The problem of evil is an ideal topic for experimental philosophy. Suffering--which is at the heart of most prominent formulations of the problem of evil--is a universal human experience and has been the topic of careful reflection for millennia. However, interpretations of suffering and how it bears on the existence of God are tremendously diverse and nuanced. We might immediately find ourselves wondering why (and how!) something so universal might be understood in so many different ways. (...) Why does suffering push some people toward atheism while pushing others toward deeper faith? What cultural, psychological, or sociological differences account for this diversity of responses? And, importantly, what light might this diversity of responses shed on the problem of evil and how it has been formulated by philosophers in recent years? The primary aim of this paper is to highlight how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be fruitfully applied to the problem of evil. In the first section, we review some recent work in this area and describe the current state of this emergent body of literature. In the second section, we review the broader and more recent theoretical developments on the problem of evil. Finally, in the final section, we outline some potential areas of future empirical research that we see as especially promising given those developments. (shrink)

My paper examines the problem of evil in its logical form, and along lines of African philosophizing. I construe the problematic nature of this problem [of evil] (hereafter, λ) as arising from a Western logical structure, which takes the valuation of propositions as being marked by a rigid bivalence of only truth (T) and falsity (F). By this structure, values and propositions are diametrically pitted against each other such that it appears that choice is only restrained (...) to an ‘either’, ‘or’. My argument transcends and dismantles this bivalence and subscribes to the African system of Ezumezu logic, developed by Jonathan Okeke Chimakonam which permits the pursuit of a trivalent logical course of ‘either’, ‘or’, in addition to ‘and’. Employing the logical system of Ezumezu, I demonstrate a negative resolution to λ, showing via the ‘principle of value-complementarity’, that good and evil as observed and experienced, are not opposites, but rather complements. The conclusions I draw from my analysis bear some implication for the conception of the Supreme Being; for one, I argue that conceiving the Supreme Being in African philosophy through the categories of the superlative ‘omni’ properties is mistaken , and also, I argue that this Supreme Being is better conceived as a harmony of good and evil: an embodiment of balance. (shrink)

The problem of evil is set out as a dialectic between theist and critic, the aim being to reveal the place of ethical judgments in the theist's apology. I discover what ethical judgments, both normative and descriptive, are implicit in the theist's use of his premises as good reasons, and where his reasoning goes astray. I suggest what ethical judgments, in contrast to the theist's, are supported by good reasons.

The problem of evil poses a challenge for traditional theists by asking how they could rationally believe in the existence of an omnipotent and wholly good God given that the world is filled with evil manifested in such events as wars, crimes, and natural disasters. This is widely considered one of the most significant challenges to belief in God and has evoked many responses from traditional theists. However, it is not my aim in this book to propose (...) another response to the problem or to evaluate the effectiveness of existing responses at length. I deliberately refrain from such endeavours. Instead, I take a step back from the ongoing debate surrounding the problem and adopt a unique perspective which transcends the familiar perennial debate between traditional theists and atheists. The thesis that the problem of evil is a problem beyond traditional theism is radical enough. Yet, I argue for an even more radical thesis in this book: supernaturalist theists enjoy advantages that naturalist atheists/non-theists lack when responding to the problem of evil because there is greater hope that the problem can be solved when supernaturalist resources are in place. This thesis, I argue, entails an additional interesting thesis: the problem of evil is a more significant challenge for atheists/non-theists than for traditional theists. (shrink)

