1 God and Suffering
The issue of whether or not God exists is for many of us among the most perplexing and profound questions of our lives. Not everyone, of course, considers this matter an open one, and for some of the “closed matter” sort, the issue is considered not even a fit subject for intellectual scrutiny or debate. For some people, religious conviction—even a kind of certainty—comes quite readily, without question or intellectual struggle: faith that God is there, guiding the universe, watching out for created beings, helping them to know what they ought to do. Others consider the issue closed and not worthy of sustained philosophical attention, but from the opposite direction: belief in God seems to them quite clearly akin to belief in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy—merely a fantasy, a childish case of wishful thinking.
I consider the matter of God’s existence to be sufficiently non-obviously settled and of sufficient import to be worth an investment of extended rigorous thought and debate. Given the roles that the idea of God and human religious conviction have played in the development of history and given the roles they continue to play in our political, social, and personal lives, it is difficult to have solidarity with the perspective that the question of God’s existence is unimportant. Similarly, steadfast commitment to God in isolation from reasoned debate, on the one hand, and fervent conviction in the non-existence of God coupled with inattentiveness to careful philosophical responses on the part of reflective theists to arguments for atheism, on the other hand, are positions from which I feel estranged. Even if one has a settled commitment concerning the existence of God—whether theism or atheism—this surely calls out for periodic evaluation and re-evaluation. I hope this book plays a role in serving such a purpose.
My primary focus is on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power of arguments from evil, while giving a thorough critical examination of attempts to answer them. Although in the course of exploring these arguments for atheism, I set out, as sympathetically and fair-mindedly as I can, an array of theistic responses,
God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will. Laura W. Ekstrom, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197556412.003.0001
ultimately I argue that, as these responses stand, they are lacking in persuasive power. One matter I aim especially to bring to center stage as meriting further attention in the relevant philosophical literature is the value of human free will. Given the very significant role played by free will in prominent theistic treatments of the problem of evil, one would expect to find more nuanced, comprehensive, and widespread philosophical attention to the good or goods that human free will is thought to contain or to secure. I systematically set out and discuss a variety of ideas concerning the matter of free will’s worth.
In recent work, Brian Leftow makes this declaration:
If you think that evil currently provides any very strong argument against the existence of God, you have not been paying attention. Purely deductive (‘logical’) versions of the problem of evil are widely conceded to be ‘dead,’ killed off by Plantinga’s free-will defence. . . . Once one sees the sort of thing a defence has to be to work, it seems pretty clear that some kind of free-will defence has to be available and adequate. The debate has shifted to ‘evidential’ versions of the problem of evil, and my own view, which is not uncommon, is that these are pretty thoroughly on the ropes—what’s called skeptical theism provides an effective counter.1
I do not agree with Leftow that deductive arguments from evil are dead, as I will explain further on in this chapter, and while I am not sure what it would take for evidential arguments from evil to count as “pretty thoroughly on the ropes,” I do not think that what is called skeptical theism provides an effective counter, as I explain in Chapter 4. My defense of arguments from suffering and overall negative assessment of theistic lines of response to those arguments lends support to atheism. As should be clear from the book’s project, however, in my view atheists ought not to be acrossthe-board dismissive of the intelligence of theists, as is in fashion in some circles. (I am thinking, for instance, of Sam Harris’s many glib claims about religious believers, including that “the atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his [theistic] neighbors,”2 and of Christopher Hitchens’s view that “religion should
1 Brian Leftow, 2012, God and Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 547.
2 Sam Harris, 2011, “There Is No God (And You Know It),” Huffington Post, October 6, 2005, updated May 25, 2011. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/there-is-no-god-and-you-k_b_8459
be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt.”3 Richard Dawkins similarly suggests that religious believers—particularly those who view God as providing meaning to their lives—are “infantile.”4) On the other side, theists, in my view, should weaken their hold on theism in the face of arguments from evil: they should become agnostics or atheists or, alternatively, they should articulate and support better responses to arguments from evil. A theist, then, might read this book as a call to further sustained philosophical attention to arguments from suffering and to the development of deepened, more persuasive replies to those arguments. A different reader might conclude that—in view of what she takes to be the total body of evidence, including arguments for atheism and arguments on the other side in favor of theism, and perhaps, as well, the deep ambiguity of the relevant evidence, remaining agnostic on this issue—keeping an open mind, committing neither to the existence of God nor to the non-existence of God, is an intellectually appropriate course of action.
