Introduction

In this context, evil is given the widest possible scope to signify all of lifes minuses. Within this range, philosophers
and theologians distinguish moral evils such as war, betrayal and cruelty from natural evils such as earthquakes,
floods and disease. Usually the inescapability of death is numbered
among the greatest natural evils. The existence of
broad-sense evils is obvious and spawns a variety of problems, most prominently the practical one
of how to cope with life and the existential one of
what sort of meaning human life can have.
Philosophical discussion has focused on two
theoretical difficulties posed for biblical theism.
First, does the existence of evils show biblical theism
to be logically inconsistent? Is it logically possible
for an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good
God to create a world containing evil? One classical
response to this, following Leibniz, is to argue that
such a God would create the best of all possible
worlds, but that such a world may contain evil as an
indispensable element. Alternatively, evil may be an
unavoidable consequence of the boon of free will,
or it may be part of a divine plan to ensure that all
souls attain perfection.
The second difficulty for biblical theism is, even
if we grant logical consistency, does evil (in the
form, for instance, of apparently pointless suffering)
nevertheless count as evidence against the existence
of the Bibles God? One frequent theistic response
here is to argue that the apparent pointlessness of
evil may be merely a result of our limited cognitive
powers; things would appear the same to us whether
or not there were a point, so it is not legitimate to
argue from the evidence.
1 Problems of evil
2 Logically necessary connections with greater
goods
3 Free-will defences
4 Divine goodness to creatures
5 Methodological notes
6 The evidential problem of evil
1 Problems of evil
The so-called logical problem of evil rests on the
contention that the following two claims of biblical
theism:
(I) God exists, and is essentially omnipotent,
omniscient and perfectly good; and
(II) evil exists,
combine with the following plausible attribute
analyses:
(P1) a perfectly good being would always eliminate
evil in so far as it could;
(P2) an omniscient being would know all about
evils; and
(P3) there are no limits to what an omnipotent
being can do,
to form an inconsistent quintet, so that the
conjunction of any four entails the denial of the
fifth; most notably the conjunction of (P1)(P3)
with either of (I) or (II) entails that the other is false.
Such an argument can be taken aporetically, as a
challenge to propose more subtle alternatives to
(P1)(P3), but it has usually (in analytical philosophy
of religion since the 1950s) been advanced
atheologically as an argument against the existence
of God (see Atheism; Natural theology). Also
important is the distinction between the abstract
problem, which takes evil in (II) to refer generally
to some evil or other (say the pain of a single
hangnail), and the concrete problem, which construes
(II) as shorthand for the existence of evils in
the amounts and of the kinds and with the
distribution found in the actual world. While the
abstract problem raises a question of conceptual
interest, it is the concrete version that gives the issue
its bite.
Bold responses deny (P3), maintaining variously
that God cannot overcome certain natural necessities
(like Platos Demiurge), that he cannot
conquer his evil twin (as in Manichean dualism),
or even that he lacks the power to compel at all (see
Process theism). Some reject (P2), observing that
many evils arise from free choice, while future
contingents are in principle unknowable (see
Omniscience). (P1) is the most obviously vulnerable
because it is contrary to the common intuition
that ignorance and weakness excuse, and is best
replaced with:
(P4) it is logically impossible for an omniscient,
omnipotent being to have a reason compatible
with perfect goodness for permitting (bringing
about) evils.
Rebuttals seek to counterexemplify (P4) by identifying
logically possible reasons available even to an
omniscient, omnipotent God.
2 Logically necessary connections with
greater goods
Since omnipotence is not bound by causally
necessary connections, it is natural to look for
reasons among the logically necessary connections
of evils with greater goods. Because the piecemeal
approach of correlating distinctive sorts of good
with different kinds of evil (for example, courage
with danger, forgiveness with injury) threatens to be
endless, it seems advantageous to identify a single
comprehensive good that logically integrates all ills.
One promising strategy takes its inspiration from
Leibniz and develops his best of all possible worlds
(BPW) theodicy in terms of contemporary
possible-worlds semantics (see Leibniz, G.W. 3).
If a possible world is a maximal consistent state of
affairs, each of infinitely many constitutive details is essential to the possible world of which it is a part.
Assuming (P5) that possible worlds as wholes have
values (P6) that can be ranked relative to one
another and (P7) that the value scale has a maximum
(P8) occupied by one and only one world, one can
interpret divine creation in terms of actualizing a
possible world and reason (P9) that necessarily an
essentially omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly
good God would actualize the best. Given the
further controversial claim that:
(P10) the BPW contains instances of evil as
logically indispensable components,
it follows that the desire to create the BPW is a
reason compossible with perfect goodness for God
not to prevent or eliminate all instances of evil.
(P10) contradicts our prima facie intuition that the
BPW should be homogeneously good. Defenders
of BPW approaches distinguish two ways in which
value-parts may be related to value-wholes. The
one presupposed by the critics is simply additive:
negatively and positively valued parts simply
balance off one another and the inclusion of any
minuses inevitably lowers the value total. By
contrast, parts may be integrated into wholes by
relations of organic unity, in such a way that the
positive value of the whole may defeat the negative
value of the part (for example, the way the beauty of
Monets design defeats the ugliness of some colour
patches). (P10) envisages the defeat of evil within
the context of the possible world as a whole.
Leibniz thought he could prove the necessity of
(P10) on the basis of his a priori arguments for the
necessity of (I) and (P9); he believed that (P10)
followed from the fact that God had actualized this
world. Yet (P10) seems to fall into that class of
propositions that are logically possible if and only if
logically necessary. Those who recognize no sound
demonstrations of (I) are left to claim that (P10) is
epistemically possible. Since the atheologian is in
the same epistemic predicament with respect to
(P10), this epistemic defence would be sufficient
ceteris paribus to discharge the burden of proof
imposed on the theist by the argument from evil.
This BPW approach makes several other debatable
value-theory assumptions. Augustines notion
(contra P8) that many alternative worlds have
maximum value imposes no damage. Aquinas
insistence (contra P7) that for every collection of
creatures there is a better one would not be
crippling if every possible world above a certain
value-level included evil. The rejection of (P5) and
(P6), however, would be fatal for BPWapproaches.
Some question whether our comparative evaluations
of small-scale states of affairs (for example,
Jones enjoying a symphony as better than his
experiencing excruciating pain) is good evidence
that the values of maximal states of affairs form a
hierarchy. More fundamentally, some have argued
(contra P5) that states of affairs are not intrinsically
good or bad, although they can be good or bad for
certain persons or projects and can ground different
moral evaluations by particular agents. Anti-consequentialists
in ethics also challenge whether (P9)
follows from (P5)(P8) (see Consequentialism).
Deontologists would let justice to individuals trump
putative increases in the value of states of affairs (see
Deontological ethics). Could creating the
BPW be a reason compossible with perfect goodness
for permitting suffering and degradation for the
relatively innocent? Even if such value-maximizing
were compatible with perfect goodness, it is not
obviously required. For example, divine goodness is
often interpreted as grace, a disposition to show
favour independently of merit.
Finally, this modified Leibnizian approach entails
divine determinism, because in choosing which of
infinitely many fully determinate possible worlds to
actualize, God is deciding on each and every detail.
Some find this theologically objectionable, either
because it seems incongruous for God to hold
created persons responsible to himself for actions he
determined, or because it fails to put enough
distance between evil and divine aims.
3 Free-will defences
The last-mentioned worries are well accommodated
by the other main traditional theme that (some or
all) evil originates in the wrong or evil choices of
free creatures. Free-will approaches contend that:
(A1) created free will is a very great good, whether
intrinsically or as a necessary means to Gods
central purposes in creation;
(A2) God cannot fulfil his purposes for and with
free creatures without accepting the possibility
that some will misuse their freedom, thereby
introducing evil into the world.
In classical developments of this defence, (A1) is
supposed to be a reason compossible with perfect
goodness for making free creatures, while (A2) is
compatible with the claim that evil is not necessary
to the perfection of the universe or any other divine
purpose. Some or all evil is not something God
causes or does, but something he allows, a (perhaps)
known but unintended side effect of his aims. The
introduction of evil into the world is explained by
the doctrine of the Fall, according to which God
made angelic and human free agents in naturally
optimal condition and placed them in utopian
environments. God wanted them freely to choose
what is right or good, but some angels and theprimordial humans Adam and Eve chose what is
wrong, thereby actualizing the possibility of evil.
Contemporary attention (beginning with Plantinga)
has turned away from free-will defences based
on the principles of double effect and doing
allowing the principle that agents are not as
responsible for the known but unintended side
effects of their actions as they are for their chosen
means and ends; that they are not as responsible for
what they allow as for what they do to others that
reconnect with possible-worlds semantics (see
Double effect, principle of). Once again, God
creates by actualizing a possible world, but freedom
is now taken to be incompatible with determinism,
with the consequence that God and free creatures
collaborate in determining which possible world
becomes actual. Created freedom does not so much
distance God from evils as limit which worlds God
can create. As with BPWapproaches, God evaluates
possible worlds as to their global features (P5) and
(P6) are assumed true, although not necessarily (P7)
and (P8) but this time he evaluates those that are a
function of created incompatibilist-free choice: for
example, a very good world with the optimal
balance of created moral goodness over moral evil.
In defence of (A2), both classical and possibleworlds
approaches appeal first to the notion that not
even God can cause someone elses incompatibilistfree
choices. To the objection that God should use
his foreknowledge to actualize only incompatibilistfree
creatures who will never sin, free-will defenders
reply that such foreknowledge is not prior in the
order of explanation to Gods decision to create. To
the suggestion that God should use his middle
knowledge of what free creatures would do in
particular circumstances, some (notably Plantinga
1974) grant that such counterfactuals of freedom
can be true, but argue that it is logically possible that
all incompatibilist-free creatures be transworld
depraved that is, that no matter which combinations
of individuals and circumstances God actualized,
each would go wrong at least once and
logically possible that any world containing as much
moral goodness as the actual world would also
include at least as much moral evil as the actual
world contains. Thus, it is logically possible that
God could not create a world with a better balance
of moral good over moral evil which would be a
reason compossible with perfect goodness for his
not doing so.
This ingenious argument is controverted both by
those who agree and those who deny that counterfactuals
of freedom can be true. Among the former,
SUA REZ defends middle knowledge but arguably
finds transworld depravity impossible because of
Gods necessary resourcefulness, which he takes to
have the following implication: necessarily, for any
possible person and any situation in which they can
exist, there are some helps of grace that would
(should God supply them) win the creature over
without compromising its incompatibilist freedom.
Others (notably R.M. Adams) wonder what could
make such counterfactuals true about creatures
considered as merely possible. Incompatibilist freedom
rules out divine choices or any native features
of the creative will. To appeal to a contingent
condition (habitudo, or primitive property) independent
of both is too close for comfort to the
ancient doctrine of fate that falls alike on the gods
and their creatures, and contradicts traditional
Christian views of divine providence. To maintain
that counterfactuals of freedom are true although
there is nothing to make them true violates a
correspondence theory of truth (see Truth,
correspondence theory of). Denying truth to
such counterfactuals of freedom does not automatically
put (A2) clear of the objection from
omniscience, however, if God could know about
merely possible creatures what they probably would
do in any given circumstance. But the meaning and
ground of such probability assessments is at least as
problematic as that of the original counterfactuals.
Even if (A2) were unproblematic, it could still be
asked whether (A1) necessarily constitutes a reason
compossible with perfect goodness for allowing
evils. Two dimensions of divine goodness may be
distinguished: global goodness and goodness to
individual created persons. The possible-worlds
approaches cite global features the best of all
possible worlds, a world a more perfect than which
is impossible, a world exhibiting a perfect balance
of retributive justice, a world with as favourable a
balance as God can get of created moral good over
moral evil by way of producing some generic and
comprehensive reason for allowing evil. But worlds
with evils in the amounts and of the kind and with
the distribution found in the actual world contain
horrendous evils evils the participation in (the
doing or suffering of) which gives one prima facie
reason to doubt whether ones life could (given their
inclusion in it) be a great good to one on the
whole unevenly distributed among humans and
uncorrelated with variations in desert. Even if
horrors thus apportioned were epistemically compatible
with global perfections, these defences of
divine goodness as a producer of global perfection
would not so much guarantee as raise doubts about
Gods goodness to individual participants in horrors.
Divine goodness to them would require God to
defeat the disvalue of horrors not only within the
context of the world as a whole, but also within the
framework of the individual participants life. Nor
will precise individual retribution fit this billwhere the
perpetrators of horrors are concerned. Balancinghorror with horror only deepens the difficulty.
Some Christians bite this bullet, insisting that
decisive defeat of evil is promised only to the
obedient, while the wicked can expect the reverse, a
decisive defeat of positive meaning in their lives in
the form of eternal damnation. Others insist that the
doctrine of hell only makes matters worse by giving
rise to a specialized version of the problem of evil
(see Hell).
4 Divine goodness to creatures
Soul-making theodicies try to fill the explanatory
gap regarding divine goodness to individual created
persons by adding further hypotheses as to what
they might get out of existence in an environment
in which they are so vulnerable to sin, suffering and
horrors. Some versions stipulate:
(A3) Gods purpose in creation culminates in a
process of spiritual development in which
autonomous created persons with their own
free participation are perfected, and transformed
from self-centred to other-centred,
God-centred, Christlike or otherwise virtuous
souls; and
(A4) environmental evils are permitted because
they create an environment favourable to
soul-making.
(A3) is compatible both with the notion that
humans are initially created with mature unobstructed
agency and so are fully responsible for their
choices, and with the alternative idea (retrieved
from Irenaeus by Hick (1966)) that human agency
began immature, so that sin was to be expected in
the course of the growing-up process. The idea is
that life in a world with evils such as this is, or with
created cooperation can be, good for the soul.
Establishing (A4) is difficult thrice over because:
(i) the task shatters into piecemeal cataloguing, with
separate demonstrations for each sub-type of
environmental evil; (ii) relevant necessary connections
with the soul-making environment can be
hard to show; and (iii) experience makes it prima
facie implausible that a world with evils such as ours
is a good classroom for the soul. In response to (ii),
some (notably Hick 1966) ingeniously contend
that dysteleological evils lend an air of mystery
which is itself favourable to soul-making. Others
modify (A4) to acknowledge that some environmental
evils are consequences of sin.
Where Gods soul-making purpose succeeds, it is
easy to see how the painful journey is worth the
individuals while. What about where it fails? Some
reply that the dignity of self-determination is
enough, whatever the outcome. The credibility of
this contention varies with ones estimate of the
robustness of human nature as well as ones
conception of the natural or punitive consequences
of repeated bad choices. Pessimists argue that antemortem
participation in horrors makes a mockery
of human self-determination; a fortiori, so does
decisive personal ruin in hell.
Others (notably Hick 1966) embrace a doctrine
of universal salvation: if ante-mortem horrors
remain undefeated between birth and the grave,
education will continue after death, probably in a
series of careers, until the soul is perfected and
brought into intimacy with God. Thus, God does
guarantee each created person an overall existence
that is a great good to them on the whole, one in
which participation in horrors is balanced by the
incommensurate goodness of intimacy with God.
Are such horrors likewise defeated within the
context of the individuals existence? The stout of
heart might say yes, because participation in
horrors that remain undefeated within the individuals
ante-mortem career contributes to the sense
of mystery that makes a positive contribution to the
soul-making of others. Since one is at least the
agent-cause of the willy-nilly sacrifice of ones antemortem
good, participation in horrors would
constitute some sort of shift from self- to otheror
God-centredness after all. Even if this putative
positive dimension of participation in horrors is
swamped by its negative aspect when considered
within the framework of the individuals antemortem
career, it provides a means for participation
in horrors to be integrated into the overall
development that gives positive meaning to the
individuals life and thus which are defeated within
the context of the individuals existence as a whole.
Some (notably M.M. Adams) contend, on the
contrary, that divine goodness to created persons
would do more to lend positive meaning to any
careers in which they participate in horrors. The
sacrifice involved in participation in horrors is
pedagogically inept as a first lesson because it can
damage the person so much as to make much
further ante-mortem progress from self- to otheror
God-centredness virtually impossible. This
combines with the delay in gratification to another
or perhaps many lives later to de-emphasize the
importance of this life, leaving the impression that it
would have been better skipped by those whose
spiritual development was significantly set back
through participation in horrors. To give this life, or
any career involving participation in horrors,
positive significance, some parameter of positive
meaning other than contribution to soul-making
must be found. Given two further assumptions
that divine metaphysical goodness is infinite, and
that intimacy with God is incommensurably good
for created persons the mystical literature suggests several ways for participation in horrors to be
integrated into the created persons relationship
with God, ranging from divine gratitude for ones
earthly career to various types of mystical identification
between God and creatures in the midst of
horrors. Because the identification occurs in this life
and divine gratitude is for this life, they add positive
significance to this life even where the creature has
no ante-mortem but only postmortem recognition
of these facts.
5 Methodological notes
Much contemporary discussion of BPW and freewill
defences has addressed itself to the logical
problem of evil because we seem epistemically in a
better position to assess the compossibility of
logically possible reasons with various conceptions
of perfect goodness than to pronounce on what
Gods actual reasons are. In identifying logically
possible defeaters, many of the earlier discussions
confine themselves to a religion-neutral value
theory, the better to answer the atheologian on
their own turf. By contrast, soul-making, mystical
and other explanatory theodicies draw on the
resources of revelation for their speculations about
Gods actual reasons for the evils of this world and
usually address their remarks in the first instance to
the believing community. The distinction between
these approaches blurs when attention is riveted on
the concrete logical problem of evil that is, on the
logical compossibility of God with evils in the
amounts and of the kinds and with the distribution
found in the actual world. In so far as the
consistency of actual religious belief is at stake, it
becomes highly relevant to test the reasons supplied
by revelation for logical compossibility with the
existence of evils and the goodness of God. Where
they pass, they can be advanced as solving the
concrete logical problem of evil, whether or not
their truth can be proved to the atheologian.
Once the wider resources of the religions under
attack are allowed to interpret (I) and (II), it
becomes clear that explanatory reasons come in two
broad types: reasons why God causes or permits
evils, and does not prevent or eliminate them; and
explanations as to how God could be good to
created persons despite their participation in evil.
