The "Heaven Ab Initio" Argument from Evil

1990

Seminar Paper, 2023

From the Greek philosopher Epicurus to William L. Rowe, Victor J. Stenger and the rest, the argument that God does not exist because there are evils in our world, has been raging among atheist scientists and philosophers. This paper is based on extracts from my recent book titled “The World Cannot be a Paradise: Recent Response to Arguments for Atheism and Skeptical Theism,” published in 2022 through the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing platform. The book reviews, among others, the arguments for atheism by William L. Rowe who is noted for formulating the evidential problem from evil, Paul Draper, a philosopher and follower of Darwinian naturalism, and Victor J. Stenger, a member of the New Atheists group, who denies the existence of any supernatural being and regards the human species as a result of an accident. It reviews arguments for skeptical theism and expounds how theodicies responded to the argument from evil. It also detects some deficiencies in the response of four Christian theists, including William P. Alston and Tim Stratton, to the argument from evil. The book then responds to the arguments for atheism and skeptical theism by adducing reasons to show why evil and suffering co-exist with Almighty God in the world that cannot be a Paradise, and proves that Rowe’s controversial, evidential argument from evil is dead and buried. This paper specifically presents parts of the arguments for atheism by Epicurus, Aaron Jones, George H. Smith and William J. Stenger, and my response to them which I extracted from the first and seventh chapters of the book. The goal of the paper is to show that taking a world without any form of evil and suffering as a necessary condition for the existence of God is not only illogical but also utopian. The paper begins with a definition of atheism and ends with a conclusion and implications for being an atheist, and for believing in God.

De Ethica: Journal of Philosophical, Theological and Applied Ethics, 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.

Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi dergisi, 2023

According to the logical problem of evil, the coexistence of evil and the theistic God who is considered to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is impossible. The fact that our world contains evils invalidates the existence of the theistic God. A libertarian theistic response to this problem, the free will defense, holds that if God actually has or could have a sufficient reason to actualize a world containing evils, the problem fails. This good reason, according to the defense, might be significant freedom, the freedom to choose between moral good and evil. Yujin Nagasawa, Graham Oppy, and Nick Trakakis, however, approach this debate from a different angle and argue that the traditional theistic view of heaven is a problem for this theistic response when we ask whether there is freedom in heaven. They contend that if the inhabitants of heaven do not have significant freedom, free will cannot be a great good that gives God a good reason to create a world containing evils. Thus, the free will defense fails. In this paper, I claim that this is mistaken. I argue that even though the inhabitants of heaven are not free in the most robust sense (i.e. they are no longer capable of sinning), this does not show that significant freedom is not a great good that justifies God's creating a world containing evils.

2015

The contemporary debate originates with the publishing of J. L. Mackie's "Evil and Omnipotence." 2 In this article, Mackie articulates the standard version of the logical argument from evil by claiming that the three core tenants of theism ("God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists") are logically inconsistent. 3 H. J. McCloskey follows Mackie by taking a more general approach to the problem and examining a wider range of potential solutions. 4 The logical argument's momentum comes to a screeching halt with the publication of Alvin Plantiga's landmark work, The Nature of Necessity. 5 In this work Plantinga employs modal logic and possible world semantics to demonstrate "that it is possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good without creating one containing moral evil." 6 By demonstrating this possibility, Plantinga shows that there is no necessary logical inconsistency between the existence of God and evil. Using this demonstration, he accomplishes a rare feat in the contemporary philosophical landscape: near universal agreement. Robert Adams states, "It is fair to say that Plantinga has solved this problem." 7 William Alston agrees: "It is now acknowledged on (almost) 2

Religious Studies, 2020

Michael Tooley has developed a sophisticated evidential version of the argument from evil that aims to circumvent sceptical theist responses. Evidential arguments from evil depend on the plausibility of inductive inferences from premises about our inability to see morally sufficient reasons for God to permit evils to conclusions about there being no morally sufficient reasons for God to permit evils. Tooley's defence of this inductive step depends on the idea that the existence of unknown rightmaking properties is no more likely, a priori, than the existence of unknown wrongmaking properties. I argue that Tooley's argument begs the question against the theist, and, in doing so, commits an analogue of the base rate fallacy. I conclude with some reflections on what a successful argument from evil would have to establish.

