the world could be such that there was unlimited room for populations to expand, and ample natural resources to support such populations.

Secondly, many evils depend upon precisely what laws the world contains. An omnipotent being could, for example, easily create a world with the same laws of physics as our world, but with slightly different laws linking neurophysiological states with qualities of experiences, so that extremely intense pains either did not arise, or could be turned off when they served no purpose. Or additional physical laws of a rather specialized sort could be introduced that would cause very harmful viruses to self-destruct.

Thirdly, this final theodicy provides no account of moral evil. If other theodicies could provide a justification for God's allowing moral evil, that would not be a problem. But, as we have seen, no satisfactory justification appears to be available.

In section 1.3, it was argued that concrete formulations of the argument from evil, which focus upon specific evils, or else upon narrowly defined types of evils, are superior to abstract formulations of the argument from evil, which start out from very general statements concerning evil — such as that there is evil in the world, or that there are natural evils, or that there is an enormous amount of evil, and so on. Consider, then, an evidential argument from evil that focuses upon Rowe's famous case of Sue — a young girl who was brutally beaten, raped, and murdered. Confronted with such a case, it is natural to think that a satisfactory response will involve arguing that it is plausible that the terrible occurrence in question itself has some hidden property that makes it the case that allowing it to happen is not morally wrong all things considered.

But as Peter van Inwagen has argued — most recently in The Problem of Evil — there is a very different possibility, and one that he thinks is much more promising. The basic idea is as follows. First of all, one begins by focusing upon abstract formulations of the argument from evil, and one attempts to put forward a story — which might be either a defense-story or a theodicy-story — that makes it plausible that the existence of, say, a great amount of horrendous suffering in the world, is actually desirable because there is some great good that outweighs that suffering, and that can only be achieved if that amount of suffering is present, or some greater evil that can only be avoided if that amount of suffering is present. Second, if that provides a satisfactory answer to an abstract version of the argument from evil that focuses upon the existence of horrendous suffering, one can turn to concrete versions of the argument from evil, and there the idea will be that God had good reason to allow a certain amount of horrendous suffering, and the terrible case of Sue is simply one of the cases that he allowed. It is not that Sue's suffering itself had some property that made its occurrence good all things considered. God could have very well prevented it, and had he done so, he would have eliminated an occurrence that was bad in itself, all things considered. But had he done so, he would have had to have allowed some other horrendous event that, as things stand, he prevented, and the reason that he would have had to do that would be to ensure that the global property of there being a certain amount of horrendous evil in the world was instantiated — something that was necessary to achieve a greater good, or to avoid a greater evil.

In short, defenses and theodicies that are based upon this idea, rather than appealing to the idea that apparent evils are not evils in themselves, all things considered, once all local properties — all properties that those events themselves have — are taken into account, appeal, instead, to the idea that there are global properties whose instantiation is important, and that can only be instantiated if there are events that are evil in themselves.

9. Peter van Inwagen's Religious Theodicy and a Global Properties Approach

Van Inwagen's response to the argument from evil involves two main parts. The first deals with human suffering, and other evils that humans experience, and involves an extended free will defense. The second is concerned with the suffering of non-human animals that lack rationality, and it turns upon claims about ‘massively irregular’ worlds.

In both cases, van Inwagen needs to argue, first, that there is an adequate answer to abstract versions of the argument from evil, and then, secondly, that if this is so, then there is also an adequate response to concrete versions of the argument from evil. Here, however, I shall consider only his responses to abstract versions of the argument.

Van Inwagen characterizes his approach as a ‘defense’, rather than as a ‘theodicy’. But this reflects the fact that in The Problem of Evil he has adopted Plantinga's interpretation of the term ‘theodicy’ (2006, 65). Given how the term ‘Theodicy’ is being used here, van Inwagen is offering a theodicy, since he is specifying properties that, it is claimed, would serve to justify God in allowing evils, rather than attempting to show that there are some unspecified properties that would do this.

I shall begin by setting out the two parts of van Inwagen's theodicy, dealing first with human suffering, and then with the suffering of non-human animals. I shall then turn to a critical evaluation of van Inwagen's approach.

To deal with the evils that humans endure, van Inwagen sketches quite a complicated story. The story, however, is not exactly unfamiliar, for while it is not, in all of its details, the story told by traditional Christianity, there are very strong resemblances, and it is fair to say that it is very unlikely that anyone unfamiliar with Christianity would have come up van Inwagen's story.

In brief, it runs as follows. God guided evolution to produce the primates that immediately preceded Homo sapiens. A relatively small group of those primates formed, at one time, a breeding community, and God “miraculously raised them to rationality,” thereby giving them “the gifts of language, abstract thought, and disinterested love—and, of course, the gift of free will.” (2006, 85)

But God also bestowed many other striking gifts upon them:

God not only raised these primates to rationality—not only made of them what we call human beings—but also took them into a kind of mystical union with himself, the sort of union that Christians hope for in Heaven and call the Beatific Vision. Being in union with God, these new human beings, these primates who had become human beings at a certain point in their lives, lived together in the harmony of perfect love and also possessed what theologians used to call preternatural powers—something like what people who believe in them today call ‘paranormal abilities’. Because they lived in the harmony of perfect love, none of them did any harm to the others. Because of their preternatural powers, they were able somehow to protect themselves from wild beasts (which they were able to tame with a look), from disease (which they were able to cure with a touch), and from random, destructive natural events (like earthquakes) which they knew about in advance and were able to escape. (2006, 85-86)

For reasons that we cannot understand, however, all of these people abused their free will, and left the union with God. In doing so, they lost their preternatural powers, and so were subject to disease, to aging, to destructive natural events, and to death. But separation from God also meant that they were subject to tendencies present in their inherited genes, so that they now suffered from “an inborn tendency to do evil against which all human efforts are in vain.” (2006, 87)

What did God do at this point? He might have acted in accordance with the demands of justice, and simply have left human beings in the ruined world that they had brought about. Alternatively, God might have acted out of mercy, and annihilated the human race. But God is also a God of love, and so he “neither left our species to its own devices nor mercifully destroyed it.” (2006, 87) Instead, he carried out some sort of rescue operation.