Reasons-why identify some great-enough good
with which evils are necessarily connected, while
reasons-how specify ways God could defeat evils in
which the created person has participated and thus
give that person a life that is a great good to them
on the whole. Much philosophical discussion
(Swinburne is particularly insistent on this point)
presupposes that the problem cannot be solved
without sufficient reasons-why. The criticized
religions arguably take a mixed approach. Assuming
that what perfect goodness can permit or cause is a
function of what it can defeat, they combine partial
reasons-why with elaborate scenarios by which God
defeats even the worst horrors.
6 The evidential problem of evil
Recently many philosophers (notably Rowe,
Alston, van Inwagen and Wykstra) have concluded
that the most serious version of the problem of evil
concerns not the logical but the evidential relation
between (I) and (II). The mere logical possibility
that a student has broken all four limbs and been
hospitalized for a heart attack will win them no
extension of essay deadlines if the tutor can see that
the student is in fact physically sound. Likewise, the
evidential argument contends, many actual evils
such as the slow, painful death of a fawn severely
burned in a forest fire started by lightning appear
pointless, in the sense that our composite empirical
evidence constitutes strong reason to believe they
have no point. But an omniscient, omnipotent
being could have prevented some of them, while a
perfectly good being would not allow or cause any
of them it could avoid. Therefore, (II) concretely
construed constitutes decisive evidence against (I).
Once again, replies could take the piecemeal
approach, trying to show for each type of very
intense suffering that it has a discernible point after
all. It would not be necessary to complete the
process to undermine the evidential argument.
Success with some important cases would increase
the probability that defeating goods are also present
in other cases where we have not discovered any.
The favourite response (for example, by Wykstra,
Alston and van Inwagen) attacks the argument at its
epistemological foundations. The contention is that
our composite empirical evidence could constitute
strong reason to believe some actual evils pointless
only if our cognitive powers would afford access to
any point such evils might have were they to have
one. If things would seem roughly the same to us
(that is, if our evidence would be roughly the same)
whether or not such evils had a point, the fact that
we detect no point is not good evidence that there
is no point. In particular, we are in no position to
see that many instances of intense suffering are not
explained by some of the reasons appealed to in
traditional theodicies.
Defenders of the evidential argument (notably
Rowe) grant the appeal of the underlying evidential
principle, but relocate the disagreement in the
richness of the theological hypothesis on which one
draws. They argue that if one restricts oneself to a
straightforward philosophical reading of (I), then it
is likely that the situation with regard to intense suffering would be different in ways discernible by
us. Expanded theism might import assumptions
about the hiddenness of divine providence, mystical
identification with suffering creatures, etc., but
deploying these resources in the evidential debate
carries a cost, because the prior probability of
expanded theism is lower than that of (I).
This last point holds only if the richer theological
theory is advanced as true. If instead it is used, as
with the logical problem, to generate possible this
time not merely logically but epistemically possible
explanations, then no dilution in prior probabilities
need be accepted. And once again, the more
epistemically possible explanations there are, the
greater the probability that the suffering in question
is not pointless.
See also: God, arguments for the existence of;
Holocaust, the
References and further reading
Hick, J. (1966) Evil and the God of Love, San
Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 2nd edn, 1978.
(Criticizes Augustinian theodicies that rely on
the doctrine of the Fall, and develops a soulmaking
theodicy in the spirit of Irenaeus.)
Plantinga, A. (1974) The Nature of Necessity, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, ch. 9, 10, 1913. (Develops the
possible-worlds version of the free-will defence
discussed in 3 of the present entry, with
considerable attention to counterfactuals of freedom
and the hypothesis of transworld depravity.)
MARILYN MCCORD ADAMS
Logical Problem of Evil
The existence of evil and suffering in our world seems to pose a serious challenge to belief in the
existence of a perfect God. If God were all-knowing, it seems that God would know about all of the
horrible things that happen in our world. If God were all-powerful, God would be able to do
something about all of the evil and suffering. Furthermore, if God were morally perfect, then surely
God would want to do something about it. And yet we find that our world is filled with countless
instances of evil and suffering. These facts about evil and suffering seem to conflict with the
orthodox theist claim that there exists a perfectly good God. The challenged posed by this apparent
conflict has come to be known as the problem of evil.
This article addresses one form of that problem that is prominent in recent philosophical
discussionsthat the conflict that exists between the claims of orthodox theism and the facts about
evil and suffering in our world is a logical one. This is the logical problem of evil.
The article clarifies the nature of the logical problem of evil and considers various theistic responses
to the problem. Special attention is given to the free will defense, which has been the most widely
discussed theistic response to the logical problem of evil.
Table of Contents
1. Introducing the Problem
2. Logical Consistency
3. Logical Consistency and the Logical Problem of Evil
4. Plantingas Free Will Defense
5. Divine Omnipotence and the Free Will Defense
6. An Objection: Free Will and Natural Evil
7. Evaluating the Free Will Defense
8. Was Plantingas Victory Too Easy?
9. Other Responses to the Logical Problem of Evil
10. Problems with the Free Will Defense
11. References and Further Reading
a. References
b. Further Reading
1. Introducing the Problem
Journalist and best-selling author Lee Strobel commissioned George Barna, the public-opinion
pollster, to conduct a nationwide survey. The survey included the question If you could ask God only
one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask? The most common
response, offered by 17% of those who could think of a question was Why is there pain and suffering
in the world? (Strobel 2000, p. 29). If God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good, why does
he let so many bad things happen? This question raises what philosophers call the problem of evil.
It would be one thing if the only people who suffered debilitating diseases or tragic losses were the
likes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Osama Bin Laden. As it is, however, thousands of good-
hearted, innocent people experience the ravages of violent crime, terminal disease, and other evils.
Michael Peterson (1998, p. 1) writes,
Something is dreadfully wrong with our world. An earthquake kills hundreds in Peru. A pancreatic cancer
patient suffers prolonged, excruciating pain and dies. A pit bull attacks a two-year-old child, angrily
ripping his flesh and killing him. Countless multitudes suffer the ravages of war in Somalia. A crazed cult
leader pushes eighty-five people to their deaths in Waco, Texas. Millions starve and die in North Korea as
famine ravages the land. Horrible things of all kinds happen in our worldand that has been the story
since the dawn of civilization.
Peterson (1998, p. 9) claims that the problem of evil is a kind of moral protest. In asking How
could God let this happen? people are often claiming Its not fair that God has let this happen.
Many atheists try to turn the existence of evil and suffering into an argument against the existence of
God. They claim that, since there is something morally problematic about a morally perfect God
allowing all of the evil and suffering we see, there must not be a morally perfect God after all. The
popularity of this kind of argument has led Hans Kng (1976, p. 432) to call the problem of evil the
rock of atheism. 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.
J. L. Mackie (1955, p. 200), for example, claimed,
Here it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively
irrational, that several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another.
H. J. McCloskey (1960, p. 97) wrote,
Evil is a problem, for the theist, in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil on the one hand and
belief in the omnipotence and omniscience of God on the other.
Mackie and McCloskey can be understood as claiming that it is impossible for all of the following
statements to be true at the same time:
(1) God is omnipotent (that is, all-powerful).
(2) God is omniscient (that is, all-knowing).
(3) God is perfectly good.
(4) Evil exists.
Any two or three of them might be true at the same time; but there is no way that all of them could be
true. In other words, (1) through (4) form a logically inconsistent set. What does it mean to say that
something is logically inconsistent?
(5) A set of statements is logically inconsistent if and only if: (a) that set includes a direct contradiction of
the form p & not-p; or (b) a direct contradiction can be deduced from that set.
None of the statements in (1) through (4) directly contradicts any other, so if the set is logically
inconsistent, it must be because we can deduce a contradiction from it. This is precisely what
atheologians claim to be able to do.
Atheologians claim that a contradiction can easily be deduced from (1) through (4) once we think
through the implications of the divine attributes cited in (1) through (3). They reason as follows:
(6) If God is omnipotent, he would be able to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.
(7) If God is omniscient, he would know about all of the evil and suffering in the world and would know
how to eliminate or prevent it.
(8) If God is perfectly good, he would want to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.
Statements (6) through (8) jointly imply that if the perfect God of theism really existed, there would
not be any evil or suffering. However, as we all know, our world is filled with a staggering amount of
evil and suffering. Atheologians claim that, if we reflect upon (6) through (8) in light of the fact of
evil and suffering in our world, we should be led to the following conclusions:
(9) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is
powerful enough to prevent it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly good.
(10) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to
prevent it, and yet does not do so, he must not be all- powerful.
(11) If God is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he
must not know about all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent itthat is, he must not be
all-knowing.
From (9) through (11) we can infer:
(12) If evil and suffering exist, then God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
Since evil and suffering obviously do exist, we get:
(13) God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
Putting the point more bluntly, this line of argument suggests thatin light of the evil and suffering
we find in our worldif God exists, he is either impotent, ignorant or wicked. It should be obvious
that (13) conflicts with (1) through (3) above. To make the conflict more clear, we can combine (1),
(2) and (3) into the following single statement.
(14) God is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good.
There is no way that (13) and (14) could both be true at the same time. These statements are logically
inconsistent or contradictory.
Statement (14) is simply the conjunction of (1) through (3) and expresses the central belief of
classical theism. However, atheologians claim that statement ( 13) can also be derived from (1)
through (3). [Statements (6) through (12) purport to show how this is done.] (13) and (14), however,
are logically contradictory. Because a contradiction can be deduced from statements (1) through (4)
and because all theists believe (1) through (4), atheologians claim that theists have logically
inconsistent beliefs. They note that philosophers have always believed it is never rational to believe
something contradictory. So, the existence of evil and suffering makes theists belief in the existence
of a perfect God irrational.
Can the believer in God escape from this dilemma? In his best-selling book When Bad Things
Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner (1981) offers the following escape route for the
theist: deny the truth of (1). According to this proposal, God is not ignoring your suffering when he
doesnt act to prevent it becauseas an all-knowing Godhe knows about all of your suffering. As a
perfectly good God, he also feels your pain. The problem is that he cant do anything about it because
hes not omnipotent. According to Kushners portrayal, God is something of a kind-hearted wimp.
Hed like to help, but he doesnt have the power to do anything about evil and suffering. Denying the
truth of either (1), (2), (3) or ( 4) is certainly one way for the theist to escape from the logical problem
of evil, but it would not be a very palatable option to many theists. In the remainder of this essay, we
will examine some theistic responses to the logical problem of evil that do not require the
abandonment of any central tenet of theism.
2. Logical Consistency
Theists who want to rebut the logical problem of evil need to find a way to show that (1) through
(4)perhaps despite initial appearancesare consistent after all. We said above that a set of
statements is logically inconsistent if and only if that set includes a direct contradiction or a direct
contradiction can be deduced from that set. That means that a set of statements is logically
consistent if and only if that set does not include a direct contradiction and a direct contradiction
cannot be deduced from that set. In other words,
(15) A set of statements is logically consistent if and only if it is possible for all of them to be true at the
same time.
Notice that (15) does not say that consistent statements must actually be true at the same time. They
may all be false or some may be true and others false. Consistency only requires that it be possible for
all of the statements to be true (even if that possibility is never actualized). (15) also doesnt say
anything about plausibility. It does not require the joint of a consistent set of statements to be
plausible. It may be exceedingly unlikely or improbable that a certain set of statements should all be
true at the same time. But improbability is not the same thing as impossibility. As long as there is
nothing contradictory about their conjunction, it will be possible (even if unlikely) for them all to be
true at the same time.
This brief discussion allows us to see that the atheological claim that statements (1) through (4) are
logically inconsistent is a rather strong one. The atheologian is maintaining that statements (1)
through (4) couldnt possibly all be true at the same time. In other words,
(16) It is not possible for God and evil to co-exist.
The logical problem of evil claims that Gods omnipotence, omniscience and supreme goodness
would completely rule out the possibility of evil and that the existence of evil would do the same for
the existence of a supreme being.
3. Logical Consistency and the Logical Problem of
Evil
How might a theist go about demonstrating that (16) is false? Some theists suggest that perhaps God
has a good reason for allowing the evil and suffering that he does. Not just any old reason can justify
Gods allowing all of the evil and suffering we see. Mass murderers and serial killers typically have
reasons for why they commit horrible crimes, but they do not have good reasons. Its only when
people have morally good reasons that we excuse or condone their behavior. Philosophers of religion
have called the kind of reason that could morally justify Gods allowing evil and suffering a morally
sufficient reason.
Consider the following statement.
(17) It is possible that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
If God were to have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, would it be possible for God to be
omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and yet for there to be evil and suffering? Many theists
answer Yes. If (17) were true, (9) through (12) would have to be modified to read:
(9) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is
powerful enough to prevent it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly goodunless he has a
morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
(10) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to
prevent it, and yet does not do so, he must not be all-powerfulunless he has a morally sufficient reason
for allowing evil.
(11) If God is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he
must not know about all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent it (that is, he must not be
all-knowing)unless he has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
(12) If evil and suffering exist, then either: a) God is not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly
good; or b) God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
From (9) through (12), it is not possible to conclude that God does not exist. The most that can be
concluded is that either God does not exist or God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
So, some theists suggest that the real question behind the logical problem of evil is whether (17) is
true.
If it is possible that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil and suffering to occur, then
the logical problem of evil fails to prove the non-existence of God. If, however, it is not possible that
God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, then it seems that (13) would be true: God is
either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
An implicit assumption behind this part of the debate over the logical problem of evil is the
following:
(18) It is not morally permissible for God to allow evil and suffering to occur unless he has a morally
sufficient reason for doing so.
Is (18) correct? Many philosophers think so. It is difficult to see how a God who allowed bad things to
happen just for the heck of it could be worthy of reverence, faith and worship. If God had no morally
sufficient reason for allowing evil, then if we made it to the pearly gates some day and asked God why
he allowed so many bad things to happen, he would simply have to shrug his shoulders and say
There was no reason or point to all of that suffering you endured. I just felt like letting it happen.
This callous image of God is difficult to reconcile with orthodox theisms portrayal of God as a loving
Father who cares deeply about his creation. (18), combined with the assumption that God does not
have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, yields
(19) God is doing something morally inappropriate or blameworthy in allowing evil to occur,
and
(20) If God is doing something morally inappropriate or blameworthy, then God is not perfectly good.
If (19) and (20) are true, then the God of orthodox theism does not exist.
What would it look like for God to have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil? Lets first
consider a down-to-earth example of a morally sufficient reason a human being might have before
moving on to the case of God. Suppose a gossipy neighbor were to tell you that Mrs. Jones just
allowed someone to inflict unwanted pain upon her child. Your first reaction to this news might be
one of horror. But once you find out that the pain was caused by a shot that immunized Mrs. Jones
infant daughter against polio, you would no longer view Mrs. Jones as a danger to society. Generally,
we believe the following moral principle to be true.
(21) Parents should not inflict unwanted pain upon their children.
In the immunization case, Mrs. Jones has a morally sufficient reason for overriding or suspending
this principle. A higher moral dutynamely, the duty of protecting the long-term health of her
childtrumps the lesser duty expressed by (21). If God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing
evil and suffering, theists claim, it will probably look something like Mrs. Jones.
4. Plantingas Free Will Defense
What might Gods reason be for allowing evil and suffering to occur? Alvin Plantinga (1974, 1977) has
offered the most famous contemporary philosophical response to this question. He suggests the
following as a possible morally sufficient reason:
(MSR1) Gods creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value.
God could not eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the
greater good of having created persons with free will with whom he could have relationships and who are
able to love one another and do good deeds.
(MSR1) claims that God allows some evils to occur that are smaller in value than a greater good to
which they are intimately connected. If God eliminated the evil, he would have to eliminate the
greater good as well. God is pictured as being in a situation much like that of Mrs. Jones: she allowed
a small evil (the pain of a needle) to be inflicted upon her child because that pain was necessary for
bringing about a greater good (immunization against polio). Before we try to decide whether (MSR1)
can justify God in allowing evil and suffering to occur, some of its key terms need to be explained.
To begin with, (MSR1) presupposes the view of free will known as libertarianism:
(22) Libertarianism=df the view that a person is free with respect to a given action if and only if that
person is both free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing that action; in other words,
that person is not determined to perform or refrain from that action by any prior causal forces.
Although the term libertarianism isnt exactly a household name, the view it expresses is commonly
taken to be the average persons view of free will. It is the view that causal determinism is false,
thatunlike robots or other machineswe can make choices that are genuinely free.
According to Plantinga, libertarian free will is a morally significant kind of free will. An action is
morally significant just when it is appropriate to evaluate that action from a moral perspective (for
example, by ascribing moral praise or blame). Persons have morally significant free will if they are
able to perform actions that are morally significant. Imagine a possible world where God creates
creatures with a very limited kind of freedom. Suppose that the persons in this world can only choose
good options and are incapable of choosing bad options. So, if one of them were faced with three
possible courses of actiontwo of which were morally good and one of which was morally badthis
person would not be free with respect to the morally bad option. That is, that person would not be
able to choose any bad option even if they wanted to. Our hypothetical person does, however, have
complete freedom to decide which of the two good courses of action to take. Plantinga would deny
that any such person has morally significant free will. People in this world always perform morally
good actions, but they deserve no credit for doing so. It is impossible for them to do wrong. So, when
they do perform right actions, they should not be praised. It would be ridiculous to give moral praise
to a robot for putting your soda can in the recycle bin rather than the trash can, if that is what it was
programmed to do. Given the program running inside the robot and its exposure to an empty soda
can, its going to take the can to the recycle bin. It has no choice about the matter. Similarly, the
people in the possible world under consideration have no choice about being good. Since they are
pre-programmed to be good, they deserve no praise for it.
According to Plantinga, people in the actual world are free in the most robust sense of that term.
They are fully free and responsible for their actions and decisions. Because of this, when they do
what is right, they can properly be praised. Moreover, when they do wrong, they can be rightly
blamed or punished for their actions.
