The physicist Richard Gott defends the Copernican principle, which claims that when we have no information about our position along a given dimension among a group of observers, we should consider ourselves to be randomly located among those observers in respect to that dimension. First, I apply Copernican reasoning to the distribution of evil in the universe. I then contend that evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life strengthens four important versions of the argument from evil. I remain neutral regarding whether this (...) result is a reductio of these arguments from evil or the statement of a genuine evidential relationship. (shrink)

It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of (...) the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms apply to gods. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a family of responses to the evidential problem of evil. What unifies this family is two general claims. First, that even if God were to exist, we shouldn’t expect to see God’s reasons for permitting the suffering we observe. Second, the previous claim entails the failure of a variety of arguments from evil against the existence of God. In this essay, we identify three particular articulations of skeptical theism—three different ways of “filling in” those two claims—and describes (...) their role in responding to evidential arguments of evil due to William Rowe and Paul Draper. But skeptical theism has been subject to a variety of criticisms, several of which raise interesting issues and puzzles not just in philosophy of religion but other areas of philosophy as well. Consequently, we discuss some of these criticisms, partly with an eye to bringing out the connections between skeptical theism and current topics in mainstream philosophy. Finally, we conclude by situating skeptical theism within our own distinctive methodology for evaluating world views, what we call “worldview theory versioning.”. (shrink)

The paper discusses the unique approach to the problem of evil employed by the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion and ethics that is primarily represented by D. Z. Phillips. Unlike traditional solutions to the problem, Phillips’ solution consists in questioning its meaningfulness—he attacks the very ideas of God’s omnipotence, of His perfect goodness and of the need to ‘calculate’ God’s goodness against the evil within the world. A possible weakness of Phillips’ approach is his unreflected use of what he calls ‘our (...) religious language’, against which he measures the meaningfulness of theodical conceptions. He apparently underestimates both the heterogeneity of the ‘ours’ and how philosophical ideas pervade and inform the actual practice. On the other hand, Phillips rightly identifies the fact that some theodical conceptions, if understood as general doctrines, commit the sin of insensitivity and do not pay appropriate respect to human suffering. The reason is that they neglect the seriousness and importance of the difference between issuing the theodical accounts in the first person and in the third person. He may, however, thereby accuse theodicies of failing in a task that theodicists never intended to undertake. Possible problems are also involved in Phillips’ use of the Holocaust as the central discussion example. (shrink)

A common argument for atheism runs as follows: God would not create a world worse than other worlds he could have created instead. However, if God exists, he could have created a better world than this one. Therefore, God does not exist. In this paper I challenge the second premise of this argument. I argue that if God exists, our world will continue without end, with God continuing to create value-bearers, and sustaining and perfecting the value-bearers he has already created. (...) Given this, if God exists, our world—considered on the whole—is infinitely valuable. I further contend that this theistic picture makes our world's value unsurpassable. In support of this contention, I consider proposals for how infinitely valuable worlds might be improved upon, focusing on two main ways—adding value-bearers and increasing the value in present value-bearers. I argue that neither of these can improve our world. Depending on how each method is understood, either it would not improve our world, or our world is unsurpassable with respect to it. I conclude by considering the implications of my argument for the problem of evil more generally conceived. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, although Alvin Plantinga’s Felix Culpa theodicy appears on only two pages of his recent book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism (2011) (i.e. 58-59), it is of pivotal importance for the book as a whole. Plantinga argues that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and monotheism, and that there is superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism. I contend that the weakness of the Felix Culpa theodicy (...) lends support to the view that there is more than superficial conflict between science and monotheism, and offer an alternative response to the challenge of evil which suggests that there might be, after all, concord between science and (religious) naturalism. (shrink)

Analytical philosophers of religion widely assume that God is a person, albeit immaterial and of unique status, and the divine attributes are thus understood as attributes of this supreme personal being. Our main aim is to consider how traditional divine attributes may be understood on a non-personal conception of God. We propose that foundational theist claims make an all-of-Reality reference, yet retain God’s status as transcendent Creator. We flesh out this proposal by outlining a specific non-personal, monist and ‘naturalist’ conception (...) of God, which we call the ‘euteleological’ conception of God, and then considering euteleological interpretations of omnipotence, omniscience and divine goodness. (shrink)

Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to the project of meta-theodicy, understood here as the elucidation of the concept of theodicy through the analysis of its adequacy. In our case, the analysis shall be made inside a framework including a taxonomical view of the theodical adequacy conditions which allows for a rigorously acceptable description of them as well as for a natural appraisal of the role, importance and intra-logical relations holding between them. The result of the analysis shall (...) be used to introduce definitions minimally precise of the notions of theodicy, satisfactory theodicy, plausible theodicy, ideal theodicy, and the like. (shrink)

I defend the theory that one's life is meaningful to the extent that one promotes the good. Call this the good cause account (GCA) of the meaning of life. It holds that the good effects that count towards the meaning of one's life need not be intentional. Nor must one be aware of the effects. Nor does it matter whether the same good would have resulted if one had not existed. What matters is that one is causally responsible for the (...) good. I argue that the best theory of the meaning of life should clearly distinguish between subjective fulfillment and objective meaningfulness. The GCA respects the distinction. And it is superior to its leading rivals in the recent literature, most notably those of Erik Wielenberg and Susan Wolf. (shrink)

Marilyn McCord Adams’s perspective on the intimacy with God as a way of defeating horrendous evils in the course of a human being’s existence has been met with a series of objections in contemporary scholarship. This is due to the fact that the critiques formulated have focused more on the debilitating impact of suffering on the sufferer’s body and mind, on intimacy as mere intermittent relationships between God and humans, or on what is lost or gained from the presence or (...) absence of this intimacy with the divine being. Focusing on Adams’s appeal to esthetic arguments in theodicy and on her reflection on practical issues in theology, the article presents Adams’s perspective on intimacy as a relation initiated objectively by God at the creation and at Christ’s incarnation and continued subjectively throughout history by both God and every human being. Given its combining of objective and subjective features, this kind of intimacy is not to be understood as an exclusively private relationship of each individual with God, but rather as a process of communal advancing in rehabilitation and mutual healing that is initiated in the antemortem career and fulfilled in the post-mortem existence. (shrink)

A number of theologians and philosophers have found theodical value in the theme of divine solidarity with human suffering. To further develop this theme, I examine what it would mean to assert that Christ on the cross participated in a representative sample of human suffering. Particular attention is paid to Christ’s cry of dereliction. I argue that if God through Christ identified with the very worst kinds of human suffering on the cross, then the cry of dereliction should be interpreted (...) as indicating an epistemic break between God and Christ, and not merely an attentional disruption. According to this account, Christ’s death cry expressed his temporary inability to grasp the significance of his passion and death. In this way, Christ on the cross suffered the full effects of divine hiddenness, thus sharing with horror-sufferers the experience of meaning-negating suffering. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers of religion typically take God to be ‘the personal omniGod’ – a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and who creates and sustains all else that exists. Analytic philosophers also tend to assume that the personal omniGod is the God of ‘classical’ theism. Arguably, this is a mistake. To be consistent, a classical theist or her supporter must deny that God is literally a person. They need not, however, deny the aptness of using personal language, or of (...) thinking of God as a person or personal at the level of religious psychology. (shrink)

William James advocated a form of finite theism, motivated by epistemological and moral concerns with scholastic theism and pantheism. In this article, I elaborate James’s case for finite theism and his strategy for dealing with these concerns, which I dub the problems of suffering. I contend that James is at the very least implicitly aware that the problem of suffering is not so much one generic problem but a family of related problems. I argue that one of James’s great contributions (...) to philosophical theism is his advocacy for the view that adequate theistic philosophizing is not so much about cracking this family of problems, but finding a version of the problem to embrace. (shrink)

