This paper aims to neutralize Draper-style evidential arguments from evil by defending five theses: (1) that, when those who advance these arguments use the word “evil,” they are referring, at least in large part, to ill-being; (2) that well-being and ill-being come as a pair (i.e., are essentially related); (3) that well-being and ill-being are best understood in an at least partly objectivist way; (4) that (even partial) objectivism about well-being and ill-being is best understood as implying non-naturalism about well-being (...) and ill-being; and (5) that the truth of non-naturalism about well-being and ill-being does not fit cleanly with naturalism and, in fact, fits at least as well with theism as it does with naturalism. (shrink)

The Evil‐god challenge has enjoyed a flurry of attention after its resurrection in Stephen Law's, 2010 paper of the same name. Intended to undermine classical monotheism, the Evil‐god challenge rests on the claim that the existence of all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐evil god (Evil‐god) is roughly as likely as the existence of an all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐good god (Good‐god). The onus is then placed on those who believe in Good‐god to explain why their belief should be considered significantly more reasonable than belief in (...) Evil‐god. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive exposition of the Evil‐god challenge by exploring its history and recent developments. The forthcoming part II paper will present and address the main objections that have been posed to the Evil‐god challenge and consider its implications for classical monotheism. (shrink)

Proponents of the problem of animal suffering state that the great amount of animal death and suffering found in Earth’s natural history provides evidence against the truth of theism. In particular, philosophers such as Paul Draper have argued that regardless of the antecedent probability of theism and naturalism, animal suffering provides positive evidence for the truth of naturalism over theism. While theists have attempted to provide answers to the problem of animal suffering, almost none have argued that animal suffering and (...) death can be seen as positive evidence for theism. This essay will discuss several arguments from the writings of Thomas Aquinas that can be used to show that animal suffering and death are to be expected in theistic universes. In the first section, I discuss evidential arguments for naturalism from animal suffering. Next, I provide an overview of Aquinas’ arguments, particularly in Book II of the Summa Contra Gentiles. After this, I discuss the implications these arguments have for theistic universes. Finally, I conclude that these arguments refute evidential arguments for naturalism from animal suffering and also provide evidence that favors theism. (shrink)

A Nietzschean theodicy would claimthat God has created the world exactly the wayit is in order to produce morally autonomousagents in Nietzsche's sense: self-consciousmoral subjectivists. Both atheism and a`Nietzschean theodicy' make the sameprediction: the world will appear to containgratuitous evil. Thus, observation ofapparently gratuitous evil is not evidence foror against either hypothesis. In the absenceof any other evidence for or against theism,the most reasonable position is agnosticism.

Following Hume’s lead, Paul Draper argues that, given the biological role played by both pain and pleasure in goal-directed organic systems, the observed facts about pain and pleasure in the world are antecedently much more likely on the Hypothesis of Indifference than on theism. I examine one by one Draper’s arguments for this claim and show how they miss the mark.

Among the things that students of the problem of evil think about is whether explanatory versions of the evidential argument from evil are better than others, better than William Rowe’s famous versions of the evidential argument, for example. Some of these students claim that the former are better than the latter in no small part because the former, unlike the latter, avoid the sorts of worries raised by so-called “skeptical theists”. Indeed, Trent Dougherty claims to have constructed an explanatory version (...) that is “fundamentally immune to considerations pertaining to skeptical theism”. I argue that he has done no such thing. (shrink)

This is a review of Peter van Inwagen's collection of essays. It corrects a typesetter’s deletion of 75% of the review originally published in _Faith and Philosophy_15, 1998: 397-399.

While evil has always fascinated philosophers, it is only in modern times that the existence of evil has been seen as a serious challenge to belief in the existence of a powerful and benevolent God. In order to demonstrate this, the following chapter traces the historical emergence of what philosophers today call “the problem of evil” through an analysis of the writings of Plato, Epicurus, Sextus Empiricus, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Descartes, Bayle, and Hume.