James Sterba uses the Pauline Principle to argue that the occurrence of significant, horrendous evils is logically incompatible with the existence of a good God. The Pauline Principle states that (as a rule) one must never do evil so that good may come from it, and according to Sterba, this principle implies that God may not permit significant evils even if that permission would be necessary to secure other, greater goods. By contrast, I argue that the occurrence of significant (...) evils is logically compatible with the existence of a good God because victims of significant evils may themselves reasonably consent to their suffering. In particular, I argue that they may be able to accept their suffering if it turns out that there was no way for God to secure relevant greater goods (or prevent other, greater evils) except by way of allowing their suffering, and God also provides them with other compensating, heavenly comforts. After using this consent-based argument to address Sterba’s logical problem from evil, I briefly consider how this argument may also help address a related evidential problem from evil, which suggests that while it is possible that victims of significant evils would consent to their suffering, it is unlikely that they would do so. While I do not provide a definitive solution to this evidential problem of evil, I highlight one important example of a trade-off that God may need to make that would—along with the provision of compensating, heavenly comforts—potentially persuade victims of significant evils to consent to their suffering. Specifically, I argue that there may be a necessary trade-off that God needs to make between permitting significant evils (on the one hand) and protecting a certain, morally significant form of free will (on the other hand). (shrink)

In its original form, Nozick’s experience machine serves as a potent counterexample to a simplistic form of hedonism. The pleasurable life offered by the experience machine, its seems safe to say, lacks the requisite depth that many of us find necessary to lead a genuinely worthwhile life. Among other things, the experience machine offers no opportunities to establish meaningful relationships, or to engage in long-term artistic, intellectual, or political projects that survive one’s death. This intuitive objection finds some support in (...) recent research regarding the psychological effects of phenomena such as video games or social media use. After a brief discussion of these problems, I will consider a variation of the experience machine in which many of these deficits are remedied. In particular, I’ll explore the consequences of a creating a virtual world populated with strongly intelligent AIs with whom users could interact, and that could be engineered to survive the user’s death. The presence of these agents would allow for the cultivation of morally significant relationships, and the world’s long-term persistence would help ground possibilities for a meaningful, purposeful life in a way that Nozick’s original experience machine could not. While the creation of such a world is obviously beyond the scope of current technology, it represents a natural extension of the existing virtual worlds provided by current video games, and it provides a plausible “ideal case” toward which future virtual worlds will move. While this improved experience machine would seem to represent progress over Nozick’s original, I will argue that it raises a number of new problems stemming from the fact that that the world was created to provide a maximally satisfying and meaningful life for the intended user. This, in turn, raises problems analogous in some ways to the problem(s) of evil faced by theists. In particular, I will suggest that it is precisely those features that would make a world most attractive to potential users—the fact that the AIs are genuinely moral agents whose well-being the user can significantly impact—that render its creation morally problematic, since they require that the AIs inhabiting the world be subject to unnecessary suffering. I will survey the main lines of response to the traditional problem of evil, and will argue that they are irrelevant to this modified case. I will close by considering by consider what constraints on the future creation of virtual worlds, if any, might serve to allay the concerns identified in the previous discussion. I will argue that, insofar as the creation of such worlds would allow us to meet morally valuable purposes that could not be easily met otherwise, we would be unwise to prohibit it altogether. However, if our processes of creation are to be justified, they must take account of the interests of the moral agents that would come to exist as the result of our world creation. (shrink)

One paradigmatic argument from evil against theism claims that, (1) if God exists, then there is no gratuitous evil. But (2) there is gratuitous evil, so (3) God does not exist. I consider three deontological strategies for resisting this argument. Each strategy restructures existing theodicies which deny (2) so that they instead deny (1). The first two strategies are problematic on their own, but their primary weaknesses vanish when they are combined to form the third strategy, resulting (...) in a promising new approach to the problem of evil. (shrink)

The Multiverse Response to the problem of evil has it that God made our universe because God makes every universe meeting a certain standard. The main problem for that response is that there’s no explanation for why God didn’t just keeping making duplicates of perfect universes. This paper introduces the ‘Multiactualities Response’, which says that God actualises every possible world that meets a certain standard of value. It avoids the corresponding problem about duplication because different propositions (...) must always be true at distinct worlds. The Multiactualities Response nevertheless has its own problem, namely that it requires the possibility of multiple actual worlds. This paper argues that if we consider spacetimes with wormholes, we have good cause to think there can be multiple metaphysically privileged present moments; given a suitable analogy between time and modality, it follows that there can be multiple metaphysically privileged (i.e. actual) worlds. This paper includes an in–depth examination of the metaphysics of both the temporal and modal cases. (shrink)

