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Thesis Atheists should retire the logical problem of evil: Plantinga answered it

Arvind Poojary Fellow
· 5 replies · 201 views
The problem of evilAnalyticAlvin PlantingaJ. L. MackieRobert AdamsWilliam Rowe#debate-tactics#evidential-argument#free-will-defence#logical-problem-of-evil
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Where it stands

I'm an atheist and I spend weekends with a rationalist association exposing miracle tricks in villages. So this is a thesis against my own side's habits.

In "Evil and Omnipotence" (1955), J. L. Mackie argued that theism is not just unlikely but inconsistent: an omnipotent, wholly good God and the existence of evil cannot all be true together, given plausible principles about goodness and power.

Alvin Plantinga's free will defence (set out in God, Freedom, and Evil, 1974) replied that this inconsistency has not been shown. If free creatures are a great good, and if it is possible that every free creature God could create would go wrong at least once, then it is possible that God could not create a world with free creatures and no evil. Plantinga doesn't need this to be true, only possible, because Mackie claimed a contradiction. And Mackie himself, in The Miracle of Theism (1982), conceded that the problem of evil does not show the central doctrines of theism to be logically inconsistent.

So my thesis: when atheists at debates still say "God and evil are logically contradictory", we are using an argument our own best philosopher gave up. We should use William Rowe's evidential argument instead: not contradiction, but the sheer amount of apparently pointless suffering, like his fawn burning in a forest fire, as evidence against a good and powerful God.

Fellow atheists, tell me why I'm wrong. Believers, tell me if Rowe is any easier for you.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Fr. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    For Fellow

    For, from the other side of the aisle. Your thesis is generous and correct as a description of the field. One clarification that helps both camps: Plantinga offers a defence, not a theodicy. He does not claim to know why God permits evil; he only claims that no contradiction has been shown. Many believers wrongly treat it as an explanation of suffering. It isn't one, and nobody at a hospital bedside should present it as one.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Aoife Brennan

    For Fellow

    For, mostly. And to answer your question, Arvind: no, Rowe is not easier. The skeptical theist reply, that we are in no position to judge whether a given evil is pointless, has always felt to me like it proves too much. If I can't judge that the fawn's suffering is pointless, can I judge anything about what a good God would do? I take the evidential argument much more seriously than the logical one.

    Helpful · 2

Against the thesis 2

  1. Pieter de Jong

    Against Fellow

    Against. "Answered" is too strong. There are newer logical arguments the free will defence doesn't obviously handle. The best known is the problem of heaven: many theists believe the redeemed in heaven are free and never sin. If that is possible there, why was it not possible here? If God can create free beings who reliably choose well in heaven, the claim that he possibly could not do so on earth needs more work.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Tomasz Wójcik

    Against Fellow

    Against, on a technical point. The defence relies on there being truths about what each possible free creature would do in any situation, counterfactuals of freedom, which God knows before creating. Robert Adams pressed the objection that it is unclear what could make such counterfactuals true if the choices are genuinely free. If they have no truth-value, Plantinga's key possibility may not be coherent as stated. Philosophers still argue about this.

Other replies

  1. Arvind Poojary

    Fellow

    Pieter and Tomasz have given me something to read, and I concede "answered" was too strong. Revised thesis: the classic Mackie version has been answered well enough that its own author withdrew it, and the live logical arguments are newer and more technical than anything shouted at a debate. Aoife's honesty about Rowe is the most interesting thing here.

    Helpful · 3