Critics of skeptical theism often claim that if it (skeptical theism) is true, then we are in the dark about whether (or for all we know) there is a morally justifying for God to radically deceive us. From here, it is argued that radical skepticism follows: if we are truly in the dark about whether there is a morally justifying reason for God to radically deceive us, then we cannot know anything. In this article, I show that skeptical theism does (...) not entail that we are in the dark about whether (or for all we know) there is a morally justifying reason for God to deceive us. And hence arguments against skeptical theism that make use of this assumption fail. (shrink)

This article is a response to Stephen Law's article ‘The evil-god challenge’. In his article, Law argues that if belief in evil-god is unreasonable, then belief in good-god is unreasonable; that the antecedent is true; and hence so is the consequent. In this article, I show that Law's affirmation of the antecedent is predicated on the problem of good (i.e. the problem of whether an all-evil, all-powerful, and all-knowing God would allow there to be as much good in the world (...) as there is), and argue that the problem of good fails. Thus, the antecedent is unmotivated, which renders the consequent unmotivated. Law's challenge for good-god theists is to show that good-god theism is not rendered unreasonable by the problem of evil in the same way that evil-god theism is rendered unreasonable by the problem of good. Insofar as the problem of good does not render belief in evil-god unreasonable, Law's challenge has been answered: since it is not unreasonable to believe in evil-god (at least for the reasons that Law gives) it is not unreasonable to believe in good-god. Finally, I show that – my criticism aside – the evil-god challenge turns out to be more complicated and controversial than it initially appears, for it relies on the (previously unacknowledged) contentious assumption that sceptical theism is false. (shrink)

Arguments from evil purport to show that some fact about evil makes it (at least) probable that God does not exist. Skeptical theism is held to undermine many versions of the argument from evil: it is thought to undermine a crucial inference that such arguments often rely on. Skeptical objections to skeptical theism claim that it (skeptical theism) entails an excessive amount of skepticism, and therefore should be rejected. In this article, I show that skeptical objections to skeptical theism have (...) a very limited scope: only those who reject certain (apparently) popular epistemological theories will be threatened by them. (shrink)

Trent Dougherty has argued that commonsense epistemology and skeptical theism are incompatible. In this paper, I explicate Dougherty’s argument, and show that (at least) one popular form of skeptical theism is compatible with commonsense epistemology.

De facto objections to theism purport to show that theism is false, whereas de jure objections to theism claim that, whether or not theism is true, belief in God is irrational. Divine hiddenness – the fact that there are people who non-resistantly lack belief in God – is sometimes used as an argument against theism. In this article I will show that accepting the argument from divine hiddenness carries a high cost: it eliminates all de jure objections to theism. So (...) atheists can either have de jure objections to theism or the objection from divine hiddenness, but they cannot have both. (shrink)

The problem of evil is widely recognised to be the most serious challenge to the reasonableness of believing this world to be God’s creation. In this paper, I offer a novel way of responding. I argue that given a certain sort of divine command metaethics our moral intuitions and beliefs about what moral goodness substantially involves cannot reasonably be expected to provide reliable insight into what God’s moral goodness substantially involves. As such, even if it is unreasonable to believe this (...) universe to be the creation of an intuitively morally good, omnipotent, omniscient being, this does not entail that it is unreasonable to suppose it to be the creation of God. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to examine the problem of suffering in the book of Job and the possible solution it offers. For this reason, it is structured as follows: In the first section, we will analyse Job’s evidential argument; the second section will delve into the ”friends’ and their failed attempt at a retributive theodicy; finally, we shall look into God’s argument and try to explain Job’s answer in terms of sceptical theism.

I examine different strategies involved in stating anti-theistic arguments from natural evil, and consider some theistic replies. There are, traditionally, two main types of arguments from natural evil: those that purport to deduce a contradiction between the existence of natural evil and the existence of God, and those that claim that the existence of certain types or quantities of natural evil significantly lowers the probability that theism is true. After considering peripheral replies, I state four prominent theistic rebutting strategies: skeptical (...) theism; Richard Swinburne's view that moral knowledge entails natural evil; the soul-making theodicy; and the natural law theodicy. (shrink)

