Philosophy 1600 - Honors Seminar

 

Topic 7: Atheism and Arguments from Evil

An Evidential Formulation of the Argument from Evil

Logical incompatibility formulations of the argument from evil claim that it is a contradiction to assert both that God exists and that certain things are the case with regard to the existence of intrinsically undesirable states of affairs, or evil, in the world - such as, (a) the mere fact that there is at least one intrinsically undesirable states of affairs in the world - or, (b) the fact that there is a certain type of evil in the world - such as natural evils, or horrendous evils - or (c) the fact that there is a certain amount of evil in the world.

Evidential formulations of the argument from evil - which are often referred to as inductive formulations of the argument from evil, or as probabilistic formulations of the argument from evil - do not maintain that the existence of God is logically incompatible with certain facts about the existence of undesirable states of affairs in the world.  What they claim, rather, is that there are facts about undesirable states of affairs in the world that constitute very strong evidence against the existence of God, and thus which render the existence of God very unlikely.

Such arguments can appeal to facts of types (a), (b), and (c) - mentioned above.  More commonly, however, the focus is upon specific, concrete instances of evil.  The following is an example of such of argument.

1. A Concrete Formulation of a Evidential Argument from Evil  

One way of formulating a concrete version of the argument from evil is in terms of a core argument, which is deductive in form, and that involves a crucial premise that stands in need of evidential support.  The core argument, for example, might be put as follows:

(1)  Cases where animals die agonizing deaths in forest fires, or where children undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, are cases of intrinsically undesirable states of affairs that an omnipotent and omniscient person could have prevented without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.

(2)  An omniscient and morally perfect person would prevent the existence of any intrinsically undesirable state of affairs whose prevention he could achieve without either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.

(3)  Therefore, there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.

(4)  God is, by definition, an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.

(5)  Therefore, God does not exist.

This argument involves three premises.  The third - which consists of a definition of the term 'God' - would be challenged by some people.  The thing that it is important to note in this connection, however, is that one cannot avoid the above sort of argument from evil by shifting from an 'omni' God to a somewhat weaker deity, since the above argument can be recast so that it applies, for example, to any deity that can communicate with human beings, that is as good as the average human being, and whose knowledge is at least as great as humans are likely to possess in a hundred years time.  The upshot is that the argument is one that will apply to almost any personal deity that is morally admirable.

Of the other  two premises, the first is the one that is most likely to be challenged.  What grounds are there for thinking that it is likely to be true?

One very natural line of thought is as follows.  First, events that involve animals dying agonizing deaths in forest fires, or children undergoing lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, are surely cases of intrinsically undesirable states of affairs.  Secondly, it is also surely true that an omnipotent and omniscient person could prevent such events.  So the crucial question is whether an omnipotent and omniscient person could prevent such events without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.

 2. Can this Evidential Argument from Evil Be Successfully Defended?

The above argument involves three premises.  The third - which consists of a definition of the term 'God' - would be challenged by some people.  The thing that it is important to note in this connection, however, is that one cannot avoid the above sort of argument from evil by shifting from an 'omni' God to a somewhat weaker deity, since the above argument can be recast so that it applies, for example, to any deity that can communicate with human beings, that is as good as the average human being, and whose knowledge is at least as great as humans are likely to possess in a hundred years time.  The upshot is that the argument is one that will apply to almost any personal deity that is morally admirable.Of the other  two premises, the first is the one that is most likely to be challenged.  What grounds are there for thinking that it is likely to be true?

One very natural line of thought is as follows.  First, events that involve animals dying agonizing deaths in forest fires, or children undergoing lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer, are surely cases of intrinsically undesirable states of affairs.  Secondly, it is also surely true that an omnipotent and omniscient person could prevent such events.  So the crucial question is whether an omnipotent and omniscient person could prevent such events without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.

How might a defender of the above version of the argument from evil argue that it is reasonable to believe that an omnipotent and omniscient person could prevent such events without thereby either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good?  The most natural line of thought, it would seem, involves holding that not only are the following two claims reasonable, their conjunction is also reasonable:

(1)  Someone's preventing the existence of the events in question would not make possible the existence of  an equal or greater evil;

(2)  Someone's preventing the existence of the events in question would not rule out the existence of  an equal or greater good.

The idea would then be that if it is reasonable to accept the conjunction of (1) and (2), then it is also reasonable to accept the conjunction of the following two claims:

(3)  If an omnipotent and omniscient person were to prevent the existence of the events in question, then that would not make possible the existence of  an equal or greater evil;

(4)  If an omnipotent and omniscient person were to prevent the existence of the events in question, then that would not rule out the existence of  an equal or greater good.

But if this is right, then there is good reason for accepting the crucial, first premise in the core argument set out above.

Postscript  

The above handout was written before I began work on my contribution to the debate volume, Knowledge of God (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), co-authored with Alvin Plantinga. There I set out a very different formulation of an evidential argument from evil, one based upon equiprobability principles.

A slightly revised version of that argument is also available in The Problem of Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), where I also survey and comment critically on possible responses to evidential arguments from evil.

 As of yet, twelve plus years on, there have been no journal articles attempting to refute the argument set out in Knowledge of God, and only one article in an anthology, to which I replied in The Problem of Evil.