Here I consider the two most venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Obviously, both arguments cannot be sound. But I argue here that (...) they are both unsound for the very same reason. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing four different versions of the argument from evil that start from four different moral premises that in various ways link the existence of God to the absence of suffering. The version of the argument from evil that I defend starts from the premise that if God exists, he would not allow excessive, unnecessary suffering. The argument continues by denying the consequent of this conditional to conclude that God does not exist. I defend the argument (...) against Skeptical Theists who say we are in no position to judge that there is excessive, unnecessary suffering by arguing that this defense has absurd consequences. It allows Young Earthers to construct a parallel argument that concludes that we are in no position to judge that God did not create the earth recently. In the last section I consider whether theists can turn the argument from evil on its head by arguing that God exists. I first criticize Alvin Plantinga’s theory of warrant that one might try to use to argue for God’s existence. I then criticize Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian argument to the same conclusion. I conclude that my version of the argument from evil is a strong argument against the existence of God and that several important responses to it do not defeat it. (shrink)

One of the few points of agreement between most theists and non-theists working on the problem of evil is that the existence of a perfect God is incompatible with the existence of pointless evil. In a series of influential papers, however, Peter van Inwagen has argued that careful attention to the reasoning behind this claim reveals fatal difficulties related to the Sorites Paradox. In this paper, I explain van Inwagen’s appeal to sorites reasoning, distinguish between two different (...) arguments in his work, and argue that they both commit the same so-far-unnoticed mistake. (shrink)

The problem of evil and the injustice it brings out has a long history in western philosophy and it has been one of the core arguments against the existence of God as an all-powerful and all-good Being. In a number of texts Meillassoux agrees with this line of argument, but he also argues that atheism fails to take into account the injustice of evil. His central thesis is that while the existence of evil discounts the existence (...) of the ‘revealed’ God, he proposes a messianic vision where we can hope for the arrival of a God who will have the power to rectify the injustices that have been committed. To justify the possible arrival of such a being Meillassoux describes the world as a contingent place such that things happen without a necessary reason. This explains why, in the past, novel and inexplicable situations (‘advents’) have arisen and, possibly, others might arise. One such possibility is the arrival of a God who will redeem all the injustices suffered within the world. (shrink)

The existence of evil, pain and suffering is considered by many philosophers to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect deity. Why would a loving God permit wanton acts of cruelty and misery on the scale witnessed throughout human history? In this essay, Leslie Allan evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the benefits and challenges faced by each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic (...) defence designed to show that the problem of evil is not a problem at all. (shrink)

This paper addresses several reasons why students may be uninterested or unwilling to engage with the problem of evil and discusses a method of teaching it which overcomes these difficulties. This strategy, first, distinguishes between evil and gratuitous evil. This prevents students from thinking that the task of theodicy is fulfilled by a reconciliation of God with mundane evil (e.g. immunizations). Second, the goal of theodicy is framed as the reconciliation of God with the appearance (...) of evil. Emphasizing appearance in this way clearly frames the work of arguments from evil and theodicies as arguments for or against the reality of this appearance. Third, it is made explicit that all candidate theodicies must attempt to cover all evil and that the reasons supporting their conclusions must compass morally sufficient reasons (a moral reason which justifies suffering) and the greater good (a good which is sufficiently good to justify the evil necessary for its achievement). (shrink)

The author presents reasons for thinking that the evil we observe in the world is not even prima facie evidence against the existence of God.

Recently, some authors have argued that experiences of poignant evils provide non-inferential support for crucial premisses in arguments from evil. Careful scrutiny of these experiences suggests that the impermissibility of permitting a horrendous evil might be characterized by a deontological insensitivity to consequences. This has significant implications for the project of theodicy.

It is sometimes thought that the Problem of Evil entails the inexistence of God. However, this is not the case: it only entails the inexistence of an omnipotent-benevolent god, of which the God of Classical Theism is an example. As for ‘limited’ deities such as that of process theology, or malevolent deities such as that of dystheism, the problem of evil is not a problem at all.