God's goal in that rescue operation was to have humans beings cooperate in that enterprise by freely choosing to love God and to be reunited with him. Because of this, God had good reason not to remove all horrific evils from the world:

For human beings to cooperate with God in this rescue operation, they must know that they need to be rescued. They must know what it means to be separated from him. And what it means to be separated from God is to live in a world of horrors. If God simply ‘canceled’ all the horrors of this world by an endless series of miracles, he would thereby frustrate his own plan of reconciliation. If he did that, we should be content with our lot and should see no reason to cooperate with him. (2006, 88)

The horrific evils that the world contains will not, however, last forever:

At some point, for all eternity, there will be no more unmerited suffering: this present darkness, ‘the age of evil’, will eventually be remembered as a brief flicker at the beginning of human history. Every evil done by the wicked to the innocent will have been avenged, and every tear will have been wiped away. If there is still suffering, it will be merited: the suffering of those who refuse to cooperate with God's great rescue operation and are allowed by him to exist forever in a state of elected ruin—those who, in a word, are in Hell. (2006, 89)

The response to global arguments from evil that van Inwagen proposes for the case of human suffering provides no explanation for the suffering of non-human animals. Moreover, and more generally, no account in terms of the abuse of free will by human beings can provide such an explanation, given that non-human animals existed before human beings. So what account can be offered?

In Lecture 7 in The Problem of Evil, van Inwagen discusses the accounts that others have offered — including the view that the suffering of non-human animals is due to the corruption of nature that resulted from the abuse of free will by fallen angels — and he argues that none of those accounts is satisfactory. What, then, is van Inwagen's account? The answer consists of a story that involves the following four propositions:

(1) Every world that God could have made that contains higher-level sentient creatures either contains patterns of suffering morally equivalent to those of the actual world, or else is massively irregular. (2) Some important intrinsic or extrinsic good depends on the existence of higher-level sentient creatures; this good is of sufficient magnitude that it outweighs the patterns of suffering found in the actual world. (3) Being massively irregular is a defect in a world, a defect at least as great as the defect of containing patterns of suffering morally equivalent to those found in the actual world. (4) The world — the cosmos, the physical universe — has been created by God. (2006, 114)

Van Inwagen contends that this story is true for all we know, and that we have no reason for viewing any of the four propositions as implausible. But if that is so, then van Inwagen thinks that one has a satisfactory answer to versions of the global argument from evil that focus specifically on the suffering of non-human animals.

Stories that are merely logically possible provide no answer to evidential versions of the argument from evil. To be effective, the stories must have some serious plausibility.

How plausible must they be? That is not a question that I shall explore here. Intuitively, however, if one has only a single story to offer, it is hard to see how it can rebut the argument from evil if the probability that it is true is less than one half. Similarly, if one has multiple stories to offer, compatible or incompatible with one another, then it would seem that the disjunction of those stories must be at least as likely to be true as to be false.

The crucial question, then, is how probable the stories in question are. I shall argue that both of van Inwagen's stories are very improbable.

There are different ways in which that can be argued. The most fundamental way, I suggest, is by constructing, in each case, incompatible stories that are structurally parallel to van Inwagen's stories. It can then be argued that the competing stories should initially be viewed as equiprobable, and that, in turn, will enable one to place an upper bound on the probability of the relevant story advanced by van Inwagen.

I shall not attempt to do that here. Instead, I shall set out considerations that make it plausible that various propositions involved in van Inwagen's story are very unlikely to be true.

Consider some of the elements of van Inwagen's story. One element is that God exists. Van Inwagen assumes, it seems, that one cannot show that that is unlikely unless one can put forward a successful version of the argument from evil. But compare the following three propositions:

(1) There is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good creator.

(2) There is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly evil creator.

(3) There is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally indifferent creator.

Intuitively, it is hard to see why one of these should have a higher a priori probability than either of the others. But if their a priori probabilities are equal, then none can have an a priori probability greater than one third. So the existence of God is a priori unlikely.

Secondly, in van Inwagen's story, God, rather than creating human beings ex nihilo, raises a group of primates up to rationality. But this approach means that humans have bodies that are defective in various ways. Consider, for example, human backs, sinuses, birth canals, wisdom teeth, defense mechanisms against diseases, and so on. How can it be plausible that an omnipotent and morally perfect being would choose to produce rational beings in that way, rather than creating them ex nihilo, and free of such defects?

Thirdly, human beings that God initially creates enjoy the Beatific Vision of God, and also possess preternatural powers. Because of the latter, they are not seriously harmed by disease or natural disasters. But then they foolishly separate themselves from God, and lose all of this. Do they all do this at the same time? Surely that is highly improbable. Do some do it first, and then others later? Given that those who separate themselves from God lose the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, along with their preternatural powers, wouldn't those who hadn't yet separated themselves from God notice that those who had done so were suddenly much worse off? But if so, how likely is it that they would choose to go down the same path?

Fourthly, having separated themselves from God, and noticing that they are now very much worse off, isn't it likely that most of them would want to return to God, repent their sins, and ask for forgiveness? On van Inwagen's story, however, all of that is to no avail. Nothing that those humans could do could atone for their error. But why should a morally perfect being treat the error of separating oneself from him as, in effect, an unforgivable sin? Is it at all plausible that a morally perfect being would do that?

Fifthly, when all the members of the initial group of humans separated themselves from God, God not only stripped them of the preternatural powers that had protected them from diseases and natural disasters: he also decreed that none of their descendents would come into the world enjoying those preternatural powers, or a Beatific Vision of him. Is it at all plausible that an omnipotent and morally perfect being would deprive humans who had not freely chosen to separate themselves from him of massive benefits that they would have had if their ancestors had not separated themselves from God, and that he would thereby subject them to all of the natural evils that the world contains? The answer, surely, is that this is not at all plausible.

Finally, consider what happens, according to van Inwagen's story, to those human beings who refuse to cooperate with God's plan for reconciliation. As in orthodox Christianity, once they die, all hope comes to an end, and they spend eternity suffering in Hell — suffering that, according to van Inwagen's story, they deserve. Is it plausible that an omnipotent and morally perfect person would fix a person's fate at some point, rather than leaving the door open for prodigal sons and daughters to return? Is it plausible that such a being would set the world up in such a way that some people would be locked into eternal suffering from which they could not escape? Is it plausible that people deserve to suffer eternally if, at the point when they die, they have not cooperated in God's plan of reconciliation? None of these things, I suggest, is at all plausible.

The conclusion, in short, is that there are very strong reasons for holding that the story that van Inwagen sets out in an attempt to answer abstract versions for the argument from evil that focus upon human suffering is a story that is improbable in the extreme.

The story that van Inwagen sets out in response to formulations of the argument from evil that focus upon the sufferings of non-human animals involves four propositions. Of these, three appear improbable.

First of all, there is the final proposition, to the effect that the world was created by God. As we saw in the previous section, there appears to be good reason for thinking that the a priori probability of that God exists cannot be greater than one third.