It is important to note that (MSR1) directly conflicts with a common assumption about what kind of
world God could have created. Many atheologians believe that God could have created a world that
was populated with free creatures and yet did not contain any evil or suffering. Since this is
something that God could have done and since a world with free creatures and no evil is better than a
world with free creatures and evil, this is something God should have done. Since he did not do so,
God did something blameworthy by not preventing or eliminating evil and suffering (if indeed God
exists at all). In response to this charge, Plantinga maintains that there are some worlds God cannot
create. In particular, he cannot do the logically impossible. (MSR1) claims that God cannot get rid of
much of the evil and suffering in the world without also getting rid of morally significant free will.
(The question of whether Gods omnipotence is compatible with the claim that God cannot do the
logically impossible will be addressed below.)
Consider the following descriptions of various worlds. We need to determine which ones describe
worlds that are logically possible and which ones describe impossible worlds. The worlds described
will be possible if the descriptions of those worlds are logically consistent. If the descriptions of those
worlds are inconsistent or contradictory, the worlds in question will be impossible.
W1: (a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;

(b) God does not causally determine people in every situation to choose
what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and

(c) There is evil and suffering in W1.
W2: (a) God does not create persons with morally significant free will;

(b) God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is
right and to avoid what is wrong; and

(c) There is no evil or suffering in W2.
W3: (a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;

(b) God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is
right and to avoid what is wrong; and

(c) There is no evil or suffering in W3.
W4: (a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;

(b) God does not causally determine people in every situation to choose
what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and

(c) There is no evil or suffering in W4.
Lets figure out which of these worlds are possible. Is W1 possible? Yes. In fact, on the assumption
that God exists, it seems to describe the actual world. People have free will in this world and there is
evil and suffering. God has obviously not causally determined people in every situation to choose
what is right and to avoid what is wrong because there would be no evil or suffering if he had. So,
W1 is clearly possible.
What about W2? Granting Plantingas assumption that human beings are genuinely free creatures,
the first thing to notice about W2 is that you and I would not exist in such a world. We are creatures
with morally significant free will. If you took away our free will, we would no longer be the kinds of
creatures we are. We would not be human in that world. Returning to the main issue, there does not
seem to be anything impossible about God causally determining people in every situation to choose
what is right and to avoid what is wrong. It seems clearly possible that whatever creatures God were
to make in such a world would not have morally significant free will and that there would be no evil
or suffering. W2, then, is also possible.
Now lets consider the philosophically more important world W3. Is W3 possible? Plantinga says,
No. Parts (a) and (b) of the description of W3 are, he claims, logically inconsistent. In W3 God
causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong.
People in this world couldnt do morally bad things if they wanted to. And yet part of what it means
for creatures to have morally significant free will is that they can do morally bad things whenever
they want to. Think about what it would be like to live in W3. If you wanted to tell a lie, you would not
be able to do so. Causal forces beyond your control would make you tell the truth on every occasion.
You would also be physically incapable of stealing your neighbors belongings. In fact, since W3 is a
world without evil of any kind and since merely wanting to lie or steal is itself a bad thing, the people
in W3 would not even be able to have morally bad thoughts or desires. If God is going to causally
determine people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong in W3, there is
no way that he could allow them to be free in a morally significant sense. Peterson (1998, p. 39)
writes,
if a person is free with respect to an action A, then God does not bring it about or cause it to be the
case that she does A or refrains from doing A. For if God brings it about or causes it to be the case in any
manner whatsoever that the person either does A or does not do A, then that person is not really free.
God cant have it both ways. He can create a world with free creatures or he can causally determine
creatures to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong every time; but he cant do both. God
can forcibly eliminate evil and suffering (as in W2) only at the cost of getting rid of free will.
The fact that W3 is impossible is centrally important to Plantingas Free Will Defense. Atheologians,
as we saw above, claim that God is doing something morally blameworthy by allowing evil and
suffering to exist in our world. They charge that a good God would and should eliminate all evil and
suffering. The assumption behind this charge is that, in so doing, God could leave human free will
untouched. Plantinga claims that when we think through what robust free will really amounts to, we
can see that atheologians are (unbeknownst to themselves) asking God to do the logically impossible.
Being upset that God has not done something that is logically impossible is, according to Plantinga,
misguided. He might say, Of course he hasnt done that. Its logically impossible! As we will see in
section V below, Plantinga maintains that divine omnipotence involves an ability to do anything that
is logically possible, but it does not include the ability to do the logically impossible.
Consider W4. Is it possible? Yes! Most people are tempted to answer No when first exposed to this
description, but think carefully about it. Although there is no evil and suffering in this world, it is not
because God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what
is wrong. In this world God has given creatures morally significant free will without any strings
attached. If there is nothing bad in this world, it can only be because the free creatures that inhabit
this world haveby their own free willalways chosen to do the right thing. Is this kind of situation
really possible? Yes. Something is logically possible just when it can be conceived without
contradiction. There is nothing contradictory about supposing that there is a possible world where
free creatures always make the right choices and never go wrong. Of course, its highly improbable,
given what we know about human nature. But improbability and impossibility, as we said above, are
two different things. In fact, according to the Judeo-Christian story of Adam and Eve, it was Gods
will that significantly free human beings would live in the Garden of Eden and always obey Gods
commands. If Adam and Eve had followed Gods plan, then W4 would have been the actual world.
It is important to note certain similarities between W1 and W4. Both worlds are populated by
creatures with free will and in neither world does God causally determine people to always choose
what is right and to avoid what is wrong. The only difference is that, in W1, the free creatures choose
to do wrong at least some of the time, and in W4, the free creatures always make morally good
decisions. In other words, whether there is immorality in either one of these worlds depends upon
the persons living in these worldsnot upon God. According to Plantingas Free Will Defense, there
is evil and suffering in this world because people do immoral things. People deserve the blame for
the bad things that happennot God. Plantinga (1974, p. 190) writes,
The essential point of the Free Will Defense is that the creation of a world containing moral good is a
cooperative venture; it requires the uncoerced concurrence of significantly free creatures. But then the
actualization of a world W containing moral good is not up to God alone; it also depends upon what the
significantly free creatures of W would do.
Atheist philosophers such as Anthony Flew and J. L. Mackie have argued that an omnipotent God
should be able to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil. As Flew (1955, p. 149) put
it, If there is no contradiction here then Omnipotence might have made a world inhabited by
perfectly virtuous people. Mackie (1955, p. 209) writes,
If God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes
what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good? If there is no
logical impossibility in a mans choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there cannot be a
logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a
choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go
wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but
always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both
omnipotent and perfectly good.
According to Plantinga, Mackie is correct in thinking that there is nothing impossible about a world
in which people always freely choose to do right. Thats W4. He is also correct in thinking that Gods
only options were not making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would
sometimes go wrong. In other words, worlds like W1 and W2 are not the only logically possible
worlds. But Plantinga thinks he is mistaken in thinking that W3 is possible and in not recognizing
important differences between W3 and W4. People can freely choose to do what is right only when
their actions are not causally determined.
We might wonder why God would choose to risk populating his new creation with free creatures if he
knew there was a chance that human immorality could foul the whole thing up. C. S. Lewis (1943, p.
52) offers the following answer to this question:
Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only
thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automataof creatures
that worked like machineswould hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His
higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other. And for
that they must be free. Of course, God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way:
apparently He thought it worth the risk.
Plantinga concurs. He writes,
A world containing creatures who are sometimes significantly free (and freely perform more good than
evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now
God can create free creatures, but he cannot cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if he
does so, then they are not significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures
capable of moral good, therefore, he must create creatures capable of moral evil; and he cannot leave
these creatures free to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. The fact that these
free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against Gods omnipotence nor against his
goodness; for he could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by excising the possibility of
moral good. (Plantinga 1974, pp. 166-167)
According to his Free Will Defense, God could not eliminate the possibility of moral evil without at
the same time eliminating some greater good.
5. Divine Omnipotence and the Free Will Defense
Some scholars maintain that Plantinga has rejected the idea of an omnipotent God because he claims
there are some things God cannot donamely, logically impossible things. Plantinga, however,
doesnt take Gods omnipotence to include the power to do the logically impossible. He reasons as
follows. Can God create a round square? Can he make 2 + 2 = 5? Can he create a stick that is not as
long as itself? Can he make contradictory statements true? Can he make a rock so big he cant lift it?
In response to each of these questions, Plantingas answer is No. Each of the scenarios depicted in
these questions is impossible: the objects or events in question couldnt possibly exist. Omnipotence,
according to Plantinga, is the power to do anything that is logically possible. The fact that God cannot
do the logically impossible is not, Plantinga claims, a genuine limitation of Gods power. He would
urge those uncomfortable with the idea of limitations on Gods power to think carefully about the
absurd implications of a God who can do the logically impossible. If you think God really can make a
round square, Plantinga would like to know what such a shape would look like. If God can make 2 +
2 = 5, then what would 2 + 3 equal? If God can make a rock so big that he cant lift it, exactly how big
would that rock be? What Plantinga would really like to see is a stick that is not as long as itself. Each
of these things seems to be absolutely, positively impossible.
Many theists maintain that it is a mistake to think that Gods omnipotence requires that the blank in
the following sentence must never be filled in:
(23) God is not able to ______________.
According to orthodox theism, all of the following statements (and many more like them) are true.
(24) God is not able to lie.
(25) God is not able to cheat.
(26) God is not able to steal.
(27) God is not able to be unjust.
(28) God is not able to be envious.
(29) God is not able to fail to know what is right.
(30) God is not able to fail to do what he knows to be right.
(31) God is not able to have false beliefs about anything.
(32) God is not able to be ignorant.
(33) God is not able to be unwise.
(34) God is not able to cease to exist.
(35) God is not able to make a mistake of any kind.
According to classical theism, the fact that God cannot do any of these things is not a sign of
weakness. On the contrary, theists claim, it is an indication of his supremacy and uniqueness. These
facts reveal that God is, in St. Anselms (1033-1109 A.D.) words, that being than which none greater
can be conceived. Plantinga adds the following two items to the list of things God cannot do.
(36) God is not able to contradict himself.
(37) God is not able to make significantly free creatures and to causally determine that they will always
choose what is right and avoid what is wrong.
These inabilities follow not from Gods omnipotence alone but from his omnipotence in combination
with his omniscience, moral perfection and the other divine perfections God possesses.
6. An Objection: Free Will and Natural Evil
At this point, someone might raise the following objection.
Plantinga cant put all the blame for pain and suffering on human beings. Although much of the evil in
this world results from the free choices people make, some of it does not. Cancer, AIDS, famines,
earthquakes, tornadoes, and many other kinds of diseases and natural disasters are things that happen
without anybody choosing to bring them about. Plantingas Free Will Defense, then, cannot serve as a
morally sufficient reason for Gods allowing disease and natural disasters.
This objection leads us to draw a distinction between the following two kinds of evil and suffering:
(38) Moral evil =df evil or suffering that results from the immoral choices of free creatures.
(39) Natural evil =df evil or suffering that results from the operations of nature or nature gone awry.
According to Edward Madden and Peter Hare (1968, p. 6), natural evil includes
the terrible pain, suffering, and untimely death caused by events like fire, flood, landslide, hurricane,
earthquake, tidal wave, and famine and by diseases like cancer, leprosy and tetanusas well as crippling
defects and deformities like blindness, deafness, dumbness, shriveled limbs, and insanity by which so
many sentient beings are cheated of the full benefits of life.
Moral evil, they continue, includes
both moral wrong-doing such as lying, cheating, stealing, torturing, and murdering and character defects
like greed, deceit, cruelty, wantonness, cowardice, and selfishness. (ibid.)
It seems that, although Plantingas Free Will Defense may be able to explain why God allows moral
evil to occur, it cannot explain why he allows natural evil. If God is going to allow people to be free, it
seems plausible to claim that they need to have the capacity to commit crimes and to be immoral.
However, it is not clear that human freedom requires the existence of natural evils like deadly viruses
and natural disasters. How would my free will be compromised if tomorrow God completely
eliminated cancer from the face of the Earth? Do people really need to die from heart disease and
flash floods in order for us to have morally significant free will? It is difficult to see that they do. So,
the objection goes, even if Plantingas Free Will Defense explains why God allows moral evil, it does
not explain why he allows natural evil.
Plantinga, however, thinks that his Free Will Defense can be used to solve the logical problem of evil
as it pertains to natural evil. Here is a possible reason God might have for allowing natural evil:
(MSR2) God allowed natural evil to enter the world as part of Adam and Eves punishment for their sin
in the Garden of Eden.
(Those familiar with Plantingas work will notice that this is not the same reason Plantinga offers for
Gods allowing natural evil. They will also be able to guess why a different reason was chosen in this
article.) The sin of Adam and Eve was a moral evil. (MSR2) claims that all natural evil followed as the
result of the worlds first moral evil. So, if it is plausible to think that Plantingas Free Will Defense
solves the logical problem of evil as it pertains to moral evil, the current suggestion is that it is
plausible also to think that it solves the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil because all
of the worlds evils have their source in moral evil.
(MSR2) represents a common Jewish and Christian response to the challenge posed by natural evil.
Death, disease, pain and even the tiresome labor involved in gleaning food from the soil came into
the world as a direct result of Adam and Eves sin. The emotional pain of separation, shame and
broken relationships are also consequences that first instance of moral evil. In fact, according to the
first chapter of Genesis, animals in the Garden of Eden didnt even kill each other for food before the
Fall. In the description of the sixth day of creation God says to Adam and Eve,
I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in
it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the
creatures that move on the groundeverything that has the breath of life in itI give every green plant for
food. (Gen. 1:29-30, NIV)
In other words, the Garden of Eden is pictured as a peaceful, vegetarian commune until moral evil
entered the world and brought natural evil with it. It seems, then, that the Free Will Defense might
be adapted to rebut the logical problem of natural evil after all.
Some might think that (MSR2) is simply too far-fetched to be taken seriously. [If you think (MSR2)
is far-fetched, see Plantinga's (1974, pp. 191-193) own suggestions about who is responsible for
natural evil.] Natural disasters, it will be said, bear no essential connection to human wrongdoing, so
it is absurd to think that moral evil could somehow bring natural evil into the world. Moreover,
(MSR2) would have us believe that there were real persons named Adam and Eve and that they
actually performed the misdeeds attributed to them in the book of Genesis. (MSR2) seems to be
asking us to believe things that only a certain kind of theist would believe. The implausibility of
(MSR2) is taken by some to be a serious defect.
7. Evaluating the Free Will Defense
What should we make of Plantingas Free Will Defense? Does it succeed in solving the logical
problem of evil as it pertains to either moral or natural evil? In order to answer these questions, lets
briefly consider what it would take for any response to the logical problem of evil to be successful.
Recall that the logical problem of evil can be summarized as the following claim:
(16) It is not possible for God and evil to co-exist.
When someone claims
(40) Situation x is impossible,
what is the least that you would have to prove in order to show that (40) is false? If you could point
to an actual instance of the type of situation in question, that would certainly prove that (40) is false.
But you dont even need to trouble yourself with finding an actual x. All you need is a possible x. The
claim
(41) Situation x is possible
is the contradictory of (40). The two claims are logical opposites. If one is true, the other is false; if
one is false, the other is true. If you can show that x is merely possible, you will have refuted (40).
How would you go about finding a logically possible x? Philosophers claim that you only need to use
your imagination. If you can conceive of a state of affairs without there being anything contradictory
about what youre imagining, then that state of affairs must be possible. In a word, conceivability is
your guide to possibility.
Since the logical problem of evil claims that it is logically impossible for God and evil to co-exist, all
that Plantinga (or any other theist) needs to do to combat this claim is to describe a possible
situation in which God and evil co-exist. That situation doesnt need to be actual or even realistic.
Plantinga doesnt need to have a single shred of evidence supporting the truth of his suggestion. All
he needs to do is give a logically consistent description of a way that God and evil can co-exist.
Plantinga claims God and evil could co-exist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
He suggests that Gods morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being
granted morally significant free will and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible. All that
Plantinga needs to claim on behalf of (MSR1) and (MSR2) is that they are logically possible (that is,
not contradictory).
Does Plantingas Free Will Defense succeed in describing a possible state of affairs in which God has
a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil? It certainly seems so. In fact, it appears that even the
most hardened atheist must admit that (MSR1) and (MSR2) are possible reasons God might have for
allowing moral and natural evil. They may not represent Gods actual reasons, but for the purpose of
blocking the logical problem of evil, it is not necessary that Plantinga discover Gods actual reasons.
In the last section we noted that many people will find (MSR2)s explanation of natural evil
extremely difficult to believe because it assumes the literal existence of Adam and Eve and the literal
occurrence of the Fall. However, since (MSR2) deals with the logical problem of evil as it pertains to
natural evil (which claims that it is logically impossible for God and natural evil to co-exist), it only
needs to sketch a possible way for God and natural evil to co-exist. The fact that (MSR2) may be
implausible does not keep it from being possible. Since the situation described by (MSR2) is clearly
possible, it appears that it successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil as it pertains to natural evil.
Since (MSR1) and (MSR2) together seem to show contra the claims of the logical problem of evil how
it is possible for God and (moral and natural) evil to co-exist, it seems that the Free Will Defense
successfully defeats the logical problem of evil.
8. Was Plantingas Victory Too Easy?
Some philosophers feel that Plantingas apparent victory over the logical problem of evil was
somehow too easy. His solution to the logical problem of evil leaves them feeling unsatisfied and
suspicious that they have been taken in by some kind of sleight of hand. For example, J. L. Mackie
one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the mid-twentieth-century and a key exponent of
the logical problem of evil has this to say about Plantingas Free Will Defense:
Since this defense is formally [that is, logically] possible, and its principle involves no real abandonment
of our ordinary view of the opposition between good and evil, we can concede that the problem of evil
does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another.
But whether this offers a real solution of the problem is another question. (Mackie 1982, p. 154)
Mackie admits that Plantingas defense shows how God and evil can co-exist, that is, it shows that
the central doctrines of theism are logically consistent after all. However, Mackie is reluctant to
attribute much significance to Plantingas accomplishment. He expresses doubt about whether
Plantinga has adequately dealt with the problem of evil.