My own starting point is this: I think in some ways it would be rather wonderful to be able to commit wholeheartedly, with full heart and mind, to the proposition that God exists. In the subsequent section, I will aim to say why this is so. However, in light of the power of arguments from suffering, conviction that God is real seems to me untenable, at least a conviction that is held with a high degree of confidence, high enough that it guides one’s life, regulates one’s conduct in a range of intellectual, practical, and moral matters, including motivating vigorous participation in a traditional monotheistic religious community and regular engagement in worship. To stake one’s claim as a traditional theist—in intellectual debate and in practical life—is a rather bold move. In my view, such boldness should be supported by rational justification that includes a response to arguments from evil that is more powerful than those currently on offer. The pain and suffering we observe in the world, including particular instances of it that are especially appalling and inexplicable, as well as the sheer enormity of the amount, the intensity, and the distribution of the atrocities and rotten aspects of existence, make a powerful case for atheism concerning God as traditionally conceived.
3 Hitchens, in a talk in Canada on Free Speech (November 2006). (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PY8fjFKAC5k)
4 Richard Dawkins, 2006, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin), 360.
1.1 Attractions of Theism
In this book we understand God as an absolutely perfect being. The question of the existence of God at issue is the question of the existence or nonexistence of a divine being who creates whatever universe there is and who has as essential attributes the perfections along the dimensions of value, including knowledge, power, and goodness. God is the being, in Richard Swinburne’s words, “who is essentially eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, creator and sustainer of the Universe, and perfectly good.”5 For what reasons might it seem attractive to stake one’s claim as a believer in the existence of this perfect being? My aim in this section is not to give an exhaustive costbenefit analysis of being a theist versus being an atheist or agnostic, but rather to articulate some of the reasons that some people find theistic commitment and traditional religious life attractive and valuable.
For instance, conviction that God is real for some believers serves as a kind of bedrock, grounding other convictions, such as the idea that life is not chaotic and random but instead ordered. 6 The idea that we have divinely ordered lives can be reassuring while, by contrast, the thought that we are subject to the vicissitudes of luck in our everyday lives can be distressing: if one might at any moment lose one’s ability to walk by way of a car accident, or one might at any time receive a cancer diagnosis or lose one’s child or gain a windfall or lose one’s job, without these incidents having any rhyme or reason—without their being put into our lives by a perfect being who looks over the world, governing all, including the major and minor events of our lives—then one may feel that one loses a kind of secure foothold. If it is not true that God exists, then it may well not be true that everything happens for our own good or for the good more generally. Conversely, if God is real and is in some sense in charge, then perhaps, one might think, we do not live at the mercy of bad luck.
Another benefit of theistic commitment is that religious community can serve as a ready-made home in the world, a source of sustenance and support
5 Richard Swinburne, 1998, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), 3.
6 On some theistic lines of response to arguments from suffering—for instance, Peter van Inwagen’s treatment, discussed later in Section 1.2.3—even though God exists, we are nonetheless subject to chance and bad luck in our everyday lives. I intend in this paragraph only to point out that, for many religious believers I know, the thought that God is in providential control of the universe provides a sense of security in virtue of the conviction that everything that comes one’s way is purposive and a part of God’s plan.
in good times and bad, a place for the celebration of major passages in life, such as from childhood to adolescence and from singleness to marriage, as well as for grieving the deaths of those about whom one cared. Being a devoted religious practitioner provides to many a sense of belonging, along with the benefits of tradition. Such benefits can be especially important for those whose biological or adoptive or foster families were locations for abuse or other dysfunctions. (In Chapter 7, I consider the matter of acquiring such benefits of religious community as an atheist or agnostic.) In some places, being a religious believer gives one standing in the community, a sort of social authority or prestige that entitles ones to respect and trust.
Commitment to theism, too, for some provides hope for a blessed afterlife, one free of pain, free of disabilities, and free of illness. Many religious traditions provide depictions of a heaven offering eternal life after earthly death, a life that is blessed and wonderful, full of joy and infused with the presence of God. In religious traditions that posit the existence of hell, some believers find assurance, too, that the injustices of this life are rectified, so that there is ultimately justice after all, despite how things go as we observe them here and now and in the stories of history: some who commit atrocious wrongs—including rapists, private abusers, liars, destructive narcissists, and betrayers—seem to go scot-free, affronting our sense of justice. Confidence in an afterlife in which evildoers are punished might serve to soothe this moral outrage, providing a sense of peace in the conviction that ultimate retribution is achieved. (In Chapter 6, however, I emphasize serious difficulties for the doctrine of hell.)
