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Gratuitous Evil and Divine Existence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Keith Yandell
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Extract

God, who is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent Creator and Providence, exists and There is evil are logically compatible claims. God exists, If God exists, then He has a morally sufficient reason for allowing any evil that He does allow, and There is evil is a consistent triad of propositions. Thus any pair from that triad is also consistent. Thus God exists and There is evil are logically compatible. But this does not settle the question as to whether the truth of There is evil in the world has such consequences for theism as making it highly improbable that God exists or making it unreasonable to believe that God exists. That propositions P and Q are logically compatible does not entail that one does not provide powerful evidence against the other. In particular, it has seemed that some actual evils are gratuitous or in some manner just could not fit into a God-made world. Thus the simple argument is offered that: (1) There are gratuitous evils; (2) If there are gratuitous evils, then there is no God; so: (3) There is no God. I will call this simple argument the ‘root argument’, for it is this argument and sophistications of it that will occupy us hereafter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 15 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

* A predecessor of this paper was read, in July, 1986, to Professor William Alston's NEH Seminar in the Philosophy of Religion in Bellingham, Washington, and a later version at the SCP Conference held in November, 1986 at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa organized by Professor Janine Idziak. Without holding them responsible for my use of their comments, the paper has profited by remarks made by Professors Richard Swinburne, Phillip Quinn, Eleanore Stump [ to Section IV] and George Mavrodes [Section V]. Section III refers to work by Professors William Rowe and Alvin Plantinga, and Section IV to work by Professor Robert Adams; in each case, the work is well known.