Abstract. Since Darwin, scholars have contemplated what our growing understanding of natural selection, combined with the fact that great suffering occurs, allows us to infer about the possibility that a benevolent God created the universe. Building on this long line of thought, I develop a model that illustrates how undesirable characteristics of the world (stylized “evils”) can influence long-run outcomes. More specifically, the model considers an evolutionary process in which each generation faces a risk from a “natural evil” (e.g., predation, (...) disease, or a natural disaster) subsequent to a basic resource allocation game. This allows both resource allocation and the natural evil to influence the number of surviving offspring. As the model shows, when the risk from the natural evil can be mitigated through the benevolent behavior of neighbors, the population may have increasing benevolence as a result of (1) greater risk from the natural evil and (2) a greater degree to which selfish individuals transfer resources to themselves in the resource allocation game. The main implication is that a world with evolutionary processes (in contrast to a world of static design) can allow two factors that have traditionally been considered “evils”—namely, the indiscriminate cruelty of the natural world and the capacity for humans to harm each other—to promote desirable long-run outcomes. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann argues directly from our ignorance about actual and merely possible goods and evils and the broadly logical relations that hold betweenthem to the conclusion that “noseeum” arguments from evil against theism like William L. Rowe’s are unsuccessful. I critically discuss Bergmann’s argument in the first part of this paper. Bergmann also suggests that our ignorance about value and modality undermines the Humean argument from evil against theism that I defended in a 1989 paper. I explain in the second (...) part of this paper why this suggestion is false. (shrink)

Skeptical theism has as its foundation the thesis that if God permits evil, his reasons for doing so will likely be beyond our ken. The only defense given for this thesis is the Parent Analogy. There is in the literature only one defense of this use of the Parent Analogy and it has never been confronted. I examine it and expose serious flaws, thus exposing a crack in the very foundation of skeptical theism.

Traditionally, the problem of evil, in its various formulations, has been one of the strongest objections against perfect being theism. In the voluminous literature on this problem, the motif of evil has usually been discussed with respect to human flourishing. In recent decades more focused attention has been paid to animal suffering and the philosophical problems that such suffering poses for perfect being theists. However, this growing body of literature, in Anglo-American philosophical milieus, is largely aimed at sketching a specifically (...) Christian or Christianity-inflected theodicy that would reconcile animal suffering with the existence of an omni-God. In contrast, there are few, if any, systematic attempts to put forth a Hindu theodicy that aims to offer morally justifiable reasons that God has for allowing animal suffering. In this article, we address this scholarly lacuna by illustrating how a Hindu perfect being theist might respond to the problem of animal suffering. (shrink)

Mark Murphy has recently defended a novel account of divine agency on which God would have very minimal requiring reasons and a wide range of merely justified reasons. This account grounds his response to the problem of evil. If God would not have requiring reasons to promote the well-being of creatures, Murphy argues, then the evil we observe would not count as evidence against theism. I argue that Murphy's conclusion, if successful in undermining the problem of evil, also undermines probabilistic (...) arguments for theism. However, there is good reason to resist his conclusion. Even if God does not have requiring reasons, but merely has justifying reasons, to promote creaturely well-being, God may nevertheless have most motivating reason to do so, and this would be enough to predict divine action, at least given Murphy's further assumption that God is perfectly free. It does not follow from the rational permissibility of God's Φ-ing that it is possible for God to Φ. (shrink)

According to a simple Bayesian argument from evil, the evil we observe is less likely given theism than given atheism, and therefore lowers the probability of theism. I consider the most common skeptical theist response to this argument, according to which our cognitive limitations make the probability of evil given theism inscrutable. I argue that if skeptical theists are right about this, then the probability of theism given evil is itself largely inscrutable, and that if this is so, we ought (...) to be agnostic about whether God exists. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that sceptical theists have too narrow a focus: they consider only God’s axiological reasons, ignoring any non-axiological reasons he may have. But this is a mistake: predicting how God will act requires knowing about his reasons in general, and this requires knowing about both God’s axiological and non-axiological reasons. In light of this, I construct and defend a kind of sceptical theism—Deontological Sceptical Theism—that encompasses all of God’s reasons, and briefly illustrate how it renders irrelevant (...) certain charges of excessive sceptical and how it evaporates equiprobability objections. Furthermore, I put forth a simple argument in favor of Deontological Sceptical Theism, which shows that everyone (at least currently) ought to endorse it. (shrink)