Part of Mackies dissatisfaction probably stems from the fact that Plantinga only gives a possible
reason for why God might have for allowing evil and suffering and does not provide any evidence for
his claims or in any way try to make them plausible. Although sketching out mere possibilities
without giving them any evidential support is typically an unsatisfactory thing to do in philosophy, it
is not clear that Mackies unhappiness with Plantinga is completely warranted. It was, after all,
Mackie himself who characterized the problem of evil as one of logical inconsistency:
Here it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively
irrational, that several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another.
(Mackie 1955, p. 200)
In response to this formulation of the problem of evil, Plantinga showed that this charge of
inconsistency was mistaken. Even Mackie admits that Plantinga solved the problem of evil, if that
problem is understood as one of inconsistency. It is, therefore, difficult to see why Plantingas Free
Will Defense should be found wanting if that defense is seen as a response to the logical problem of
evil. As an attempt to rebut the logical problem of evil, it is strikingly successful.
The dissatisfaction many have felt with Plantingas solution may stem from a desire to see
Plantingas Free Will Defense respond more generally to the problem of evil and not merely to a
single formulation of the problem. As an all-around response to the problem of evil, the Free Will
Defense does not offer us much in the way of explanation. It leaves several of the most important
questions about God and evil unanswered. The desire to see a theistic response to the problem of evil
go beyond merely undermining a particular atheological argument is understandable. However, we
should keep in mind that all parties admit that Plantingas Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the
logical problem of evil as it was formulated by atheists during the mid-twentieth-century.
If there is any blame that needs to go around, it may be that some of it should go to Mackie and other
atheologians for claiming that the problem of evil was a problem of inconsistency. The ease with
which Plantinga undermined that formulation of the problem suggests that the logical formulation
did not adequately capture the difficult and perplexing issue concerning God and evil that has been
so hotly debated by philosophers and theologians. In fact, this is precisely the message that many
philosophers took away from the debate between Plantinga and the defenders of the logical problem
of evil. They reasoned that there must be more to the problem of evil than what is captured in the
logical formulation of the problem. It is now widely agreed that this intuition is correct. Current
discussions of the problem focus on what is called the probabilistic problem of evil or the
evidential problem of evil. According to this formulation of the problem, the evil and suffering (or, in
some cases, the amounts, kinds and distributions of evil and suffering) that we find in the world
count as evidence against the existence of God (or make it improbable that God exists). Responding
to this formulation of the problem requires much more than simply describing a logically possible
scenario in which God and evil co-exist.
9. Other Responses to the Logical Problem of Evil
Plantingas Free Will Defense has been the most famous theistic response to the logical problem of
evil because he did more to clarify the issues surrounding the logical problem than anyone else. It
has not, however, been the only such response. Other solutions to the problem include John Hicks
(1977) soul-making theodicy. Hick rejects the traditional view of the Fall, which pictures humans as
being created in a finitely perfect and finished state from which they disastrously fell away. Instead,
Hick claims that human beings are unfinished and in the midst of being made all that God intended
them to be. The long evolutionary process made humans into a distinguishable species capable of
reasoning and responsibility, but they must now (as individuals) go through a second process of
spiritualization or soul-making, during which they become children of God. According to Hick,
the suffering and travails of this life are part of the divine plan of soul-making. A world full of
suffering, trials and temptations is more conducive to the process of soul-making than a world full of
constant pleasure and the complete absence of pain. Hick (1977, pp. 255-256) writes,
The value-judgment that is implicitly being invoked here is that one who has attained to goodness by
meeting and eventually mastering temptations, and thus by rightly making responsible 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. I suggest, then, that it is an ethically reasonable judgment that
human goodness slowly built up through personal histories of moral effort has a value in the eyes of the
Creator which justifies even the long travail of the soul-making process.
Unlike Plantingas response to the logical problem of evil, which is merely a defense (that is, a
negative attempt to undermine a certain atheological argument without offering a positive account of
why God allows evil and suffering), Hicks response is a theodicy (that is, a more comprehensive
attempt to account for why God is justified in allowing evil and suffering).
Eleonore Stump (1985) offers another response to the problem of evil that brings a range of
distinctively Christian theological commitments to bear on the issue. She claims that a world full of
evil and suffering is conducive to bringing about both the initial human [receipt of God's gift of
salvation] and also the subsequent process of sanctification (Stump 1985, p. 409). She writes,
Natural evilthe pain of disease, the intermittent and unpredictable destruction of natural disasters, the
decay of old age, the imminence of deathtakes away a persons satisfaction with himself. It tends to
humble him, show him his frailty, make him reflect on the transience of temporal goods, and turn his
affections towards other-worldly things, away from the things of this world. No amount of moral or
natural evil, of course, can guarantee that a man will [place his faith in God]. But evil of this sort is the
best hope, I think, and maybe the only effective means, for bringing men to such a state. (Stump 1985, p.
409)
Stump claims that, although the sin of Adamand not any act of Godfirst brought moral and
natural evil into this world, God providentially uses both kinds of evil in order to bring about the
greatest good that a fallen, sinful human being can experience: a repaired will and eternal union with
God.
The responses of both Hick and Stump are intended to cover not only the logical problem of evil but
also any other formulation of the problem as well. Thus, some of those dissatisfied with Plantingas
merely defensive response to the problem of evil may find these more constructive, alternative
responses more attractive. Regardless of the details of these alternatives, the fact remains that all
they need to do in order to rebut the logical problem of evil is to describe a logically possible way that
God and evil can co-exist. A variety of morally sufficient reasons can be proposed as possible
explanations of why a perfect God might allow evil and suffering to exist. Because the suggestions of
Hick and Stump are clearly logically possible, they, too, succeed in undermining the logical problem
of evil.
10. Problems with the Free Will Defense
A. Even though it is widely agreed that Plantingas Free Will Defense describes a state of affairs that
is logically possible, some of the details of his defense seem to conflict with important theistic
doctrines. One point of conflict concerns the possibility of human free will in heaven. Plantinga
claims that if someone is incapable of doing evil, that person cannot have morally significant free
will. He also maintains that part of what makes us the creatures we are is that we possess morally
significant freedom. If that freedom were to be taken away, we might very well cease to be the
creatures we are. However, consider the sort of freedom enjoyed by the redeemed in heaven.
According to classical theism, believers in heaven will somehow be changed so that they will no
longer commit any sins. It is not that they will contingently always do what is right and contingently
always avoid what is wrong. They will somehow no longer be capable of doing wrong. In other words,
their good behavior will be necessary rather than contingent.
This orthodox view of heaven poses the following significant challenges to Plantingas view:
(i) If heavenly dwellers do not possess morally significant free will and yet their existence is something of
tremendous value, it is not clear that God was justified in creating persons here on Earth with the capacity
for rape, murder, torture, sexual molestation, and nuclear war. It seems that God could have actualized
whatever greater goods are made possible by the existence of persons without allowing horrible instances
of evil and suffering to exist in this world.
(ii) If possessing morally significant free will is essential to human nature, it is not clear how the
redeemed can lose their morally significant freedom when they get to heaven and still be the same people
they were before.
(iii) If despite initial appearances heavenly dwellers do possess morally significant free will, then it seems
that it is not impossible for God to create genuinely free creatures who always (of necessity) do what is
right.
In other words, it appears that W3 isnt impossible after all. If W3 is possible, an important plank in
Plantingas Free Will Defense is removed. None of these challenges undermines the basic point
established above that Plantingas Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil.
However, they reveal that some of the central claims of his defense conflict with other important
theistic doctrines. Although Plantinga claimed that his Free Will Defense offered merely possible and
not necessarily actual reasons God might have for allowing evil and suffering, it may be difficult for
other theists to embrace his defense if it runs contrary to what theism says is actually the case in
heaven.
B. Another problem facing Plantingas Free Will Defense concerns the question of Gods free will.
God, it seems, is incapable of doing anything wrong. Thus, it does not appear that, with respect to
any choice of morally good and morally bad options, God is free to choose a bad option. He seems
constitutionally incapable of choosing (or even wanting) to do what is wrong. According to
Plantingas description of morally significant free will, it does not seem that God would be
significantly free. Plantinga suggests that morally significant freedom is necessary in order for ones
actions to be assessed as being morally good or bad. But then it seems that Gods actions could not
carry any moral significance. They could never be praiseworthy. That certainly runs contrary to
central doctrines of theism.
If, as theists must surely maintain, God does possess morally significant freedom, then perhaps this
sort of freedom does not preclude an inability to choose what is wrong. But if it is possible for God to
possess morally significant freedom and for him to be unable to do wrong, then W3 once again
appears to be possible after all. Originally, Plantinga claimed that W3 is not a logically possible world
because the description of that world is logically inconsistent. If W3 is possible, then the complaint
lodged by Flew and Mackie above that God could (and therefore should) have created a world full of
creatures who always did what is right is not answered.
There may be ways for Plantinga to resolve the difficulties sketched above, so that the Free Will
Defense can be shown to be compatible with theistic doctrines about heaven and divine freedom. As
it stands, however, some important challenges to the Free Will Defense remain unanswered. It is also
important to note that, simply because Plantingas particular use of free will in fashioning a response
to the problem of evil runs into certain difficulties, that does not mean that other theistic uses of free
will in distinct kinds of defenses or theodicies would face the same difficulties.
11. References and Further Reading
a. References
Clark, Kelly James. 1990. Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a
Defense of Reason and Belief in God. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Flew, Anthony. 1955. Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom. In Anthony Flew and Alasdair
MacIntyre (eds.) New Essays in Philosophical Theology. New York: Macmillan.
Hick, John. 1977. Evil and the God of Love, revised ed. New York: Harper & Row.
Kng, Hans. 1976. On Being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
Kushner, Harold S. 1981. When Bad Things Happen to Good People. New York: Schocken Books.
Lewis, C. S. 1943. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan.
Mackie, J. L. 1982. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mackie, J. L. 1955. Evil and Omnipotence. Mind 64: 200-212.
Madden, Edward and Peter Hare. 1968. Evil and the Concept of God. Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas.
McCloskey, H. J. 1960. God and Evil. Philosophical Quarterly 10: 97-114.
Peterson, Michael L. 1998. God and Evil: An Introduction to the Issues. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. The Nature of Necessary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1977. God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Strobel, Lee. 2000. The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to
Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Stump, Eleonore. 1985. The Problem of Evil. Faith and Philosophy 2: 392-423.
b. Further Reading
Adams, Robert Merrihew and Marilyn McCord Adams, eds. 1990. The Problem of Evil. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, ed. 1996. The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Peterson, Michael L., ed. 1992. The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings. Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press.
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 put aside any evidence there might be
in support of the existence of God, it becomes unlikely, if not highly unlikely, that the world was
created and is governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good being. Such arguments are
not to be confused with logical arguments from evil, which have the more ambitious aim of showing
that, in a world in which there is evil, it is logically impossibleand not just unlikelythat God
exists.
This entry begins by clarifying some important concepts and distinctions associated with the
problem of evil, before providing an outline of one of the more forceful and influential evidential
arguments developed in contemporary times, namely, the evidential argument advanced by William
Rowe. Rowes argument has occasioned a range of responses from theists, including the so-called
skeptical theist critique (according to which Gods ways are too mysterious for us to comprehend)
and the construction of various theodicies, that is, explanations as to why God permits evil. These
and other responses to the evidential problem of evil are here surveyed and assessed.
Table of Contents
1. Background to the Problem of Evil
a. Orthodox Theism
b. Good and Evil
c. Versions of the Problem of Evil
2. William Rowes Evidential Argument from Evil
. An Outline of Rowes Evidential Argument
a. The Theological Premise
b. The Factual Premise
i. Rowes Case in Support of the Factual Premise
ii. The Inference from P to Q
3. The Skeptical Theist Response
. Wykstras CORNEA Critique
a. Wykstras Parent Analogy
b. Alstons Analogies
4. Building a Theodicy, or Casting Light on the Ways of God
. What is a Theodicy?
a. Distinguishing a Theodicy from a Defence
b. Sketch of a Theodicy
5. Further Responses to the Evidential Problem of Evil
6. Conclusion
7. References and Further Reading
1. Background to the Problem of Evil
Before delving into the deep and often murky waters of the problem of evil, it will be helpful to
provide some philosophical background to this venerable subject. The first and perhaps most
important step of this stage-setting process will be to identify and clarify the conception of God that
is normally presupposed in contemporary debates (at least within the Anglo-American analytic
tradition) on the problem of evil. The next step will involve providing an outline of some important
concepts and distinctions, in particular the age-old distinction between good and evil, and the
more recent distinction between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil.
a. Orthodox Theism
The predominant conception of God within the western world, and hence the kind of deity that is
normally the subject of debate in discussions on the problem of evil in most western philosophical
circles, is the God of orthodox theism. According to orthodox theism, there exists just one God, this
God being a person or person-like. The operative notion, however, behind this form of theism is that
God is perfect, where to be perfect is to be the greatest being possible or, to borrow Anselms well-
known phrase, the being than which none greater can be conceived. (Such a conception of God
forms the starting-point in what has come to be known as perfect being theology; see Morris 1987,
1991, and Rogers 2000). On this view, God, as an absolutely perfect being, must possess the
following perfections or great-making qualities:
1. omnipotence: This refers to Gods ability to bring about any state of affairs that is logically possible
in itself as well as logically consistent with his other essential attributes.
2. omniscience: God is omniscient in that he knows all truths or knows all that is logically possible to
know.
3. perfect goodness: God is the source of moral norms (as in divine command ethics) or always acts in
complete accordance with moral norms.
4. aseity: God has aseity (literally, being from oneself, a se esse) that is to say, he is self-existent or
ontologically independent, for he does not depend either for his existence or for his characteristics on
anything outside himself.
5. incorporeality: God has no body; he is a non-physical spirit but is capable of affecting physical
things.
6. eternity: Traditionally, God is thought to be eternal in an atemporal sensethat is, God is timeless or
exists outside of time (a view upheld by Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas). On an alternative view,
Gods eternality is held to be temporal in nature, so that God is everlasting or exists in time, having
infinite temporal duration in both of the two temporal directions.
7. omnipresence: God is wholly present in all space and time. This is often interpreted metaphorically
to mean that God can bring about an event immediately at any place and time, and knows what is
happening at every place and time in the same immediate manner.
8. perfectly free: God is absolutely free either in the sense that nothing outside him can determine him
to perform a particular action, or in the sense that it is always within his power not to do what he
does.
9. alone worthy of worship and unconditional commitment: God, being the greatest being possible, is
the only being fit to be worshipped and the only being to whom one may commit ones life without
reservation.
The God of traditional theism is also typically accorded a further attribute, one that he is thought to
possess only contingently:
10. creator and sustainer of the world: God brought the (physical and non-physical) world into
existence, and also keeps the world and every object within it in existence. Thus, no created thing
could exist at a given moment unless it were at that moment held in existence by God. Further, no
created thing could have the causal powers and liabilities it has at a given moment unless it were at
that moment supplied with those powers and liabilities by God.
According to orthodox theism, God was free not to create a world. In other words, there is at least
one possible world in which God creates nothing at all. But then God is a creator only contingently,
not necessarily. (For a more comprehensive account of the properties of the God of orthodox theism,
see Swinburne 1977, Quinn & Taliaferro 1997: 223-319, and Hoffman & Rosenkrantz 2002.)
b. Good and Evil
Clarifying the underlying conception of God is but the first step in clarifying the nature of the
problem of evil. To arrive at a more complete understanding of this vexing problem, it is necessary to
unpack further some of its philosophical baggage. I turn, therefore, to some important concepts and
distinctions associated with the problem of evil, beginning with the ideas of good and evil.
The terms good and evil are, if nothing else, notoriously difficult to define. Some account,
however, can be given of these terms as they are employed in discussions of the problem of evil.
Beginning with the notion of evil, this is normally given a very wide extension so as to cover
everything that is negative and destructive in life. The ambit of evil will therefore include such
categories as the bad, the unjust, the immoral, and the painful. An analysis of evil in this broad sense
may proceed as follows:
An event may be categorized as evil if it involves any of the following:
a. some harm (whether it be minor or great) being done to the physical and/or psychological
well-being of a sentient creature;
b. the unjust treatment of some sentient creature;
c. loss of opportunity resulting from premature death;
d. anything that prevents an individual from leading a fulfilling and virtuous life;
e. a person doing that which is morally wrong;
f. the privation of good.
Condition (a) captures what normally falls under the rubric of pain as a physical state (for example,
the sensation you feel when you have a toothache or broken jaw) and suffering as a mental state in
which we wish that our situation were otherwise (for example, the experience of anxiety or despair).
Condition (b) introduces the notion of injustice, so that the prosperity of the wicked, the demise of
the virtuous, and the denial of voting rights or employment opportunities to women and blacks
would count as evils. The third condition is intended to cover cases of untimely death, that is to say,
death not brought about by the ageing process alone. Death of this kind may result in loss of
opportunity either in the sense that one is unable to fulfill ones potential, dreams or goals, or merely
in the sense that one is prevented from living out the full term of their natural life. This is partly why
we consider it a great evil if an infant were killed after impacting with a train at full speed, even if the
infant experienced no pain or suffering in the process. Condition (d) classifies as evil anything that
inhibits one from leading a life that is both fulfilling and virtuous poverty and prostitution would
be cases in point. Condition (e) relates evil to immoral choices or acts. And the final condition
expresses the idea, prominent in Augustine and Aquinas, that evil is not a substance or entity in its
own right, but a privatio boni: the absence or lack of some good power or quality which a thing by its
nature ought to possess.
Paralleling the above analysis of evil, the following account of good may be offered:
An event may be categorized as good if it involves any of the following:
a. some improvement (whether it be minor or great) in the physical and/or psychological well-
being of a sentient creature;
b. the just treatment of some sentient creature;
c. anything that advances the degree of fulfillment and virtue in an individuals life;
d. a person doing that which is morally right;
e. the optimal functioning of some person or thing, so that it does not lack the full measure of being
and goodness that ought to belong to it.
Turning to the many varieties of evil, the following have become standard in the literature:
Moral evil. This is evil that results from the misuse of free will on the part of some moral agent in
such a way that the agent thereby becomes morally blameworthy for the resultant evil. Moral evil
therefore includes specific acts of intentional wrongdoing such as lying and murdering, as well as
defects in character such as dishonesty and greed.