Other goods attend a religious life. Religious visual art and song can be tremendously moving and uplifting to the psyche. Engaging with them regularly as a believer adds a richness and artistic dimension to one’s life. If one is convinced that God is real, too, then despite how alone each of us might feel at times, one has faith that we are never really alone: at every moment, we are accompanied by an absolutely perfect creator, one who is there and who genuinely cares for us. One might find in theistic commitment a source of strength for coping in the lowest moments. If convinced that God is there, then one also may feel a sense of confidence in the divine care of our children, relatives, and friends, assured that they are looked after by someone with more power for protection and healing than we ourselves have. If God is real, furthermore, then one might think that one’s life has a point. One was made for a purpose and has a destiny or a divine calling to fulfill, a thought that can give one’s life a kind of importance it might otherwise seem to lack.
The idea “I matter, not just to some other people, but also to God, the creator and sustainer of the universe!” can provide a sense of value and mission that is empowering and motivating.7
1.2 The Problem of Suffering
If such benefits and advantages attach to being a theist, then why is it not clear that the most appropriate course in life is to be one—what stands in the way of assenting wholeheartedly to the claim that God exists and participating fully in a traditional religious community or adopting a religious way of life? The central concern on which I focus is that there is a strong case to be made in favor of the claim that God does not exist. A powerful family of arguments for atheism is rooted in the horrid aspects of this world, arguments that are extensively debated in literature broadly referred to as literature on ‘the problem of evil.’ Outside the context of the philosophy of religion, this phrase (‘the problem of evil’) might bring to mind the question of how best to organize a political system so as to prevent the ascent to power of a malicious dictator, or how best to deal with individuals who have committed atrocious acts; or it might call to mind the matter of how best to raise children so that they become kind and cooperative rather than aggressive or mean-spirited; alternatively, one might think that ‘the problem of evil’ refers to the issue of how we should organize our efforts in response to calamities and traumas such as natural disasters and domestic abuse. The problem of evil with which
7 I should emphasize, again, that my aim in this section is not to provide an exhaustive cost-benefit analysis of having religious conviction, but rather to set out some reasons why many people, including myself, have found religious commitment and an attendant traditional religious way of life attractive. As a referee rightly points out, there are, for some, serious downsides to religious belief and immersion in a religious community. For instance, religious belief can make people rather viciously judgmental and can detach them from natural feelings of compassion toward others. Some strains of Christianity—or at least some churches, including those preaching what is sometimes called a “prosperity gospel”—encourage their wealthy and healthy congregants to view their own physical well-being and economic status as evidence that they are more virtuous than those who are poor, ill, or struggling (perhaps rooted in some background assumptions about human free will and divine punishment and reward). Some religious systems, too, impose painful psychological costs on their practitioners, such as intense fear of the prospect of eternal damnation to hell, self-abasement from the pressure to forgive abuse and betrayal, terror of demonic possession, and guilt and self-loathing on the basis of sexual orientation. Some religious leaders have argued in favor of an array of immoral and harmful practices, such as the beating of children, slavery, and the oppression of women, encouraging moral self-satisfaction among practitioners. Of course, other religious leaders have advocated for charity and civil rights and mutual respect, have led abolition movements, and have encouraged congregants to be generous, accepting, and loving. I have not intended to make an across-the-board case that religious belief has solely positive effects, either for the believer or for others.
we are concerned, however, is a cluster of theoretical questions concerning how to make sense of the existence of widespread suffering, wrongdoing, and pain, much of it apparently lacking in point, along with the supposition that this world was created and is sustained by God. The problem arises for the Abrahamic religious traditions and metaphysical systems in which God is understood to be an absolutely perfect being, as described by Swinburne, one who is essentially all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. In the literature at issue, the term ‘evil’ is used to refer to anything that is bad, terrible, destructive, wrong, or devastating about our world, including human wrongdoing, human and non-human animal vulnerability to harm, and suffering on the part of human beings and other sentient creatures. On this conception of evil, instances include rape, murder, betrayal, and genocide, as well as conditions of the world that are not (or are not obviously) the result of malicious intent or human error, such as suffering from various diseases, including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and AIDS, and suffering that results from natural disasters, including tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and strikes of lightning.