Next, there is the following proposition:

(1) Every world that God could have made that contains higher-level sentient creatures either contains patterns of suffering morally equivalent to those of the actual world, or else is massively irregular.

One thing to be said about this proposition is that van Inwagen's conception of massive irregularity appears to be fine-tuned to the needs of his argument. Thus, on the one hand, van Inwagen holds that if God were to intervene to prevent the suffering of non-human animals, that would make the world a massively irregular one. But what if God were to intervene to prevent all the undeserved suffering of every human being? Here van Inwagen says,

And there is this point to be made: there have been so few human beings, compared with the number of sentient living things that there have been, that it is not evident that a world in which all human suffering was miraculously prevented would be a massively irregular world. (2006, 127-8)

So intervening to prevent all suffering on the part of what has variously been estimated as between 40 and 120 billion human beings may not be a sufficiently massive intervention to make the world massively irregular!

In any case, let us consider whether proposition (1) is plausible. Couldn't God, rather than using evolution to develop higher-level sentient creatures, have created a number of species, none of which were carnivorous? Or couldn't God have intervened in evolution at appropriate points to prevent the development of carnivorous species? Or couldn't God have endowed animals with preternatural powers, as he did in the case of humans in van Inwagen's earlier story, thereby enabling animals to recover immediately from diseases and other threats?

There would seem, in short, to be a number of ways in which an omnipotent being could create a world with higher-level sentient beings with a much lower level of animal suffering than our world, and without massive irregularity. Proposition (1) is, accordingly, highly improbable.

Finally, there is van Inwagen's third proposition:

(3) Being massively irregular is a defect in a world, a defect at least as great as the defect of containing patterns of suffering morally equivalent to those found in the actual world.

Suppose that there was an omnipotent and omniscient being, and he informed us that he had created other universes that contained no living things, and in which he constantly intervened, so that those worlds were massively irregular. Would such actions be morally problematic? The idea that they would be seems to me very implausible. But if such actions would not be morally problematic, then the property of creating a world with massive irregularities cannot be a wrongmaking property of actions. Accordingly, if one compares the action of creating a massively irregular world that is free of suffering on the part of non-human animals, and the action of creating a world that is free of massive irregularity, but in which non-human animals suffer, then the first action is morally worse than the second, since it has a wrongmaking property, while the first action has no wrongmaking property at all. So van Inwagen's third proposition is not at all plausible.

The conclusion, accordingly, is that the story that van Inwagen offers to deal with the suffering of non-human animals is very unlikely to be true.

Adams, Marilyn McCord (1999). Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Adams, Robert M. (1977). “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 14: 109-17.
––– (1985). “Plantinga on the Problem of Evil,” in Tomberlin and van Inwagen (eds.) 1985, 225-55.
Aiken, H. D. (1957-58). “God and Evil: Some Relations between Faith and Morals,” Ethics , 68: 77-97.
Audi, Robert, and William J. Wainwright (ed.) (1987). Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Chrzan, Keith (1987). “The Irrelevance of the No Best Possible World Defense,” Philosophia , 17: 161-7.
––– (1988). “Plantinga on Atheistic Induction,” Sophia , 27: 10-14.
Conway David A. (1988). “The Philosophical Problem of Evil,” Philosophy of Religion , 24: 35-66.
Draper, Paul (1989). “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists,” Noûs , 23: 331-350; reprinted in Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 12-29.
Fitzpatrick, F. J. (1981). “The Onus of Proof in Arguments about the Problem of Evil,” Religious Studies , 17: 19-38.
Forrest, Peter (1981). “The Problem of Evil: Two Neglected Defenses,” Sophia , 20: 49-54.
Hartshorne, Charles (1962). The Logic of Perfection , La Salle: Open Court Publishing.
Hasker, William (1988). “Suffering, Soul-Making, and Salvation,” International Philosophical Quarterly , 28: 3-19.
Hick, John (1966). Evil and the God of Love , New York: Harper and Row, revised edition 1978.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, ed. (1996). The Evidential Argument from Evil , Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Kane, G. Stanley (1975). “The Failure of Soul-Making Theodicy,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 6: 1-22.
Khatchadourian, Haig (1966). “God, Happiness and Evil,” Religious Studies , 2: 109-19.
La Para, Nicholas (1965). “Suffering, Happiness, Evil,” Sophia , 4: 10-16.
Langtry, Bruce (1989). “God, Evil and Probability,” Sophia , 28: 32-40.
Lewis, C. S. (1957). The Problem of Pain , London: Fontana Books.
Lewis, Delmas (1983). “The Problem with the Problem of Evil,” Sophia , 22: 26-35.
Mackie, John L. (1955). “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind , 64: 200-12
Malcolm, Norman (1960). “Anselm's Ontological Arguments,” The Philosophical Review , 69: 41-62.
Martin, Michael (1988). “Reichenbach on Natural Evil,” Religious Studies , 24: 91-9.
McCloskey, H. J. (1960). “God and Evil,” Philosophical Quarterly , 10: 97-114
McKim, Robert (1984). “Worlds Without Evil,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 15: 161-70
O'Connor David, (1983). “Swinburne on Natural Evil,” Religious Studies , 19: 65-73.
Perkins, R. M. (1983). “An Atheistic Argument from the Improvability of the Universe,” Noûs , 17: 239-50
Plantinga, Alvin (1967). God and Other Minds , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
––– (1974a). God, Freedom, and Evil , New York: Harper and Row.
––– (1974b). The Nature of Necessity , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
––– (1979). “The Probabilistic Argument from Evil,” Philosophical Studies , 35: 1-53.
––– (1981). “Tooley and Evil: A Reply,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 60: 66-75.
––– (1985a). “Self-Profile,” in Tomberlin and van Inwagen (eds.) 1985, 3-97
––– (1985b). “Reply to Robert M. Adams,” in Tomberlin and van Inwagen (eds.) 1985, 371-82.
––– (1998). “Degenerate Evidence and Rowe's New Evidential Argument from Evil,” Noûs , 32(4): 531-44.
Reichenbach, Bruce R. (1976). “Natural Evils and Natural Law: A Theodicy for Natural Evils,” International Philosophical Quarterly , 16: 179-96.
––– (1980). “The Inductive Argument from Evil,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 17: 221-7.
Rowe, William L. (1979). “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 16: 335-41
––– (1984). “Evil and the Theistic Hypothesis: A Response to Wykstra,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 16: 95-100.
––– (1986). “The Empirical Argument from Evil,” in Audi and Wainwright (eds.), Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment , Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 227-47
––– (1991). “Ruminations about Evil,” Philosophical Perspectives , 5: 69-88.
––– (1996). “The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look,” in Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, 262-85.
––– (1998). “Reply to Plantinga,” Noûs , 32(4): 545-51.
Schlesinger, George (1964). “The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Suffering,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 1: 244-7.
––– (1977). Religion and Scientific Method , Boston: D. Reidel.
Smith, Quentin (1991). “An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 29: 159-174.
Stump, Eleonore (ed.) (1993a). Reasoned Faith , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
––– (1993b). “Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job,” in Stump (ed.), Reasoned Faith , Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 328-57.
––– (1983). “Knowledge, Freedom and the Problem of Evil,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 14: 49-58
Swinburne, Richard (1979). The Existence of God , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
––– (1988). “Does Theism Need A Theodicy?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 18: 287-312.
––– (1996). “Some Major Strands of Theodicy?” in Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, 30-48.
Tomberlin, James E., and Peter van Inwagen (eds.) (1985). Alvin Plantinga , Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
––– (ed.) (1991). Philosophical Perspectives 5: Philosophy of Religion , Atascadera, California: Ridgeview Publishing).
Tooley, Michael (1977). “The Nature of Laws,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 7: 667-98.
––– (1980). “Alvin Plantinga and the Argument from Evil,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 58: 360-76.
––– (1981). “Plantinga's Defence of the Ontological Argument,” Mind , 90: 422-7
––– (1988). Causation: A Realist Approach , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Inwagen, Peter (1991). “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,” in Philosophical Perspectives , 5: 135-165.
van Inwagen, Peter (2006). The Problem of Evil , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wykstra, Stephen J. (1984). “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance’,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 16: 73-93.
“ An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws ”, a preprint of a paper by Quentin Smith (Western Michigan University), in International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion , 29 (1991): 159-174.
Essays, and Reviews of Books, on the Problem of Evil , selected by Jeffrey Lowder (Past President, Internet Infidels, Inc.).
“ The Evidential Argument from Evil ”, a paper by Nicholas Tattersall, 1998.
“ Evil and Omnipotence ”, John L. Mackie, in Mind , n.s. 64 (254) (April 1955): 200-212.
“ God, Evil, and Suffering ”, preprint of a paper by Daniel Howard-Snyder (Western Washington University), in Reason for the Hope Within , Michael Murray (ed.), Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999, 76-115.
“ Natural Selection and the Problem of Evil ”, by Paul Draper (Florida International University).
“ Review of Andrea Weisberger's Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defence of Theism (1999) ”, by Graham Oppy (Monash University).