Sceptical theists undermine the argument from evil by claiming that our ability to distinguish between justified and unjustified evil is weak enough that we must take seriously the possibility that all evil is justified. However, I argue that this claim leads to a dilemma: either our judgements regarding unjustified evil are reliable enough that the problem of evil remains a problem, or our judgements regarding unjustified evil are so unreliable that it would (...) be misguided to use them in our decision-making. The first horn undermines theism, while the second undermines our moral decision-making. Thus, sceptical theism is problematic. (shrink)

I argue that the Problem of Evil diminishes the likelihood of the simulation hypothesis being true. In section 1, I present the simulation hypothesis. In section 2, I present the Problem of Evil and how it can be addressed to the simulation hypothesis. In section 3, I strengthen my claim by defending the idea that, on the grounds of the expansion of the moral circle, we can infer that potential simulators would most probably view simulated beings (...) as moral subjects. Section 4 is dedicated to counterarguments and their responses, and section 5 contains a conclusion where I clarify the probabilistic nature of my argument. (shrink)

The problem of evil is a well-known subject in philosophy, especially in philosophy of religion. In fact many thinkers hold that the problem of evil is the most potent rational objection to the theistic belief and has been called the rock of atheism and are being introduced as a recently emerging notion. This paper shows that this problem was proposed and discussed many years ago by Zoroastrian scholars. This paper also studies the solutions proposed by (...) those scholars; And with the help of some theories from Islamic theosophists, the existence of the two sources of good and evil in Mezdayasnian creed has been compared with the concepts of Attributes of Beauty and Glory. In this way, it has been shown that with the help of responses from the Khorasan school to the problem of evil, the Zoroastrian religion can be considered as a creed of Unity. (shrink)

Evil is the opposite of good. This phenomenon has unleashed serious threat to human existence. The problem is that it is difficult to understand and even to deal with. Evil is a subject that hasdefied solution politically, socially or religiously. This paper examined the issue of the origin,effect and ways of dealing with evil for a better society. The research adopted the historical andliterary methods of research. Various views are examined. Findings affirmed that God createdevil as (...) well as good. However, this view challenged the omnipotence and the goodness of God. The research identified bloodshed, corruption, demonic activities, human trafficking, child abuseand child dumping/abuse and many others as social vices associated with evil. This researchrecommends that man should learn to live with it, overcome it with good, while religious groupsshould lead in the campaign to end evil and/or reduce its effect on society. (shrink)

This is a review of Michael Peterson's The Problem of Evil.

According to dialetheism, some contradictions are true. In a recent paper, Aaron Cotnoir has suggested that theists who are also dialetheists can resolve the paradox of the stone by accepting a contradiction, and arguing that God both can and can't make the stone. However, Zach Weber has replied that dialetheism is no help for avoiding one of the most serious problems for theism, namely the problem of evil. In this paper, I argue the situation is even worse than (...) this for dialetheist theists, since one motivation for dialetheism closes off what otherwise might be a loophole in a classic version of the problem of evil. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is a kind of evil, namely, the unequal distribution of natural endowments, or natural inequality, which presents theists with a new evidential problem of evil. The problem of natural inequality is a new evidential problem of evil not only because, to the best of my knowledge, it has not yet been discussed in the literature, but also because available theodicies, such the free will defense and the soul-making (...) defense, are not adequate responses in the face of this particular evil, or so I argue. (shrink)

The case is discussed for the doctrine of hell as posing a unique problem of evil for adherents to the Abrahamic religions who endorse traditional theism. The problem is particularly acute for those who accept retributivist formulations of the doctrine of hell according to which hell is everlasting punishment for failing to satisfy some requirement. Alternatives to retributivism are discussed, including the unique difficulties that each one faces.