Moral luck occurs when factors beyond an agent’s control positively affect how much praise or blame she deserves. Kinds of moral luck are differentiated by the source of lack of control such as the results of her actions, the circumstances in which she finds herself, and the way in which she is constituted. Many philosophers accept the existence of some of these kinds of moral luck but not others, because, in their view, the existence of only some of them would (...) make morality unfair. I, however, argue that this intermediary approach is unstable, because either morality is fair in ways that rule out resultant, circumstantial, and constitutive moral luck (and this leads to moral responsibility skepticism), or morality is unfair in ways that permit the existence of those kinds of moral luck. Thus, such intermediary approaches lack the motivation that their proponents have long taken them to have. In the appendix, I point to ways in which morality is unfair concerning the scope of moral responsibility, moral obligation, moral taint, being a good or bad person, and flourishing. (shrink)

This paper argues that, although Margaret Cavendish’s main philosophical contributions are not in philosophy of religion, she makes a case for a defense of God, in spite of the worst sorts of harms being present in the world. Her arguments about those harms actually presage those of contemporary feminist ethicists, which positions Cavendish’s scholarship in a unique position: it makes a positive theodical contribution, by relying on evils that contemporary atheists think are the best evidence against the existence of God. (...) To demonstrate that Cavendish’s work should be considered as early modern feminist theodicy, this paper will briefly introduce the contemporary feminist worry about theodicy as a project, show that Cavendish shares the contemporary feminist view about situated evil, and argue that her theodicy aims for agreement about how to eradicate great moral evils while preserving free will—and so, carves out a space for future female philosophers of religion who aim to be agents of healing in the face of such evil. (shrink)

Marilyn Adams rightly pointed out that there are many kinds of evil, some of which are horrendous. I claim that one species of horrendous evil is what I call horrendous-difference disabilities. I distinguish two subspecies of horrendous-difference disabilities based in part on the temporal relation between one’s rational moral wishing for a certain human function F and its being thwarted by intrinsic and extrinsic conditions. Next, I offer a theodicy for each subspecies of horrendous-difference disability. Although I appeal to some (...) claims made by Marilyn Adams for this theodicy, I reject one particular claim. I deny that one must be aware that one participates in a horrendous evil when the horrific event occurs. To develop this point and its relevance for a theodicy for horrendous-difference disabilities, I engage with Andrew Chignell’s work on infant suffering. In doing so, I show that what partly motivates the claim is a time-bias, i.e., near-bias. By rejecting this time-bias, I show how it is possible, given post-mortem life, for persons with profound cognitive disabilities to participate in horrendous evils and how these might be defeated by God. (shrink)

Many theist as well as many atheist philosophers have maintained that if God exists, then every instance of undeserved, unwanted suffering ultimately benefits the sufferer. Recently, several authors have argued that this implication of theism conflicts with ordinary morality. I show that these arguments all rest on a common mistake. Defenders of these arguments overlook the role of merely potential instances of suffering in determining our moral obligations toward suffering.

I argue that the problem of evil can be a moral objection to theistic belief. The thesis has three broad sections, each establishing an element in this argument. Section one establishes the logically binding nature of the problem of evil: The problem of evil must be solved, if you are to believe in God. And yet, I borrow from J. L. Mackie’s criticisms of the moral argument for the existence of God, and argue that the fundamentally evaluative nature of the (...) premises within the problem of evil entails that it cannot be used to argue for the non-existence of God. Section two establishes the moral objectionability of many responses to the problem of evil. I discuss the work of the moral ‘anti-theodicists’, and support some of the key premises within their arguments via appeal to the moral philosophy of Raimond Gaita. I combine the claims of section one and section two, and conclude that theism inherits the moral objectionability of theodicy. In section three, I establish the plausibility of a morally motivated non-cognitive atheism, offering an example, before finally distilling the central claims of this thesis into the form of a slogan: God lacks humanity. (shrink)

Theories of well-being tell us what makes a life good for the one who lives it. But there is more to what makes a life worth living than just well-being. We care about the worth of our lives, and we are right to do so. I defend an objective list theory of the worth of a life: The most worthwhile lives are those high in various objective goods. These principally include welfare and meaning. By distinguishing between worth and welfare, we (...) can capture the intuitive pull of broad theories of welfare without their liabilities. (shrink)

