Antitheodicy objects to all attempts to solve the problem of evil. Its objections are almost all on moral grounds—it argues that the whole project of theodicy is morally offensive. Trying to excuse God’s permission of evil is said to deny the reality of evil, to exhibit gross insensitivity to suffering, and to insult the victims of grave evils. Since antitheodicists urge the avoidance of theodicies for moral reasons, it is desirable to evaluate the moral reasons against theodicies in abstraction from (...) the intellectual reasons for and against them. It is argued that the best known theodicies such as those based on soul-making and free will are guilty of moral faults as alleged. But Leibniz’s best of all possible worlds theory, often thought to be the most morally offensive ‘Panglossian’ theodicy, is morally blameless because it excuses God by the absolute impossibility of his choosing any world better than the present one. Theodicy should not be conceived of as a search for greater goods which may excuse God’s permitting evils. From the divine point of view, creation is an upfront choice between scenarios—in modern parlance, a Trolley problem rather than a Transplant problem. In cases of forced choice among scenarios, it is morally improper to criticize one who chooses the best. (shrink)

Recent criticisms of theodicies express a conflict between theoretical and practical responses to the existence of evil. Theodicies, and defenses, seek to provide a resolution to the question of why there is evil if there is God. In providing an answer, theodicies offer an explanation for evil that responds to the existence of evil in a theoretical manner. In contrast to those theoretical responses, there have been a number of responses to the existence of evil that have emphasized acting against (...) evil. These practical responses have stressed human actions to lessen the occurrence and impact of evil. Examining the criticisms of theodicies and the responses that have been made to those criticisms opens up the possibility of an interaction between theoretical and practical responses to evil. A survey of the changing understanding of divine omnipotence demonstrates the reciprocal interaction between theoretical and practical responses to evil leading to a more a comprehensive response to the existence of evil and God’s relationship to evil. (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)

Some philosophers of religion have argued that moral anti-theodicy begs the question. This paper evaluates the arguments from two such philosophers, writing a decade apart—Robert Mark Simpson, and Lauri Snellman. Simpson argues that any global argument against theodicy must allow for the possibility of there existing a plausible theodicy, and that anti-theodical arguments (the argument from insensitivity, the argument from detachment, and the argument from harmful consequences) all implicitly discount this possibility, thus ending up begging the question. Snellman argues that (...) moral anti-theodicies presuppose that some evils cannot be justified, which would presuppose that theodicy is false from the start, which in turn would beg the question against theodicy. The author of the paper argues that Simpson’s arguments rest on an erroneous assumption regarding the nature of anti-theodicy, and that one of Simpson’s arguments sets a problematic standard for argumentation that the author argues we should not accept. It is also argued that Snellman’s argument relies on an unsupported claim from Toby Betenson. Therefore, the author concludes that Simpson and Snellman have not managed to show that moral anti-theodicies beg the question. (shrink)