Close examination of the works of David Hume shows that his aim to explain the problem of evil is to attack natural theology and introduce it as a situation that is non-epistemological and unsystematic. So, contrary to what the majority of interpretations which typically express that he makes an argument against the existence of God, Hume wants to show that the statements of natural theology are rationally unprovable, and he does not want to totally decline them. As a (...) matter of fact, they ontologically exist, and are epistemologically out of human cognition. This article shows that the popular interpretation is false, and this would be done in two ways: the first is Hume’s statements about the cause of the world, and the second is Hume’s solutions for the problem of evil, that have mystical streaks. Based on these fact, it will be shown that Hume is not an atheist, but he is a mystical fideist. (shrink)

The problem of Divine hiddenness, or the hiddenness problem, is more and more commonly being treated as independent of the problem of evil, and as rivalling the latter in significance. Are we in error if we acquiesce in these tendencies? Only a careful investigation into relations between the hiddenness problem and the problem of evil can help us see. Such an investigation is undertaken here. What we will find is that when certain knots (...) threatening to hamper intellectual movement are unravelled, the hiddenness problem emerges as a contender in its own right—one that may generate serious difficulties for theism regardless of conclusions drawn concerning the force of the problem of evil. (shrink)

Epicurus asked: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” This Socratic dialogue, suitable to an introductory audience, explores a popular version of the argument from evil.

There is a close systematic relationship between panentheism, as a metaphysical theory about the relation between God and the world, and transhumanism, the ethical demand to use the means of the applied sciences to enhance both human nature and the environment. This relationship between panentheism and transhumanism provides a ‘cosmic’ solution to the problem of evil: on panentheistic premises, the history of the world is the one infinite life of God, and we are part of the one infinite (...) divine being. We ourselves are therefore responsible for the future development of the life of the divine being. We should therefore use the means provided by the natural sciences to develop the history of the world in such a way that the existence of evil shall be overcome and shall no longer be part of the divine being in whom we move and live and have our being. The metaphysics of panentheism leads to the ethics of transhumanism. (shrink)

The answer given to 'the problem of evil' in the Bible that apologists, theologians, and philosophers have not recognized or understood, having sought for answers to the problem outside the sacred texts wherein alone the unequivoval answer can be found, if only one puts together the relevant texts, as for instance, the book of Job, the book of Isaiah concerning prophecies related to the return of Christ, the book of Ezekiel, the 24th chapter of Matthew, certain passages (...) from the letters of Paul, and the book of Reveation. The central theme in this work is that evil exists now not by reason of God's presence, but by reason of God's absence. We have been left to our own devices. The reason for this is very clear in these texts, and the work spells this out in no uncertain terms, and once this reason is made fully apparent, and undeniable, it will leave no viable excuse for anyone to reject the return of the King of kings, and His eternal rule over all as the Prince of peace. (shrink)

Is it reasonable to believe in a God of love in the face of life's many evils? In this essay I consider how the biblical book of Job raises and responds to this question.

The philosophical “problem of evil” goes back at least as far as Epicurus and has remained a powerful argument against the existence of God in contemporary philosophy. The argument is rooted in apparent contradictions between God’s divine attributes and various conditions of human existence. But these contradictions arise only given certain assumptions of what we should expect both God and the world to be like given God’s existence. In this paper, I argue that we can utilize the work (...) of the 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil to craft a coherent metaphysical picture of God, creation, and suffering which rejects these common assumptions. Further, I contend that this picture very plausibly follows from commonly-accepted tenets of traditional monotheism. Given this, I argue that this Weil-inspired framework provides serious reasons for reframing the problem of evil and its corresponding theodicies by presenting a radically different view of how God must relate to creation. Yet, this picture does not necessarily vindicate the theist. I argue that this picture may leave us with a new question about creation in the face of evil. Namely, is it possible to understand God’s initial creative act as Weil describes it—as an act of love? (shrink)

This paper attempts to deconstruct and undercut the so-called problem of evil from a multitude of perspective. It patches works of scholars from both Christian and Muslim traditions to give the response anyone needs. It also highlights the vagueness of atheism.