Philosophy Compass, 2016

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of evil refers to a family of arguments that attempt to show, by appeal to evil, that God does not (or probably does not) exist. Some very important arguments in this family focus on gratuitous evil. Most participants in the relevant discussions, including theists and atheists, agree that God is able to prevent all gratuitous evil and that God would do so. On this view, of course, the occurrence of even a single instance of gratuitous evil falsifies theism. The most common response to such arguments attempts to cast doubt on the claim that gratuitous evil really occurs. The focus of these two survey papers will be a different response – one that has received less attention in the literature. This response attempts to show that God and gratuitous evil are compatible. If it succeeds, then the occurrence of gratuitous evil does not, after all, count against theism. After introducing some key terms, I survey the literature surrounding the attempts by Michael Peterson and John Hick to execute this strategy. In a follow-up paper, I discuss the attempts of William Hasker, Peter van Inwagen, and Michael Almeida, respectively.

Philosophy Compass, 2016

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of evil refers to a family of arguments that attempt to show, by appeal to evil, that God does not (or probably does not) exist. Some very important arguments in this family focus on gratuitous evil. Most participants in the relevant discussions, including theists and atheists, agree that God is able to prevent all gratuitous evil, and that God would do so. On this view, of course, the occurrence of even a single instance of gratuitous evil falsifies theism. The most common response to such arguments attempts to cast doubt on the claim that gratuitous evil really occurs. The focus of these two survey papers will be a different response – one that has received less attention in the literature. This response attempts to show that God and gratuitous evil are compatible. If it succeeds, then the occurrence of gratuitous evil does not, after all, count against theism. In the prequel to this paper, I surveyed the literature surrounding the attempts by Michael Peterson and John Hick to execute this strategy. Here, I survey the attempts due to William Hasker, Peter van Inwagen, and Michael Almeida, respectively.

The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, 2014

1. Introduction While accounts of the nature of hell vary within and between religious traditions, formulations of the traditional doctrine include at least the following five elements. E1 Some persons do or will reside in hell and will be there for an infinite period of time. E2 Hell is the residence of those persons who have failed to satisfy some condition(s) dictated by God as necessary to avoid hell and enjoy heaven. E3 The cumulative well-being and well-being at any moment of any resident of hell is negative. E4 Those in hell are blocked from leaving. E5 Those in hell are consigned to hell as punishment for either failing to satisfy the condition(s) God requires for one to avoid hell or for actual sins committed or both. In this essay we explain why the doctrine of hell poses a problem of evil for traditional theists in the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and how some have responded to the problem. Our focus is entirely on recent work in analytic philosophical theology. Given that the recent philosophical debates over hell have largely transpired within the context of the Christian theistic tradition, Christian theism provides the backdrop for how we frame the problem and some of the responses in much of what follows. However, this should not be taken as an indication of the problem as unique to traditional Christianity or even that the responses to the problem considered are only available to those who are working from within the Christian tradition. In what follows, we first summarize the case for why the doctrine of hell poses a problem of evil. Next, we consider recent traditionalist responses to the problem. Finally, we examine some non-traditionalist strategies that involve dispensing with one or more of the five elements of the traditional view. 2. The Problem Stated Some philosophers have argued that the conception of hell that follows from (E1)-(E5) is inconsistent with the traditional conception of God. In particular, it poses a problem for theists who (a) believe in an afterlife and (b) believe that some persons will reside in hell forever. Such theists affirm the following two theses: (i) God exists, and is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. 1 Similar reasoning can be found in Adams (1975), Hick (1978, chapter XVI), and Talbott (1990). 2 We are not using the same numbering as Adams and we have substituted 'God' where Adams has 'He'.