I often tell my students that the only thing that is not controversial in philosophy is that everything else in it is controversial. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, it does contain a kernel of truth, as many exaggerations do: philosophy is a highly contentious discipline. So it is remarkable the extent to which there is agreement in the philosophy of religion amongst theists, agnostics, and atheists alike that John Mackie’s argument for atheism is either invalid or (...) unsound. As a result, the focus has entirely shifted from the logical problem of evil to the so-called evidential one. But I think that this is a mistake, not necessarily because I think Mackie’s argument is sound, but rather because I reject an assumption made by apparently all parties to the debate, which is that there is only one logical problem of evil. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to defend a deductive argument that God* does not exist. As far as I can tell, the basic idea of this argument is a novel one: while Mackie’s argument has a more or less consequentialist framework, mine has a deontological one. The evil of which I will speak is that of our having been thrown into the world. (shrink)

Religions don’t simply make claims about the world; they also offer existential resources, resources for dealing with basic human problems, such as the need for meaning, love, identity, and personal growth. For instance, a Buddhist’s resources for addressing these existential needs are different than a Christian’s. Now, imagine someone who is agnostic but who is deciding whether to put faith in religion A or religion B. Suppose she thinks A and B are evidentially on par, but she regards A as (...) offering much more by way of existential resources. Is it epistemically rational for her to put her faith in A rather than B on this basis? It is natural to answer No. After all, what do the existential resources of a religion have to do with its truth? However, I argue that this attitude is mistaken. My thesis is that the extent to which it is good for a certain religion to be true is relevant to the epistemic rationality of faith in that religion. This is plausible, I’ll argue, on the correct account of the nature of faith, including the ways that emotion and desire can figure into faith and contribute to its epistemic rationality. (shrink)

From a theoretical standpoint, the problem of human suffering can be understood as one formulation of the classical problem of evil, which calls into question the compatibility of the existence of a perfect God with the extent to which human beings suffer. Philosophical responses to this problem have traditionally been posed in the form of theodicies, or justifications of the divine. In this article, I argue that the theodical approach in analytic philosophy of religion exhibits both morally and epistemically harmful (...) tendencies and that philosophers would do better to shift their perspective from the hypothetical “God’s-eye view” to the standpoint of those who actually suffer. By focusing less on defending the epistemic rationality of religious belief and more on the therapeutic effectiveness of particular imaginings of God with respect to suffering, we can recover, (re)construct, and/or (re)appropriate more virtuous approaches to the individual and collective struggle with the life of faith in the face of suffering. (shrink)

Hope is crucial human agency, but its fragility grounds a substantive challenge to Christian belief. It is not clear how a perfectly loving God could permit despairinducing experiences of divine silence. Drawing upon a distinctively Christian psychology of hope, this paper seeks to address this challenge. I contend that divine silence can act as a corrective to misplaced natural hopes. But there are risks in God’s choice to allow a person to lose all natural hope. Thus, if God is perfectly (...) loving, God ought to find a way to demonstrate goodness to those who are tempted by theological despair. I argue that the Church demonstrates God’s goodness through its merciful care and hope for the afflicted. The local community can act to sustain or recover a person’s capacity to remain open to the gift of hope even in the midst of divine silence. (shrink)

This paper provides a new defence against the logical problem of evil, based on the naturalistic functional/teleological theory of mind (NFT). I argue that if the NFT is self-consistent then it is consistent with theism. Further, the NFT entails that it is not possible for created minds to exist in the absence of evil. It follows that if the NFT is self-consistent then the existence of God is consistent with the existence of evil.