Many people think that the amount of evil and suffering we observe provides important and perhaps decisive evidence against the claim that a loving God created our world. Yet almost nobody worries about the ethics of human procreation. Can these attitudes be consistently maintained? This chapter argues that the most obvious attempts to justify a positive answer fail. The upshot is not that procreation is impermissible, but rather that we should either revise our beliefs about the severity of global (...) arguments from evil or develop new and better defenses of human procreation. Although both possibilities are worthy of pursuit, this chapter focuses on the latter possibility. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, it reveals that God’s ethics has a radical satisficing structure: God can choose a good enough suboptimal option even if there is a best option and no countervailing considerations. Second, it resolves the long-standing worry that there is no account of the good enough that is both principled and demanding enough to be good enough. Third, it vindicates the key ethical assumption in the problem of evil without relying on the contested assumption (...) that God’s ethics is our ethics. (shrink)

Much scholarly work has been done on nursery rhymes. How they are coded artifacts warning children about sexual predators etc. But till date no work has been done about Vedanta and nursery rhymes. This draft will be developed into a monograph and in the meanwhile if anyone wants to develop on these ideas, please follow anti-plagiarism rules and cite properly. I thought of putting this up since both philosophers and literature scholars may benefit from some of the insights here. This (...) was given as part of a lecture. Then I discussed theodicy in these rhymes... this last I have not uploaded building up on the theodicy in Vedanta and then using this Vedanta-woven hermeneutic to psychoanalyse and analyse these English rhymes. (shrink)

• It would be a moral disgrace for God (if he existed) to allow the many evils in the world, in the same way it would be for a parent to allow a nursery to be infested with criminals who abused the children. • There is a contradiction in asserting all three of the propositions: God is perfectly good; God is perfectly powerful; evil exists (since if God wanted to remove the evils and could, he would). • The religious (...) believer has no hope of getting away with excuses that evil is not as bad as it seems, or that it is all a result of free will, and so on. Piper avoids mentioning the best solution so far put forward to the problem of evil. It is Leibniz’s theory that God does not create a better world because there isn’t one — that is, that (contrary to appearances) if one part of the world were improved, the ramifications would result in it being worse elsewhere, and worse overall. It is a “bump in the carpet” theory: push evil down here, and it pops up over there. Leibniz put it by saying this is the “Best of All Possible Worlds”. That phrase was a public relations disaster for his theory, suggesting as it does that everything is perfectly fine as it is. He does not mean that, but only that designing worlds is a lot harder than it looks, and determining the amount of evil in the best one is no easy matter. Though humour is hardly appropriate to the subject matter, the point of Leibniz’s idea is contained in the old joke, “An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist thinks.. (shrink)

Considerable effort has been expended on constructing theodicies which try to reconcile the suffering of unwilling innocents, such as Job, with the existence and nature of God as understood in Christian theology. There is, of course, abundant reflection on the problem of evil and the story of Job in the history of Jewish thought, but this material has not been discussed much in contemporary philosophical literature. I want to take a step towards remedying this defect by examining the (...) interpretation of the story of Job and the solution to the problem of evil given by one important and influential Jewish thinker, Saadia Gaon. (shrink)

Moral error theory claims that no moral sentence is (nonvacuously) true. Atheism claims that the existence of evil in the world is incompatible with, or makes improbable, the existence of God. Is moral error theory compatible with atheism? This paper defends the thesis that it is compatible against criticisms by Nicholas Sturgeon.

J.L. Mackie’s version of the logical problem of evil is a failure, as even he came to recognize. Contrary to current mythology, however, its failure was not established by Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. That’s because a defense is successful only if it is not reasonable to refrain from believing any of the claims that constitute it, but it is reasonable to refrain from believing the central claim of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense, namely the claim that, possibly, every (...) essence suffers from transworld depravity. (shrink)

God seemingly had a duty to create minds each of infinite worth through possessing God-like knowledge. People might object that God’s own infinite worth was all that was needed, or that no mind that God created could have truly infinite worth; however, such objections fail. Yet this does not generate an unsolvable Problem of Evil. We could exist inside an infinite mind that was one among endlessly many, perhaps all created by Platonic Necessity. “God” might be our name (...) for this Necessity, or for the infinite mind inside which we existed, or for an infinite ocean of infinite minds. (shrink)