Natural evil. In contrast to moral evil, natural evil is evil that results from the operation of natural
processes, in which case no human being can be held morally accountable for the resultant evil.
Classic examples of natural evil are natural disasters such as cyclones and earthquakes that result in
enormous suffering and loss of life, illnesses such as leukemia and Alzheimers, and disabilities such
as blindness and deafness.
An important qualification, however, must be made at this point. A great deal of what normally
passes as natural evil is brought about by human wrongdoing or negligence. For example, lung
cancer may be caused by heavy smoking; the loss of life occasioned by some earthquakes may be
largely due to irresponsible city planners locating their creations on faults that will ultimately heave
and split; and some droughts and floods may have been prevented if not for the careless way we have
treated our planet. As it is the misuse of free will that has caused these evils or contributed to their
occurrence, it seems best to regard them as moral evils and not natural evils. In the present work,
therefore, a natural evil will be defined as an evil resulting solely or chiefly from the operation of the
laws of nature. Alternatively, and perhaps more precisely, an evil will be deemed a natural evil only if
no non-divine agent can be held morally responsible for its occurrence. Thus, a flood caused by
human pollution of the environment will be categorized a natural evil as long as the agents involved
could not be held morally responsible for the resultant evil, which would be the case if, for instance,
they could not reasonably be expected to have foreseen the consequences of their behavior.
A further category of evil that has recently played an important role in discussions on the problem of
evil is horrendous evil. This may be defined, following Marilyn Adams (1999: 26), as evil the
participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to
doubt whether the participants life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on
the whole. As examples of such evil, Adams lists the rape of a woman and axing off of her arms,
psycho-physical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, betrayal of ones
deepest loyalties, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, child pornography, parental
incest, slow death by starvation, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas (p.26).
A horrendous evil, it may be noted, may be either a moral evil (for example, the Holocaust of 1939-
45) or a natural evil (for example, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755). It is also important to note that it
is the notion of a horrendous moral evil that comports with the current, everyday use of evil by
English speakers. When we ordinarily employ the word evil today we do not intend to pick out
something that is merely bad or very wrong (for example, a burglary), nor do we intend to refer to
the death and destruction brought about by purely natural processes (we do not, for example, think
of the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster as something that was evil). Instead, the word evil is reserved
in common usage for events and people that have an especially horrific moral quality or character.
Clearly, the problem of evil is at its most difficult when stated in terms of horrendous evil (whether of
the moral or natural variety), and as will be seen in Section II below, this is precisely how William
Rowes statement of the evidential problem of evil is formulated.
Finally, these notions of good and evil indicate that the problem of evil is intimately tied to ethics.
Ones underlying ethical theory may have a bearing on ones approach to the problem of evil in at
least two ways.
Firstly, one who accepts either a divine command theory of ethics or non-realism in ethics is in no
position to raise the problem of evil, that is, to offer the existence of evil as at least a prima facie good
reason for rejecting theism. This is because a divine command theory, in taking morality to be
dependent upon the will of God, already assumes the truth of that which is in dispute, namely, the
existence of God (see Brown 1967). On the other hand, non-realist ethical theories, such as moral
subjectivism and error-theories of ethics, hold that there are no objectively true moral judgments.
But then a non-theist who also happens to be a non-realist in ethics cannot help herself to some of
the central premises found in evidential arguments from evil (such as If there were a perfectly good
God, he would want a world with no horrific evil in it), as these purport to be objectively true moral
judgments (see Nelson 1991). This is not to say, however, that atheologians such as David Hume,
Bertrand Russell and J.L. Mackie, each of whom supported non-realism in ethics, were contradicting
their own meta-ethics when raising arguments from evil at least if their aim was only to show up a
contradiction in the theists set of beliefs.
Secondly, the particular normative ethical theory one adopts (for example, consequentialism,
deontology, virtue ethics) may influence the way in which one formulates or responds to an
argument from evil. Indeed, some have gone so far as to claim that evidential arguments from evil
usually presuppose the truth of consequentialism (see, for example, Reitan 2000). Even if this is not
so, it seems that the adoption of a particular theory in normative ethics may render the problem of
evil easier or harder, or at least delimit the range of solutions available. (For an excellent account of
the difficulties faced by theists in relation to the problem of evil when the ethical framework is
restricted to deontology, see McNaughton 1994.)
c. Versions of the Problem of Evil
The problem of evil may be described as the problem of reconciling belief in God with the existence
of evil. But the problem of evil, like evil itself, has many faces. It may, for example, be expressed
either as an experiential problem or as a theoretical problem. In the former case, the problem is the
difficulty of adopting or maintaining an attitude of love and trust toward God when confronted by
evil that is deeply perplexing and disturbing. Alvin Plantinga (1977: 63-64) provides an eloquent
account of this problem:
The theist may find a religious problem in evil; in the presence of his own suffering or that of someone
near to him he may find it difficult to maintain what he takes to be the proper attitude towards God. Faced
with great personal suffering or misfortune, he may be tempted to rebel against God, to shake his fist in
Gods face, or even to give up belief in God altogether Such a problem calls, not for philosophical
enlightenment, but for pastoral care. (emphasis in the original)
By contrast, the theoretical problem of evil is the purely intellectual matter of determining what
impact, if any, the existence of evil has on the truth-value or the epistemic status of theistic belief. To
be sure, these two problems are interconnected theoretical considerations, for example, may color
ones actual experience of evil, as happens when suffering that is better comprehended becomes
easier to bear. In this article, however, the focus will be exclusively on the theoretical dimension. This
aspect of the problem of evil comes in two broad varieties: the logical problem and the evidential
problem.
The logical version of the problem of evil (also known as the a priori version and the
deductive version) is the problem of removing an alleged logical inconsistency between certain
claims about God and certain claims about evil. J.L. Mackie (1955: 200) provides a succinct
statement of this problem:
In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There
seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the
third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the
theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three. (emphases in the
original)
In a similar vein, H.J. McCloskey (1960: 97) frames the problem of evil as follows:
Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil, on the one hand, and
the belief in the omnipotence and perfection of God on the other. (emphasis mine)
Atheologians like Mackie and McCloskey, in maintaining that the logical problem of evil provides
conclusive evidence against theism, are claiming that theists are committed to an internally
inconsistent set of beliefs and hence that theism is necessarily false. More precisely, it is claimed that
theists commonly accept the following propositions:
11. God exists
12. God is omnipotent
13. God is omniscient
14. God is perfectly good
15. Evil exists.
Propositions (11)-(14) form an essential part of the orthodox conception of God, as this has been
explicated in Section 1 above. But theists typically believe that the world contains evil. The charge,
then, is that this commitment to (15) is somehow incompatible with the theists commitment to (11)-
(14). Of course, (15) can be specified in a number of ways for example, (15) may refer to the
existence of any evil at all, or a certain amount of evil, or particular kinds of evil, or some perplexing
distributions of evil. In each case, a different version of the logical problem of evil, and hence a
distinct charge of logical incompatibility, will be generated.
The alleged incompatibility, however, is not obvious or explicit. Rather, the claim is that propositions
(11)-(15) are implicitly contradictory, where a set S of propositions is implicitly contradictory if there
is a necessary proposition p such that the conjunction of p with S constitutes a formally contradictory
set. Those who advance logical arguments from evil must therefore add one or more necessary truths
to the above set of five propositions in order to generate the fatal contradiction. By way of
illustration, consider the following additional propositions that may be offered:
16. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.
17. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
18. An omnipotent being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence has the power to
prevent that evil from coming into existence.
19. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that
evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
From this set of auxiliary propositions, it clearly follows that
20. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists.
It is not difficult to see how the addition of (16)-(20) to (11)-(15) will yield an explicit contradiction,
namely,
21. Evil exists and evil does not exist.
If such an argument is sound, theism will not so much lack evidential support, but would rather be,
as Mackie (1955: 200) puts it, positively irrational. For more discussion, see the article The Logical
Problem of Evil.
The subject of this article, however, is the evidential version of the problem of evil (also called
the a posteriori version and the inductive version), which seeks to show that the existence evil,
although logically consistent with the existence of God, counts against the truth of theism. As with
the logical problem, evidential formulations may be based on the sheer existence of evil, or certain
instances, types, amounts, or distributions of evil. Evidential arguments from evil may also be
classified according to whether they employ (i) a direct inductive approach, which aims at showing
that evil counts against theism, but without comparing theism to some alternative hypothesis; or (ii)
an indirect inductive approach, which attempts to show that some significant set of facts about evil
counts against theism, and it does this by identifying an alternative hypothesis that explains these
facts far more adequately than the theistic hypothesis. The former strategy, as will be seen in Section
II, is employed by William Rowe, while the latter strategy is exemplified best in Paul Drapers 1989
paper, Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists. (A useful taxonomy of evidential
arguments from evil can be found in Russell 1996: 194 and Peterson 1998: 23-27, 69-72.)
Evidential arguments purport to show that evil counts against theism in the sense that the existence
of evil lowers the probability that God exists. The strategy here is to begin by putting aside any
positive evidence we might think there is in support of theism (for example, the fine-tuning
argument) as well as any negative evidence we might think there is against theism (that is, any
negative evidence other than the evidence of evil). We therefore begin with a level playing field by
setting the probability of Gods existing at 0.5 and the probability of Gods not existing at 0.5
(compare Rowe 1996: 265-66; it is worth noting, however, that this level playing field assumption
is not entirely uncontroversial: see, for example, the objections raised by Jordan 2001 and Otte
2002: 167-68). The aim is to then determine what happens to the probability value of God exists
once we consider the evidence generated by our observations of the various evils in our world. The
central question, therefore, is: Grounds for belief in God aside, does evil render the truth
of atheism more likely than the truth of theism? (A recent debate on the evidential problem of evil
was couched in such terms: see Rowe 2001a: 124-25.) Proponents of evidential arguments are
therefore not claiming that, even if we take into account any positive reasons there are in support of
theism, the evidence of evil still manages to lower the probability of Gods existence. They are only
making the weaker claim that, if we temporarily set aside such positive reasons, then it can be shown
that the evils that occur in our world push the probability of Gods existence significantly downward.
But if evil counts against theism by driving down the probability value of God exists then evil
constitutes evidence against the existence of God. Evidential arguments, therefore, claim that there
are certain facts about evil that cannot be adequately explained on a theistic account of the world.
Theism is thus treated as a large-scale hypothesis or explanatory theory which aims to make sense of
some pertinent facts, and to the extent that it fails to do so it is disconfirmed.
In evidential arguments, however, the evidence only probabilifies its conclusion, rather than
conclusively verifying it. The probabilistic nature of such arguments manifests itself in the form of a
premise to the effect that It is probably the case that some instance (or type, or amount, or pattern)
of evil E is gratuitous. This probability judgment usually rests on the claim that, even after careful
reflection, we can see no good reason for Gods permission of E. The inference from this claim to the
judgment that there exists gratuitous evil is inductive in nature, and it is this inductive step that sets
the evidential argument apart from the logical argument.
2. William Rowes Evidential Argument from Evil
Evidential arguments from evil seek to show that the presence of evil in the world inductively
supports or makes likely the claim that God (or, more precisely, the God of orthodox theism) does
not exist. A variety of evidential arguments have been formulated in recent years, but here I will
concentrate on one very influential formulation, namely, that provided by William Rowe. Rowes
version of the evidential argument has received much attention since its formal inception in 1978, for
it is often considered to be the most cogent presentation of the evidential problem of evil. James
Sennett (1993: 220), for example, views Rowes argument as the clearest, most easily understood,
and most intuitively appealing of those available. Terry Christlieb (1992: 47), likewise, thinks of
Rowes argument as the strongest sort of evidential argument, the sort that has the best chance of
success. It is important to note, however, that Rowes thinking on the evidential problem of evil has
developed in significant ways since his earliest writings on the subject, and two (if not three) distinct
evidential arguments can be identified in his work. Here I will only discuss that version of Rowes
argument that received its first full-length formulation in Rowe (1978) and, most famously, in Rowe
(1979), and was successively refined in the light of criticisms in Rowe (1986), (1988), (1991), and
(1995), before being abandoned in favour of a quite different evidential argument in Rowe (1996).
a. An Outline of Rowes Argument
In presenting his evidential argument from evil in his justly celebrated 1979 paper, The Problem of
Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism, Rowe thinks it best to focus on a particular kind of evil that is
found in our world in abundance. He therefore selects intense human and animal suffering as this
occurs on a daily basis, is in great plenitude in our world, and is a clear case of evil. More precisely, it
is a case ofintrinsic evil: it is bad in and of itself, even though it sometimes is part of, or leads to,
some good state of affairs (Rowe 1979: 335). Rowe then proceeds to state his argument for atheism
as follows:
1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have
prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could,
unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally
bad or worse.
3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. (Rowe 1979: 336)
This argument, as Rowe points out, is clearly valid, and so if there are rational grounds for accepting
its premises, to that extent there are rational grounds for accepting the conclusion, that is to say,
atheism.
b. The Theological Premise
The second premise is sometimes called the theological premise as it expresses a belief about what
God as a perfectly good being would do under certain circumstances. In particular, this premise
states that if such a being knew of some intense suffering that was about to take place and was in a
position to prevent its occurrence, then it would prevent it unless it could not do so without thereby
losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. Put otherwise, an
omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God would not permit any gratuitous evil, evil that is (roughly
speaking) avoidable, pointless, or unnecessary with respect to the fulfillment of Gods purposes.
Rowe takes the theological premise to be the least controversial aspect of his argument. And the
consensus seems to be that Rowe is right the theological premise, or a version thereof that is
immune from some minor infelicities in the original formulation, is usually thought to be
indisputable, self-evident, necessarily true, or something of that ilk. The intuition here, as the
Howard-Snyders (1999: 115) explain, is that on the face of it, the idea that God may well permit
gratuitous evil is absurd. After all, if God can get what He wants without permitting some particular
horror (or anything comparably bad), why on earth would He permit it?
An increasing number of theists, however, are beginning to question Rowes theological premise.
This way of responding to the evidential problem of evil has been described by Rowe as radical, if
not revolutionary (1991: 79), but it is viewed by many theists as the only way to remain faithful to
the common human experience of evil, according to which utterly gratuitous evil not only exists but
is abundant. In particular, some members of the currently popular movement known as open
theism have rallied behind the idea that the theistic worldview is not only compatible with, but
requires or demands, the possibility that there is gratuitous evil (for the movements manifesto, see
Pinnock et al. 1994; see also Sanders 1998, Boyd 2000, and Hasker 2004).
Although open theists accept the orthodox conception of God, as delineated in Section 1.a above, they
offer a distinct account of some of the properties that are constitutive of the orthodox God. Most
importantly, open theists interpret Gods omniscience in such a way that it does not include either
foreknowledge (or, more specifically, knowledge of what free agents other than God will do) or
middle knowledge (that is, knowledge of what every possible free creature would freely choose to do
in any possible situation in which that creature might find itself). This view is usually contrasted with
two other forms of orthodox theism: Molinism (named after the sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian
Luis de Molina, who developed the theory of middle knowledge), according to which divine
omniscience encompasses both foreknowledge and middle knowledge; and Calvinism or theological
determinism, according to which God determines or predestines all that happens, thus leaving us
with either no morally relevant free will at all (hard determinism) or free will of the compatibilist sort
only (soft determinism).
It is often thought that the Molinist and Calvinist grant God greater providential control over the
world than does the open theist. For according to the latter but not the former, the future is to some
degree open-ended in that not even God can know exactly how it will turn out, given that he has
created a world in which there are agents with libertarian free will and, perhaps, indeterminate
natural processes. God therefore runs the risk that his creation will come to be infested with
gratuitous evils, that is to say, evils he has not intended, decreed, planned for, or even permitted for
the sake of some greater good. Open theists, however, argue that this risk is kept in check by Gods
adoption of various general strategies by which he governs the world. God may, for example, set out
to create a world in which there are creatures who have the opportunity to freely choose their
destiny, but he would then ensure that adequate recompense is offered (perhaps in an afterlife) to
those whose lives are ruined (through no fault of their own) by the misuse of others freedom (for
example, a child that is raped and murdered). Nevertheless, in creating creatures with (libertarian)
free will and by infusing the natural order with a degree of indeterminacy, God relinquishes
exhaustive knowledge and complete control of all history. The open theist therefore encourages the
rejection of what has been called meticulous providence (Peterson 1982: chs 4 & 5) or the
blueprint worldview (Boyd 2003: ch.2), the view that the world was created according to a detailed
divine blueprint which assigns a specific divine reason for every occurrence in history. In place of
this view, the open theist presents us with a God who is a risk-taker, a God who gives up meticulous
control of everything that happens, thus opening himself up to the genuine possibility of failure and
disappointment that is to say, to the possibility of gratuitous evil.
Open theism has sparked much heated debate and has been attacked from many quarters.
Considered, however, as a response to Rowes theological premise, open theisms prospects seem
dim. The problem here, as critics have frequently pointed out, is that the open view of God tends to
diminish ones confidence in Gods ability to ensure that his purposes for an individuals life, or for
world history, will be accomplished (see, for example, Ware 2000, Ascol 2001: 176-80). The worry is
that if, as open theists claim, God does not exercise sovereign control over the world and the
direction of human history is open-ended, then it seems that the world is left to the mercy of Tyche
or Fortuna, and we are therefore left with no assurance that Gods plan for the world and for us will
succeed. Consider, for example, Eleonore Stumps rhetorical questions, put in response to the idea of
a God of chance advocated in van Inwagen (1988): Could one trust such a God with ones child,
ones life? Could one say, as the Psalmist does, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou,
Lord, only makest me dwell in safety? (1997: 466, quoting from Psalm 4:8). The answer may in
large part depend on the degree to which the world is thought to be imbued with indeterminacy or
chance.