Here is one informal way of expressing an argument from evil in favor of atheism. When we survey the world, we observe a whole lot of suffering and wrongdoing, including sadness, torture, injustice, famine, diseases, and anguish. There are particularly atrocious cases, virtually unspeakable kinds of maltreatment and agony. It does not look as if the wicked get their comeuppance or that the righteous are always blessed with joy and prosperity. Many instances of pain and suffering seem to be patently unfair and unearned, and many seem to be lacking in point. These observations, which many of us find ourselves rather powerless to avoid forming, make it difficult to embrace the claim that there is a perfectly good, all-powerful, all-knowing being in charge of the universe, a being who created the world, who guides it and who cares about the living beings in it. In fact, it seems reasonable in light of these observations to conclude that God does not exist.
1.2.1 Consistency Matters
Let’s express one—unrefined and in need of fixing, but somewhat more regimented—version of an argument from evil, as follows. Notice that I do not claim that this argument is successful, but discussion of it is instructive.
Unrefined Argument from Evil
(1) If God were to exist, then there would be no evil in the world.
(2) There is evil in the world.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.
A line of thought in support of the first premise is the following. God is, by nature, omniscient, so God knows everything there is to be known, which implies that God knows about the existence of every evil. Thus, no instance of evil would escape God’s notice. God is, by nature, omnipotent, so God can do anything that can be done, including preventing evil. Thus, no instance of evil is one that God lacks the power to eliminate. God is, by nature, perfectly good, and a good being prevents suffering so far as possible, so God, who can do anything that can be done, would eliminate the suffering of human beings and non-human animals. Elaborating the thought concerning God’s goodness, Swinburne writes:
. . . despite the fact that some philosophical theologians have attempted to expound God’s goodness in non-moral ways, it seems to me deeply central to the whole tradition of the Christian (and other Western) religion that God is loving towards his creation and that involves his behaving in morally good ways towards it. There is no doubt more to loving someone than not kicking them in the teeth. But it does (barring special considerations) seem to involve at least not kicking them in the teeth. Western religion has always held that there is a deep problem about why there is pain and other suffering—which there would not be if God were not supposed to be morally good. Again, God is supposed to be in some way personal, and a personal being who was not morally good would not be the great being God is.8
A problem for the unrefined argument from evil is that it is possible, and in fact we find it to be sometimes true, that suffering has a good purpose, as in the case in which a child suffers the brief pain of a vaccine in order to prevent the occurrence of a debilitating disease. Some evils are necessary for the existence of greater goods or for the prevention of equal or worse evils. This does not imply that the evils in question are not evils. Suffering, let us assume, is intrinsically evil—it hurts! even if it contributes to and is necessary
8 Swinburne 1998, 7.
for a greater good. The child’s vaccination may be overall beneficial, but it is still painful, and this is a shame; it is something the child has to endure. Nonetheless, the parent who takes her child to the physician’s office to get vaccinated is not, by virtue of permitting her child to endure something painful, a bad parent or morally suspect.
This point helps to make clear what was wrong with J. L. Mackie’s (1955) argument from evil against theism. Mackie argued that theism is vulnerable to a stronger charge than that it lacks rational support by way of proofs for God’s existence. In fact, “a more telling criticism can be made,” he charged, namely that it can be shown that
religious beliefs . . . are positively irrational, that the several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another, so that the theologian can maintain his position as a whole only by a much more extreme rejection of reason than in the former case. He must now be prepared to believe, not merely what cannot be proved, but what can be disproved from other beliefs that he also holds.9
As Mackie expresses it, the problem of evil is “a logical problem, the problem of clarifying and reconciling a number of beliefs.”10 Similarly, H. J. McCloskey contends that “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 omniscience and omnipotence of God on the other.”11 McCloskey’s and Mackie’s charges are strong ones: they suggest that the theist is so highly irrational as to hold logically inconsistent beliefs. The particular religious beliefs Mackie specifies are beliefs in the propositions “God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists.” Aware that there is no obvious or explicit logical inconsistency among these, Mackie writes:
to show it we need some additional premises, or perhaps some quasilogical rules connecting the terms ‘good,’ and ‘evil,’ and ‘omnipotent.’ These additional principles are that good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. From these it follows that a good
9 J. L. Mackie, 1955, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind 64, no. 245: 200–212, at 200.
10 Mackie 1955, 200.
11 H. J. McCloskey, 1960, “God and Evil,” Philosophical Quarterly 10, no. 39: 97–114, at 97.
omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely, and then the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible.12
Mackie’s case here would succeed in showing logical inconsistency only if the proposition that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and the proposition that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do, were each necessary truths. But fairly plainly they are not both necessary truths. It is consistently imaginable, in fact plausible to think, that there are logical limits to what an omnipotent thing (or being) can do, and it is possible that a good thing (or being) does not always eliminate evil as far as it can, since it is possible that the good thing (or being) has a justifying reason for causing or allowing an instance of evil.