According to the most recent articulation of her view, Marilyn Adams’s reply to the problem of horrendous evils states that God offers compensation to those who experience horrendous evils. This compensation includes the good of the incarnation of God and the good of identification with God in virtue of suffering horrendous evils. Andrew Gleeson has raised a series of objections to Adams’s recent articulation. I argue that all of Gleeson’s arguments fail or fail to pose a distinct challenge. I then (...) present a different challenge: that her view provides insufficient compensation for horrendous evils. I conclude by suggesting a development of her view. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophy of religion there are three main ways in which God is conceptualised in relation to personhood:God is a person and so personal. God is non-personal, and so is not a person. God is a personal non-person. The first two of these options will be familiar to many, with held by most contemporary monotheist philosophers of religion and mainly by those who are pantheists., however, is a view some may not have come across, despite its proponents claiming it (...) was the view of great philosophical theologians from the past. However, within recent times has become more popular. On the face of it, it might not be clear what the difference between and is, and whether debate had between the two positions is substantive. The goal of this paper is therefore to clarify the debate and assess whether the many claims advocates of make as to why God cannot be a person stand up to scrutiny or are persuasive. My suggestion will be that on the whole they do and are not. As such, defenders of will either need to defend these reasons in more detail or focus on the area I suggest the debate really rests on. (shrink)

Christopher Southgate offers a remarkable evolutionary theodicy that includes six affirmations and arguments; together they form a unique and very persuasive proposal which he terms a “compound evolutionary theodicy.” Here I summarize the arguments and offer critical reflections on them for further development, with an emphasis on the ambiguity in the goodness of creation; the role of thermodynamics in evolutionary biology; the challenge of horrendous evil in nature; and the theological response to theodicy in terms of eschatology, with its own (...) severe challenge from cosmology. (shrink)

El problema del mal sigue inquietando la conciencia humana, lo que hace indispensable revisar las fuentes de nuestro entendimiento de esa terrible dificultad. Agustín de Hipona suele ser considerado el primer filósofo en encarar este problema desde una perspectiva sistemática. Sin embargo, la soluci..

My purpose in this paper is to clarify or explicate the concept of theodicy. More specifically, I shall provide an account of the concept that takes its logical aspects seriously into consideration as well as satisfies the basic intuitions philosophers of religions have had about it. This shall be done by systematically analysing the several theodical conditions found in the literature. As it shall be seen, these conditions are logically related to one another; collectively, they point not to one, but (...) to several concepts of theodicy. Thus, as by-product of this explicatory endeavour, I shall provide a logically guided, I may say, analysis of such conditions as well as a systematization of the theodical concepts arising from them. I shall follow what might be termed a semiformal approach; despite not developing a full logical theory, I use the standard notation and some important results from the field of formal logic. (shrink)

In this essay, moral anti-theodicy is characterized as opposition to the trivialization of suffering, defined as the reinterpretation of horrendous evils in a way the sufferer cannot accept. Ambitious theodicy (which claim goods emerge from specific evils) is deemed always to trivialize horrendous evils and, because there is no specific theoretical context, also harm sufferers. Moral anti-theodicy is susceptible to two main criticisms. First, it is over-demanding as a moral position. Second, anti-theodicist opposition to least ambitious theodicies, which portray God's (...) decision to create as an scenario, requires a moral commitment to philosophical pessimism. Thus anti-theodicists should not be quick to take the moral high ground. However, this should not encourage theodicists, since theodicies may well be self-defeating in so far as they attempt to provide comfort. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, Jason Megill (2011) offers an innovative meta-argument which deploys considerations about multiple universes in an effort to block all arguments from evil. In what follows, I contend that Megill has failed to establish a key premise in his meta-argument. I also offer a rival account of the effect of multiverse models on the debate about evil.

In Romans 5, St. Paul claims that death came into the world through Adam's sin. Many have taken this to foist on us a fundamentalist reading of Genesis. If death is the result of human sin, then, apparently, there cannot have been death in the world prior to human sin. This, however, is inconsistent with contemporary evolutionary biology, which requires that death predates the existence of modern humans. Although the relationship between Romans 5, Genesis, and contemporary science has been much (...) discussed—often with goal of dissipating the idea that the two are in conflict—the specific issue of death entering the world through sin has remained difficult to resolve. I argue that the Eastern Orthodox tradition has the resources to respect both Romans 5 and contemporary science. Appealing to a broadly Irenaean notion of soul‐making, and to the idea of theosis, opens up space for an understanding of these passages that is both scientifically informed and Orthodox. (shrink)