[Please contact the author with further suggestions.]

Acknowledgments

In revising this piece, I received a number of excellent suggestions from Edward N. Zalta, and I very much appreciate his interest in the philosophical issues, and his extremely helpful input.

Newest Articles

Argumentative Writing and Analysis
Exploring Humanism: A Comprehensive Overview
Exploring the Semantics and Pragmatics of Language Usage
A Comprehensive Overview of Foucault's The Order of Things
Metaphysics
Theory of Forms
Epistemology
Materialism
Moral relativism
Utilitarianism
Virtue ethics
Normative ethics
Applied ethics
Moral Psychology
Philosophy of art
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of beauty
Nature of Art
Philosophy of Film
Philosophy of Music
Deductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning
Justification
Perception and Knowledge
Beliefs and Truth
Modern philosophy
Romanticism
Analytic philosophy
Enlightenment philosophy
Existentialism
Enlightenment
Ancient philosophy
Classical Greek philosophy
Renaissance philosophy
Medieval philosophy
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Hellenistic philosophy
Presocratic philosophy
Rationalism
Scholasticism
Jewish philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy
Reasoning and Argumentation
Seeking Justice After a Tractor-Trailer Accident: Why You Need an Experienced Lawyer
Critical Thinking
Fallacies and logical errors
Skepticism and doubt
Creative Thinking
Lateral thinking
Thought experiments
Argumentation and Logic
Syllogisms and Deductive Reasoning
Fallacies and Rebuttals
Inductive Reasoning and Analogy
Reasoning and Problem-Solving
Critical Thinking and Decision Making
Creative Thinking and Problem Solving
Analytical Thinking and Reasoning
Philosophical Writing and Analysis
Interpreting Philosophical Texts
Writing Essays and Articles on Philosophy
Philosophical Research Methods
Qualitative Research Methods in Philosophy
Quantitative Research Methods in Philosophy
Research Design and Methodology
Ethics and Morality
Aesthetics and Beauty
Metaphysical terms
Ontological argument
Ethical terms
Aesthetic terms
Metaphysical theories
Kant's Categorical Imperative
Aristotle's Four Causes
Plato's Theory of Forms
Hegel's Dialectic
Ethical theories
Aesthetic theories
John Dewey's aesthetic theory
Immanuel Kant's aesthetic theory
Modern philosophical texts
Foucault's The Order of Things
Descartes' Meditations
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil
Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Ancient philosophical texts
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Plato's Republic
Ancient philosophers
Modern philosophers
Modern philosophical schools
German Idealism
British Empiricism
Ancient philosophical schools
The Skeptic school
The Cynic school
The Stoic school
The Epicurean school
The Socratic school
Philosophy of Language
Semantics and Pragmatics of Language Usage
Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
Meaning of Words and Phrases
Philosophy of Science
Scientific Realism and Rationalism
Induction and the Hypothetico-Deductive Model
Theory-Ladenness and Underdetermination
Philosophy of Mind
Mind-Body Dualism and Emergentism
Materialism and Physicalism
Identity Theory and Personal Identity
Philosophy of Religion
Religious Pluralism and Exclusivism
The Problem of Evil and Suffering
Religious Experience and Faith
Metaphysical Theories
Idealism and Realism
Determinism, Fatalism, and Libertarianism
Phenomenalism and Nominalism
Epistemological Theories
Intuitionism, Skepticism, and Agnosticism
Rationalism and Empiricism
Foundationalism and Coherentism
Aesthetic Theories
Formalist Aesthetics, Emotional Aesthetics, Experiential Aesthetics
Relational Aesthetics, Sociological Aesthetics, Historical Aesthetics
Naturalistic Aesthetics, Immanent Aesthetics, Transcendental Aesthetics
Ethical Theories
Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, Deontology
Subjectivism, Egoism, Hedonism
Social Contract Theory, Natural Law Theory, Care Ethics
Metaphysical Terms
Cause, Necessity, Possibility, Impossibility
Identity, Persistence, Time, Space
Substance, Attribute, Essence, Accident
Logic and Argumentation Terms
Analogy, Syllogism, Deduction, Induction
Inference, Validity, Soundness, Refutation
Premise, Conclusion, Entailment, Contradiction
Epistemological Terms
Perception and Knowledge Claims
Infallibility, Verifiability, Coherence Theory of Truth
Justification, Beliefs and Truths
Ethical Terms
Modern Texts
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
Medieval Texts
The Guide for the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides
The Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas
The Incoherence of the Incoherence by Averroes
Ancient Texts
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
The Art of Rhetoric by Cicero
The Republic by Plato
The Problem of Evil and Suffering: A Philosophical Exploration
Philosophical Concepts