In the passage from Brian Leftow quoted earlier in which Leftow intimates that evil does not provide any very strong argument against the existence of God, Leftow pointed to “logical” versions of the problem of evil. One might call the logical problem of evil, for the theist, the problem of showing that atheists, such as Mackie (and there are others, as I mention later), fail to demonstrate logical inconsistency among the relevant propositions. In the hands of the theist who wants to go further than showing that atheists fail to demonstrate inconsistency, the logical version of the problem of evil is the problem of showing that the particular propositions in question—in the case of arguments like Mackie’s, concerning God and the bare existence of evil— are not contradictory but are, in fact, logically consistent. Robert Adams expresses a widely shared belief in the philosophy of religion (as is also given voice by Leftow in the quoted passage) in stating, “It is fair to say that [Alvin] Plantinga has solved this problem.”13 Plantinga has offered a well-known free will defense, which aims to demonstrate the logical consistency of the relevant propositions, in particular in Plantinga’s case the propositions that (i) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, on the one hand, and that (ii) evil exists, on the other.
In describing his case as a “defense,” Plantinga says that his aim is to identify a proposition that specifies a justifying reason for God’s allowing evil that is consistent with (i) and that, in conjunction with (i), entails (ii). Plantinga emphasizes that this identified proposition need not be true or known to be true, but only possibly true, consistent with (i) and such that, in conjunction
12 Mackie 1955, 200–201.
13 Robert Adams, 1985, “Plantinga on the Problem of Evil,” in Alvin Plantinga, edited by Peter van Inwagen and James Tomberlin (Dordrecht: D. Reidel), 226.
with (i), it entails (ii). Making a distinction between a free will defense and a free will theodicy, Plantinga states that the defender has more minimal aims: he intends to show that propositions (i) and (ii) can both be true at once, whereas the theodicist makes a suggestion as to what God’s reason or reasons for permitting evil is or are, in fact. On Plantinga’s free will defense, roughly, it is possible that: a world containing created beings who are significantly free (i.e., free with respect to morally significant actions) is greater, all else being equal, than is a world containing no such creatures; and it was not within God’s power to actualize a world containing moral good without that world also containing moral evil (i.e., goods and evils brought about by beings who are significantly free).
One objection to Plantinga’s free will defense, which he anticipates, is that God could have brought into existence created beings who have free will and who exercise their free will in each instance to do what is morally right, and thus God could have actualized a world containing only moral good and no moral evil.14 Plantinga suggests in response that it is possible that every created essence suffers from transworld depravity, a condition that makes each being who has it, were that being to be actualized, go wrong at least once with respect to exercising significant freedom. When we add this possibility to the “defensive story” earlier, we get the result, Plantinga and his many followers argue, that the propositions that (i) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, and that (ii) evil exists, can both be true at once, and thus that there is no logical inconsistency in believing in both God and evil.
The positive verdict on the success of this free will defense is not unanimous.15 Dissenters include Daniel Howard-Snyder, who argues that it is not at all clearly true that, possibly, every created essence suffers from transworld depravity. Howard-Snyder suggests that “a defense succeeds only if it is not reasonable to refrain from believing the claims that constitute it.”16 In fact, Howard-Snyder suggests, it is reasonable to refrain from believing the possibility claim concerning transworld depravity, and it is no more reasonable to believe that, possibly, every created essence suffers from transworld
14 Mackie 1955, 209.
15 See, for instance, Daniel Howard-Snyder, 2013a, “The Logical Problem of Evil: Mackie and Plantinga,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, edited by Justin McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell), 19–33. J. L. Schellenberg, 2007, argues that the free will defense fails, in both its logical possibility and epistemic possibility forms, in The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). I discuss aspects of Schellenberg’s views later in Chapter 2.