“Divine hiddenness”, as the phrase suggests, refers, most fundamentally, to the hiddenness of God, i.e., the alleged fact that God is hidden, absent, silent. In religious literature, there is a long history of expressions of annoyance, anxiety, and despair over divine hiddenness, so understood. For example, ancient Hebrew texts lament God’s failure to show up in experience or to show proper regard for God’s people or some particular person, and two Christian Gospels portray Jesus, in his cry of dereliction on (...) the cross, as experiencing abandonment by God, whom he regarded as “Abba, Father”, an experience shared by many mystics, saints, and ordinary folk of all theistic traditions, described at its worst as “the dark night of the soul”. Understood in this way, divine hiddenness poses an existential problem for those who have such experiences. -/- However, “divine hiddenness” refers to something else in recent philosophical literature, especially since the publication of J.L. Schellenberg’s landmark book, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993). In this context, it refers to alleged facts about the absence of belief of God, on the basis of which one might think there is no God. For example, Schellenberg argues that, since there are nonbelievers who are capable of a personal relationship with God and who do not resist it, there is no perfectly loving God, while Stephen Maitzen argues that naturalism better explains the “demographics” of nonbelief than theism and Jason Marsh argues that naturalism better explains “natural nonbelief” than theism. Understood in this way, divine hiddenness constitutes putative evidence for atheism. -/- Although some of the recent philosophical literature addresses the problem understood in the first way (e.g., DeWeese-Boyd 2016; Garcia 2002), this entry focuses on divine hiddenness understood in the second way. The first section discusses the relationships between nonbelief and another source of alleged evidence for atheism: evil. The second section states and defends the argument from nonresistant nonbelief. The third section sketches attempts to explain nonresistant nonbelief from a theistic perspective. The fourth section states other responses to the argument from nonresistant nonbelief. The fifth section discusses the argument from the demographics of nonbelief and the sixth section discusses the argument from natural nonbelief. (shrink)

The Evil-god challenge attempts to undermine classical monotheism by contending that because belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-malevolent God (the Evil-god hypothesis) is similarly reasonable to belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God (the Good-god hypothesis), the onus is on the classical monotheist to justify their belief in the latter hypothesis over the former hypothesis. This thesis explores the Evil-god challenge by detailing the history and recent developments of the challenge; distinguishing between different types of Evil-god challenge; responding to several (...) prominent objections to the challenge; and applying the challenge to philosophical arguments for the existence of God. I also evaluate the efficacy of parallel arguments as a whole, with a view to determining the parameters of the Evil-god challenge by laying out exactly which theistic positions are irrevocably undermined by it. I conclude that the Evil-god challenge effectively damages several arguments for the existence of God and, in cases where it does not straightforwardly do so, it nevertheless reduces the Good-god theist’s belief to one or more intuitions. (shrink)

Preprinted in God and the Problem of Evil(Blackwell 2001), ed. William Rowe. Many people deny that evil makes belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism. After all, they say, the grounds for belief in God are much better than the evidence for atheism, including the evidence provided by evil. We will not join their ranks on this occasion. Rather, we wish to consider the proposition that, setting aside grounds for belief in God and relying only on (...) the background knowledge shared in common by nontheists and theists, evil makes belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism. Our aim is to argue against this proposition. We recognize that in doing so, we face a formidable challenge. It’s one thing to say that evil presents a reason for atheism that is, ultimately, overridden by arguments for theism. It’s another to say that it doesn’t so much as provide us with a reason for atheism in the first place. In order to make this latter claim seem initially more plausible, consider the apparent design of the mammalian eye or the apparent fine-tuning of the universe to support life. These are often proposed as reasons to believe in theism. Critics commonly argue not merely that these supposed reasons for theism are overridden by arguments for atheism but rather that they aren’t good reasons for theism in the first place. Our parallel proposal with respect to evil and atheism is, initially at least, no less plausible than this proposal with respect to apparent design and theism. (shrink)

The Introduction provides a general overview of the issues discussed in The Myth of an Afterlife in more detail in the individual selections, structured according to the four parts of the volume, plus preceding introductory and subsequent concluding comments. -/- 1. Preliminary Considerations -- 2. Empirical Arguments for Annihilation -- 3. Conceptual and Empirical Difficulties for Survival -- 4. Problematic Models of the Afterlife -- 5. Dubious Evidence for Survival -- 6. The Importance of Empirical Considerations -- 7. Alternative Paranormal (...) Explanations of the Survival Evidence -- 8. Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Wadsworth, 2013, 6th edition, eds. Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. In this essay, I argue that the moral skepticism objection to what is badly named "skeptical theism" fails.