The Problem of Evil and Suffering is one of the most perplexing questions of philosophy and religion. It is a question that has been asked since the dawn of time, with no definitive answer in sight. How can a good and loving God allow so much suffering in the world? Is it all part of a greater plan or is it simply random chance?In this article, we will explore the philosophical implications of The Problem of Evil and Suffering. We will examine various theories, from the classic Theodicy to modern interpretations.

Others argue that a benevolent God would not stand by and do nothing while evil was present. The most common response to this question is that evil and suffering are part of a larger plan of which we cannot yet understand. This is known as the Free Will Defense. According to this theory, God gave us free will in order to make moral choices, but with those choices come consequences, which can sometimes result in evil and suffering.

Another possible explanation is that evil and suffering are simply a necessary part of life in order for us to learn and grow. This is known as the Principle of Growth or Development. According to this principle, suffering can be seen as an opportunity for growth, as it teaches us empathy, compassion, and resilience. A third possible explanation for the presence of evil and suffering is that it is simply a result of human nature.

This is known as the Naturalistic Fallacy. According to this view , evil and suffering are a natural part of our existence, and it is not up to us to judge or condemn them. Finally, there are some who believe that evil and suffering are simply a result of random chance. This is known as the Randomness Hypothesis.

The Free Will Defense

Thus, in order for us to have genuine moral choices, God had to create a world with a certain amount of risk and suffering. Critics of the Free Will Defense point out that it does not explain why some people suffer more than others. It also does not address questions of why an all-powerful God would allow so much evil and suffering in His creation. Finally, some argue that while free will is important, it does not justify the amount of evil and suffering we see in our world today.

The Naturalistic Fallacy

The principle of growth or development.

This principle suggests that by learning from our experiences with pain and suffering, we can develop more meaningful relationships, gain a deeper understanding of the world, and cultivate a greater appreciation for life. The Principle of Growth or Development can be seen as a way to reconcile the Problem of Evil and Suffering. It holds that rather than simply being a source of despair and anguish, evil and suffering can have a positive effect on our lives. By learning to cope with pain and adversity, we can become more resilient, compassionate, and empathetic individuals. This can lead to a more fulfilling life and improved relationships with those around us. The Principle of Growth or Development is also applicable in our modern society.

The Randomness Hypothesis

This idea appears in various forms throughout history, from ancient Greek philosophers to modern day scientists. It has also been argued that randomness can be a good thing, as it allows for unpredictability and growth in the world. The Randomness Hypothesis has been used to explain why some people suffer more than others and why certain groups may be more prone to suffering than others. It also implies that there is no higher power at work, which can be a controversial idea for some religious believers. However, this hypothesis does not deny the possibility of divine intervention or miracles, as these could still occur in spite of the randomness. This theory can be seen as a way of accepting suffering without attempting to explain why it happens.

It suggests that we should simply accept suffering as part of life and try to make the best of it rather than attempting to explain it away with philosophical arguments. This can be a difficult concept to embrace for many people, as it can seem like an acceptance of injustice. The Randomness Hypothesis has been met with both support and criticism over the years. Supporters argue that it is a way to make sense of the chaotic nature of life, while critics point out that it fails to take into account moral responsibility and personal choice. Ultimately, this hypothesis may be seen as a way to accept the realities of life without trying to find a metaphysical or moral explanation for them. This article has explored some of the possible explanations for why a benevolent God would allow evil and suffering in His creation.

It has looked at The Free Will Defense, The Principle of Growth or Development, The Naturalistic Fallacy, and The Randomness Hypothesis. While none of these theories provide a definitive answer to the Problem of Evil and Suffering, they do provide insight into how we can understand this difficult issue. Ultimately, it is up to each individual to grapple with this problem on their own terms, and create their own understanding of the complex relationship between suffering and a just universe.

Exploring Egoism: What It Is and What It Means

Altruism: Exploring the Power of Selflessness
Exploring the Ethical Theory of Utilitarianism
Exploring Aristotle's Four Causes
Exploring Plato's Theory of Forms
Deontology: An Introduction to an Ethical Theory
Exploring Virtue Ethics: The Philosophical Theory
Hegel's Dialectic: A Comprehensive Overview
Socrates: An In-Depth Exploration of the Ancient Philosopher
Exploring Immanuel Kant's Aesthetic Theory
Descartes' Meditations: An Introduction for None

Exploring Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Aristotle: A Comprehensive Overview
Exploring Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Exploring the Life and Legacy of Cicero: An Introduction
Exploring Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil

Exploring Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Epicurus - An Introduction to His Philosophy
Descartes: A Comprehensive Overview
Sublime: An Introduction to Aesthetic and Philosophical Terms
Exploring Plato's Republic
Exploring Pragmatism: A Modern Philosophical School
Exploring the Life and Works of David Hume
Exploring the Skeptic School of Ancient Philosophy
The Cynic School: An In-depth Look
The Stoic School: An Overview
German Idealism: A Comprehensive Overview
Analytic Philosophy: A Primer
Exploring the Socratic School: An Overview
A Comprehensive Overview of Presocratic Philosophy
Exploring the Nature of Art
Understanding Normative Ethics
Exploring Beliefs and Truth: A Philosophical Guide
Exploring Syllogisms and Deductive Reasoning
Exploring Cosmology: What We Know and What We Don't
Understanding Fallacies and Rebuttals
Exploring Critical Thinking and Decision Making
Exploring Theology: A Comprehensive Overview
Philosophy of Film: Exploring Aesthetics and Types of Philosophy
Philosophy of Music: Exploring the Aesthetics of Sound
Materialism and Physicalism: Exploring the Philosophical Concepts
Exploring Identity Theory and Personal Identity
Exploring Quantitative Research Methods in Philosophy
Understanding the Meaning of Words and Phrases
Exploring Theory-Ladenness and Underdetermination
Exploring the Interplay between Religious Experience and Faith
Exploring the Concepts of Cause, Necessity, Possibility, and Impossibility
Intuitionism, Skepticism, and Agnosticism: A Comprehensive Overview
Perception and Knowledge Claims: Understanding Epistemological Terms
Exploring Naturalistic, Immanent and Transcendental Aesthetics
Exploring Rationalism and Empiricism
Exploring Identity, Persistence, Time, and Space
Understanding Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism and Deontology
Exploring Phenomenalism and Nominalism
Exploring Subjectivism, Egoism, and Hedonism
Exploring Infallibility, Verifiability, and the Coherence Theory of Truth
Understanding Social Contract Theory, Natural Law Theory, and Care Ethics
Exploring Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Exploring Subjectivism, Egoism and Hedonism
The Art of Rhetoric by Cicero: A Comprehensive Overview
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant: A Comprehensive Overview