16 Howard-Snyder 2013a, 24.
and the Value of Free Will depravity, than it is to believe the claim that, necessarily, some essence or other enjoys “transworld sanctity.”17 I set aside here this particular controversy concerning whether or not it is reasonable to assent to the claim that, possibly, every created essence suffers from transworld depravity. My argument in the subsequent chapter suggests that it is reasonable to refrain from believing the possibility claim concerning the greater value of a world containing creatures who are significantly free (as Plantinga understands such freedom), all else being equal, than the value of worlds not containing such creatures.
Suppose that it were the case—contrary to the remarks of Leftow, R. Adams, and others, including James Beebe, who writes that “all parties admit that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil as it was formulated by atheists during the mid-twentieth century” (2005, section 8)—that Plantinga’s free will defense does not succeed. Still, one may argue that the propositions that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good and that evil exists (at all) are not logically inconsistent propositions, since it is logically possible that God has some justifying reason (or reasons) or other for which God allows evil to exist in our world (at all).
It does not follow that all deductive arguments from evil against the existence of God fail. Graham Oppy suggests a logical argument from evil different from Mackie’s, as follows:18 (p) If God exists, then God is the perfect ex nihilo creator of our universe; (q) The actions of a perfect being cannot decrease the degree of perfection in the world; (r) If God exists, then, prior to all creation, the world is perfect; and therefore (s) The world is perfect. But clearly (t) Our universe is imperfect. Therefore, (u) God does not exist. Oppy thus challenges the idea that all logical deductive arguments from evil are dead, “killed off” (in Leftow’s words) by Plantinga’s free will defense.19
17 Howard-Snyder 2013a. For the definition of transworld sanctity, see 24–25.
18 Graham Oppy, 2017, “Logical Arguments from Evil and Free Will Defences,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil, edited by Chad Meister and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 45–64, at 54.
19 Schellenberg, as well, offers a new logical argument from evil, distinct from Mackie’s. Schellenberg argues that the conjunction of three particular claims—(i) that God is the greatest possible being (Unsurpassable Greatness), (ii) that no world created by God (or any part thereof) is a part of God (Ontological Independence), and (iii) that prior to creation (whether “prior” be taken logically or temporally) there is no evil in God of any kind (Prior Purity)—is implicitly contradictory with a fourth claim to which theists are equally committed, namely, that there is evil in the world. Schellenberg, 2013, “A New Logical Problem of Evil,” in McBrayer and Howard-Snyder 2013, 34–48.
Suppose it were true that the propositions that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good and that evil exists (at all) are not logically inconsistent. Still, I think that a theist ought to have higher relevant intellectual ambitions than showing only this, and powerful arguments from suffering remain.
1.2.2 Pointless Evils
The central arguments I want to explore are rooted in more precise observations about the instances of evil that exist in our world than the mere observation that evil exists at all.20 Over the span of more than thirty years, William Rowe advanced various arguments against the existence of God based in instances of intense suffering. Rowe (1979) highlights a case of non-human animal suffering, in which a fawn, in the midst of a forest fire and away from all observers, “is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering.”21 The fawn’s agony over the course of several days before death is, Rowe says, “apparently pointless.” There does not seem to be any good reason for which a perfect being would be idle in the face of the fawn’s prolonged painful experience of burned flesh, rather than mercifully putting the fawn out of its misery with a quick death. Rowe notes that the case does not alone prove decisively that our world contains cases of suffering that could have been prevented by God without thereby losing a greater good or permitting an evil at least as bad. Still, Rowe continues:
20 Plantinga does attempt to show more than that there is no logical inconsistency in believing both that God exists and that evil exists at all. He also works to show that there is no logical inconsistency in believing both that God exists and that the world contains the amount of evil it contains. (Plantinga supposes, simply to give the amount a measure, that the world contains 1018 “turps” of evil.) To reconcile the existence of God with the amount of evil in our world, Plantinga gives the following free will defense: it is possible that a world containing created beings who are significantly free (i.e., free with respect to morally significant actions) is greater, all else being equal, than is a world containing no such creatures; and it is possible that it was not within God’s power to actualize a world containing moral good without that world also containing moral evil (i.e., goods and evils brought about by beings who are significantly free); and it is possible that all evils in our world, including what we call natural evils (e.g., the suffering and devastation brought by hurricanes, floods, and diseases), are broadly moral evils (i.e., they, too, are brought about by the poor free choices of created beings, including demons); and it is possible that our world is among those with the best mix of moral good and moral evil. Plantinga, 1974, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).