Imagine slicing your hand with a steak knife. Inevitably, this leads to a characteristic unpleasant sensation, and just as reliably, to a withdrawal of the wounded limb. But can this rather mundane fact--and other similar facts--shed any light on the mind-body problem or the issue of the role of experience in causing behavior? In my dissertation, I explore this issue head on, and in the process clarify and criticize the arguments of philosophers who have given an affirmative answer to this (...) question--philosophers such as William James and Herbert Spencer. These arguments have coupled evidence like the above with the fact that human beings have evolved, in order to make the case that epiphenomenalism with respect to qualia is false. My first task will be to formulate a rigorous version of a James-Spencer style argument, which will occupy us in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is dedicated to answering a number of objections to the argument, in an effort to show that if there is a problem with it, this problem lies elsewhere. Chapter 3 explores alternative arguments in the spirit of the original one formulated in Chapter 1, and discusses any resulting effects on the plausibility of the conclusion. Chapter 4 is the capstone chapter of the dissertation. In it, I discuss a crucial objection to all arguments in the spirit of that given in the first chapter--namely, that physicalism has analogous flaws to epiphenomenalism where accommodating the relevant evidence is concerned. My conclusions in this final chapter are twofold. First, that even if there is no fatal flaw in the general strategy the evolutionary argument employs, it works against all forms of dualism, not just epiphenomenalism. And second, the accusations made in the objection are correct; physicalism suffers from problems analogous to those faced by epiphenomenalism. Although the primary findings of the dissertation are negative, there are many lessons we can take from them along the way. Most prominent among them is an improved perspective on the appropriate roles of empirical findings and armchair philosophical theorizing in debate over the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Throughout the last century there has been much discussion over what it is that makes an activity or a theory 'scientific'. In the philosophy of science, conversation has focused on differentiating legitimate science from so-called 'pseudoscience'. In the broader cultural sphere this topic has received attention in multiple legal debates regarding the status of creationism, where it has been generally agreed that the 'supernatural' nature of the claims involved renders them unscientific. In this thesis I focus upon the latter of (...) these issues, arguing that although there may be merit in the larger demarcation project of separating science from pseudoscience, the notion of 'supernaturality' does not belong in this adjudication. Due to the complex cultural issues that have played a role in the history of this topic, this will involve a degree of historical and normative analysis alongside more philosophically abstract considerations. Complicating the discussion is thefact that neither the term 'science' nor 'supernatural' enjoys a widely agreed upon definition. In order to assess the question then, I will survey a wide variety of definitions of each term in order to identify areas of potential conflict. I argue that in none of the prevalent understandings can we find impediment to scientific investigation inherent in the supernaturality of a claim, but rather posit that where difficulty arises it does so for more mundane reasons. I conclude that not only is there no inherent issue with scientific investigation of the supernatural, but that the term 'supernatural' itself is too poorly defined to provide a useful role in philosophical discussion. While I argue that notions of supernaturality should be abandoned entirely when assessing demarcation criteria, I concede that numerous extraneous factors, including the significant degree of overlap between the supernatural and the 'religious', warrant consideration of a compromise position. (shrink)

Philosophical theists argue with great ingenuity and sophistication that there is excellent evidence in support of the existence of the God of western theism. Philosophical atheists argue with equal skill that the evidence is negative. Both sides can't be right. But, this seems to imply that one camp is guilty of serious epistemological error. I explore in this essay a way of understanding good theological evidence that mitigates charges of intellectual error or blindness. According to a position that Rowe calls (...) friendly atheism, the atheist can argue that the relevant evidence supports his or her view, but that theists are rationally justified in believing that God exists in spite of the intense suffering that manifest in this world. I will argue that friendly atheism, and more generally friendly natural theology, when articulated in more detail, and with great care, represents an important metaphilosophical insight about use of evidence in theological contexts. (shrink)

This essay assesses Paul Draper's argument from evolution to atheism.