New Articles

Exploring Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

The Problem of Evil

The existence of evil, pain and suffering is considered by many philosophers to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect deity. Why would a loving God permit wanton acts of cruelty and misery on the scale witnessed throughout human history? In this essay, Leslie Allan evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the benefits and challenges faced by each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic defence designed to show that the problem of evil is not a problem at all.

Related Papers

Aloysia Hermanita

English language proficiency is crucial since it affects academic performance. The variety of abilities a person possesses reveals their proficiency in the English language. Using flash cards as media is one inventive way to make learning engaging. The purpose of this study is to ascertain how junior high school students' vocabulary is increased through the usage of flash card media. Action research in the classroom is this research methodology. Thirty-two pupils in classes VII-8 served as the research subjects. The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that using flash card media will improve students' knowledge mastery.

Results in Physics

Journal of the American College of Cardiology

Ann Kavanaugh-mchugh

Rajan jacob

Nature Climate Change

Michael Heithaus

SIAM Journal on Mathematical Analysis

Julian Fernandez Bonder

Saúde, Ética & Justiça

VILMA LEYTON

Preventing chronic disease

Claire Brindis

US legislation requires that schools offer free drinking water where meals are served. However, little information is available about what types of water delivery systems schools should install to meet such requirements. The study objective was to examine the efficacy and cost of 2 water delivery systems (water dispensers and bottleless water coolers) in increasing students' lunchtime intake of water in low-income middle schools. In 2013, twelve middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area participated in a cluster randomized controlled trial in which they received 6 weeks of promotional activities, received provision of cups, and were assigned to 1 of 2 cafeteria water delivery systems: water dispensers or bottleless water coolers (or schools served as a control). Student surveys (n = 595) and observations examined the interventions' effect on students' beverage intake and staff surveys and public data assessed intervention cost. Analysis occurred from 2013 through 2015...

Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine

CEMOTI. Cahiers d'études sur la Méditerranée orientale et le monde turco-iranien

Stéphane de Tapia

RELATED PAPERS

Cukurova Medical Journal

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics

Choudhury J Praharaj

Critical Analysis of Law

Ariel Ezrachi

Chris Seenan

Natural Language Semantics

Journal of Neurosciences in Rural Practice

Edwin Espinosa

ferruccio canali

Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science

Ugo de'Liguoro

วารสารสังคมศาสตร์ จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย

Chyatat Supachalasai

Evren Burakgazi

The Problem of Evil

Categories: Augustine Evil Problem of Evil

About this sample

Words: 1126 |

Published: Feb 12, 2019

Words: 1126 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Introduction, free will and responsibility, the importance of the body and the soul, the possibility of certitude.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

Expert in: Literature Life Religion

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4.5 pages / 1980 words

2 pages / 887 words

7 pages / 3092 words

1.5 pages / 780 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Augustine

The most interesting historical figures that have ever existed are Socrates and St. Augustine that were in the center of the spiritual life in ancient time. Their works still are the most influential all over the world. [...]

Martin Luther, one of the foremost leaders of the Protestant Reformation, sought to reject much of the doctrine and authority of the Catholic Church, yet many of his theological and political ideas are extremely reflective of [...]

In the Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine addressed himself articulately and passionately to the persistent questions that stirred the minds and hearts of men since time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form [...]

The title year of George Orwell's most famous novel is nineteen years past, but the dystopian vision it draws has retained its ability to grip readers with a haunting sense of foreboding about the future. At the heart of many of [...]

Romantic love and intimacy are common features in 1984 by George Orwell. The Party works to eradicate all physical sensations of love and depersonalise sex to the point where is it referred to as a 'duty to the party' for the [...]

Offred and Winston, the main protagonists of the two strikingly similar dystopian fictions, The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, have disparate fates in the endings of the novels. Julia’s fate, however, is undetermined, as (like the [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best the problem of evil topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 good essay topics on the problem of evil, 🔎 most interesting the problem of evil topics to write about.

