Talk:Problem of evil/argument from evil

This page is about the problem of evil in western analytic philosophy of religion. For other approaches, see problem of evil.

An argument from evil attempts to show that there exists some fact about evil in the world that renders the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent deity either impossible or unlikely. Arguments from evil take different forms depending on the fact about evil being proposed, and whether the argument seeks to establish the impossibility or improbability of the existence of God; thus, a distinction is made between logical arguments from evil and evidential arguments.

Logical arguments have historically relied on a simple empirical fact about the world, namely the mere existence of evil. While such a factual premise is relatively uncontroversial, it is often conceded that God may allow evil in order to enable greater goods. A successful argument must, therefore, maintain that the world contains instances of gratuitous evil, i.e., evils which are not necessary for the realization of greater goods. However, it is widely accepted among contemporary philosophers of religion that purely deductive arguments have failed to establish the existence of gratuitous evil.

Contemporary discourse centers on evidential arguments from evil. The most direct approach is to defend the probable existence of gratuitous evil based on concrete instances of horrendous evil, such as rape of innocent children and natural evil, for which the theist cannot readily identify a greater good. There are many responses available though, including theodicies which outline the existence of greater goods and the skeptical theist approach of questioning the inference from our human inability to identify a greater good to the likelihood of God having no greater purpose.

Evil and traditional theism

• Explain why evil is a problem.
• Deal with the irrelevant objections like "evil is the absence of good" and "evil requires some moral law"
  • Tooley on deontological vs. axiological formulations.
  • Oppy's point about the arguments can be formulated with evil as "that which a theist considers evil".

The logical argument from evil

• Focus on Mackie's formulation.

Greater goods

• Mackie's "concession" => unabsorbed evils.
• Tooley: unabsorbed evil => inductive step required.

The free will defense

Main article: Plantinga's free will defense

• Short explanation, the main article is not very good though.
• Mackie's response.

Evidential arguments from evil

• Probably focus on one Rowe style argument?
• Or, also include Draper.

Open theism

Main article: open theism

• Seems to be increasingly important, but should probably be fairly short due to lack of acceptance among other theists.

Skeptical theism

• Most important part of this article; almost all recent papers relate to this approach it seems.
  • Wykstra, Alston, Plantinga.
• Problems
  • Trakakis on hiddenness.
  • Oppy, Almeida on moral skepticism.
  • Tooley on inductive reasoning.

Theodicy

Main article: theodicy

• This should be fairly short as there is a separate article. But that article is in a horrendous mess.