Boyd and Crosby's article "Zoroastrianism: Dualistic or Monotheistic?" explores various perspectives on this question. In their work, the authors delve into the dualistic and monotheistic aspects of Zoroastrianism, considering six different responses. These responses are subjected to rigorous philosophical examination, primarily focusing on how they address the challenge of evil. Ultimately, Boyd and Crosby propose a seventh response, which they find more compelling and philosophically robust than the previous six alternatives, aligning more closely with their criteria for rigorous scrutiny. (...) This paper delves into the seven versions put forth by Boyd and Crosby and evaluates their efficacy in responding to Epicurus' formulation of the problem of evil mentioned earlier. Epicurus' formulation, structured as questions demanding answers, prompts an active engagement with its inquiries. I contend that while Boyd and Crosby's version does possess certain philosophical advantages over the others, it cannot ensure humanity's salvation. This limitation arises from their perspective, which allows for the possibility of viewing the world as progressively improving, a perspective that humanity may be hesitant to relinquish entirely. In the subsequent sections, I will (1) reconstruct the seven versions as presented by Boyd and Crosby, (2) subject each of them to the questions raised by Epicurus, (3) summarize the overarching analysis, and (4) conclude with some final remarks. (shrink)

According to the free-will defence, the exercise of free will by creatures is of such value that God is willing to allow the existence of evil which comes from the misuse of free will. A well-known objection holds that the exercise of free will is compatible with determinism and thus, if God exists, God could have predetermined exactly how the will would be exercised; God could even have predetermined that free will would be exercised sinlessly. Thus, it is held, (...) the free-will defence cannot be used as a partial account of why God should have allowed evil to exist. I investigate this objection using Kripke's apparatus for treating modalities and natural kinds to explore the nature of the incompatibilism required by the free-will defence. I show why the objection fails even if the standard arguments for compatibilism are acceptable. This is because the modality involved in the incompatibilism needed by the free-will defence differs from the modality involved in the compatibilism that is supported by standard compatibilist arguments. Finally, an argument is sketched for a variety of incompatibilism of the kind needed by the free-will defence. (shrink)

I first argue that, contrary to many atheistic philosophers, there is good reason to think the typical theistic philosopher’s retaining of her theism when faced with the Problem of Evil is comparatively epistemically upstanding even if both atheism is true and the typical theistic philosopher has no serious criticism of the atheist’s premises in the PoE argument. However, I then argue that, contrary to many theistic philosophers, even if theism is true, the typical theistic philosopher has no good (...) non-theistic reasons for rejecting any of the atheist’s premises, and she has good non-theistic reasons in favor of the atheist’s premises. In that respect, it’s extremely difficult for the theistic philosopher to respond to the PoE in an informative, non-question-begging way. I close by considering whether theistic philosophers should reject my second thesis. (shrink)

I develop a model of providence on which God brings about good states of affairs by means of evil states of affairs, but without intending the latter. The model's key ingredient is a backward-looking counterpart of the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences of an action: namely, a distinction between intended and merely foreseen means to an end. The model enables greater-good theodicies to avoid worries about whether a perfect being could intend evil.

This was presented as part of an assignment, and like all assignments, this is a work in a hurry. Nonetheless, it has interesting points on the three Gunas. This was written in 2018.

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven. That is, heaven is an imaginable world in a similar way that logically possible scenarios in any fiction are imaginable. However, like some (...) of the imaginable stories in fiction where we are asked to envision an immoral act as a moral one, we resist. I will employ the works of Tamar Gendler on imaginative resistance and Keith Buhler’s Virtue Ethics approach to moral imaginative resistance and apply them to the conception of heaven and the problem of evil. While we can imagine God as an omnibenevolent parent permitting evil to allow for morally significant freedom and the rewards in heaven or punishments in hell (both possible worlds), we should not. This paper is not intended to be a refutation of particular theodicies; rather it provides a very general groundwork connecting issues of horrendous suffering and imaginative resistance to heaven as a possible world. (shrink)