John Hick’s “Soul-Making” Theodicy and the Problem of Evil Many Christians find it hard to explain the problem of evil as it does not seem to correspond to the will of God.
God and Problem of Evil in Johnson’s Philosophy As for the moral features of God, it is possible to assume that he is evil since he causes many evil events.
St. Augustine. Solution to the Problem of Evil Augustine claims that the solution of evil is to do the right thing and to abstain from wrongdoing. He claims that evil results from a man trying to equal himself to God.
Problem of Evil and Varieties of Atheism The article “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” gives a powerful argument to support the ideas of atheism based on the existence of evil.
Examining the Problem of Evil in Theism The idea of immortality is one of the key themes that are discussed in theism in terms of the problem of evil.
The Logical Problem of Evil and the Freewill Defense The free-will defense as a response to the logical problem of evil will also be covered in the essay as well as how the free-will response demonstrates the existence of evil to be logically inconsistent […]
The Problem of Evil: Personal Viewpoint Now with my new system of theological thinking, I acknowledge that God’s ability accurately defines His authority over the whole world, and therefore Evil, as well as Good, is His will.
Theodicy and the Problem of Evil However, what perhaps relates to the issue at hand is when, in the Book of Genesis, God created enmity between the woman’s offspring and that of the serpent.
The Problem of the Evil and Philosophy of Religion John Hick, the author of Evil and the God of Love, insists on the idea that theodicy is “unavoidable…in the virtue of the nature that the world and of the essential character of the Christian […]
Problem of Evil and Illegitimate Theodicy Discussing the first claim, it should be noted that the evil never preceded the good; therefore it should not be taken as if the evil were the first to occur and then as a result […]
The Problem of Evil in Religion and Theology In the viewpoint of religion and theology, the issue of evil is the trouble of reconciliation the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of a god.
The Problem of Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation A philosophical theory of evil can be expected to address many questions of meaning and value that pertain us to think in multiple dimensions at a time like thinking of “evil” a concept worth preserving […]
The Problem of Evil: Modern vs Traditional The aspects of evil and the reality of the devil are deeply explored in different verses in the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament.
Marilyn McCord Adams’ Views on the Problem of Evil Since overcoming the adverse effects of such a phenomenon is beyond the capacity of human beings, the presence of horrendous evil signifies the inconsistency of optimism as a viable, sustainable posture in life and demands […]
Hamartiology as a Problem of Evil Moral evil, which is ultimately the cause of natural evil, can be traced to the beginning of creation when Adam and Eve defied God’s explicit directive not to eat fruits from the tree at the […]
John Mackie and Alvin Plantinga Arguments on the Problem of Evil This paper will discuss the problem of evil, state the main claims that have been argued by John Mackie and Alvin Plantinga, and show some of the arguments that other scholars have raised with regard […]
The Problem of Evil: Rational, Reasonable, and Scientific Explains God is omnipotent and it is impossible to reject it under the statements of evil’s presence. God is unable to create a world where everything is good, as it contradicts the idea of personal choice […]
The Problem of Evil: Religious and Apologetic Way The problem of evil is simply the disagreement of how such a great God can exist and evil still dominates a greater part of the world he created.
The Problem of Evil During the Jewish Holocaust
The Problem of Evil: An Issue in Religious Philosophy and the Logic
How the Problem of Evil Aims to Disprove the Existence of God
Boethius’ Account of and Solution to the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil in Shakespeare’s Play “Richard Iii”
The Christian Philosophy’s Stance on the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil in “Rebellion” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Christian Solution to the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil in “The Harry Potter” Series
The Problem of Evil in the World and the Goal of a Christian Life
Continuing Controversy for Theological Philosophers: The Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil in the Philosophic Community
What the Problem of Evil Is Under a General Scope
What Theists Understand as the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil: Definition, Responses, & Facts
The Logical Problem of Evil: Views Mackie and Plantinga
Satan and the Problem of Evil: From the Bible to the Early Church Fathers
The Theory of Middle Knowledge as Solution to Soteriological the Problem of Evil
John Mackie’s Views on the Problem of Evil
Logical the Problem of Evil and the Limited God Defense
The Problem of Evil in Richard Swinburne’s Natural Evil
The Basic Argument for the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil and the Free Will Defense
Axiological Versus Deontological Formulations of the Problem of Evil
Incompatibility Formulations Versus Inductive Formulations of the Problem of Evil
Surin’s Theodicy as the Problem of Evil
What Is the Biblical Solution to the Problem of Evil
How Scripture Frames the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil in the Field of Social Work
How Does Address the Problem of Evil Plantinga’s Free Will Defense
How Should Christians Approach the Problem of Evil
Differences Between the Intellectual and Emotional the Problem of Evil
Critically Assessing Thomas Aquinas’ Approach to the Problem of Evil
Merciful God and the Problem of Evil in the Philosophy
The Problem of Evil as Treated by St. Augustine
Comparing Moral Error Theory and the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs
The Argument of Logical the Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil in Experimental Philosophy of Religion
Buddhism Topics
Catholicism Topics
Christianity Topics
God Paper Topics
Hinduism Topics
Islam Topics
Religious Conflict Topics
Theology Topics
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, January 24). 59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-problem-of-evil-essay-topics/

"59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 24 Jan. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-problem-of-evil-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 24 January.

IvyPanda . 2023. "59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." January 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-problem-of-evil-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." January 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-problem-of-evil-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." January 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-problem-of-evil-essay-topics/.

Department of Philosophy, The University of Chicago

The Problem of Evil

Phil 21620 the problem of evil.

"Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?" (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)This course will consider the challenge posed by the existence of evil to the rationality of traditional theistic belief. Drawing on both classic and contemporary readings, we will analyze atheistic arguments from evil, and attempts by theistic philosophers to construct "theodicies" and "defenses" in response to these arguments, including the "free-will defense," "soul-making theodicies," and "suffering God theodicies." We will also consider critiques of such theodicies as philosophically confused, morally depraved, or both; and we will discuss the problem of divinely commanded or enacted evil (for example the doctrine of hell). (A)