21 William Rowe, 1979, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16: 335–341, at 337.
In light of our experience and knowledge of the variety and scale of human and animal suffering in our world, the idea that none of this suffering could have been prevented by an omnipotent being without thereby losing a greater good or permitting an evil at least as bad seems an extraordinarily absurd idea, quite beyond our belief.22
Let us call an instance of evil pointless just in case there is no Godjustifying reason for causing or allowing it. It is standard in the literature following Rowe to hold that for there to be a God-justifying reason for causing or allowing some instance of evil requires that there is a good for which the evil (or the risk of the evil) is logically necessary that suffices to justify an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good being in causing or allowing it. The good for which the evil (or the risk of the evil) in question is necessary could be avoiding evils equally bad or worse.23 The core idea Rowe articulates is that it is reasonable to believe that there are some instances of pointless suffering in our world, which there would not be if God were to exist, and hence it is reasonable to conclude that God does not exist.
Rowe (1988) also discusses a case of intense suffering on the part of a child, an actual rather than hypothetical case of a girl who was brutally beaten, raped, and murdered by her mother’s boyfriend. The argument expressed in Rowe (1988) is this: (p) No good we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting these particular cases of horrendous suffering on the part of the trapped fawn and the murdered child. (q) (Therefore) (Probably) No good at all justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting these particular cases of horrendous suffering. (r) (Therefore) (Probably) There is no omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being. This argument, unlike the argument of Rowe (1979), is put in terms of the two particular cases of the trapped fawn and the girl who is brutally murdered. Rowe (1996) also focuses on these two cases, but the argument discussed in (1996) is expressed in terms of probabilities, as
22 Rowe 1979, 338, italics added.
23 In speaking of pointless evils, Rowe describes them as instances of suffering which God “could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse” (Rowe 1979, 336). Some suggest that there is a God-justifying reason to permit an evil if there is some great enough good such that the occurrence of this good is made sufficiently probable by the occurrence of the evil, such that it is permissible for God to allow the evil and the good to occur, and the state of affairs of both the evil and the good occurring is more valuable than the state of affairs of neither of them occurring. Cf. Trent Dougherty, 2016, “Skeptical Theism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Section 1.1 https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/skeptical-theism/
follows: (x) The probability that God exists, conditional on the claim that no good we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting the particular cases of horrendous suffering on the part of the trapped fawn and the murdered child, is less than the prior probability that God exists. (y) The prior probability that God exists is 0.5. (z) (Therefore) The claim that no good we know of justifies an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being in permitting these particular cases of horrendous suffering lowers the probability that God exists to something less than 0.5.
Many have pointed out in response to Rowe (1996) that there are serious difficulties for the probability claims made in this (1996) argument, particularly that the “prior probability” that God exists is 0.5. It is not clear on what basis one ought to think that the probability that God exists is 0.5, prior to considering Rowe’s particular two instances of suffering. In light of difficulties for making and assessing the probability claims in Rowe (1996) and in light of the focus of Rowe (1988) on the particular cases of the trapped fawn and the murdered child, since I want to discuss a wide range of cases of suffering, I focus on an argument very much like that in Rowe (1979). In this I follow Graham Oppy in his excellent article, “Rowe’s Evidential Arguments from Evil” (2013), although I differ with Oppy over the success of the argument. Consider the following argument.
Argument from Pointless Evil
(1) If God exists, then our world does not contain any instances of pointless evil.
(2) Our world contains an instance (or instances) of pointless evil.
(3) Therefore, God does not exist.24
24 Notice that this is a deductive argument. Whereas some theorists in the philosophy of religion seem to call instances of “the evidential argument from evil” only arguments that are put in terms of probability or in terms of the ability of competing hypotheses to best account for some data, including our observations about evil, other theorists count an argument like this one in the main text, the argument from pointless evils, as an evidential argument. For instance, Daniel Speak writes, in discussing an argument of Rowe’s much like this one (likewise not expressed in terms of probability): “As it stands, it has the form of a valid deductive argument. What makes this argument “evidential”—or sometimes “inductive”—is the fact that [the premise that there are pointless evils] is not taken to be a demonstrated truth . . . Instead, the empirical premise [that there are pointless evils] needs ultimately to be supported by a kind of evidence or argument.” Speak, 2015, The Problem of Evil (Malden, MA: Polity Press), 51. The fact that a premise of an argument itself needs argument in its support does not seem to me to qualify the argument as inductive or evidential, but it is not important to me how the argument from pointless evils is classified.