If, for example, the open theist view introduces a high level of chance into Gods creation, this would
raise the suspicion that the open view reflects an excessively deistic conception of Gods relation to
the world. Deism is popularly thought of as the view that a supreme being created the world but
then, like an absentee landlord, left it to run on its own accord. Deists, therefore, are often accused of
postulating a remote and indifferent God, one who does not exercise providential care over his
creation. Such a deity, it might be objected, resembles the open theists God of chance. The objection,
in other words, is that open theists postulate a dark and risky universe subject to the forces of blind
chance, and that it is difficult to imagine a personal Godthat is, a God who seeks to be personally
related to us and hence wants us to develop attitudes of love and trust towards himproviding us
with such a habitat. To paraphrase Einstein, God does not play dice with our lives.
This, however, need not mean that God does not play dice at all. It is not impossible, in other words,
to accommodate chance within a theistic world-view. To see this, consider a particular instance of
moral evil: the rape and murder of a little girl. It seems plausible that no explanation is available as
to why God would permit this specific evil (or, more precisely, why God would permit this girl to
suffer then and there and in that way), since any such explanation that is offered will inevitably
recapitulate the explanation offered for at least one of the major evil-kinds that subsumes the
particular evil in question (for example, the class of moral evils). It is therefore unreasonable to
request a reason (even a possible reason) for Gods permission of a particular event that is specific to
this event and that goes beyond some general policy or plan God might have for permitting events of
that kind. If this correct, then there is room for theists to accept the view that at least some evils are
chancy or gratuitous in the sense that there is no specific reason as to why these evils are permitted
by God. However, this kind of commitment to gratuitous evil is entirely innocuous for proponents of
Rowes theological premise. For one can simply modify this premise so that it ranges either over
particular instances of evil or (to accommodate cases where particular evils admit of no divine
justification) over broadly defined evils or evil-kinds under which the relevant particular evils can be
subsumed. And so a world created by God may be replete with gratuitous evil, as open theists
imagine, but that need not present a problem for Rowe.
(For a different line of argument in support of the compatibility of theism and gratuitous evil, see
Hasker (2004: chs 4 & 5), who argues that the consequences for morality would be disastrous if we
took Rowes theological premise to be true. For criticisms of this view, see Rowe (1991: 79-86),
Chrzan (1994), OConnor (1998: 53-70), and Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder (1999: 119-27).)
c. The Factual Premise
Criticisms of Rowes argument tend to focus on its first premise, sometimes dubbed the factual
premise, as it purports to state a fact about the world. Briefly put, the fact in question is that there
exist instances of intense suffering which are gratuitous or pointless. As indicated above, an instance
of suffering is gratuitous, according to Rowe, if an omnipotent, omniscient being could have
prevented it without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
A gratuitous evil, in this sense, is a state of affairs that is not (logically) necessary to the attainment of
a greater good or to the prevention of an evil at least as bad.
i Rowes Case in Support of the Factual Premise
Rowe builds his case in support of the factual premise by appealing to particular instances of human
and animal suffering, such as the following:
E1: the case of Bambi
In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped,
horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering (Rowe 1979:
337).
Although this is presented as a hypothetical event, Rowe takes it to be a familiar sort of tragedy,
played not infrequently on the stage of nature (1988: 119).
E2: the case of Sue
This is an actual event in which a five-year-old girl in Flint, Michigan was severely beaten, raped and then
strangled to death early on New Years Day in 1986. The case was introduced by Bruce Russell (1989: 123),
whose account of it, drawn from a report in the Detroit Free Press of January 3 1986, runs as follows:
The girls mother was living with her boyfriend, another man who was unemployed, her two children, and
her 9-month old infant fathered by the boyfriend. On New Years Eve all three adults were drinking at a
bar near the womans home. The boyfriend had been taking drugs and drinking heavily. He was asked to
leave the bar at 8:00 p.m. After several reappearances he finally stayed away for good at about 9:30 p.m.
The woman and the unemployed man remained at the bar until 2:00 a.m. at which time the woman went
home and the man to a party at a neighbors home. Perhaps out of jealousy, the boyfriend attacked the
woman when she walked into the house. Her brother was there and broke up the fight by hitting the
boyfriend who was passed out and slumped over a table when the brother left. Later the boyfriend
attacked the woman again, and this time she knocked him unconscious. After checking the children, she
went to bed. Later the womans 5-year old girl went downstairs to go to the bathroom. The unemployed
man returned from the party at 3:45 a.m. and found the 5-year old dead. She had been raped, severely
beaten over most of her body and strangled to death by the boyfriend.
Following Rowe (1988: 120), the case of the fawn will be referred to as E1, and the case of the little
girl as E2. Further, following William Alstons (1991: 32) practice, the fawn will be named Bambi
and the little girl Sue.
Rowe (1996: 264) states that, in choosing to focus on E1 and E2, he is trying to pose a serious
difficulty for the theist by picking a difficult case of natural evil, E1 (Bambi), and a difficult case of
moral evil, E2 (Sue). Rowe, then, is attempting to state the evidential argument in the strongest
possible terms. As one commentator has put it, if these cases of evil [E1 and E2] are not evidence
against theism, then none are (Christlieb 1992: 47). However, Rowes almost exclusive
preoccupation with these two instances of suffering must be placed within the context of his belief
(as expressed in, for example, 1979: 337-38) that even if we discovered that God could not have
eliminated E1 and E2 without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad
or worse, it would still be unreasonable to believe this of allcases of horrendous evil occurring daily
in our world. E1 and E2 are thus best viewed as representative of a particular class of evil which
poses a specific problem for theistic belief. This problem is expressed by Rowe in the following way:
(P) No good state of affairs we know of is such that an omnipotent, omniscient beings obtaining it would
morally justify that beings permitting E1 or E2. Therefore,
(Q) It is likely that no good state of affairs is such that an omnipotent, omniscient beings obtaining it
would morally justify that being in permitting E1 or E2.
P states that no good we know of justifies God in permitting E1 and E2. From this it is inferred that Q
is likely to be true, or that probably there are no goods which justify God in permitting E1 and E2. Q,
of course, corresponds to the factual premise of Rowes argument. Thus, Rowe attempts to establish
the truth of the factual premise by appealing to P.
ii. The Inference from P to Q
At least one question to be addressed when considering this inference is: What exactly do P and Q
assert? Beginning with P, the central notion here is a good state of affairs we know of. But what is it
to know of a good state of affairs? According to Rowe (1988: 123), to know of a good state of affairs is
to (a) conceive of that state of affairs, and (b) recognize that it is intrinsically good (examples of
states that are intrinsically good include pleasure, happiness, love, and the exercise of virtue). Rowe
(1996: 264) therefore instructs us to not limit the set of goods we know of to goods that we know
have occurred in the past or to goods that we know will occur in the future. The set of goods we know
of must also include goods that we have some grasp of, even if we do not know whether they have
occurred or ever will occur. For example, such a good, in the case of Sue, may consist of the
experience of eternal bliss in the hereafter. Even though we lack a clear grasp of what this good
involves, and even though we cannot be sure that such a good will ever obtain, we do well to include
this good amongst the goods we know of. A good that we know of, however, cannot justify God in
permitting E1 or E2 unless that good is actualized at some time.
On what grounds does Rowe think that P is true? Rowe (1988: 120) states that we have good
reason to believe that no good state of affairs we know of would justify an omnipotent, omniscient
being in permitting either E1 or E2 (emphasis his). The good reason in question consists of the fact
that the good states of affairs we know of, when reflecting on them, meet one or both of the following
conditions: either an omnipotent being could obtain them without having to permit E1 or E2, or
obtaining them would not morally justify that being in permitting E1 or E2 (Rowe 1988: 121, 123;
1991: 72).
This brings us, finally, to Rowes inference from P to Q. This is, of course, an inductive inference.
Rowe does not claim to know or be able to prove that cases of intense suffering such as the fawns
are indeed pointless. For as he acknowledges, it is quite possible that there is some familiar good
outweighing the fawns suffering and which is connected to that suffering in a way unbeknown to us.
Or there may be goods we are not aware of, to which the fawns suffering is intimately connected. But
although we do not know or cannot establish the truth of Q, we do possess rational grounds for
accepting Q, and these grounds consist of the considerations adumbrated in P. Thus, the truth of P is
taken to provide strong evidence for the truth of Q (Rowe 1979: 337).
3. The Skeptical Theist Response
Theism, particularly as expressed within the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions, has always
emphasized the inscrutability of the ways of God. In Romans 11:33-34, for example, the apostle Paul
exclaims: Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his
judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? (NIV). This
emphasis on mystery and the epistemic distance between God and human persons is a characteristic
tenet of traditional forms of theism. It is in the context of this tradition that Stephen Wykstra
developed his well-known CORNEA critique of Rowes evidential argument. The heart of Wykstras
critique is that, given our cognitive limitations, we are in no position to judge as improbable the
statement that there are goods beyond our ken secured by Gods permission of many of the evils we
find in the world. This position sometimes labelled skeptical theism or defensive skepticism
has generated a great deal of discussion, leading some to conclude that the inductive argument from
evil is in no better shape than its late lamented deductive cousin (Alston 1991: 61). In this Section, I
will review the challenge posed by this theistic form of skepticism, beginning with the critique
advanced by Wykstra.
a. Wykstras CORNEA Critique
In an influential paper entitled, The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Evil, Stephen
Wykstra raised a formidable objection to Rowes inference from P to Q. Wykstras first step was to
draw attention to the following epistemic principle, which he dubbed CORNEA (short for
Condition Of ReasoNable Epistemic Access):
(C) On the basis of cognized situation s, human H is entitled to claim It appears that p only if it is
reasonable for H to believe that, given her cognitive faculties and the use she has made of them, if p were
not the case, s would likely be different than it is in some way discernible by her. (Wykstra 1984: 85)
The point behind CORNEA may be easier to grasp if (C) is simplified along the following lines:
(C*) H is entitled to infer There is no x from So far as I can tell, there is no x only if:
It is reasonable for H to believe that if there were an x, it is likely that she would perceive (or find, grasp,
comprehend, conceive) it.
Adopting terminology introduced by Wykstra (1996), the inference from So far as I can tell, there is
nox to There is no x may be called a noseeum inference: we no see um, so they aint there!
Further, the italicized portion in (C*) may be called the noseeum assumption, as anyone who
employs a noseeum inference and is justified in doing so would be committed to this assumption.
C*, or at least something quite like it, appears unobjectionable. If, for instance, I am looking through
the window of my twentieth-floor office to the garden below and I fail to see any caterpillars on the
flowers, that would hardly entitle me to infer that there are in fact no caterpillars there. Likewise, if a
beginner were watching Kasparov play Deep Blue, it would be unreasonable for her to infer I cant
see any way for Deep Blue to get out of check; so, there is none. Both inferences are illegitimate for
the same reason: the person making the inference does not have what it takes to discern the sorts of
things in question. It is this point that C* intends to capture by insisting that a noseeum inference is
permissible only if it is likely that one would detect or discern the item in question if it existed.
But how does the foregoing relate to Rowes evidential argument? Notice, to begin with, that Rowes
inference from P to Q is a noseeum inference. Rowe claims in P that, so far as we can see, no goods
justify Gods permission of E1 and E2, and from this he infers that no goods whatever justify Gods
permission of these evils. According to Wykstra, however, Rowe is entitled to make this noseeum
inference only if he is entitled to make the following noseeum assumption:
If there are goods justifying Gods permission of horrendous evil, it is likely that we would discern or be
cognizant of such goods.
Call this Rowes Noseeum Assumption, or RNA for short. The key issue, then, is whether we should
accept RNA. Many theists, led by Stephen Wykstra, have claimed that RNA is false (or that we ought
to suspend judgement about its truth). They argue that the great gulf between our limited cognitive
abilities and the infinite wisdom of God prevents us (at least in many cases) from discerning Gods
reasons for permitting evil. On this view, even if there are goods secured by Gods permission of evil,
it is likely that these goods would be beyond our ken. Alvin Plantinga (1974: 10) sums up this
position well with his rhetorical question: Why suppose that if God does have a reason for
permitting evil, the theist would be the first to know? (emphasis his). Since theists such as Wykstra
and Plantinga challenge Rowes argument (and evidential arguments in general) by focusing on the
limits of human knowledge, they have become known as skeptical theists.
I will now turn to some considerations that have been offered by skeptical theists against RNA.
b. Wykstras Parent Analogy
Skeptical theists have drawn various analogies in an attempt to highlight the implausibility of RNA.
The most common analogy, and the one favoured by Wykstra, involves a comparison between the
vision and wisdom of an omniscient being such as God and the cognitive capacities of members of
the human species. Clearly, the gap between Gods intellect and ours is immense, and Wykstra (1984:
87-91) compares it to the gap between the cognitive abilities of a parent and her one-month-old
infant. But if this is the case, then even if there were outweighing goods connected in the requisite
way to the instances of suffering appealed to by Rowe, that we should discern most of these goods is
just as likely as that a one-month-old infant should discern most of her parents purposes for those
pains they allow her to suffer that is to say, it is not likely at all. Assuming that CORNEA is correct,
Rowe would not then be entitled to claim, for any given instance of apparently pointless suffering,
that it is indeed pointless. For as the above comparison between Gods intellect and the human mind
indicates, even if there were outweighing goods served by certain instances of suffering, such goods
would be beyond our ken. What Rowe has failed to see, according to Wykstra, is that if we think
carefully about the sort of being theism proposes for our belief, it is entirely expectable given what
we know of our cognitive limits that the goods by virtue of which this Being allows known suffering
should very often be beyond our ken (1984: 91).
c. Alstons Analogies
Rowe, like many others, has responded to Wykstras Parent Analogy by identifying a number of
relevant disanalogies between a one-month-old infant and our predicament as adult human beings
(see Rowe 1996: 275). There are, however, various other analogies that skeptical theists have
employed in order to cast doubt on RNA. Here I will briefly consider a series of analogies that were
first formulated by Alston (1996).
Like Wykstra, Alston (1996: 317) aims to highlight the absurdity of the claim that the fact that we
cannot see what justifying reason an omniscient, omnipotent being might have for doing something
provides strong support for the supposition that no such reason is available to that being. Alston,
however, chooses to steer clear of the parent-child analogy employed by Wykstra, for he concedes
that this contains loopholes that can be exploited in the ways suggested by Rowe.
Alstons analogies fall into two groups, the first of which attempt to show that the insights attainable
by finite, fallible human beings are not an adequate indication of what is available by way of reasons
to an omniscient, omnipotent being. Suppose I am a first-year university physics student and I am
faced with a theory of quantum phenomena, but I struggle to see why the author of the theory draws
the conclusions she draws. Does that entitle me to suppose that she has no sufficient reason for her
conclusions? Clearly not, for my inability to discern her reasons is only to be expected given my lack
of expertise in the subject. Similarly, given my lack of training in painting, I fail to see why Picasso
arranged the figures inGuernica as he did. But that does not entitle me to infer that he had no
sufficient reason for doing so. Again, being a beginner in chess, I fail to see any reason why Kasparov
made the move he did, but I would be foolish to conclude that he had no good reason to do so.
Alston applies the foregoing to the noseeum inference from We cannot see any sufficient reason for
God to permit E1 and E2 to God has no sufficient reason to do so. In this case, as in the above
examples, we are in no position to draw such a conclusion for we lack any reason to suppose that we
have a sufficient grasp of the range of possible reasons open to the other party. Our grasp of the
reasons God might have for his actions is thus comparable to the grasp of the neophyte in the other
cases. Indeed, Alston holds that the extent to which God can envisage reasons for permitting a given
state of affairs exceeds our ability to do so by at least as much as Einsteins ability to discern the
reason for a physical theory exceeds the ability of one ignorant of physics (1996: 318, emphasis his).
Alstons second group of analogies seek to show that, in looking for the reasons God might have for
certain acts or omissions, we are in effect trying to determine whether there is a so-and-so in a
territory the extent and composition of which is largely unknown to us (or, at least, it is a territory
such that we have no way of knowing the extent to which its constituents are unknown to us). Alston
thus states that Rowes noseeum inference
is like going from We havent found any signs of life elsewhere in the universe to There isnt life
elsewhere in the universe. It is like someone who is culturally and geographically isolated going from As
far as I have been able to tell, there is nothing on earth beyond this forest to There is nothing on earth
beyond this forest. Or, to get a bit more sophisticated, it is like someone who reasons We are unable to
discern anything beyond the temporal bounds of our universe, where those bounds are the big bang and
the final collapse, to There is nothing beyond the temporal bounds of our universe. (1996: 318)
Just as we lack a map of the relevant territory in these cases, we also lack a reliable internal map of
the diversity of considerations that are available to an omniscient being in permitting instances of
suffering. But given our ignorance of the extent, variety, or constitution of the terra incognita, it is
surely the better part of wisdom to refrain from drawing any hasty conclusions regarding the nature
of this territory.
Although such analogies may not be open to the same criticisms levelled against the analogies put
forward by Wykstra, they are in the end no more successful than Wykstras analogies. Beginning with
Alstons first group of analogies, where a noseeum inference is unwarranted due to a lack of
expertise, there is typically no expectation on the part of the neophyte that the reasons held by the
other party (for example, the physicists reasons for drawing conclusion x, Kasparovs reasons for
making move x in a chess game) would be discernible to her. If you have just begun to study physics,
you would not expect to understand Einsteins reasons for advancing the special theory of relativity.
However, if your five-year-old daughter suffered the fate of Sue as depicted in E2, would you not
expect a perfectly loving being to reveal his reasons to you for allowing this to happen, or at least to
comfort you by providing you with special assurances that that there is a reason why this terrible evil
could not have been prevented? Rowe makes this point quite well:
Being finite beings we cant expect to know all the goods God would know, any more than an amateur at
chess should expect to know all the reasons for a particular move that Kasparov makes in a game. But,
unlike Kasparov who in a chess match has a good reason not to tell us how a particular move fits into his
plan to win the game, God, if he exists, isnt playing chess with our lives. In fact, since understanding the
goods for the sake of which he permits terrible evils to befall us would itself enable us to better bear our
suffering, God has a strong reason to help us understand those goods and how they require his permission
of the terrible evils that befall us. (2001b: 157)
There appears, then, to be an obligation on the part of a perfect being to not keep his intentions
entirely hidden from us. Such an obligation, however, does not attach to a gifted chess player or
physicist Kasparov cannot be expected to reveal his game plan, while a physics professor cannot be
expected to make her mathematical demonstration in support of quantum theory comprehensible to
a high school physics student.