COMMENTS

The Problem of Evil
The Problem of Evil. First published Mon Sep 16, 2002; substantive revision Tue Mar 3, 2015. The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God. This discussion is divided into eight sections.
The Problem of Evil
The 'Incompatibility' or 'Logical' versions of the Problem of Evil claim that evil's existence is logically incompatible with God's existence: believing in God and evil is like believing in a five-sided square, a contradiction.[3] Most philosophers today reject this argument.[4] They think that God could have some sufficient reason ...
The Problem of Evil
The so-called "problem of evil" is an argument against the existence of God that reasons along these lines: A perfectly powerful being can prevent any evil. A perfectly good being will prevent evil as far as he can. God is perfectly powerful and good. So, if a perfectly powerful and good God exists, there will be no evil.
Problem of evil
A variety of arguments have been offered in response to the problem of evil, and some of them have been used in both theodicies and defenses. One argument, known as the free will defense, claims that evil is caused not by God but by human beings, who must be allowed to choose evil if they are to have free will. This response presupposes that humans are indeed free, and it fails to reckon with ...
Logical Problem of Evil
This essay examines one form the argument from evil has taken, which is known as "the logical problem of evil." In the second half of the twentieth century, atheologians (that is, persons who try to prove the non-existence of God) commonly claimed that the problem of evil was a problem of logical inconsistency.
PDF Evil and a Selection of its Theological Problems
In her essay Looking Along the Problem of Evil, Holly Ordway reflects on this type of narrative power in ... conditions any argument from evil must meet in order to count as a successful piece of atheology. Next, I attempt to isolate the essential premise of such arguments, citing examples from contemporary instances ...
Problem of evil
The problem of evil is generally formulated in two forms: the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. The logical form of the argument tries to show a logical impossibility in the coexistence of a god and evil, [2] [9] while the evidential form tries to show that given the evil in the world, it is improbable that there is an ...
The Problem of Evil
That is a pretty strong position to take. With an eye on the evil in the world, however, some have preferred a weaker one—something now commonly referred to as the "evidentialist argument" against God's existence. 6 Close The best known defender of this is, perhaps, William Rowe, who suggests that evil is good evidence for not believing in God even if it does not prove that there is no God.
Evidential Problem of Evil, The
The Evidential Problem of Evil. The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, if so, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness.Evidential arguments from evil attempt to show that, once we ...
3 The Problem of Evil, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility
This chapter, contends that the problem of evil is more distinctly a problem on theistic assumptions, for there really is a gap between the way the world is and the way it ought to be. The problem is generated precisely by a commitment to the truth of moral judgments that are better accounted for on theism than naturalism.
Explaining Evil: Four Views
And because the problem of evil is often stated as an argument against theism, discussions can focus too narrowly on whether this theodicy or that objection to theism is successful. However, Franks continues, "while this is a worthwhile activity, taken alone it doesn't actually give us what we were initially looking for -- an explanation for ...
Lecture 1 The Problem of Evil and the Argument from Evil
It is remarkably hard to say. Philosophers—analytical philosophers at any rate—who say that they are writing something on the problem of evil generally mean that they are writing about the argument from evil. (There are two anthologies of work on the argument from evil, both widely used as textbooks by analytical philosophers of religion.
The Problem of Evil
The logical problem makes a large claim, that evil and God cannot possibly co-exist. Defeating the logical problem requires conceiving of some logically possible scenario or reason God could have for allowing evil. The Evidential problem of evil. This is the a posteriori argument that the evidence of evil in the world makes belief in God ...
The Problem of Evil
In God and Other Minds, in The Nature of Necessity, and in God, Freedom, and Evil, for example, Plantinga, starting out from an examination of John L. Mackie's essay "Evil and Omnipotence" (1955), in which Mackie had defended an incompatibility version of the argument from evil, focuses mainly on the question of whether the existence of God ...
The Problem of Evil and Suffering: A Philosophical Exploration
The Naturalistic Fallacy. The Naturalistic Fallacy is a philosophical concept that suggests that evil and suffering are simply a result of human nature and should not be judged or condemned. This theory has been proposed as a way of reconciling the problem of evil and suffering, which has puzzled philosophers for centuries.
PDF The problem of evil and the free will defence
The problem of evil and the free will defence. THE ARGUMENT. God is traditionally understood to be perfectly good, omnipotent and omniscient. The existence of evil causes problems for this definition. If God is good, then he has the desire to eliminate evil. If God is omnipotent, then God is able to eliminate evil.
(PDF) The Problem of Evil
The problem of evil has been formulated in many different ways over the millennia. A version attributed to Epicurus4 is perhaps the oldest. The argument can be formalized into a syllogism as follows: Premise 1: If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
The Problem of Evil: [Essay Example], 1126 words GradesFixer
Mani taught that the universe was a battlefield of two conflicting forces. On one side is God, who represents light and goodness and who seeks to eliminate suffering. Opposing him is Satan, who represents darkness and evil and is the cause of misery and affliction. Human beings find themselves caught in the middle of these two great forces.
Argumentative Essay: The Problem Of Evil
The strongest argument in contradiction to God's existence is the Problem of Evil, presented by J.L Mackie. In this paper, I aim to describe the problem of evil, analyse the objection of the Paradox of Omnipotence and provide rebuttals to this objection. Thus, highlighting my support for Mackie's Problem of evil. Read More.
59 The Problem of Evil Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
The Problem of Evil: Rational, Reasonable, and Scientific Explains. God is omnipotent and it is impossible to reject it under the statements of evil's presence. God is unable to create a world where everything is good, as it contradicts the idea of personal choice […] The Problem of Evil: Religious and Apologetic Way.
Does 'The Problem of Evil' Contradict God?
The problem of evil is usually seen as the problem of how the existence of God can be reconciled with the existence of evil in the world. The problem simply stems from basic beliefs or assumptions pertaining to the attributes of God: God is perfectly good, omniscient, and omnipotent. From this, such a God should want to prevent evil, yet much ...
The Problem of Evil
Drawing on both classic and contemporary readings, we will analyze atheistic arguments from evil, and attempts by theistic philosophers to construct "theodicies" and "defenses" in response to these arguments, including the "free-will defense," "soul-making theodicies," and "suffering God theodicies." We will also consider critiques of such ...

The Problem of Evil

1. The Incompatibility Problem of Evil

2. The Evidential Problem of Evil

2.1. Free Will

2.2. “Soul-Making”

3. Outweighing Evidence?

4. Evil Is No Evidence?

5. Conclusion

Related Essays

Revision History

About the Author

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook , Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at the bottom of 1000WordPhilosophy.com

Most Popular

U.S. Edition

To All The World

The Problem of Evil

What Is the Problem of Evil?

Responding to the Problem of Evil

The Ways of Theodicy and Inscrutability

The Way of Theodicy

Four popular theodicies have some biblical basis

These theodicies fall under the umbrella of the “greater good theodicy.”

Constructing the “Greater Good Theodicy”: a Three-Fold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

The Case of Job

The Case of Joseph

The Case of Jesus

Licensing and Limiting the GGT

Licensing the GGT: God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

God’s Sovereignty over Moral Evil

God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

Limiting the GGT: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

Analogies for our Cognitive Limitations

Biblical Argument for Divine Inscrutability

Further Reading

Explaining Evil: Four Views

Sign in through your institution

Lecture 1 The Problem of Evil and the Argument from Evil

Signed in as

Personal account

Institutional access

IP based access

Society Members

Sign in through society site

Sign in using a personal account

Viewing your signed in accounts

Signed in but can't access content

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

The Problem of Evil

The logical problem of evil

The Evidential problem of evil

Augustine’s theodicy

Plantinga’s ‘free will defence’

Augustine & Plantinga vs the logical problem on moral responsibility

Whether the doctrine of original sin is supported by the evidence

Irenaeus’ Theodicy

John Hick’s modern Irenaean Theodicy

Soul-making vs the evidential problem on dysteleological evil

Soul-making vs the logical problem on God creating us perfect

Soul-making vs Dostoyevsky

The problem of evil & the issue of free will

The Problem of Evil

1.1 Relevant Concepts of God

3. Inductive Versions of the Argument from Evil

3.2.1 A Concrete, Deontological, and Direct Inductive Formulation

3.2.2 A Natural Account of the Logic of the Inductive Step

3.2.3 An Evaluation of this Account of the Inductive Step

3.4.1 A Summary of Rowe's Bayesian Argument

3.4.2 The Flaw in the Argument

3.4.3 Can Rowe's Argument Be Revised?

5. Attempted Total Refutations

6. Attempted Defenses

7. Theodicies

9. Peter van Inwagen's Religious Theodicy and a Global Properties Approach

Acknowledgments

Newest Articles

The Free Will Defense

The Naturalistic Fallacy

The Randomness Hypothesis

Top Articles

Exploring Egoism: What It Is and What It Means