Is known as the most common argument for skepticism/atheism, or the lack thereof of religious belief.
There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without losing some greater good or permitting some equally bad or worse evil. (Premise 1)
An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent any intense suffering it could, unless doing so would cost a greater good or permit an equally bad or worse evil. (Premise 2)
Therefore, there is no omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. (Conclusion)
Many instances of naturally-occurring “gratuitous” suffering are observed daily—ichneumon wasps inject eggs into the body of caterpillars and insect larvae, allowing them to eat the host from the inside out, keeping it alive for as long as possible by avoiding critical organs; children are diagnosed with pediatric cancer and congenital impairments, forcing them to suffer for their entire lives in a battle against illness; an injured whale will sink into the seafloor, being eaten alive by marine scavengers for several days.
Millions of these dysteleological, or pointless events, happen outside the scope of human observation, detaching this suffering from even the concept that dysteleological suffering is a means to discern between good and evil.
With this being said, an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being would surely be able to interfere in the course of these events—otherwise it would be failing to prevent evil that achieves no greater good; or, if prevented, would permit some equally bad or worse evil; the presence of pointless suffering in our world would intuitively lead us to believe the skeptic’s conclusion that an omnipotent and wholly good being, represented as God, wouldn’t exist—at least in our world. If that were the case, this article would be pointless. Let’s go over 3 solid responses that can take out the traditional atheist argument.
One of the most intuitive logical refutations to the skeptic’s argument can be found in agnostic philosopher G. E. Moore’s shifting of a modus ponens—a logical inference in the form of “if P, then Q | P is true | therefore, Q is true” into a modus tollens—a logical inference in the form of “if P, then Q | P is false | therefore, Q is false”. Due to the principle of transposition, a conditional is equivalent to its contrapositive; hence letting us seamlessly transform any modus ponens into a modus tollens. We can use G to denote “God exists” and E to denote “gratuitous evil exists”, drawing out the atheist’s argument as represented below.
Premise 1: G → ¬E (if god exists, there would be no gratuitous evil)
Premise 2: E (gratuitous evil exists)
Conclusion: ∴ ¬G (therefore god does not exist)
The contrapositive follows as such.
Premise 1: G → ¬E (if god exists, there would be no gratuitous evil)
Premise 2: G (god exists)
Conclusion: ∴ ¬E (therefore there is no gratuitous evil)
The refutation is logically solid, but it is a purely defensive response; it doesn’t provide so much as a proof in the opposite direction, just being able to show that the contrapositive is just as likely as the affirmative. You would have to rely on proving an argument affirming the existence of God as true in order to warrant the prioritization of the modus tollens over the modus ponens.
[If you want to see an article where I pick apart the G. E. Moore Shift, just comment it down below.]
Skeptical Theism, or CORNEA (Condition On ReasoNable Epistemic Access), is another viable way to defend against the argument from evil; formulated by Stephen Wykstra in a 1984 paper titled “The Humean obstacle to evidential arguments from suffering”, proposing that Rowe’s argument makes a noseeum fallacy. (Within an implied premise, of course)
Premise 1 must assert that we are justified in believing that gratuitous evil exists—that hinges on whether or not you could reasonably grant access to that epistemic claim. We would only be able to rationally say that dysteleological suffering exists at all if we could recognize God’s justifying reasons for that suffering. If a being were supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, our ability to understand such a being’s justification for a certain suffering should certainly be viewed as improbable, or at least fallible. The inability of mortal beings to justify the behavior of ichneumon wasps should be rationally accepted, given our cognitive and moral ineptitude relative to a perfect being.
If an infant is taken to the hospital for a surgical operation but, as is the case with most, if not all, infants, does not see any ramifications for this suffering, does that make the suffering gratuitous? Obviously not; infants lack the cognitive paraphernalia to decode a true purpose for this suffering—to them, it is dysteleological and unnecessary.
A logical jump from the premise “I can’t see X” to “X doesn’t exist” is of importance when debating the existence of a being whose intellective abilities operate on completely foreign grounds; incomprehensible to the human psyche—the difference between a God’s reasoning ability and ours is broadly comparable to the difference in chess gameplay between a 200 elo child who can only see the white squares on a chess board and a 3200 elo grandmaster who can see the whole board.
Theism and naturalism are competing interpretations of ontology, epistemology, cosmology, and metaethics. To weigh theism and naturalism is to weigh the plausibility of a God’s existence, that is accounting for every argument for and against God; therefore, you can have 10 logically sound arguments for theism and 9 logically sound arguments for naturalism; the proof, therefore, still points in favor of theism. If the conclusion that “God must exist” follows from all arguments for God, and the conclusion that “God must not exist” follows from all arguments against God, you’re simply weighing the total evidence that exists on each side.
In this case, you must prove the validity of several other theistic arguments, including but not limited to: the Cosmological Argument, Ontological Argument, and Teleological argument. Much like how scientific consensus works, the problem of unnecessary suffering and evil will undermine your justification for believing in God significantly; though, as long as most of the logically sound evidence points in favor of a God existing, you still have more of a justification to believe in God’s existence—ergo “true” arguments resulting in proof/disproof can be present on both sides, but you have more of a reason to accept which side has the majority of true arguments.
If you’re not familiar with being able to deploy to several coherent versions of theistic arguments, defend those arguments against a plethora of skeptical attacks, and defend against steel-manned skeptic responses against those responses; as well as being able to pick apart several of the best atheist arguments, you are not in a position to use a Bayesian calculus to concede Rowe’s Argument from Evil or the concept of unnecessary suffering as being able to undermine your defense of theism. Honestly, I myself am not in a position to be using this one in a theology debate either…
Against Rowe’s Argument from Evil. A laundry list of comprehensive, still non-exhaustive theistic defenses would include Plantinga’s Free Will Defense, Soul-Making Theodicy, and the Felix Culpa Theodicy. Deploying any of these properly in a theology debate is a great way to stress test your theism, and defending Rowe’s Argument is a great way to test your atheism—none of these responses are one-shot silver bullets against theism or naturalism; they still have to rely on your ability to argue better.
All of these provide some really interesting counter-arguments to the most popularized (and for good reason) argument for atheism out there—the ability of those responses to adequately respond to one of the most elementary and intuitive grounds for nonbelief is debatable.
Anyways, I thought this article would be a solid drop for my Substack while I work on an upcoming article that involves some cool stuff! If you have any robust and grounded refutations against the Argument from Evil or have frontlines to my refutations, drop them down in the comments below, it would mean the world to me if you could contribute to some thoughtful discussion in the comments. My goal with these theology argumentation articles is to make theists and atheists think sharper ;)
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