Similarly with Alstons second set of analogies, where our inability to map the territory within which
to look for x is taken to preclude us from inferring from our inability to find x that there is no x. This
may be applicable to cases like the isolated tribesmans search for life outside his forest or our search
for extraterrestrial life, for in such scenarios there is no prior expectation that the objects of our
search are of such a nature that, if they exist, they would make themselves manifest to us. However,
in our search for Gods reasons we are toiling in a unique territory, one inhabited by a perfectly
loving being who, as such, would be expected to make at least his presence, if not also his reasons for
permitting evil, (more) transparent to us. This difference in prior expectations uncovers an
important disanalogy between the cases Alston considers and cases involving our attempt to discern
Gods intentions. Alstons analogies, therefore, not only fail to advance the case against RNA but also
suggest a line of thought in support of RNA. (For further discussion on RNA and divine hiddenness,
see Trakakis (2003); see also Howard-Snyder & Moser (2002).)
4. Building a Theodicy, or Casting Light on the
Ways of God
Most critics of Rowes evidential argument have thought that the problem with the argument lies
with its factual premise. But what, exactly, is wrong with this premise? According to one popular line
of thought, the factual premise can be shown to be false by identifying goods that we know of that
would justify God in permitting evil. To do this is to develop a theodicy.
a. What Is a Theodicy?
The primary aim of the project of theodicy may be characterized in John Miltons celebrated words
as the attempt to justify the ways of God to men. That is to say, a theodicy aims to vindicate the
justice or goodness of God in the face of the evil found in the world, and this it attempts to do by
offering a reasonable explanation as to why God allows evil to abound in his creation.
A theodicy may be thought of as a story told by the theist explaining why God permits evil. Such a
story, however, must be plausible or reasonable in the sense that it conforms to all of the following:
a. commonsensical views about the world (for example, that there exist other people, that there
exists a mind-independent world, that much evil exists);
b. widely accepted scientific and historical views (for example, evolutionary theory), and
c. intuitively plausible moral principles (for example, generally, punishment should not be
significantly disproportional to the offence committed).
Judged by these criteria, the story of the Fall (understood in a literalist fashion) could not be offered
as a theodicy. For given the doubtful historicity of Adam and Eve, and given the problem of
harmonizing the Fall with evolutionary theory, such an account of the origin of evil cannot
reasonably held to be plausible. A similar point could be made about stories that attempt to explain
evil as the work of Satan and his cohorts.
b. Distinguishing a Theodicy from a Defence
An important distinction is often made between a defence and a theodicy. A theodicy is intended to
be a plausible or reasonable explanation as to why God permits evil. A defence, by contrast, is only
intended as a possible explanation as to why God permits evil. A theodicy, moreover, is offered as a
solution to the evidential problem of evil, whereas a defence is offered as a solution to the logical
problem of evil. Here is an example of a defence, which may clarify this distinction:
It will be recalled that, according to Mackie, it is logically impossible for the following two
propositions to be jointly true:
1. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good,
2. Evil exists.
Now, consider the following proposition:
3. Every person goes wrong in every possible world.
In other words, every free person created by God would misuse their free will on at least one
occasion, no matter which world (or what circumstances) they were placed in. This may be highly
implausible, or even downright false but it is, at least, logically possible. And if (3) is possible, then
so is the following proposition:
4. It was not within Gods power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil.
In other words, it is possible that any world created by God that contains some moral good will also
contain some moral evil. Therefore, it is possible for both (1) and (2) to be jointly true, at least when
(2) is said to refer to moral evil. But what about natural evil? Well, consider the following
proposition:
5. All so-called natural evil is brought about by the devious activities of Satan and his cohorts.
In other words, what we call natural evil is actually moral evil since it results from the misuse of
someones free will (in this case, the free will of some evil demon). Again, this may be highly
implausible, or even downright false but it is, at least, possibly true.
In sum, Mackie was wrong to think that it is logically impossible for both (1) and (2) to be true. For if
you conjoin (4) and (5) to (1) and (2), it becomes clear that it is possible that any world created by
God would have some evil in it. (This, of course, is the famous free will defence put forward in
Plantinga 1974: ch.9). Notice that the central claims of this defence namely, (3), (4), and (5) are
only held to be possibly true. Thats what makes this a defence. One could not get away with this in a
theodicy, for a theodicy must be more than merely possibly true.
c. Sketch of a Theodicy
What kind of theodicy, then, can be developed in response to Rowes evidential argument? Are there
any goods we know of that would justify God in permitting evils like E1 and E2? Here I will outline a
proposal consisting of three themes that have figured prominently in the recent literature on the
project of theodicy.
(1) Soul-making. Inspired by the thought of the early Church Father, Irenaeus of Lyon (c.130-c.202
CE),John Hick has put forward in a number of writings, but above all in his 1966 classic Evil and the
God of Love, a theodicy that appeals to the good of soul-making (see also Hick 1968, 1977, 1981,
1990). According to Hick, the divine intention in relation to humankind is to bring forth perfect finite
personal beings by means of a vale of soul-making in which humans may transcend their natural
self-centredness by freely developing the most desirable qualities of moral character and entering
into a personal relationship with their Maker. Any world, however, that makes possible such
personal growth cannot be a hedonistic paradise whose inhabitants experience a maximum of
pleasure and a minimum of pain. Rather, an environment that is able to produce the finest
characteristics of human personality particularly the capacity to love must be one in which there
are obstacles to be overcome, tasks to be performed, goals to be achieved, setbacks to be endured,
problems to be solved, dangers to be met (Hick 1966: 362). A soul-making environment must, in
other words, share a good deal in common with our world, for only a world containing great dangers
and risks, as well as the genuine possibility of failure and tragedy, can provide opportunities for the
development of virtue and character. A necessary condition, however, for this developmental process
to take place is that humanity be situated at an epistemic distance from God. On Hicks view, in
other words, if we were initially created in the direct presence of God we could not freely come to
love and worship God. So as to preserve our freedom in relation to God, the world must be created
religiously ambiguous or must appear, to some extent at least, as if there were no God. And evil, of
course, plays an important role in creating the desired epistemic distance.
(2) Free will. The appeal to human freedom, in one guise or another, constitutes an enduring theme
in the history of theodicy. Typically, the kind of freedom that is invoked by the theodicist is
the libertariansort, according to which I am free with respect to a particular action at time t only if
the action is not determined by all that happened or obtained before t and all the causal laws there
are in such a way that the conjunction of the two (the past and the laws) logically entails that I
perform the action in question. My mowing the lawn, for instance, constitutes a voluntary action only
if, the state of the universe (including my beliefs and desires) and laws of nature being just as they
were immediately preceding my decision to mow the lawn, I could have chosen or acted otherwise
than I in fact did. In this sense, the acts I perform freely are genuinely up to me they are not
determined by anything external to my will, whether these be causal laws or even God. And so it is
not open to God to cause or determine just what actions I will perform, for if he does so those actions
could not be free. Freedom and determinism are incompatible.
The theodicist, however, is not so much interested in libertarian freedom as in libertarian freedom of
themorally relevant kind, where this consists of the freedom to choose between good and evil
courses of action. The theodicists freedom, moreover, is intended to be morally significant, not only
providing one with the capacity to bring about good and evil, but also making possible a range of
actions that vary enormously in moral worth, from great and noble deeds to horrific evils.
Armed therefore with such a conception of freedom, the free will theodicist proceeds to explain the
existence of moral evil as a consequence of the misuse of our freedom. This, however, means that
responsibility for the existence of moral evil lies with us, not with God. Of course, God is responsible
for creating the conditions under which moral evil could come into existence. But it was not
inevitable that human beings, if placed in those conditions, would go wrong. It was not necessary, in
other words, that humans would misuse their free will, although this always was a possibility and
hence a risk inherent in Gods creation of free creatures. The free will theodicist adds, however, that
the value of free will (and the goods it makes possible) is so great as to outweigh the risk that it may
be misused in various ways.
(3) Heavenly bliss. Theodicists sometimes draw on the notion of a heavenly afterlife to show that
evil, particularly horrendous evil, only finds its ultimate justification or redemption in the life to
come. Accounts of heaven, even within the Christian tradition, vary widely. But one common feature
in these accounts that is relevant to the theodicists task is the experience of complete felicity for
eternity brought about by intimate and loving communion with God. This good, as we saw, plays an
important role in Hicks theodicy, and it also finds a central place in Marilyn Adams account of
horrendous evil.
Adams (1986: 262-63, 1999: 162-63) notes that, on the Christian world-view, the direct experience of
face-to-face intimacy with God is not only the highest good we can aspire to enjoy, but is also an
incommensurable good more precisely, it is incommensurable with respect to any merely temporal
evils or goods. As the apostle Paul put it, our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the
glory that will be revealed in us (Rom 8:18, NIV; compare 2 Cor 4:17). This glorification to be
experienced in heaven, according to Adams, vindicates Gods justice and love toward his creatures.
For the experience of the beatific vision outweighs any evil, even evil of the horrendous variety, that
someone may suffer, thus ensuring a balance of good over evil in the sufferers life that is
overwhelmingly favourable. But as Adams points out, strictly speaking, there will be no balance to
be struck (1986: 263, emphasis hers), since the good of the vision of God is incommensurable with
respect to ones participation in any temporal or created evils. And so an everlasting, post-mortem
beatific vision of God would provide anyone who experienced it with good reason for considering
their life in spite of any horrors it may have contained as a great good, thus removing any
grounds of complaint against God.
Bringing these three themes together, a theodicy can be developed with the aim of explaining and
justifying Gods permission of evil, even evil of the horrendous variety. To illustrate how this may be
done, I will concentrate on Rowes E2 and the Holocaust, two clear instances of horrendous moral
evil.
Notice that these two evils clearly involve a serious misuse of free will on behalf of the perpetrators. We
could, therefore, begin by postulating Gods endowment of humans with morally significant free will as
the first good that is served by these evils. That is to say, God could not prevent the terrible suffering and
death endured by Sue and the millions of Holocaust victims while at the same time creating us without
morally significant freedom the freedom to do both great evil and great good. In addition, these evils
may provide an opportunity for soul-making in many cases, however, the potential for soul-making
would not extend to the victim but only to those who cause or witness the suffering. The phenomenon of
jailhouse conversions, for example, testifies to the fact that even horrendous evil may occasion the
moral transformation of the perpetrator. Finally, to adequately compensate the victims of these evils we
may introduce the doctrine of heaven. Postmortem, the victims are ushered into a relation of beatific
intimacy with God, an incommensurable good that redeems their past participation in horrors. For the
beatific vision in the afterlife not only restores value and meaning to the victims life, but also provides
them with the opportunity to endorse their life (taken as a whole) as worthwhile.
Does this theodicy succeed in exonerating God? Various objections could, of course, be raised against
such a theodicy. One could, for example, question the intelligibility or empirical adequacy of the
underlying libertarian notion of free will (see, for example, Pereboom 2001: 38-88). Or one might
follow Tooley (1980:373-75) and Rowe (1996: 279-81, 2001a: 135-36) in thinking that, just as we
have a duty to curtail another persons exercise of free will when we know that they will use their free
will to inflict considerable suffering on an innocent (or undeserving) person, so too does God have a
duty of this sort. On this view, a perfectly good God would have intervened to prevent us from
misusing our freedom to the extent that moral evil, particularly moral evil of the horrific kind, would
either not occur at all or occur on a much more infrequent basis. Finally, how can the above theodicy
be extended to account for natural evil? Various proposals have been offered here, the most
prominent of which are: Hicks view that natural evil plays an essential part in the soul-making
process; Swinburnes free will theodicy for natural evil the idea, roughly put, is that free will
cannot be had without the knowledge of how to bring about evil (or prevent its occurrence), and
since this knowledge of how to cause evil can only be had through prior experience with natural evil,
it follows that the existence of natural evil is a logically necessary condition for the exercise of free
will (see Swinburne 1978, 1987: 149-67, 1991: 202-214, 1998: 176-92); and natural law theodicies,
such as that developed by Reichenbach (1976, 1982: 101-118), according to which the natural evils
that befall humans and animals are the unavoidable by-products of the outworking of the natural
laws governing Gods creation.
5. Further Responses to the Evidential Problem of
Evil
Lets suppose that Rowes evidential argument from evil succeeds in providing strong evidence in
support of the claim that there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. What
follows from this? In particular, would a theist who finds its impossible to fault Rowes argument be
obliged to give up her theism? Not necessarily, for at least two further options would be available to
such a theist.
Firstly, the theist may agree that Rowes argument provides some evidence against theism, but she
may go on to argue that there is independent evidence in support of theism which outweighs the
evidence against theism. In fact, if the theist thinks that the evidence in support of theism is quite
strong, she may employ what Rowe (1979: 339) calls the G.E. Moore shift (compare Moore 1953:
ch.6). This involves turning the opponents argument on its head, so that one begins by denying the
very conclusion of the opponents argument. The theists counter-argument would then proceed as
follows:
(not-3) There exists an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.
(2) An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it
could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some
evil equally bad or worse.
(not-1) (Therefore) It is not the case that there exist instances of horrendous evil which an
omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater
good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
Although this strategy has been welcomed by many theists as an appropriate way of responding to
evidential arguments from evil (for example, Mavrodes 1970: 95-97, Evans 1982: 138-39, Davis 1987:
86-87, Basinger 1996: 100-103) indeed, it is considered by Rowe to be the theists best response
(1979: 339) it is deeply problematic in a way that is often overlooked. The G.E. Moore shift, when
employed by the theist, will be effective only if the grounds for accepting not-(3) [the existence of the
theistic God] are more compelling than the grounds for accepting not-(1) [the existence of gratuitous
evil]. The problem here is that the kind of evidence that is typically invoked by theists in order to
substantiate the existence of God for example, the cosmological and design arguments, appeals to
religious experience does not even aim to establish the existence of a perfectly good being, or else,
if it does have such an aim, it faces formidable difficulties in fulfilling it. But if this is so, then the
theist may well be unable to offer any evidence at all in support of not-(3), or at least any evidence of
a sufficiently strong or cogent nature in support of not-(3). The G.E. Moore shift, therefore, is not as
straightforward a strategy as it initially seems.
Secondly, the theist who accepts Rowes argument may claim that Rowe has only shown that one
particular version of theism rather than every version of theism needs to be rejected. A process
theist, for example, may agree with Rowe that there is no omnipotent being, but would add that God,
properly understood, is not omnipotent, or that Gods power is not as unlimited as is usually thought
(see, for example, Griffin 1976, 1991). An even more radical approach would be to posit a dark side
in God and thus deny that God is perfectly good. Theists who adopt this approach (for example,
Blumenthal 1993, Roth 2001) would also have no qualms with the conclusion of Rowes argument.
There are at least two problems with this second strategy. Firstly, Rowes argument is only concerned
with the God of orthodox theism as described in Section 1.a above, not the God of some other version
of theism. And so objections drawn from non-orthodox forms of theism fail to engage with Rowes
argument (although such objections may be useful in getting us to reconsider the traditional
understanding of God). A second problem concerns the worship-worthiness of the sort of deity being
proposed. For example, would someone who is not wholly good and capable of evil be fit to be the
object of our worship, total devotion and unconditional commitment? Similarly, why place complete
trust in a God who is not all-powerful and hence not in full control of the world? (To be sure, even
orthodox theists will place limits on Gods power, and such limits on divine power may go some way
towards explaining the presence of evil in the world. But if Gods power, or lack thereof, is offered as
the solution to the problem of evil so that the reason why God allows evil is because he doesnt
have the power to prevent it from coming into being then we are faced with a highly impotent God
who, insofar as he is aware of the limitations in his power, may be considered reckless for proceeding
with creation.)
6. Conclusion
Evidential arguments from evil, such as those developed by William Rowe, purport to show that,
grounds for belief in God aside, the existence of evil renders atheism more reasonable than theism.
What verdict, then, can be reached regarding such arguments? A brief answer to this question may
be provided by way of an overview of the foregoing investigation.
Firstly, as was argued in Section II, the open theist response to Rowes theological premise either
runs the risk of diminishing confidence in God or else is entirely compatible with the theological
premise. Secondly, the sceptical theist objection to Rowes inference from inscrutable evil to
pointless evil was examined in Section III and was found to be inadequately supported. Thirdly,
various theodical options were canvassed in Section IV as a possible way of refuting Rowes factual
premise, and it was found that a theodicy that appeals to the goods of free will, soul-making, and a
heavenly afterlife may go some way in accounting for the existence of moral evil. Such a theodicy,
however, raises many further questions relating to the existence of natural evil and the existence
of so much horrendous moral evil. And finally, as argued in Section V, the strategy of resorting to the
G.E. Moore shift faces the daunting task of furnishing evidence in support of the existence of a
perfect being; while resorting to a non-orthodox conception of God dissolves the problem of evil at
the cost of corroding religiously significant attitudes and practices such as the love and worship of
God.
On the basis of these results it can be seen that Rowes argument has a strongly resilient character,
successfully withstanding many of the objections raised against it. Much more, of course, can be said
both in support of and against Rowes case for atheism. Although it might therefore be premature to
declare any one side to the debate victorious, it can be concluded that, at the very least, Rowes
evidential argument is not as easy to refute as is often presumed.
7. References and Further Reading
Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1996. Redemptive Suffering: A Christian Solution to the Problem of Evil,
in Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (eds), Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral
Commitment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp.248-67.
Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1999. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press.
Alston, William P. 1991. The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive
Condition,Philosophical Perspectives 5: 29-67.
Alston, William P. 1996. Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on the Evidential Arguments from
Evil, in Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, pp.311-32.
Ascol, Thomas K. 2001. Pastoral Implications of Open Theism, in Douglas Wilson (ed.), Bound
Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, pp.173-90.
Basinger, David. 1996. The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment. Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press.
Blumenthal, David R. 1993. Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest. Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox Press.
Boyd, Gregory A. 2000. God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Boyd, Gregory A. 2003. Is God to Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Evil.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Brown, Patterson. 1967. God and the Good, Religious Studies 2: 269-76.
Christlieb, Terry. 1992. Which Theisms Face an Evidential Problem of Evil? Faith and
Philosophy 9: 45-64.
Chrzan, Keith. 1994. Necessary Gratuitous Evil: An Oxymoron Revisited, Faith and Philosophy 11:
134-37.
Davis, Stephen T. 1987. What Good Are Theistic Proofs? in Louis P. Pojman (ed.), Philosophy of
Religion: An Anthology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, pp.80-88.
Draper, Paul. 1989. Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists, Nous 23: 331-50.
Evans, C. Stephen. 1982. Philosophy of Religion: Thinking about Faith. Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press.
Griffin, David Ray. 1976. God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster
Press.
Griffin, David Ray. 1991. Evil Revisited: Responses and Reconsiderations. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Hasker, William. 2004. Providence, Evil and the Openness of God. London: Routledge.
Hick, John. 1966. Evil and the God of Love, first edition. London: Macmillan.
Hick, John. 1968. God, Evil and Mystery, Religious Studies 3: 539-46.
Hick, John. 1977. Evil and the God of Love, second edition. New York: HarperCollins.
Hick, John. 1981. An Irenaean Theodicy and Response to Critiques, in Stephen T. Davis
(ed.),Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, first edition. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, pp.39-52,
63-68.
Hick, John. 1990. Philosophy of Religion, fourth edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz. 2002. The Divine Attributes. Oxford: Blackwell.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Frances Howard-Snyder. 1999. Is Theism Compatible with Gratuitous
Evil? American Philosophical Quarterly 36: 115-29.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Paul K. Moser (eds). 2002. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jordan, Jeff. 2001. Blocking Rowes New Evidential Argument from Evil, Religious Studies 37:
435-49.
Mackie, J.L. 1955. Evil and Omnipotence, Mind 64: 200-212.
Mavrodes, George I. 1970. Belief in God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religion. New York:
Random House.
McCloskey, H.J. 1960. God and Evil, Philosophical Quarterly 10: 97-114.
McNaughton, David. 1994. The Problem of Evil: A Deontological Perspective, in Alan G. Padgett
(ed.), Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, pp.329-51.
Moore, G.E. 1953. Some Main Problems of Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Morris, Thomas V. 1987. Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Morris, Thomas V. 1991. Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Nelson, Mark T. 1991. Naturalistic Ethics and the Argument from Evil, Faith and Philosophy 8:
368-79.
OConnor, David. 1998. God and Inscrutable Evil: In Defense of Theism and Atheism. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Otte, Richard. 2002. Rowes Probabilistic Argument from Evil, Faith and Philosophy 19: 147-71.
Pereboom, Derk. 2001. Living Without Free Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peterson, Michael L. 1982. Evil and the Christian God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
Peterson, Michael L. 1998. God and Evil: An Introduction to the Issues. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Pinnock, Clark H., Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger. 1994. The
Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God. Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1977. God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Quinn, Philip L., and Charles Taliaferro (eds). 1997. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Reichenbach, Bruce R. 1976. Natural Evils and Natural Law: A Theodicy for Natural
Evils,International Philosophical Quarterly 16: 179-96.
Reichenbach, Bruce R. 1982. Evil and a Good God. New York: Fordham University Press.
Reitan, Eric. 2000. Does the Argument from Evil Assume a Consequentialist Morality? Faith and
Philosophy 17: 306-19.
Rogers, Katherin A. 2000. Perfect Being Theology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Roth, John K. 2001. A Theodicy of Protest, in Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil: Live
Options in Theodicy, second edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, pp.1-20.
Rowe, William L. 1978. Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, first edition. Encino, CA:
Dickenson Publishing Company..
Rowe, William L. 1979. The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism, American
Philosophical Quarterly 16: 335-41.
Rowe, William L. 1986. The Empirical Argument from Evil, in Audi and Wainwright
(eds),Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment, pp.227-47.
Rowe, William L. 1988. Evil and Theodicy, Philosophical Topics 16: 119-32.
Rowe, William L. 1991. Ruminations about Evil, Philosophical Perspectives 5: 69-88.
Rowe, William L. 1995. William Alston on the Problem of Evil, in Thomas D. Senor (ed.), The
Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith: Essays in Honor of William P. Alston. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, pp.71-93.
Rowe, William L. 1996. The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look, in Daniel Howard-
Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil, pp.262-85.
Rowe, William L. 2001a. Grounds for Belief Aside, Does Evil Make Atheism More Reasonable than
Theism in William Rowe (ed.), God and the Problem of Evil. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp.124-37.
Rowe, William L. 2001b. Reply to Howard-Snyder and Bergmann, in Rowe (ed.), God and the
Problem of Evil, pp.155-58.
Russell, Bruce. 1989. The Persistent Problem of Evil, Faith and Philosophy 6: 121-39.
Russell, Bruce. 1996. Defenseless, in Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from
Evil, pp.193-205.
Sanders, John. 1998. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press.
Sennett, James F. 1993. The Inscrutable Evil Defense Against the Inductive Argument from
Evil,Faith and Philosophy 10: 220-29.
Stump, Eleonore. 1997. Review of Peter van Inwagen, God, Knowledge, and
Mystery, Philosophical Review 106: 464-67.
Swinburne, Richard. 1977. The Coherence of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Swinburne, Richard. 1978. Natural Evil, American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 295-301.
Swinburne, Richard. 1987. Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil, in William J.
Abraham and Steven W. Holtzer (eds), The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of
Basil Mitchell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.141-67.
Swinburne, Richard. 1991. The Existence of God, revised edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Swinburne, Richard. 1998. Providence and the Problem of Evil. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Tooley, Michael. 1980. Alvin Plantinga and the Argument from Evil, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy 58: 360-76.
Trakakis, Nick. 2003. What No Eye Has Seen: The Skeptical Theist Response to Rowes Evidential
Argument from Evil, Philo 6: 263-79.
Van Inwagen, Peter. 1988. The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God, in Thomas V. Morris
(ed.), Divine and Human Action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp.211-35.
Ware, Bruce. 2000. Gods Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism. Wheaton, IL:
Crossways Books.
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.
Wykstra, Stephen J. 1986. Rowes Noseeum Arguments from Evil, in Daniel Howard-Snyder
(ed.),The Evidential Argument from Evil, pp.126-50.
The Problem of Evil
First published Mon Sep 16, 2002; substantive revision Fri Nov 30, 2012
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. Some Important Distinctions
o 1.1 Relevant Concepts of God
o 1.2 Incompatibility Formulations versus Inductive Formulations
o 1.3 Abstract Versus Concrete Formulations
o 1.4 Axiological Versus Deontological Formulations
2. The Choice between Incompatibility Formulations and Evidential Formulations
3. Inductive Versions of the Argument from Evil
o 3.1 Arguments
o 3.2 Direct Inductive Versions of the Evidential Argument from Evil
o 3.3 Indirect Inductive Versions of the Evidential Argument from Evil
o 3.4 Bayesian-Style Probabilistic Versions of the Evidential Argument from
Evil
o 3.5 Inductive Logic and the Evidential Argument from Evil
4. Responses to the Argument from Evil: Refutations, Defenses, and Theodicies
5. Attempted Total Refutations
o 5.1 Human Epistemological Limitations
o 5.2 The No Best of All Possible Worlds' Response
o 5.3 The Appeal to the Ontological Argument
6. Attempted Defenses
o 6.1 The Appeal to Positive Evidence for the Existence of God
o 6.2 Belief in the Existence of God as Non-Inferentially Justified
o 6.3 Induction Based on Partial Success
7. Theodicies
o 7.1 A Soul-Making Theodicy
o 7.2 Free Will
o 7.3 The Freedom to Do Great Evil
o 7.4 The Need for Natural Laws
8. Defenses and Theodicies Based on Global Properties
9. Peter van Inwagen's Religious Theodicy and a Global Properties Approach
o 9.1 Human Suffering and the Extended Free will Defense
o 9.2 The Suffering of Beasts and Massively Irregular Worlds
Bibliography
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1. Some Important Distinctions
1.1 Relevant Concepts of God
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 beingseven 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 the term God in a clear and
relatively straightforward way with religious attitudes, such as those of worship, and with
very important human desires, such as the desires that good will triumph, that justice be
done, and that the world not be one where death marks the end of the individual's
existence.
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 desires just mentioned will be fulfilled? A natural answer is that God
must be a person 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:
1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. 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.
7. 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 or
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 wayfor 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 an 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.
1.2 Incompatibility Formulations versus Inductive
Formulations
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 unlikelyor
perhaps very unlikelythat God exists.
The choice between incompatibility formulations and evidential formulations is discussed
below, in section 2.
1.3 Abstract Versus Concrete Formulations
Any version of the argument from evil claims that there is some fact concerning the evil
in the world such that the existence of Godunderstood as at least a very powerful, very
knowledgeable, and morally very good person, and, ideally, as an omnipotent,
omniscient, and morally perfect personis 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 charactersuch as patience, and courageby 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 earliernamely, 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 willnamely, 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 evilin the absence of
further informationcan 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 inGod, 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 writersincluding 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.
1.4 Axiological Versus Deontological Formulations
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:
1. 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.
2. For any state of affairs (that is actual), the existence of that state of affairs is not
prevented by anyone.
3. 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):
4. There is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.
5. If God exists, then he is an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.
Therefore:
6. 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 consideredincluding 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 uponthe 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 crucialsuch 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 propertiesrightmaking 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.
2. The Choice between Incompatibility
Formulations and Evidential Formulations
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:
If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
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 evilin 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 1.1that 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:
1. 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.
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
3.1 Arguments
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 hypothesisother than the mere
negation of theismthat 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 Direct Inductive Versions of the Evidential
Argument from Evil
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:
1. 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.
2. Our world contains animals that die agonizing deaths in forest fires, and children
who undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer.
3. An omnipotent being could prevent such events, if he knew that those events
were about to occur.
4. An omniscient being would know that such events were about to occur.
5. 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.
Therefore:
6. 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.
7. 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.
Therefore:
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.
Therefore it is likely that:
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
characteristicsincluding ones that we are not aware ofthat both apply to the
cases in question, and that are also sufficiently serious to counterbalance the
relevant wrongmaking characteristics.
10. An action is morally wrong, all things considered, if it has a wrongmaking
characteristic that is not counterbalanced by any rightmaking characteristics.
Therefore:
11. 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.
Therefore:
12. 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.
13. 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.
Therefore:
14. If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then that being is not morally
perfect.
Therefore:
15. There is no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being.
16. If God exists, then he is, by definition, an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally
perfect being.
Therefore:
17. God does not exist.
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
.
(1991, 72)
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 Jit 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 As we know of to the As we don't
know of. If we observe many As and note that all of them are Bs we are justified in
believing that the As we haven't observed are also Bs. 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 As 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 As 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:
A. 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.
B. 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 As and note that all of
them are Bs we are justified in believing that the As we haven't observed are also Bs is
somewhat ambiguous, since while the claim that we are justified in believing that the As
we haven't observed are also Bs might naturally be interpreted as saying
1. We are justified in believing that all the As that we haven't observed are also Bs
it is possible to construe it as making, instead, the following, much weaker claim
2. We are justified in believing of each of the As that we haven't observed that
that A is also aB.
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 As are not likely to differ from
observed As 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 regularitiesand, in particular, if they are
second-order relations between universalsthen 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 lawor a consequence of a law. If
as seems plausibleit 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.
3.3 Indirect Inductive Versions of the Evidential
Argument from Evil
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 causeor a perfectly evil
onestarting 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:
(1) Pr(O/HI) > Pr(O/T) (Substantive premise)
(2) Pr(O/HI) = Pr(O & HI)/Pr(HI) (Definition of conditional
probability)
Therefore,
(3) Pr(O & HI)/Pr(HI) > Pr(O/T) (From (1) and (2).)
(4) Pr(O/T) = Pr(O & T)/Pr(T) (Definition of conditional
probability)
Therefore,
(5) Pr(O & HI)/Pr(HI) > Pr(O & T)/Pr(T) (From (3) and (4).)
(6) Pr(O & HI) = Pr(HI/O) Pr(O) (From the definition of
conditional probability)
Therefore,
(7) Pr(O & HI)/Pr(HI) = Pr(HI/O) Pr(O)/Pr(HI) (From (6).)
Therefore,
(8) Pr(HI/O) Pr(O)/Pr(HI) > Pr(O & T)/Pr(T) (From (5) and (7).)
(9) Pr(O & T) = Pr(T/O) Pr(O) (From the definition of
conditional probability)
Therefore,
(10) Pr(O & T)/Pr(T) = Pr(T/O) Pr(O)/Pr(T) (From (9).)
Therefore,
(11) Pr(HI/O) Pr(O)/Pr(HI) > Pr(T/O) Pr(O)/Pr(T) (From (8) and (10).)
(12) Pr(O/T) 0 (Axiom of probability
theory)
Therefore,
(13) Pr(O/HI) > 0 (From (1) and (12).)
(14) Pr(HI) > 0, (Substantive premise)
(15) Pr(OI/HI) Pr(HI) = Pr(O & HI) = Pr(HI/O) Pr(O) (From the definition of
conditional probability)
Therefore
(16) Pr(O) > 0, (From (13), (14) and (15).)
so that Pr(HI)/Pr(O) is defined. Therefore, we can multiply both sides of (11)
by Pr(HI)/Pr(O) which gives:
(17) Pr(HI/O) > Pr(T/O) Pr(HI)/Pr(T)
(18) HI entails ~T (Substantive premise)
Therefore,
(19) Pr(~T/O) Pr(HI/O) (From (18).)
Therefore,
(20) Pr(~T/O) > Pr(T/O) Pr(HI)/Pr(T) (From (17) and (19).)
(21) Pr(HI) Pr(T) (Substantive premise)
Therefore,
(22) Pr(~T/O) > Pr(T/O) (From (20) and (21).)
(23) O entails [(T & O) or (~T & O)] and [(T & O) or (~T & O)]
entails O
(Logical truth)
Therefore,
(24) Pr(T & O) + Pr(~T & O) = Pr(O) (From (23).)
Then, in view of (16), we can divide both sides of (24) by Pr(O), which gives us:
(25) Pr(T & O)/Pr(O) + Pr(~T & O)/Pr(O) = Pr(O)/Pr(O) = 1
Therefore,
(26) Pr(T/O) + Pr(~T/O) = 1 (From (25).)
Therefore,
(27) Pr(T) < 0.5 (From (22) and (26).)
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 trueas it would be if there were no other nonhuman persons. So,
at the very least, it is not clear that HIentails ~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 assumptionsthe assumptions set out, namely, at steps (18) and (21), to the
effect thatHI entails ~T, and Pr(HI) Pr(T). For given those assumptions, it follows
immediately thatPr(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 premisenamely, that introduced at (1). Some of the objections
directed against this premise are less than impressiveand 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 observationsO*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.
3.4 Bayesian-Style Probabilistic Versions of the
Evidential Argument from Evil
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 propositionsnamely, 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 thatP 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
knowledgehere 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
andE
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 conclusionthat is, that relative to our background
knowledge together with proposition P it is more likely than not that God does not
existRowe 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 principlenamely, the Total
Evidence Requirementwhich 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 evidencenamely, the proposition that there is a pen in my
pocketsince 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 ifPthe statement that
No good we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in
permittingE
1
and E
2

is interpreted in such a way that ~G entails P, it is then logically equivalent to the
following disjunctive statement:
~G or P*
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
disjunctthat 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:
1. Pr(P*/~G & k) = Pr(P* & ~G/k)/Pr(~G & k)
2. Pr(P*/G & k) = Pr(P* & G/k)/Pr(G & k)
3. Pr(P*/~G & k) > Pr(P*/G & k) [Assumption (5)]
4. Pr(P* & ~G/k)/Pr(~G & k) > Pr(P* & G/k)/Pr(G & k) [From 1, 2, and 3]
5. Pr(~G/P* & k) = Pr(~G & P*/k)/Pr(P* & k)
6. Pr(G/P* & k) = Pr(G & P*/k)/Pr(P* & k)
7. Pr(~G/P* & k)/Pr(~G & k) > Pr(G/P* & k)/Pr(G & k) [From 4, 5, 6, and 7]
8. Pr(G/k) 0.5 [Assumption (4)]
9. Pr(~G/k) > Pr(G/k) [From 8]
10. Pr(~G/P* & k) > Pr(G/P* & k) [From 7 and 9]
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 Qthat 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, thenQ 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 plausiblethat 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.
3.5 Inductive Logic and the Evidential Argument from
Evil
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.
Therefore it is likely that:
(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 characteristicsincluding ones that we are
not aware ofthat 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 knowledgea 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 propertyR 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.
4. Responses to the Argument from Evil:
Refutations, Defenses, and Theodicies
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.
5.1 Human Epistemological Limitations
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.
5.2 The No Best of All Possible Worlds' Response
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.
5.3 The Appeal to the Ontological Argument
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 exceptionssuch 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 objectionswhere 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
statementssomething 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.
6.1 The Appeal to Positive Evidence for the Existence
of God
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 beliefthe
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.
6.2 Belief in the Existence of God as Non-Inferentially
Justified
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.
6.3 Induction Based on Partial Success
Swinburne (1988 297-8) argued in support of the conclusion that theism does need a
theodicy. In doing so, however, he noted one minor qualificationnamely, 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 waythat 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 eviltheodicies, as
we may call themstrike 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.
7.1 A Soul-Making Theodicy
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
othersas in the Holocaustor because of terminal illnesses such as cancer? One
writerEleonore Stumphas 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.
7.2 Free Will
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.
7.3 The Freedom to Do Great Evil
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.
7.4 The Need for Natural Laws
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.
8. Defenses and Theodicies Based on Global
Properties
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 evilsuch 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 Suea 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 arguedmost recently in The Problem of Evilthere 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 storywhich might be either a
defense-story or a theodicy-storythat 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
instantiatedsomething 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 propertiesall properties that those events themselves haveare 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.
9.1 Human Suffering and the Extended Free will
Defense
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 loveand,
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 rationalitynot only made of them what we call
human beingsbut 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 powerssomething 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 ruinthose who,
in a word, are in Hell. (2006, 89)
9.2 The Suffering of Beasts and Massively Irregular
Worlds
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
offeredincluding 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 angelsand 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 worldthe cosmos, the physical universehas 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.
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